The year of change

More signs of what I've been saying all year: there is something in the air this year; it is the year of personal change. The year began with a series of breakups and divorces and the ensuing shifts in overlapping friend circles. Are you ever really just breaking up with one person only? People reorganizing, restructuring life, getting to know themselves again. Or am I just seeing it this way through my own life experience lense, because it's been a year of change and growth for me, and so I am quick to look for it in others? Or have I just been blind to the patterns and cycles of periods of time?
Two friends whom I haven't seen in much too long shared their stories with me, stories of change, and happily, growth. One has just discovered buddhism, he is waking up, learning to let go of the past, the future, to ask another he has hurt for forgiveness, to create his own joy. My heart was warmed. He's been on my mind ever since.
The other has been filling herself up with drugs and alcohol and sex for too many years for her young age. No more. Her "friends" have abandomed her, but she has found a support network, is dealing with the real highs and lows of everyday filtered through nothing. She is strong, and I believe in m heart she will do this. It has led her to endless creation!
I didn't prompt them to share, and I didn't share myself. I don't know, I didn't feel I needed to. Is this me shying away from connections and closeness again, or is it just what I felt: that I wanted to be their audience for this transformation, their ear, shoulder, whatever it is they need?

Unlearning

Unleaning. What my parents taught me, the things that were never said, more powerful than words, their own insecurites absorbed into the skin, the blood, my mind. You can shed skin. Purify blood. And you have the right to change your mind.
How powerful is your mind? Try to change it's attitudes, beliefs, opinions, or at least have it stop and think beofre forming them. Hard? Yes. It's so well trained, well behaved like an obedient child! What would happen if we let it go, let it run free, took it off it's leash? Retrained it to think differently about things, to think diffrent things? The mind, blows my mind. This is possible. Our brains are not all pre-determind patterns of thought, they can be changed! But they are patterned. Change those patterns people! The mind will fight itself, an epic battle. Your will will win. Let go.
Sit quietly and don't think about anything. I dare you to try. Do it as often as you can for as long as you can. Let every thought go. Interrupt those thought patterns telling you you're not good enough to make your dreams come true, that your boyfirend just doesn't understand. Ask yourself why. Then let that go too. Let it all go and sit with yourslef without the action of thought and listen to who you are. Wake up and follow those dreams, communicate with your boyfriend in his language for a moment, see how that feels. Give your heart permission to feel joy. And pain and sorrow, and everything else because these are not going anywhere. But they will not last. You know this. Believe it. This goes for everything! Knowing and believing are two different things, and believing is what becomes liberation.
You have no one to blame. Unlearning what my parents taught me, yes. But besides insecurities and a penchant for self doubt they also taught me how to love, how to give and share, to take care of others, to work hard and be honest, to have respect and integrity. I can't blame them for anything but being themselves and doing the best they could with what they had and where they were in their lives at each moment. It's all we can ever ask of anyone, and all we can ever give anyone and ourselves, and it is perfect because it is enough. I am enough even though I haven;t unlearned, I haven't let go, my mind is still on a short tether. Hey, it's a process. Change. So scary for our minds safe and comfortable in the bed in the corner, the blinds tightly drawn over the window. I'm letting the sunlight in just a crack, a little at a time.

Hey Universe! Are you listening?

Sometimes I can hear myself even with noise all around me. Sometimes I know I'll be just fine, am just fine, even when everything around me is not. Progress in the un-measurable subtleties I call goals. I don't have to do everything, say yes to everything to feel like I'm living a complete, full life. Some days I just want to sit and breathe, be. Let me be. I'm successful and failing at this every day. But the Universe is responding to what I'm putting out there. I can see it. I can feel it. And I'm amazed. Reasons to get out of bed every morning and put myself and my love out into the world. Or just into myself. A reason to not get out of bed in the morning too, to keep my love right there for a little while longer...

Maps and Graves

Standing in front of the grave of my great grandparents this weekend, my grandmother begins to weep. She tells my sister and I that she pictures her mother lying in her coffin underneath our feet, eyes closed and peaceful as if asleep, in her best dress. I remember it from the day we buried her, it is light pink and old fashioned. I never saw her wear anything like it while she was alive. She preferred brown sweaters and an apron, her only extravagance she allowed herslef was the pure gold crucifix hanging around her neck.
I ask her if it gives her comfort to picture her mother's body there as it was when she saw it for the last time. She is overcome again and she never answers. I want to know if she feels her soul in this place, if she believes it resides in her lifeless body. Somehow she feels close to her here.
My mother refuses to come to the cemetary with her. The people my mother has loved and lost are not where thier bodies lie, she repeatedly tells her own mother. She prefers to keep them close to her heart in memories of thier life.
I am fascinated by the cemetary, and will always accomapny my grandmother when she asks. It gives me the same feeling as visiting the Hungarian Greek Orthodox church did as a child. Although never a catholic, I love the symbols and rituals and dark mystery of this religion. It is linked with my vision of the eastern european half of me, a language I can't speak or understand, blood relatives I have never met practicing unknown traditions across a vast ocean.
Together we wander up and down the neat rows, my sister watching the dates on the gravestones, morbidly looking for children so she can imagine thier sad stories and wonder what happened to them. Maybe all of us are looking for our own mysteries here. My grandmother and I are reading the names, trying to match the country to the sound. So many slavic bodies in this western grave. How many similar stories to my own grandparents are buried here with them I wonder? Stories of poverty and soviet oppression, wars and endless work in fields and farms, revolution, uprising, hope and escape in the middle of the night.
Later that eveing we pour over a map of the old country, and my grandmother points out births and homes and schools and meeting places on border lines and small dots. A strong woman harvests grain and kills chickens alone while her only daughter is tearfully sent to a far away convent, her only chance at an education. From the fields she hovers over the stove, simmering small meals for one, she eats quickly to get to the next task. When darkness comes she must be able to collapse with exhaustion, leaving no time for thoughts of her missing husband, a prisoner of war in a foreign land. She sleeps as if she will not wake, as she lies now in a pink dress in the home of her granddaughter and great granddaughters, who try to imagine her life, even as she is here so we never have to.

On Death

Death is the ultimate in everyday experience. Unique in that it can only be discussed by those who have yet to take their last breath. Bodies shut down and become food for the worms or burn to ash in glorious flame. Death is an experience for the living. To make sense of it, we perform rituals for the protection and salvation of the departed soul, gather with friends and family and accept gifts of food we cannot possibly eat, shed what seems like endless tears, view the body one last time before the expensive box lid is shut forever, view old photographs and tell stories to any poor soul who will listen in our grief. Maybe if we remember them vividly enough, some part of them will remain alive, with us in this world.
What do I have to say on the subject of death? I'm no authority. I have the same human fear of the concept as everyone else, buried somewhere deep within, unconfronted and unbattled. Still only a concept because if I get to close to the thought that I will oneday breathe my last breath my chest tightens with involuntary panic and my brain yells to me "next subject, next subject!"
But what if we must confront this reality, our fears of death in order to fully live our lives? Maybe the opposite also holds true. Maybe only those who fully live their lives, each embraced string of moments can lay down one final time satisfed and ready for whatever may come next.
I want to embrace this ultimate truth of reality: I am going to die. So is everyone that I love. You are going to die, and so is everyone you love. This is all there is, life and death. Everything in existence is impermanant and in a state of constant change. The only time that exists is the present moment. Live in it, it's the only thing we have. Besides death, of course, which I can live with.
Don't say prayers for my dearly departed soul when I have taken my last breath. It will be too late. Don't visit my grave. I won't be there, I promise. Burn everything I ever wrote. Throw my body in the fire while you're at it if you wish. Think of a memory now and then if you wish. Don't dwell on it. Don't hold on to me, my time here will be over, but you will still have many moments that are only yours to live. Sing and dance and cry and then let me go.
Nothing in this world is permanent. The present is the only moment in time. Let go of your fears and attachments and live your moments now. We are all going to die.

Woman's Solstice

I remembered childlike innocence and joy on the beautiful summer solstice eve. I felt the magic in the air. I found myself on an evening walk with 4 generations of beautiful women. The oldest is reeling and healing from a broken heart. She is the reason we are all here. I want to hear her laugh that I have not heard since my grandfather died. The laugh of my childhood, replaced by lines of stress and worry. I want to give her anything, everything, to hear that laugh, to take away her pain. All her men have left her. The story of a woman's life. I give all I can give, my arms wrapped around her small frame in love and thanks, and a hope, that she will learn to laugh that hearty laugh again. That she will realize it came from herself alone all along.

My mother stops to stand in reverence and awe of the huge, sturdy tree with twisted branches. We all stop and can't help doing the same. I am reminded again that she is me, I am her. Her christian heart feeling the tug of the pagan ancients. I don't fight her in me tonight.

Ahead of me walk two young sisters, I can almost see the thread bonding them and I want to tell them to let that thread loosen as it will over the years of growing pains, but not too much...always keep a hand ready to wind it up when needed. I can see their fights and hugs and shared secrets as they walk side by side. My grandmother keeps calling the older one by my name. I know were all seeing my sister and I when we look at them. I'm glad it remains unsaid. My sister walks ahead of me, with the two young girls. I am walking in the middle, bridging the gap.

I don't know if it is because I am with children, or just the magic of fireflies at the approaching twilight, the just over half moon swelling against the clouds but I run for the park we are about to pass, I run up the jungle gym and down the slide. The two young girls follow next, and follow my lead on the slides. My mother and sister each get on a swing and are soon flying ever higher. The almost night becomes filled with 5 female laughs, natural and uncontrollable delight. For a moment, I remember the feeling of pure and simple joy. 5 laughs and one voice of concern, we are flying too high. I hope somewhere in her heart she is remembering being a girl on a swing or a slide and laughing with her daughters. Her voice of concern, her worry is the reason we can all be laughing carefree I remind myself. She is the reason we are here. Is one woman's carefree laugh lost too steep a sacrifice for her daughters and her daughters daughters to be able to laugh carefree? My heart smiles in silent thanks, even as it aches for her.

I leave the middle of our walking path and join my sister and the young sisters. I am still one of them. We walk quickly, trade smiles, comment on the houses and our growing number of mosquito bites. I leave the three of them at the front door of my parents house, the one I can no longer call home and run back down the street to slow down with my mother and grandmother the rest of the way. My mother and I admire the moon. All three of us take time to acknowledge mother's garden on the path to the front door. I resist my resistance to them in me. Recognize their gentleness as beauty and strength and smile.

Everyday tears

I cry everyday tears for my everyday life on this ordinary day
Fuck your castles in the sky
Your dreams are clouds
I walk on the dirty ground
I clean the dirty plates and stained underwear, his and mine
Nobody has heard of me
except the people who matter in my life
I cry everyday tears for something I've said that I didn't mean
to someone I love who is now hurting
not for the life I don't have, the one that isn't to be mine
I am healed when I apologize and they forgive
It wont make a ripple on the ocean of the other coast
and it doesn't matter to anyone but them and me
which is why it matters at all
I cry everyday tears for my everyday life oin this ordinary day
I smile an everyday smile
I love in an ordinary way
Everyday