Through Love and Heart

from my friend Kathleen...

Vandana Shiva, from her book Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development

"Third World women are bringing the concern with living and survival back to center stage in human history ... They are laying the foundations for the recovery of the feminine principle in nature and society, and through it the recovery of the earth as sustainer and provider"

Together like-minded, like-souled, women and men together will engage and transform patriarchy ... through love and heart.

Freak Flag Fly

I wonder...at what point does identity blend into the wallpaper pattern and day-to-day life emerges out from under it? I had a conversation with Bombo, to check his heart rate after he read my whole blog, and asked what he thought about my persuasions, namely, my being indiscriminate about gender when it comes to dating.

Bombo is a guy's guy working every day with guy's guys in a very guy's guy job fighting forest fires. He is a good man, a sweetheart, and a loyal friend to his friends and son to his parents. He is not a feminist or an activist. He does not, as far as I know, identify with any marginalized social or ethnic groups, and he has been known to rib a few liberals (i.e., me).

My community, on the other hand, is teeming with activists and feminists and humanists and people who politic about gender and identity and sex and social awareness and civic evolution. The lot of us are so fully gay or gay friendly, green, spiritually broad, and questioning about life in general that I forgot there were people in my age bracket who don't know about privilege (white, male, heterosexual, economic, etc).

So here I was yesterday, suddenly aware of my identity. Though I hadn't raised a fist or a flag over it in years, in my conversation with Bombo, I was suddenly feminist and bisexual and humanist and all very staunchly so. So much so that I was getting offended just waiting for Bombo's answers to offend me. I was different and defending my difference as normal.

His words were not meant to be offensive, and as a matter of fact, he was trying to be supportive, I think. But what I kept hearing was his privilege, the belief that I made some choices in my past...

I believe that my past is my present is my future, and that I am everything and everyone I've ever been. That's a lot of incarnations over the years, good and bad. But I'm not ashamed of the identity that my mish mosh of "choices" creates. It just jangled me awake to realize that I hadn't stood up for or about who I am in a long time. And made me wonder all over again if at some point, folks different from the cultural mainstream will be less of a conversation topic, than, say, how will we, as an entire culture, love?

writing the future

Einstein, Picasso and Elvis on one stage, on seeing the future and being it. Picasso at the Lapin Agile, by Steve Martin. What a great play.

Sonnet Apropos

Sonnet 30
by Shakespeare
Yesterday was the anniversary of his birth, and death, incidentally.
Thanks to Tania for the introduction, who thought it apropos to my blog post yesterday, and strangely, had a xerox copy of it in her purse.

SONNET 30
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.

Practicing Love

So, it came as a kick in the gut last weekend to hear that the boy I loved at 18 is now, 18 years later, getting a divorce. Nevermind that the man lives way over in the Midwest with two kids and is pissing off his family something fierce. It kicked me in the gut.

Why? Wouldn't I like to know. This guy was someone I grew up with and came to love deeply over the years. He was also my brother's best friend over that time period. And then my brother died. So we had a lot to relate about. Except for that one time he got married and stayed that way.

The thing is it took a long time to get him out of my system. Even years later, when consciously I had forgotten about him, when I had moved into my own apartment and was living an adult life and enjoying adult friends, I would dream about him. Rapturous sleep. A deluge of familiarity and remembrance and longing. And then I would wake up. Alone as ever. In my big adult bed in my big adult apartment, and remember my big adult life. Sheeeouw, where did he come from?

It's been a long time since I've had one of those dreams. But this news from his mom last weekend hit the same replay button...what if, what if, what if? Why didn't he pick me?

So I called my therapist. The cool thing about my therapist is that he has this energetic psychic thing going. He tunes in, reads my energy and that of people I've interacted with, and describes them spot-on every time. When I told him this old-love thing is wearing me out already, he spied some pretty deep connections between us. Then he got soft and kind and said, you love him. You need to just feel that.

Hm. Feel it. Really? Okay.

So I felt it. And I began to glow. And I let it in more and I began to buzz. I let the love flourish even more and it overflowed so powerfully that I was sending it through thought waves and prayer and good wishes to this guy across several states and even more lifetimes, considering it's probably been about 10 years that we've seen each other. I sent him love in this very difficult time in his life.

Meanwhile, I was thinking, "Fabulous. How about this timing? Things are just beginning to get sweet with me and Bombo. We're having fun. We're opening up." But this other feeling I have is eons old. It's as old as my development from girlhood on. It's as deep as my first love and first loss. I have to just give it sway.

So for three days, I let the love course through me, so much joy. And would you believe that the more love I allowed myself to feel for my childhood sweetheart, the more free I felt to let Bombo in? In dating, I have these neurotic tendencies that keep me on guard. But those, my friends, have all but disappeared.

Then something else happened. This love thing was really working for me. I thought about Michael, how he was my mentor, my friend, my boss, my sometimes-confidante and I his. I remembered how much love I had for him when he was alive, and realized that now that he is gone, there are no social mores to respect, no boss-employee boundaries to effect, no professional distances to meter out. I love him. Plain and simple, like I always did, in the contexts we held. But now I don't have to follow any rules. So I just let the love flow. I lit up. I buzzed. I loved him.

Can I just say I've had the best couple of days emotionally that I've had in a long time? I feel like a humongous boulder kind of just yawned wide and mosey-rolled on its merry way, out of the way of my feelings. I feel like LOVE is accessible to me now, and is closer at hand than my need to protect myself, my need to be careful, my need to NOT love because I'll get myself into trouble or sadness.

Judging by this experience, I froze up around lost love way back when I was a teenager. My muscles cramped around the injury and my limping feelings allowed only limited movement. But this week, I let it flow! It's not realistic to believe I'll meet up with my childhood sweetheart as adults and all will return to what it "should have been" at the addled age of 18. But it IS realistic to recognize the intense joy I have felt in the past few days, allowing this feeling of love to overpower me and teach me a few things about loving as an adult. And it is deliciously realistic to recognize the room that love has made in my heart. I feel like my heart got cleared out by a love bomb, and that now, anything is possible.

Snip Snip

Years ago I gave up journalism because, as I put it then, my creativity didn't fit into its skinny columns. My writing was more curvy and poetic, swooping narrative, less facty, I suppose (plus, newspapers won't let me use words like "facty"). Today I turned in an art show review to the local Arts and Entertainment paper, and it got drawn, quartered, minced and re-baked before getting anywhere near finished. I still don't know if it's going in, it was so worked over. Funny, that's my job as an editor and ghostwriter, to cut, quarter and re-shape. Ask questions, clarify points. Once I started to see it that way, my prancing little ego sat still and succumbed to the smart lady with the red pen. Parched of poetry and all.

If it makes it in, I'll post the link here. Cool show by photographer, Bobbi Bennett, called "On Sacred Ground."

Honk honk

Traffic. traffic jam in my head.
In my head la la la in my
Traffic! Jam in head in my
Traffic! in my head.

Make up a tune for those lyrics, lovey, and sing!

History Alive and Well

History caught up with me this weekend. Or I it. I'm exhausted.

20 years ago, my brother died and I disappeared to some distant emotional planet. Among other things--like my grades and certain friends at the time--the church my family raised me in diminished to nearly nothing in my setlist of priorities. Actually, it ranked on a negative scale. You know how they say the opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference? I was not indifferent to my spiritual upbringing. I was very much "over it," shall we say. For a host of reasons.

But this past weekend I went to Women's Retreat, at the church campground my brother and I attended several times a year for our whole lives till my brother died at 17. From the time we were babies, we grew up attending camp with friends in the church. The ladies at Retreat this weekend told me in turns about their memories of us as babies along with their babies who grew up together year by year. We all of us went up to those mountains and played and grew and fell in love with each other too. Many of the people who spent our summers and camp weekends in that setting are now married to each other. It's amazing to have such a close bond during those developing years, and I guess it was a normal extension to marry that person you had come to love.

That didn't happen in my case. Although there was half a minute, buried in an arc of, oh, 10 years, that I thought it might. But it didn't.

This weekend was my first time back to "camp" in 15 years. I was worried for all that it could bring up about my brother, my dissociation with the church (by practice), and my tidy habit of hiding any and all emotion from the church people since my brother died.

Love, death, tragedy, loss, I left my innocence in those mountains and trees and moonlight and steep rocks at 16, and never went back.

The upshot this weekend: I cried. Told deep dark secrets to a cherished family friend. And found out in my first hour there that my "one that got away" at the tender age of 20 is now in the middle of a divorce. (His mom told me.) All this while having a really great time. Every last place I turned was flooded by years' worth of memories that cover the course of my youth. And here I was, bringing my adulthood back to them. There was a crowd in my brain, crowd in my body, circus of all the ages playing in one center ring under the pines.

Now it's late, I'm back home, and it's a wonder my eyes are still open, with all there is left to digest. Alas, I think sleep is the best place to digest it.

"Thwock"

Bombero

It's Spanish for "firefighter." And that's how Firefighter Dude got his new nickname, "Bombo." By the way, those are long-o sounds.

So to the point, Bombo and I hit some golf balls on the beach last weekend. Golfing is new to me: He likes to coach. I like to learn. And in the practice, I made a connection. Quite literally.

I learned that if I...
1) Remember what body motions go into a good swing
2) Visualize the ball flying,
3) then forget it all and let the connection happen between the club and the ball, rather than forcing my will on it with all my might,

the thing gives out a good "thwock" sound and goes sailing with hardly any effort.

Much like manifesting anything else: a great salary, a perfect home, a firefighter on the bikepath. I've noticed that if I actively imagine what I want or want to achieve, visualize receiving it, reaching it, living it, then forget everything but that easy connection with my desire, I get it. I manifest. Life sails with hardly an effort.

More Anne Lamott Thought

"If they didn't want you to grow up and write not nice things about them, they shouldn't have done not nice things."

Sweet and Good

LISA: You like passion fruit?

(She hands one over, cut in half, its insides slick as oysters.)

PEMA: How can something that looks like snot taste so sweet and good?

one word

for my absence this weekend.

okay maybe more than one, but the key word is VACATION.

even if it was a mere 31 hours, it was all the vacation tax time could muster, and it was OUT OF CELL RANGE BABY. out of blog universe, out of siiight.

beautiful jalama beach.

owww, my eyes

it's tax time for everyone, and doubly so for me. i work in finance and folks is draggin me down. GORGEOUS day outside. but inside it's another 11 hour day.

and this occurs to me, whilst brain has jello-ed: i glimpsed my post from yesterday, and flinched ever so slightly to read "my biological mother." what a weird thing to say. not poetic at all. and it feels shameful. that ancient kick of, "they don't need to know your family problems!" until now, under the influence of too much work and weariness, i hear my head respond, "hell, lady, it ain't YOUR problem. she's the one that left and made herself the biological mother, not the mother mother. and the other one, she's the one that helped invent the meaning of 'step-mother.' in other words, yo, it ain't yo shit.'"

ahhh. enlightenment.

calendaring with one brain cell

hey chiquitas,
i have playwriting class on thursday nights, so cain't do the 17th. though yummy sups souns...yummy.

i miss you and hope we get to hang out before you leave. we'all sound verty busy. if i'm around this weekend (and not out of town) we can commune? undecided on the out of town bit; yearnin like a virgin to git though. next week i'm free cept for thursday through the weekend.

xxo's
pems

Love and drugs

I think I'm dating a combination of my biological mother, Janis, and my step brother, Jay. Both of whom are about as opposite as you could find, and the strangest two people you might imagine to combine. With the exception of both being funny.

I've said before that beauty is a drug. A lobotomy even. If beauty is heroin, then laughter is, let's say, coffee. Gives me a good buzz-and-flutter till it wears off and my face hurts from all that smiling. If beauty is a lobotomy, then humor is, well, humor is a dizzy spell from spinning around on the grass too fast. Lots of fun if I have some place soft to fall.

"Truth is Medicine"

Starting off with a quote from Anne Lamott, since the entire post will be hers. Listened to her speak yesterday at UCSB Arts & Lectures. She echoed some important things in my brain and being... along these lines -

We're terrorized and terrified as a nation. Jesus said if you want to feel loved, do loving things. Fear cuts us off. It makes us clingy and grabby. Make conscious contact, be expansiveness. We're here to take care of the poor.
Jesus said: See those poor people over there? That's where I'll be.

Then she said, of ending wars and starting small, "Could you all try not to kill anyone today?"

Minty Fresh

Meg leaves town to visit her family. She's sitting in the car with her nieces, 5 and 7 years old, while they wait for Meg's sister to return. Meg's sister has put a picture of Meg's recent wedding on the car dash.

The 7 y-o: You married a girl??

Meg: Yeah.

The 4 y-o: And you kissed?

Meg: Yeah.

4 y-o: Well, how'd she taste?

Meg: She brushed her teeth so she tasted pretty good.

4 y-o: How'd you taste?

Meg: I'd just brushed my teeth too so I think I tasted okay.

Jeopardy Theme Music

Yesterday was one of those days and nights where PBD quotes and observations were zinging by so fast I couldn't catch them.

The upshot: I spent a glorious amount of time laughing and laughing and laughing.

Buzzer goes off, and I still can't think of a one...except for this sweet moment. I was at a long dinner in a loud restaurant, and toward the end, I heard the faintest coo of a baby--in the middle of that din. Right behind me. I turned around and this tiny cutie saw me see her, saw me smile and talk to her and she grinned with squinty eyes and a wide open smile. I was transported a moment because she looked like Talia, that powerful joy. That made me feel warm and sweet and calm. I returned to the dinner and conversation in front of me a little changed.

Polaroids

10-hour work days make everything a blur. But here are a few slowed glimpses:

-Receipts receipts receipts, everywhere (tax time!)

-Me watching the "busker" on State Street whose animals are busking for him while he sits on his bony butt. His white rat sleeps on his tabby cat who sleeps on top of his dog. I'm looking out the window at lunch a good hour thinking, "Poor things, they have to be tranquilized to sit like that all day. Dog doesn't look thrilled at all. What a meanie jerk. Growly growl growl." Every once in a while, he picks up the wandering rat and swings it back onto the cat. Then, the more time that goes by, the more I watch, I see every fifth person on the busy sidewalk stop and take a picture, but only one in ten of those is dropping money in his tin can. Robbers! Then I get pissed and think I should drop money in his can to make up for those people who stopped to photograph the animal tower, but didn't so much as glance at the guy who has them propped up there next to his tin. ...Perspective. We don't call it a flip flop in polite circles. We call it a reversal. And, ehm...growth.

-Another funny image of Firefighter Dude. Today the call came after he had pulled over the fire engine. He pulled up next to a fire hydrant and was filling the rig with water from it, safety lights flashing. It just struck me as a funny image - like when my friend from high school told me his dad was a used cruise ship salesman, or when I saw a man watering a golf course with a garden hose - one guy driving a big fire truck to a little fire plug to fill up.

Bob's Fill Dirt & Donuts*

Firefighter Dude called me today. I was working at my desk.

He was sitting in a fire engine listening to jazz while reviewing his taxes and monitoring a controlled burn.

*(from The Far Side comics) Cultural footnote