be good

Learning how to listen is about discovering more meaning behind less words.
Papa used to tell us that "it would all come out in the wash" but we are second language learners (thank God) and the cliches are reappropriated more often than not (read: another reason for gratitude).
So when you read it you probably thought he was referring to stains or filth but I figured, even very youngly, that he meant that things would even out somehow. He said it so often and each time I found myself hoping (trusting him, really)
that all the injustice in the world will somehow get stirred around,
tumbled until its head aches,
and its wonky sense of fairness will be adequately flopped over so that when we take the laundry out of the machines and give it a good shake and fold, we would find it was all there but a little more clearly. I thought he meant that the little lost socks caught in the sheets would be found or the coins would fall out of the rich man's pockets and I would find them at the bottom of the dryer drum and I would be rich.

But even more often than he told me about the wash, he told me
Be Good.
and sometimes I think he means I should behave myself
you know: listen to wisdom, weigh the facts first, tell the truth or wait quietly, be careful, obedient and do my best.
Other times I think he means I should be good
you don't know: sometimes listening is impossible, the facts betray the feelings that follow, the truth doesn't arrive in time, careful is a myth and being obedient is not the best I can do.
These days neither of us knows what it will mean for me to be good.
Instead we trust that I am good, that
I am the good I was created to be and that I should be that, only that, just that.
I should just be.
Be myself, even if it means I will be by myself, I will at least be with myself and he will be thinking of me with a far off loving look in eyes below a troubled brow, and lit up the way they were even only by the very sight of me, the thought of me before he heard me cry for the first time, before I had done anything to earn his trust or break his heart or
make him laugh or make him cry,
lit up by the hope he has always had that I will heed his words and whatever they might mean to the woman I have become in his care
which is why he keeps telling me--now that I am too old for admonition his words have become premonition:
and I hear him say it like a sort of benediction sending me out with a blessing to go out there and be all the good I want to be because there is a lot of good out there for me
a lot of good to be.

feeling sorry, and other reasons for mixing metaphors

I am sorry, but not regretful
I am feeling sorry
but
These days you can't tell the victim in me that there is a whole lot left to lose. As I get used to all the ways people victimize and are victims the more I think about how much we have all lost along the way.
And I realize
I keep close to what could hurt me
confusing it with what might love me.

What might love be, and where?
There is no way to stop asking. I would be hopeless and lost without this question to anchor or rudder. It is the compass and the Northern Star hanging low over Alaska's Anchorage, the very place I was born: under this question.
And you, my beloved, are caught up in it. Between the sails and the stars. Like the youngest stow away, crawling through the potato sacks of my story and loving every minute that takes us further from the familiar shore.
Insight is not dispersed with any kind of regularity.
the nerves and anger and anxiety will have to be managed, or at least embraced, as gentle friends come to warn--the chorus in a Greek tragedy, telling what we keep forgetting about the story and the ways it will go. But they are no more than that. They are not the players, we are, more important than what they portend or forebear.
We are looking toward the end of the performance because endings are a great accountability.

So I have been thinking more about endings and reworking what I think about death.
The death of a hatred is called love.
The death of night means the world keeps turning.
The death of a savior means resurrection.
Death is not the end of the story. That is not how the story ends.
The death of despair is hope
The death of hunger is fullness
The death of a tree in all its carbon glory is a fire-a pentecost
and flames lick the heads of those called to hold one another,
hold one another's feet to the fire.
The death of a broken union is called a divorce. Death is a great accountability at times. It keeps track of faults and ending and frailties and beginnings. It is a vengeance brought about by a God who chooses life, makes it go on or go out.

So, no: I'm not thinking about suicide. I'm thinking about the way death is a part of life and that knowing this makes all the difference.
There are so many things to see and find and places to put my self
my whole self
just as soon as I get it all there, find it there, right where I want to be and even though I thought I'd never make it to 30, or past that, I am excited and really hoping that I might!

All this time I thought I was afraid of the one big death and so I was living all the tiny deaths. I am, if I am honest, rarely afraid of dying because I see it so far off. Instead I am afraid of all the little deaths along the way: the ways I let go my biggest hopes, waking dreams and deepest feelings and best thoughts. Those are the deaths that seem to finish, seem like life is finished or at least fucking with me. These are only the little endings and mediocre dead ends that leave me maimed or scarred but very very scared.

I've apologized too many times
wanting desperately to make loving me into less of a choice
for you,
to make you love
anything or everything because I wanted you to love me too--
not best or first but at least, at last.
I hoped it would be the last thing:
that you would love me.
That in some final desperate move you would love me
but now I see that I could be first in some
One's mind,
part of the first thought and the last thought.
That You can
see me arrive and think first (feel first)
that I am here, that I, me, my self
(not only my faults, missing parts
jettisoned, triaged ambitions)
but my best whole broken mess is here.
That
You don't have to stop thinking of yourself--You can hold on to yourself and hold on, and
still see me clearly.

It is as if there are hundreds of thoughts in the room and
you know there are
but they are not overwhelming because we are curious about each other--not displacing each other.

A chemical reaction happens when so many tiny pieces react to one another:
I will learn to do this too::
to see your ideas and calculations on the chalkboard and among all of Einstien's equations choose to let yours matter, not before my story or my work but alongside it, part of it
helping it along toward our greatest discovery--
the great equation--
the balance of all things bonded after breaking down because we added just enough of some mysterious thing to what was
compounded since it all began and there will be breaking, splitting, new bonds and perhaps smoke or combustion from the friction of our
mutual admiration.
If we observe over night, donning safety goggles and tending the burners
we may end up
with nothing but the powerful powder of ashes: a new thing from ancient things
and recognize it as
love.
You know the score: From ashes I have called you, dust to dust and all that
and I think those ashes from that story must be some fancy goddamn ashes to have composed something so perfectly as
us.
Think powdered sugar next time you hear those familiar words, think a dusting of pixies: a little dirty, sticky, messy, unexpected, earthy and fantastic muddy, wild and grimy stuff from which we arose
but in the end when the final word came: it is good
resounded.

reason #2 to get out of bed

Don't watch the lyrics: there are discrepancies which distract. We're all going down to see him in all his dredlocked glory: Saturday 8p QCafe Interbay--Do come!

It's already out there

Remember the article I posted? I'll repost it, because you might gain from rereading it, it is really important to me. And since Kristie, the brilliant, has followed me here, and she was the one who recommended Gottman years ago, when I was too scared to read it, it seems only right that we follow her sage advice!

"Til Disrespect Do Us Part
Couples therapist John Gottman predicts marriage futures.

MY HUSBAND TOM and I fought most of the way to the Dr. John Gottman lecture.

I don’t recall what the argument was about. I vaguely remember he was annoyed that I hadn’t gotten the Subaru’s headlight replaced, which I guess I must’ve agreed to do. I was annoyed that he expected me, a car dope, to accomplish something even remotely automotive. He carped that I wasn’t parking in the best lot. I carped that he was checking his BlackBerry for email instead of talking to his wife. And he’d forgotten something in his office, dammit, so we were going to be late to the “Making Marriage Work” lecture.

As it turned out, we weren’t late: A knot of people clogged the Town Hall entrance, waiting to pay $50 a couple—during a recession—to hear the nation’s pioneer in relationship science dispense the marriage secrets he’d spent a career uncovering. Thirty some years ago, as a young clinical psychologist, he set out to study the relationship dynamics and concurrent physiological responses of married couples. One newlywed pair at a time would spend a full 24 hours in a lushly appointed apartment with a placid view of the Montlake Cut, discussing matters of both agreement and conflict, while Gottman wired them for heart rate and brain function and numerous other physical variables.

Over months and years Gottman and his grad students tested and retested these same couples, gradually amassing a pile of data on the behaviors that make marriages work—and those that make them weak. As the study ripened and some couples divorced, the scientist began to see that certain behaviors could reliably predict a split. Upon this data, Dr. John Gottman built a research institute, a self-help book empire, a thriving therapeutic practice, and an esteemed academic name. His therapeutic superhero skill? Divorce Predictor.

“Is that like horse whisperer?” Tom asked as we found seats. We looked around, suddenly self-conscious. Our marriage seemed pretty healthy to me, aside from a short list of ongoing differences—we call them Fight A, Fight B, and Fight C—and the occasional argument about nothing, as in the car ride over. Generally we dwell in a playful, enriching, and loving union.

But just being at a “Making Marriage Work” lecture felt like wearing a name tag that said, “Hello! We’re Circling the Drain!” Of course the one couple we knew in the huge hall happened to be sitting just across the aisle, and looked equally busted when we said hi. “Dragged here, too, were you?” Tom joshed, socking the husband manfully on the shoulder. We all smiled, admitting it was the wives’ idea, but that both husbands were genuinely interested in what this Gottman had to say. Plus, the man told us, they had just received jarring news from the marriage front. “You remember our neighbors, the Smiths?” (Not really “the Smiths,” you understand.) We did—great people, very solid, together forever. “He had an affair. The marriage is done.”

The lights flickered and we stumbled back to our seats. The Smiths? I read my own thoughts in Tom’s expression: If it can happen to them, is anyone’s marriage safe? Could the Divorce Predictor have seen that one coming?

The good doctor spent the next two hours establishing that yeah…he probably could have. Gottman told his audience that four neon signs herald marital doom: criticism (“There is no such thing as constructive criticism”), defensiveness, the “shutting-out” Gottman calls stonewalling, and contempt. Of these, contempt—the act of relating to one’s partner from a position of superiority, whether by calling him an idiot or correcting her grammar—is the most destructive and the number-one predictor of divorce. Not only does contempt eat like sulfuric acid through a marriage, it’s physically destructive. Emerging research reveals that contempt among intimates measurably corrodes the recipient’s immune system. Couples who practice these sorts of marriages Gottman calls the Disasters.

At the other end of the spectrum are the Masters, who through a thousand positive moments build a culture within their marriage of appreciation and respect. They look for things to praise in their partner. They say, “Thanks for doing the dishes tonight,” and “You look so sexy in that color.”

It’s no great mystery how the Masters do this, Gottman explains; it’s Friendship 101. They ask their partner questions about their desires and dreams, then remember the answers. They learn to identify their partner’s bids for emotional connection, then respond in kind. Unlike the therapeutic modalities in vogue when Gottman started his research, where couples were urged to air their resentments with each other—sometimes employing foam baseball bats for emphasis—Gottman found that what makes marriage work is precisely the opposite. Relationships work to the extent that partners are gentle with each other.

Gottman spoke with candor and wit—the wise elder statesman in a city unusually crowded with relationship experts, sociologist Pepper Schwartz to sex columnist Dan Savage. Make no mistake, Gottman declared: Crappy interactions happen in all marriages, good and bad. Successful marriages are not bastions of romantic bliss; they’re pretty good partnerships peppered with regrettable moments. Indeed, 69 percent of the married couples he studied wrestled with the same problems the entire life of their marriage. Fight A, Fight B, and Fight C. The only difference was that the Masters dealt with them functionally and respectfully.

At the end Gottman opened the floor, and a man asked if there was a variable to predict good marriages. “There is,” Gottman said. “Men who are willing to accept influence from women.” From across the aisle my friend caught my eye. He means men who work up interest in a marriage lecture because they know it means something to their wives, I heard her thinking. Tom looked at me and dramatically rolled his eyes.

And took my hand."


So, it seems contempt is to blame for so much of the mess I am in these days. And if I don't want to place blame on just one person, and I don't want one person to have to take full responsibility for any one thing, or everything, I think we can all share in the sadness and grieve mightily.

There are those of you who are keeping a close eye on the dissolution of my marriage and I want to thank you, honestly. Even though I am quite embarrassed I am also quite grateful.

The good and rainy State of Washington will be issuing us a divorce because, this is their way of putting it, and I am embracing it fully: the marriage is irretrievably broken.
And it is time to think of unspoken broken hopes, broken dreams, broken ties, broken hearts, broken homes and to cry until I fear the rain won't stop until I do. New disappointments arrive everyday like rain clouds covering our little city.

Things unravel slowly-- sometimes so slowly that none of us is able to articulate what is happening as it happens. We are not the newscasters and anchorwomen, we are, I'm afraid not receiving news of our own story until it is almost too late. I hope you won't feel entirely betrayed to be reading this here, but I am afraid it has already appeared on FaceBook and this is, albeit an insufficient invitation for dialogue, the best I can do to undermine my own contempt for internet exposure of tender subjects.

If you need to talk I am getting pretty good at that (writing is easier for me, but it will never be as thorough as a good conversation) so do call or let me know how you would like me to reach you and I will do my best.

That is quite enough for now, except for this one thought that surfaced late last night... it is sort of breaking news:
After a few good hours of anger and difficult discussion a trustworthy voice came poking through the telephone and said, in response to my broken little thanks
that voice said that I am deserving... and it really got me thinking about what I might deserve.
And this is what I came up with:
Maybe true love isn't the opposite of false bravado love as I may have assumed for so long. Maybe it means the love I receive and feel and give and want is more true than all the hate I was taught to believe about myself. And perhaps, the idea that we are deserving of love is truth more solid than the idea that we deserve to be hated. Maybe love is the truth about all of us.

First time around, wintering in Seattle

I found the journal from the Fall of 1996 and it is mind boggling so I am setting some of it down here.

October 29, 1996
halitosis and ding dongs.
Contrast is as strong as reality.
My own boring little slide show.
"It is okay to alter the facts to convey the point."
And suburbia wails I can't breathe but this goddamn cigarette smoke slurred breath icicles shit frozen into cement parking lots and I never learned but inflate the big city and the trees taught me to wail. Where am I?
[I'm not sure why these are out of order]
September 5, 1996
I am an orange. seed ...quite in the center...
I am an ant.
I am a bubble.
I am a bees wing.
My HEAD is a bubble.
My foot is a paintbrush.
My dance the painting.
A dragon fly wing
My words are orange leaves...they fall to the ground.
The rocket push off
crazy fire sputter long tail
thick fountain pressure earth... push and push and push and
strawberry red acid air spurts bottom...

giraffe.

September 10
Sometimes I imagine. Sometimes I can run. & it is good & it is beautiful & far & clear crisp motion. My legs stretch and my feet stretch. I blow. and its down this hall and out this street and real and mindless and good.
... If I could throw myself into a floor so lightly I come back up like in water. & my hands he can imagine my hands he can see them and I am not alone. He sees me and it is only good.
...
Do you hear me? Embrace means grab and hold for a long time--long after you let go.

September 11
Selling kisses ins't such a big deal. Not a bad idea. Bad deal, big idea. Everybody wants one. Follow that sucking heart of yours it just might scrape you off yourself adn push you into feeling some one else's lips. Not just yours. Flapping. Now that I'd like a kiss I notice other people's mouths. not in not out. drop out.
Ben sells drugs. Maybe not maybe he just buys them. whole pounds at a time. I eat too much Ice Cream. My drug of choice. Talking in my sleep. I had a dream
I said, "I feel sick. I don't want to go. & I really did feel sick. Sick like a headache in my stomach. Like a slinky is stuck in my esophagus.
...
Ever been so damn in love that you don't know if you ever weren't?
Ultimate control is determining reaction.
...
My children are going to have a graffiti artist for a father. Someone who is addicted to his art of breaking the law. Addicted to the law of breaking art is worse. Alcohol is worse than cigarettes. Cigarettes are worse than pot. Pot is worse than Ice Cream. Meat is Murder. Tee shirts Kill.
...
Sarai Comes home. She is my opposite and my counter part & I want everyone who knows me to know her. She is nicaraguense ahorita. Mi Corazon. Te. Ven aqui Gringa. Gringiuta. Saraita. Share my space. See my face. Share my house and live and work and silently make everything a little more how it was. Tell mom she is funny by laughing with me. Laugh and go and remember i am yours like your long brown hair. I am your baby sister and I love you love you and love you and I am sorry I don't say it. I know you know it. I know you love me.

[and this next bit is, I think, Quite Shocking:]
September 21
If I were me and you were too,
I'd have no one to kiss
and on those days I drag around,
I'd not have you to miss.
and then when you would need a hug
There'd be no one to give
and if I ran away from home
I'd have no place to live.
We'd dress alike and think the same
perhaps we'd only have one name
I would grow so tired of you
I'd often cry--but you would too
and in that case
who'd comfort who?

[the form is much too silly for the content and that is quite upsetting, if you think of how alone I must have been to have written it at all--High School is such a bizarre time and it seems obvious in retrospect: I had nothing to anchor any of it not a person or place, just myself. Ouch.]

"Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They're always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions."-JD Salinger

[next to that quote the lovely Andy Barker, my wild english teacher for that brief semester time at Shorecrest High School, wrote two exclamation marks, just so you know]

September 23
Stop talking to me! I don't need anyone to tell me what to do or ask me questions. Ask me how I feel and you'll probably receive a stupid lie answer anyway. "Fine, thank you." what I really think is: " I'm okay if I don't think about how nice it would be to press my chin against your shoulder. To feel your whole arm."

September 25
What if Isis had looked just awful in that big head piece? I think I would have. My neck isn't long enough.
"...we intellectuals are all screaming of a speech without words that utters the inexpressible and gives form to the formless." Herman Hesse.
Nate didn't know who Ray Bradbury is. Who's fault is that? Not mine-I helped.

September 29
I don't know what time it is because I left my wristwatch in the breast pocket of the shirt he wore yesterday. This is home. This beautiful home. Those apple trees dripping apples. one grape for every tear on those graping vines.
"Pretty rare when you get on a plane without any problems, eh?"
Yeah. Except that this time the problem is that I am catching this flight.

October 1
I know his whole body hurst and it makes mine hurt too like inside something hits against my collar bone and the pain vibrates up and down to you think its my heart breaking?

Some of us are those poor kids who come to suburbia to take advantage of the advantages. we know more and pain like they never will. ... I know the sad stories people sing in any song. I can feel. and when we find each other and recognize each other for who we are we feel safe in the danger we have known.

October 17
"Aren't you cold out here?"-some lady
yes, hold me.

November 4
Picasso invented collage is he lucky nothing existed?
Oh dramatic dog words of times pushed into normalcy.

December 2
Don't forget that those rags are not who you are
just tell people about your goals

December 10
I don't feel good.
My nose is a cork and my sinus is a series of streets in a traffic jam and my eyes are windows when someone opens the door on the airplane and the glass on the front of the overn when the cake is expanding. and my muscles are old newspaper rubber bands found in the gutter sprinkler spit.

January 3
Emma you are the sun and I am the sky and somtimes you just fill me up. Love, Abigail

January 6
I haven't any great stories to tell. No life lessons today. Instead I ponder the existence of the truth. Everybody makes his own.
I read your letter about crying often. ...But I cry and don't know how to stop. It isn't right. How does one know when to stop? You are a wise thing. Tell me.
It is far too warm in this room. My tummy rubs against rocks but I don't want to eat anything. You are tea and I am hot cocoa.

phew.

the kind of hope I'm having

Lizzle commissioned a poem about this problem I am having because she thought it would help.

See, she wants me to be able to locate my hope, hope for myself, not for anyone else, just for myself.

And I thought of loss and a time when I was hopeful about loss.

I couldn't tell anyone at the time because they would have thought I was crazy or awful for hoping in death.

But I am not crazy, I am alive. And though alive might often be mistaken for crazy because of all the sweating and huffing and puffing and emotional volatility (as under control as it often is) that is associated (and rightly so!) with being alive, crazy and alive are two very different ideas.

So here is a little poem about the kind of hope I am having.

Mind you, it isn't the kind of greeting card hope you want to send a friend, it is not the big kind of hope that gets you out of bed in the morning unless

you are like me:

the kind of person who is only willing to get out of bed for tiny, broken down hopes like Ficus trees and falling leaves and

maybe the hope that you will be all right even if you are caught dancing in the kitchen with the Albanian cook: When my boss peeked in the window we were really getting down, shaking our heads and hips and our hands were raised over our heads and it was the kind of dancing you can't just stop because you are caught because we began laughing in rhythm with the song and our bodies kept moving, we kept moving--we were up and out of bed and we kept moving.

The Hope

When you died you were wearing a pink nightgown and looking quite vulnerable as the rigor crept through you.

Your pale skin had a power over us, what was left

of your thinning hair refused to rest

against the pillow.

You were the dead with a bed head

and you would have laughed at yourself, the way you always had.

When it happened

They said you weren’t alone, and I suspect

there may have been a nurse in the room when the last little bit of life fell

out of you, rolled across the floor in search of another haunt.

Maybe a memory of family lodged in the corner chaos of your brain

finally showed itself:

a picture of you with your sister perhaps

keeping you company.

Then eventually

we arrived, gathering like seagulls on the cliff

Standing over,

your little brittle body—a precipice—and we, forced to jump toward

(your) death,

the next best thing in life.

Suddenly unsure of my wings,

I began pacing, back and forth, near the rocky razor edge of self-doubt

And fell into the grieving question cycle:

Who will I be now that you are gone?

What will I do with the voice that sounds like yours bouncing around

in my memory?

When I say your name again you will not answer;

Will I be alone in your absence? Will I be anything at all?

What do I want now that you are gone::

my desire for your love defined me::

your presence filled spaces::

now those spaces are like wounds::

You cut yourself

out of my bark,

You widdled my surface coming close,

wielding guilt like a pocket knife.

Disappointment threatens to move in like an infection

If we deny the lacrimal of love to drip its disinfectant.

The heat of Hope cauterized the edges and yet

There is swelling and throbbing but there is no emptiness here.

We are full of ourselves.

Our words for your leaving caught and lumping like mucus in our throats

So we gave in to hope, not the big Hope you wanted for us,

the little hopes:

That we will each touch your hand once, then

Look into your face, then

Then go eat breakfast

Without you.

That we will sing your favorite songs and eat your favorite foods, then

remember you well, not fully but respectfully.

Not for you

For ourselves.

We will hold onto what we enjoyed and sort out

The painful pieces of you, your remains.

We will find a way to leave them behind,

In our own time

Not just because you died

But because we did not.

And all this time we must have thought we were doing this for you, with you

But now you are gone and we go on.

We go on in the ways you taught us

Saying the words you said—

And laughing;

Saying the words you said—

And raging like a wild fire

cuts a swath through the forest of story, our anger toward you

burning a jagged and unpredicted hollow down the center.

But we are the forest people—loving,

the tall trees—crowding the fueling dueling underbrush—we know

what fire means

what fire brings:

the heat the seeds need

to tell them how the old is dying, drying and burning away

making room for (the new)

you.

We are the Phoenix seeds, rising slowly from the acid of the ashes.

You asked to be cremated, never knowing (how hot) our anger

was burning you alive all this time.

You shrieked at us, and we put the fire inside out with our tears,

Until today

when the tears come all salt and gather enough oil as they race over our noses: they splash and spit across the flame, splattering, sizzling, and finally crystallized across the soiled floor::

You are the salt of the earth and we have salted the field

crying over the loss

and then remembered the blessing of your dried marrow.

Looking across, bearing the pall, it seems all (hope) is lost

Just because you are lost.

But the truth is

we are not lost

because we are losing you.

this is what it looks like here

This is the last post from the berkeleyblogs skinnytree
I thought you might like something familiar in an unfamiliar place:

maybe i never told you about the professor who taught my class on existentialism in undergrad so here is the whole story: he was a little west of middle aged, with plenty of white hair and he was one of the LaSallian Brothers who lived on campus with us. I don't remember his name but i do remember him leaving class to use the restroom at least once each session.
During a discussion on Heiddeger he excused himself for a moment and when he returned with a tiny flourish he picked up a piece of chalk and wrote the word mystery on the board.
once he knew we were all paying attention he said,
Take it from a celibate, mystery is everything.



when we moved into that last house
i swore i'd never move again
because i hate moving
but i hated other things about that life
more than i hate moving.

so now that it seems fitting to use the phrase
"the rest of your stuff"
about things, furnishings, wedding rings
i am warming to the possibility
that this one more painful part of the process is coming to an end and
I'm going to get it
get this
get it
wrong or right
i'm going to get it.

There are these things we say to one another and given a change in context, a change in place or face or space a simple phrase can mean different things: same words moving through the space between us, moving meanings impossible to pin down
Get it, take it
from me
take it, get it?
I got you
I've got you
right where...
I want you
Its all there,
get it, take it
one last chance to take it
take on
take hold,
hold it!
hold on,
I've got you.

hold on, I've got you.