Harold and the Overlord Brain

Outside it's hot and damp with a rain surely coming up this afternoon while inside I alternately strip off my shirt or shudder from the air conditioning, the variation in temperature caused not only by the wonky HVAC system, but also by the freaked out feeling of writing, pounding things out, dipping in for short attacks on my memory that is part of this week-long writing intensive.

But I can't write or recall shit, my memory is bland sandy beige like the land where Luke Skywalker grew up. Rich things happening underneath with miles of dry camouflage on top.

This is painful but helpful in its own way because every time I begin down a trail, my overlord brain smacks it down. I can't write things down that somebody else might see. I can't write things down that may hurt another person's heart. I can't just let it out, so instead I scribble furiously about how my brain is seizing up, how moments of clarity about my life are opening up in this fight. It's not writing, but therapy underlined boldly so that it will burn into my mind. I begin labeling things: that was a birth canal, this is a life raft, the other is a black hole. All of the images make sense of the past few months of my life, of my fears of the future, of the worry of unmapped space. My overlord brain is scanning for ways to discount and deny everything good that has brought me to this place, digging deep to unearth the reasons why people and situations cannot be trusted. But I know my brain, and like Harold with his creepy-ass crayon, I run in front of overlord brain. I map it all out, the memories, the people, the stories, in order to let it go, these phantom limbs and unclosed circles. And god, does it feel good to just let it be.

Because the truth is that you will never make sense of it all, because that requires a type of honesty with yourself and others that exists in a special state of grace. Sometimes others are capable of that space, most are not. Sometimes they are already gone and not able to respond, sometimes your brain is just searching memory for clues to make it all make sense.

Antilamentation -Dorianne Lau

Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read
to the end just to find out who killed the cook.
Not the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,
in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication.
Not the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot,
the one you beat to the punchline, the door, or the one
who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones
that crimped your toes, don’t regret those.
Not the nights you called god names and cursed
your mother, sunk like a dog in the livingroom couch,
chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness.
You were meant to inhale those smoky nights
over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings
across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed
coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches.
You’ve walked those streets a thousand times and still
you end up here. Regret none of it, not one
of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing,
when the lights from the carnival rides
were the only stars you believed in, loving them
for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved.
You’ve traveled this far on the back of every mistake,
ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house
after the TV set has been pitched out the upstairs
window. Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied
of expectation. Relax. Don’t bother remembering any of it.
Let’s stop here, under the lit sign
on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.

Kindness

I've been thinking pretty much nonstop about kindness. Not your run-of-the-mill open the door kindness, but the kind of kindness that nearly sweeps you off of your feet, leaves you feeling like you've fallen on your back from the monkeybars, makes you look around the room to see who is smirking behind their hand. It's the kind of kindness that you wonder when the other shoe will drop because nobody you know believes that this sort of kindness can exist. It's grace and beauty and sadness and love all wrapped up in one big bundle that exists and moves forward; rolling, shimmying, pausing, picking its way forward gingerly and not always lucidly. Not that the smaller gestures of kindness aren't important...they are. But this is the kind of kindness that gets out of its own way. It is deeply, intentionally out of its own way. And not in your way either. It's the kind of kindness that holds space. There, I said it, it *holds space*. I never even knew what that really meant until I experienced this kind of kindness. It's that powerful.

All I have to say is that I just spent the weekend with a group of the kindest and most generous people I know. People who show up even though things are not clear, who are there for those they love, who are willing to be in the space of unknowing. People who do not make it about themselves. People who have their priorities straight by working with the needs of others. It's the most solemn gift.  It's amazing and breathtaking all at the same time.

Redolent with possibility

For Alvin, who inspires me and for Paul, who makes me a better person.

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It's hard to imagine what it is like to live in an environment where you don't have the weather to mark the passage of time. Seasons rise and fall in Michigan, none more so on the thumping, wet, cold darkness of Winter and none more delightful than the brilliant rays of the sun in Spring. We emerge, hunkered down from holding on through the most bone-chilling weeks of near desperation to a sky blazing blue and redolent with golden light. And for those months of light, we don't look at the sun as an advantage, we relish it. Seattle is like this too, as is Portland and all other climates I've lived in where people are deprived of the nectar of light. It's delicious beyond belief. It gives us pause. It renews us on a cellular level.

There's a lesson in this renewal, one subtle but worth exploration in trying to clear out the mental models that stand in our way. I sat at a bar the other night and explained to a friend how incredibly horrified I am of growing old, that there is something inside of me that shudders when I think of aging; that not enough of my life has been lived, that whatever shreds of youth I have had left will leave quickly, that I will never have again the time that I squandered when I was young. In my brain, this causes an odd inertia. I drag my feet, like some 3 year old who wanders the room because he doesn't want to leave, hoping time will stop or slow down.

But this year feels different.  Everything feels like it wants to be new. Clicking off miles on my walk to and from work, new skincare, new sunscreen, new bright running shoes on my feet, new music curated by friends, new writing, new reading, new perfume on my wrist, new, new, new.

More new this year than last. This year is about choices. This year is about vision. This year is about bursting with creative ideas, about curating again, about feeling the current of aliveness from discovery. It's the act of assembling and reassembling the parts to find the best combination. It's about paying attention to the little things as well as the big things. It's about being in it, swimming in it. It's about paying attention, having an avocation or two that sharpens your eye. Boldness and subtlety. Braveness and humility. Not being hamstrung by anything. Loving the process and expecting amazing outcomes. Humming at the cellular level with something that stirs your very soul and marrow. To choose to be alive in a fundamentally exciting way, to live a life powerfully evocative.

I love this feeling. I wish I could bottle it, the possibility of it all. In these moments, I often think of my friend Alvin and his ability to keep it fresh, moving, thoughtful; how he is always turning the dial just a bit to find the right frequency. Or my friend Paul whose practice of reflection and personal editing is not a task, but an essential part of his being. And Annie, and Sharleen, and Nicole. All of these people who have curated lives that are rich with interest and possibility. They remind me of how resplendent with interest the world is, how positive and alive it can be when your creative side gets to lead.

How to keep this feeling alive? How to carve out the time for energizing work? How to construct the next stage of life so that the cellular hum remains? Intention, focus, space, opportunity, running lanes, collaboration, courage, joy, choice. Yes.

Gravity pulls us back

My mother and I had a sticky relationship. Two people could not have been more different in many ways, our political beliefs unbending, our ways of arguing about things loud and confrontational. This was years in the making, journeying through high school and college and beyond up until the weeks preceding her death when the soft reality of a short time gave us the space to not so much talk things through, but just to be attentive to the love that we had for each other, the love that underwrote all these things.

People that know about my hard relationship with my mom always wonder, sometimes aloud, sometimes with their eyes, about how we wrapped things up. I shuffle my feet a bit, uncomfortable with the question that implies what it does, that we wasted many years in disharmony only to be robbed of a future together.

But in these past few years that my mother has been gone, I have realized that our relationship was what it was and would have continued to be so until something catastrophic happened that would have changed everything. And then likely changed nothing.

Because behavior in relationships is incredibly difficult to change. The gravity of the well-worn path pulls us back to what we know and are accustomed to, even if it's not what we want in our heart of hearts. That pattern may be the inability to admit that we are wrong or the hurt at another freezing us out. It may be the lack of courage to have hard conversations, to say that we are sorry, operate on a different level and in a different behavior pattern than we had before. But it's just really hard. And it may not mean that we don't love the other person, it may mean that we just don't have the capacity to make that change. Changing behavior in relationships takes time and near constant attention. It takes intention and tending. False starts and failures chip away at the surface. Sometimes it feels safer not to even start. Sometimes the disappointment feels like more than we can bear.

And you can live the rest of your life sick to your stomach that this never happened, riddled with guilt that you squandered your time with something so precious as your mother's time in your life. You can let that eat away at you, blame yourself, wonder what you could have done. Or you can realize, as so many relationships in life, that it was what it was, mine the time that you had for the good, push past the regrets and move forward. You can take this realization into your relationships that are alive today, have expectations for people and for yourself, live according to what you need and how you need to be loved and to recognize your own role in how that all works out. Because that is what she would have wanted, honestly. I think she'd appreciate that most.

A shot at redemption

T-10 days until I board a plane for Miami, dragging my pale skin and winter-worn smile to bask in the light of warm weather and friendship. This is no ordinary trip, but a reunion tour with one of my oldest and most important friends. Yes, this is the friend of my heart that I haven't seen or spoken to in years. Yes, we have been in contact.

In weird ways, it's as though things never changed, that the five years we spent out of each other's lives simply erased when we met at the glass door of her apartment building in Seattle. All of the sadness, hurt, bewilderment and anger that I think we both felt got crowded out by a feeling of coming home. She looks the same, has more gorgeous children, her sweet and hilarious husband is the wonderful guy I was friends with for years. We sat and drank mimosas and talked for hours before they packed up to go be Seattle's 12th man.

And this has all made me realize that I hate things that are unfinished. I used to think that the best/worst thing I could do at the end of a friendship or relationship was just to simply remove myself from the other person's world. But the truth is that it's painful, these unfinished things. It's harder to lose someone to living than to dying. Bereavement is different when what you have lost is walking around in the world.

The hardest thing to tease out is what keeps you from taking the plunge of reconnecting. Mostly it's pride, I think. At least that's what kept me from my friend for years. Pride and not wanting to be the first to extend the olive branch. That and the very real likelihood that things had changed so radically that it would never be the same. Or, like in so many other situations, it can't or shouldn't be the same. It's something impossible to know. It's only by making yourself vulnerable and by understanding what you are trying to resolve in your own heart that you will get to what you need.

Sunshine, cuban food, so many memories at the ready. Wish us luck.

This one.

[I wrote this piece ages upon ages ago when I was really struggling with how to be a good mom, how to be present and attentive and there but still be here, with myself, in my own being. It felt right to post tonight].

She is my girl, this one.

This girl is all lanky limbs and big brown eyes and a witty retort or an observant question. When she wraps her arms around my waist, I can feel her little bird heart beating double time against me.

She's got her eye on everything, she cackles with laughter one minute and pulls the saddest face ever the next. Being with her cracks my heart right open with love. I fear for things that will hurt her, moments when she will bump up against sadness or loneliness or hurtful words dished out by mean women who take delight in pummeling her tender and precious heart.

I carry a lot for this girl.

It's an intense thing to be the mother of a daughter, here in this space of being a motherless daughter myself. I remind myself that everything she sees gets imprinted. I remind myself that I don't have to be a perfect mother, but one that she can rely on. I remind myself that the most important things I can give her are love, proof that I have her back, willingness to sit and talk and work things out, insight into the myriad of things coming her way. I remind myself to tell her that she's dynamite, because she is and nobody needs to hear that more than a small girl.

There is a little part of me that wants to run away from this responsibility. I'm not sure if it's the fear of disappointing her or screwing up or not being the woman that she needs me to be. I'm not sure if it's the desire to balance my one precious life with hers, to give her a legacy of a mother who didn't have to follow the conventional path of sustained sacrifice but found a middle ground.  I don't live the life my mother led, so how do I know how to do this and do it well?

Her small back curved to my side tonight as we read a book, talked and mostly just sat in each other's company. Little spine, hair a tangle down her back, eyes flashing. My heart is so full with love.

Each for what they are

“Sometimes you meet someone, and it’s so clear that the two of you, on some level belong together. As lovers, or as friends, or as family, or as something entirely different. You just work, whether you understand one another or you’re in love or you’re partners in crime. You meet these people throughout your life, out of nowhere, under the strangest circumstances, and they help you feel alive. I don’t know if that makes me believe in coincidence, or fate, or sheer blind luck, but it definitely makes me believe in something.”— unknown


I have a fool's understanding of the beginning of the Universe, my untutored lens on the nature of its existence peppered with romantic ideas about particles and their attraction. But I love my ignorance, as it allows me to believe what I believe to be the electricity of deep connection, particles from the beginning of time reconnecting, people finding in another something elemental, fundamental, paired, true. It's a coming together of things long ago separated. It's attraction that is undeniable, electrifying and real. 

There is little in the world that matches the feeling of finding belonging in another, and little that matches the exhilaration of allowing yourself to open up to make that connection of deep friendship. This, for me, has happened with only a handful of people in my life and, as my life has progressed, I've grown less available to that possibility. I've been less willing to put myself out there, more afraid of investigating a connection to a new friend that may not fit and to have to back away, awkwardly, from relationships that aren't meant to be. There is a fitting to intimate friendships, as if your heart is made more whole upon connection and diminished in multiples upon loss. If you let it, the losses cause your heart to calcify; to look with a prejudiced eye at the attempts of others; to resist your own awesomely joyful and open nature; to tamp it down, lock it up, seal it off.

But the truth is that they are there, these connections well-worn and those not yet hatched, even if you try to keep yourself from them. Sometimes they last a lifetime or two, sometimes they intuit when you need them, sometimes they are moments in your life stitched together just for the moments that they are. You leave the ones that don't work out behind and relish the ones that stay. You chip away at the calcification and warm up the veins. You recognize each for what they are and for what they bring to your life. And you are grateful.