2019

Married, worked the next day. Went to Miami and NYC. Suffered hypothermia. Severely ill for 10 days in February. Realized I had a ton of pent up anger about my job. Wrote it down. Told the boss. The boss confirmed my fears. Worked hard anyway and taught myself high level corporate marketing. Sang a solo in the church choir. Learned to play Mah Jong. Saw Lana Del Rey in concert at a castle in Ireland. Fell in love with Tamino’s voice (an opening act). Spent 9 days in England and Ireland with Ramón. Paid off our trip and wedding. Paid off my car. Fell in love with Billie Eilish’s voice. Laid off in August. Saw Tamino in concert two more times. Learned to scuba dive. Finished some books. A friend died unexpectedly. An uncle of Ramon’s died unexpectedly. Experienced grief up close for the first time. Navigated crisis. Grieved for everything again. Navigated unemployment. Filed for unemployment for the first time. Many Facebook conversations about things that matter to me. Many timeouts from Facebook to recover. Bought Jagger a cat condo and he didn’t bite a cat sitter for the first time. Passed over 50,000 hands of Zynga Texas Hold ‘Em played. Spent Christmas in Idaho with parents and in-laws.

Decide

Exploring all my options

Need some time off the grid

Too much of what you are saying

Can’t hear the voice inside my head

Too many years of listening

Gotta make art now

Art decides

Relieved

One foot in front of the other, slowly
The walking escalator moves me past
So many faces
Hair colors, lengths
Somber expressions
One or two make eye contact
I’m relieved
So many don’t need me

Funeral Notes

St. Francis of Assisi left his wealth behind for a different way of living. This is particularly poignant to me because he established the order of the Franciscans, the namesake of San Francisco. I too left a life that promised wealth and security to move to San Francisco and follow my passions.

Remember that when you leave this earth, you can take with you nothing that have received–only what you have given.

Francis of Assisi

I’ve always loved this passage:

Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love,
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved, as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive,
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

St. Francis of Assisi

And I came across this new one today, which the last two funerals I’ve gone to have been helping me take to heart. It’s been a process coming back to my joy:

It is the devil’s greatest triumph when he can deprive us of the joy of the Spirit. He carries fine dust with him in little boxes and scatters it through the cracks in our conscience in order to dim the soul’s pure impulses and its luster. But the joy that fills the heart of the spiritual person destroys the deadly poison of the serpent. But if any are gloomy and think that they are abandoned in their sorrow, gloominess will continuously tear at them or else they will waste away in empty diversions. When gloominess takes root, evil grows. If it is not dissolved by tears, permanent damage is done.

St. Francis of Assisi

Connecting

Another late night over the Grapevine
Returning low-eyed from Bakersfield
Wondering if the country
Will stop corruption
Or just give in to the man of action
The coffee from Chili’s was just not good
But we all left satisfied
Feeling full yet gnaws the hunger
Of dreams just out of reach
Lana Del Rey crooning sweetly
Still loving men who disappoint us

Finding ground

Imagine being rooted in art
Generations of support for the craft and sacrifices
Imagine being grounded in anything
Does the grounding feel like a steadyness?
Like a destiny?
Does it smell like life and feed your hunger?
Is it a heavy anchor?
Or is it shackles and chains on all limbs,
Restricting all movement?
She was rooted in religious control. He was rooted in cruelty.
I flew away, tearing my roots. Feeling my uprootedness.
Finding new ground, wherever my heart lands.

A little longer

Slowed way down
Agreed to stop standing in bathrooms
Running toward parked cars
Happy to sit
Happy to work
Happy to take a backseat
What am I learning?
Material
Turns out I’m not dropping my gifts
Just disappointing the large audience
Or learning not to
Not willing to be parted from my babies
They deserve at least that
In this world of busyness
Work
All the disdainful distractions from what matters
Why bother breathing if you can’t share all the love in your heart?
No more laboring to feed the rich
My soul cries for more

Thirty-Nine

A dark and wintry melody
Sung alone with a guitar
Cracked my heart open tonight
Remembering
The shimmering of fresh snow
From golden street lamps between shadows
Underneath a black empty sky
I am small, sprinting barefoot across campus
Holding my stilettos
Drunk and foolish
Running with a new friend I’ll never see again
to catch a midnight movie in time
How vast the night skies, all of them
How fruitless her hills, I went hungry sometimes
The nagging feeling there was going to be nothing here for me.
I cannot stay.

How far away from that time I feel now.
Novels have been written.
I cry for the trials I would face.
How much life would change me
Remembering the hunger that looked like drive
To those near enough to witness.
Many have traveled much farther
Also alone
Crossing dark oceans with hope in their heart.
How strange and beautiful is this life?
How grateful am I to finally have a companion.
But tonight I feel her loneliness
I feel her emptiness, her placelessness
I feel the cold snow stinging and numbing my feet
And the alcohol warming my heart
For the long and difficult road ahead.

Wait or Seduce

Hunkering down

The winds are whipping around tonight

Like mad little goblins

Just when I’m maximum spooked

The enormous, graceful koi fish

Makes an appearance again

It’s my sign to:

Wait

Wait

Wait

Earlier,

A capitalist’s wet dream

Flooded American living rooms

Not a dry eye anywhere

But it seemed a little too perfect to me

Wait, wait, wait

Am I being seduced?

To what am I faithful?

Do you all need seduction?

And what if I refuse?

The Pain of Evolution

Can you imagine

How much suffering evolution required?

The gasping of gills choking on light air

The pain of rocks against

Soft foot flesh

The stretching of lungs too tight for thin mountain air

The number of children you had to watch die

Helplessly

What pain was endured to arrive at this

Halcyon moment of comfort and balance

And we take it all for granted

Until we can’t breathe freely again.