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Indigo Vales

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Indigo Vales

Monthly Archives: December 2016

Here It Comes…

31 Saturday Dec 2016

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change, justice, life, New Year, thoughts

This is where everyone writes their resolutions. Their hopes and goals for themselves in the New Year.  I ain’t putting that pressure on myself because I know that shit don’t work.  For me, anyway.  That’s all right.  I’ll take a moment to reflect and write, anyways, because it’s been on my mind.

I feel like I reset my whole life in 2016, though it was put into motion long before.  I upturned the whole apple cart.  I hurt people I love. I failed in so many ways, and the worst was walking away from a man who put up with me, who took care of me and our son all these years, and I struggle to deal with that upheaval.  2016 dealt me a “change” card. I took it and ran, and it’s hard to sleep with what I left behind.

I mourn the celebrities we lost, but they weren’t in my shoes or his shoes or your shoes all this time. Tonight is the end and a beginning, and yet I always felt like the true new year began when I went back to school in September.  More horror.

Tonight I am cleaning my bathroom top to bottom, and I will have some champagne at the prescribed time.  I look back on a life before and after I married Mike.  I miss my son.

This year I will share my fears on the page, and might, maybe, confess my sins for the record, too.  This year I will send more work out into the world because rejection just gets easier the more you take it.  This year I will try to do something about the thin skin I was born with. Perhaps I can toughen it because my armor just hasn’t been enough.  This year I learned that I can join a club, some all-grrl gang and force my view down your throat or beat you to death with it because you ain’t hearing us otherwise… or I can doctor the wounds. I can record the voices and stand up for the ones who need it most. I get to decide what Change looks like, and it doesn’t have to tear Justice limb from limb.

This year I will root for the Seattle Seahawks because I’m done with that other team. On a side note, I hope my son learns what “team” means, and that nobody gets a medal for being a lone wolf.  I hope they hand out medals to lone wolf parents, by the way, but I’d better not  hold my breath.

This year I will try to participate more in the community. Change can’t happen just by posting comments on a web page.

And I’m not asking any more of myself right now because that’s a pretty good plate so far.

Paper cut

30 Friday Dec 2016

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dream, father, words

I’m glad the night is over.  Better to rise in the dark to herd my thoughts, to write, to read, anything but try and lay still when it does me no good.

It was the dream that had no intention of ending, for no matter how many times I got up last night it returned. Makes me question my sanity–did I truly did get up many times last night? How can a dream pick up where I tried to leave it?

And it was my father, of course.  Driving. I was a little girl. He was driving the car in the dark, and I was listening silently. He was lecturing me for using the wrong word in a sentence. He was so annoyed, displeased, unhappy with the fact that I could misuse the word “opaque.” Why is he still annoyed with me?  Why does it still matter?  Will I always be that little girl driven in the dark, destination unknown, by an aggravated male?  Why is the father of Me annoyed with the little girl of Me for misusing a word (though I am not convinced that I did.)  Aye, there’s the rub. Who is right, who is wrong, and does it really matter?

How does one heal a little dream that feels like a stinging cut in my palm?  I refuse to make this dream more than it is, but I am curious about the word “opaque” and what it means to me right now, so I will explore that idea (along with “transformation”) today.

The wind blows southeasterly, and it will get stronger later this afternoon.  The Eisenhower returns to port today, and I watched all the cars queue up in the dark waiting to see their loved ones gone all these months.  In the bay, little wavelets lift up their white heads and say, “What? Oh no, no no no, that’s just too cold for me!” then duck their heads right back down into the cold, dark water, pushed along by the wind.  As for all the rest, I’ll leave it opaque as can be.

A Morning for Wonder

29 Thursday Dec 2016

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brother, morning, ocean, rain, son, sunrise, wonder

I awoke to the sound of the sky changing color.  I almost set my alarm clock to give me just 15 minutes more, but instead I swung legs over the bed and dressed in the dark, eyes half-glued shut.  My favorite weather app tells me it will begin to rain in 8 minutes, and I decide to wear my hoodie instead of a rain jacket, it’s warmer after all, and what does an app really know, anyway?

I believe the sun lured me out of bed this morning with a little dare. He said, “If you come for a walk I will show you something that will make you glad.”  I hustled down to the sand looking for ocean and there it was, right where I left it. I turned east, looking for Juliet, and the sun let a few wide bands of gossamer, in rose, come through the clouds. I stood still, and I know for sure the sun said, “See? Aren’t you glad?”

I trespassed ten steps through Werner’s sand (you know he loves his fences and his signs), keeping my eye on the sunrise but it faded rapidly.  The 10th street stairs haven’t been repaired from the hungry bite of hurricane Matthew. When did this graffiti arrive on the hanging wood, and why hadn’t I noticed it before?  Six large flocks of crows flew past heading northwest. I wonder why.  And it begins to rain.  I think of the chores I have this morning, and the spell of the sun is broken.

I am typing in a dark apartment waiting for the bathroom to warm up.  My hoodie hangs from a hook on the door, soaked.  It sounds like a creature has come to live in the ceiling above my kitchen. Perhaps he or she thought it was a good time to move in while I was gone. Meanwhile, in the back bay, the soaking flag clings to its white pole trying to escape the cold rain.  A mountain-sized bee has been sounding the bay, but it has gone quiet now.  No other sounds but little laptop typing, no light but what the sun can give behind thick layers of gray sky. I wonder if I will feel a door slam soon and will I embrace it as proof of life and let it go with a smile, or will I greet it with rolling eyes and gritted jaw, proof that I just can’t let things go.   I wonder when I will reply to my brother’s email, another ocean I must cross. I wonder if my wax plant will continue to thrive since I had to give it a new place to grow.  I wonder when I will finish reading that book, and what will I do with the notes I’ve been taking, or will I leave it unfinished because I never want it to end?   What will I do with the word “transformation?” It’s everywhere now, unleaving me like the soundtrack for Red October that’s been playing in my head for weeks.  Well.  I couldn’t ask for a better sound in my head while getting things done.  My son would approve.

Treasures?

21 Wednesday Dec 2016

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dream, Solstice, writing

When I could stay awake no longer, I curled into a tightly made bed. The horns of the moon glowed orange. Tree branches silhouette on the wall, nodding. I said, “tonight I will write about sleeping with you. I will write. Sleeping with you.” I hoped if I lay the dream on my pillow it would unfold like roses and bleed on the page in the morning.

But tarantulas came, robin’s egg blue. Stunned on my plate. Ghost crabs, pink and white, blinked, stunned on my plate. I told the people who sat all around me, “I cannot eat these, they are still alive, look and see.”  But no one would believe me. Their food was full dead and still on their plates. I wanted a dream of beauty, but this order came instead.

I came to the ocean this morning. It’s full cold beneath the balcony, but once I stood in the sun it was too warm for this sweater. A Navy ship diesels across the flat ocean, horizon invisible in the haze.  A small, pink stone leaps into my hand. I tuck it into my jeans where in seconds it becomes an ice cube on my thigh.

I wanted to write  love song today, or a song of praise for the longest night, the shortest day. I wanted to write sea shells but only rusticles came slaloming out the water pipe. I wanted to write.  I wanted.

December 20

20 Tuesday Dec 2016

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Chris Pratt, dream, hot rods, ocean

I awoke at midnight. I slipped into the kitchen in my t-shirt and bare feet, the floor quite cold and tapped the nightlight on so I could pour something cold into my cup and not onto the counter.  I drank the water and wondered if I would be able to get back to sleep.  I dreamed that Chris Pratt came to visit me at my family’s house in the woods, at night, and it was like a car cruise, all those sleepers, hot rods, rat rods parked among small dirt clearings and the trees.  He took one out for a drive and eventually found a place to park among the trees and their roots that could take out a transmission if you weren’t careful.  We knew each other.  We liked each other.  We had too many moments of looking and not speaking because family was around.  He took my hands and we said a few things without speaking, it was all just eye contact, then he let go because it was time for him to leave. Hours later I wanted to text him, “U up?” but decided against the idea, and that felt right.  All those beautiful hot rods their pastel paint faintly lit by diffused headlights, the way they filmed the X-Files in Vancouver forests…

I awoke at 6:15 wondering how morning came so fast. I said, “I will dream of Vikings and the oceans they live upon,” over and over, so it must have done the trick to get me back to sleep.  Then I wondered why there were flashing lights on the wall, and could flashing lights actually wake me up?  There was an emergency vehicle (perhaps a tow truck?) in the neighbor’s yard and I wondered, “Now what?” Seemed like everything was stable, so I wandered into the kitchen, and it smelled like somebody’s been cookin’ in here, yeah, Jamaican!  I pulled on some clothes and went down to see the ocean, low tide, but the wind busy making waves and slamming the beach quite flat.  One of our supply ships was coming in beneath an angled sky, half dark, half illuminated by the beginnings of sunrise. God it was too cold to walk far, and I realized I’d have to start wearing my hiking wool if the walks were to continue in these conditions.  When I returned to the house, so grateful for the warmth, my mind began making lists, and I went about wiping down weeping windowsills.  Winter solstice is coming; I want to be ready.  A long drive.  Gifts to put finishing touches on. I will file those papers last, probably, and vacuum later because it might disturb the granite-faced lady who lives downstairs.

The ladies who live in these buildings, their faces are all so grim. Most of them are single. Their comings and goings are fairly regular, and their resting faces look so hard. There are two exceptions: one lady who lives with her cats, she walks with her chin up and a small smile, and the other is a new mother who is pretty and composed no matter what’s going on.  I know what my resting face looks like, and it’s so hard to smile when all I can hear is my ears ringing, and feeling like I’m walking alongside some magnificent grand canyon, prepared to fall in at any moment.

I sat with the neighbors two days ago on the beach.  It was 70 degrees on a December afternoon.  A laughing gull patronized me for food. Perhaps she thought I was a good candidate because I am the “bag lady” of the beach, bringing all my stuff down there in a plastic tote, but never food.  Sorry, gull, please move down the line.  Me and my neighbors sat in silence for hours. I noticed the polish had vanished from all but two of my toes. I noticed that everyone came down to the beach to walk, to use metal detectors, to let their children bolt into frigid waters but they didn’t care, to walk their dogs, to chat on cellphones.  I believe we all knew it would be one of the few remaining days the sun and atmosphere would be kind enough to let us walk barefoot in the sand, comfortably. I was prepared to fall, I am always prepared to fall, to suffer, and regret at any moment, and I wondered if I would ever learn to let go of that gloom.

This Is Sea Level.

18 Sunday Dec 2016

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absolutes, father, mother, ocean, sea level, woman

It was a foggy morning that began so early with me knocking on the maintenance guy’s door because there was a fast and furious water leak down by the stairs.  The fog came and went as did the foghorns, their distinct sound calling out from indistinct weather.  It swelled my heart.

This evening’s beach walk brought more than I expected which should never surprise me, yet it does.  I spent a long time out there for somebody who doesn’t like the cold, but the walking shoes and over sized hoodie with pockets did the job.  I left the hood down for the most part because I wanted to feel the cold air on my neck, my ears, my cheeks, my nose.  I wanted to”feel,” just as I wanted to hear and taste this ocean and see the cloud/fog being driven over me by the wind.

I hadn’t walked far when a gorgeous shell, intact, practically jumped up from the sand and bit my shin, a kind of whelk I’d not seen before, and I felt like… Who left this here?  I looked around like Red in Shawshank Redemption, wondering if anybody saw me take it, and was it actually meant for me?  I guessed it was, so I tucked it in my pocket and kept rubbing its smooth gut and bumpy exterior the whole way.  It was a very low tide, and were it spring or summer I could have walked out to the breakwater and touched its rocks, slippery with growth, but I chose to keep my feet on the damp ridges of dune.

Black-headed ducks bobbed in the pool spotted with gulls, and I notice their voice sounds nothing like mallards.  Cormorants worked so hard flying into the wind, and I asked them, “C’mon guys, what’re you doing?” but they kept on going their hard way.  A red doberman played on the sand with her daddy.  No dolphins today but that would’ve been asking too much because look at the whelk in my hand!  I faced into the wind and smelled a burger on the grill which made me want one, and I wondered who’s out here grilling in this chilly, windy day?  There were many small, white feathers in the sand, a portent of something wrong, and I found its body.  My guess is a dog or a fox got this gull but somebody chased it away before it could feed.  And here, seaweed I’d not seen before: I’m used to seeing long, purple hairs or the short, red stumpy ones that turn soft brown on a windowsill, but now there’s this brownish stuff swaying that looks like celluloid. Cool. Has it always been here and I just never noticed?  Probably. While I walked I felt the pull of who I was missing, then heard that critics’ voice chiding me, but I put it back in place, decently, remembering that I get to decide who I miss and who I don’t, when, where, and why. It felt so good. And I cried.

The conclusion of my father’s estate sits in an envelope on my desk.  I stood on the sandbar knowing this was sea level, tide sloping in, because it’s absolute. This is sea level, fullstop, not driving past a sign that says “you are 1000 feet above sea level” which means absolutely nothing to me.  It doesn’t get any more absolute than sea level at your feet with a tide coming in, or a check that says this is all that’s left of your dad now, run along and try to make something of yourself.  I cried and I missed him. I was glad the neighbors weren’t around.  I cried and only the bobbing black-headed ducks might have noticed. I was glad they didn’t fly away when I walked past them, smoothing the whelk in my fingertips.

The wind makes the lamps in the courtyard sway tonight. I still have tears in my eyes as the new mother comes to share pictures of her little one on Santa’s lap for the first time.  We talk about our babies cruising, nursing, coffee tables, mother-shaming. I think about my son and my family, my fate and fortune, and the ellipsis that we all are, feeling like it’s just gonna be all right…

Peace Begins With Compromise

13 Tuesday Dec 2016

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compromise, guns, march, peace, politics, pro-choice, woman

I don’t like to be pigeonholed or slapped with some final label that “defines”me.  I am of a mixed mindset, philosophy, and that is right and good.  Maybe some people can carry a sign for just one “thing” at a rally but my sign is too big for the Goodyear blimp, a CNN chryon, or just about anything else. At this point, my sign will eeeee-clipse Mount Rushmore.  How can I carry that complicated thing? So I blog and hope my body will suffice.

Why does my sign have to be an 8″ x 10″ on soft paper?  Yes, the world can change on a small piece of soft paper like our wonderful Constitution, but the voice, need, desire, and the right of revolution because the world changes deserves a voice that breaks mountains! Some folks say the media is stoking a racial divide, or there is a shadowy faction that wants to control the world first by stoking a race war, taking guns away, and who knows what else.  Suddenly women want too much, including not wanting to be pregnant for whatever reason.  My country wants to live in the past, the past of biblical, conservative “democracy”, and it’s so hard for me to realize that we all have to make room for each other but nobody wants to.   Tonight I want the pro-lifers and the pro-choicers to make room for each other.  I want to see two people who love each other so much to make a union, and raise children in a home filled with love, but I want there to be a place for people who don’t see it that way to have a voice, too. I want the gun owners to know we’re not trying to take all the guns away, but damn, man, whatchoo need that overflowing magazine for, unless you’re in a double war zone? I don’t need you to justify to me your beliefs, but what I really want is for you to make space for mine, because it’s my right. I want women to be paid equally, I want black and brown people to not be profiled, and I want us to figure out how to fix our criminal justice system. How is that unAmerican and wrong?

What the hell is America if we can’t be a place where we aren’t all singing the same song?  What the hell are we about if we can’t stand up for each other’s values or take a knee when we disagree?  Why the hell can’t we disagree but still get along?  Respect each other’s views, be a land of discourse instead of blame?  You don’t want to marry a woman, fine. You don’t want an abortion, fine.  You believe government should be smaller and not be so concerned with world politics, fine.  But what about the rest of us who don’t agree with your view?  Why can’t you make room for us?  Will your whole world only be right and at peace because your government looks like your bible?  Or maybe the fear that the whole world will collapse because you held on to your beliefs while letting others live their own lives?    What about the rest of us who would like to live in harmony with you?  It’s only a “war” if you label and market and perpetuate it so.  What about the freedom of discourse?  I guess unless it doesn’t provide a sexy soundbite and break down the facts it’s just better off ignored, life is just all right? Meme ain’t democracy, babes, but I respect the hell out of your right to express it.  I only wish we’d only get on the same fact page.

I hope that someday we can all get over this whole religious/government order thing and just figure out that this whole world is right small, and how lucky we are to have clean water to drink.   We’ve only got limited water and air and we’ve got to share it.  Our views don’t have to agree with yours, but can’t you just live with the fact that the whole world doesn’t have to agree with and live by your mores? Is there no space in your world for people who don’t agree with you?

I will march to DC in January not because I hate men or life or the Electoral College. I will march not because I want to create divide between black, brown, and white, male and female or because I hate babies.   I will not march because I hate all guns and their owners.  I will march because of EVERYTHING.  For all my beliefs, for the right, the sacred right we have to even march and stand for what we believe.  I will march because I believe in an America that has different beliefs that should be protected, and does not stamp out the opposition based on religion. I will march because I am a woman with beliefs who look different from yours, asking that you make space for mine. I will march because we’ve only got one tiny world and we have to get along in it.

Thank you for listening.

White Helmets & Thunder

13 Tuesday Dec 2016

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help, human, refugee, silence, Syria

It was perhaps 5:30AM when I was jolted out of bed by metal pounding, great booming concussions of the sanitation truck emptying a dumpster.  It’s not Thursday afternoon, why is this horrible smashing happening now?  How inconvenient.

It was 7:00AM when I heard the sound of thunder, but no, not thunder.  A distant low boom that cuts off quickly. This is the sound of either a fighter or stealth jet.  It growled and boomed several times, and I wondered if they would be practicing around here today, but it’s gone silent now.  There’s no use trying to sleep anymore, thinking about the marvel of our machines, the wonder that we forced our way into the air, and then beyond air.  Aren’t we so clever.

It was 7:30AM when I read the that civilians are being marched out of their homes and shot in Aleppo, Syria.  Technology allows us to stay in touch with little Bana Alabed via Twitter or CNN, a human family stuck in war.  The US has amazing flying machines that boom over the bay, but what have we done to help the people who asked for freedom from a tyrant?  Silence. Our country is war fatigued and tired of being the world’s police. Our government condemns and sanctions Syria and sends help piecemeal because it’s not in the interest of our country to start a world war over ideals.  It amounts to silence. The world watches as Russia sides with the tyrant and suppresses the rebels who only asked for more democracy five years ago. I watched the uprising and the refugee crisis in the news for years in silence, hoping the world would do something.

I’m hoping to redeem myself as a human being by writing letters, Tweeting, and donating to the White Helmets  , and asking others to do the same. Revolution cannot be silent, humanity must make a joyful noise and do the right thing.

4af26ac012a1ba5baaeb3984fc722116

December 11

11 Sunday Dec 2016

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dream, thoughts

Dark room. A bed like a cot. Blankets, I presume? On my back, naked, my hair longer than it is now.  Someone I do not know approaches, I only see their arms and what they’re carrying in the dark, no face, or voice or sound.  He or she puts a naked infant on my ribs and leaves. He is not interested in nursing and has no need to cry.  I can feel the skin of his skin on my ribs and belly. He curls up just a little and sleeps.  He only wants to sleep, and so he does.

###

I am walking down the road that leads from my father’s house to the main road.  The sky is pale and getting lighter by the second. It’s not the sun rising but the moon. The moon has risen from the wrong direction in the sky, and it is enormous. It should not be this close to us. Craters and seas are plainly visible. I am frightened by this enormous white, pockmarked plate in the sky.  I take the phone out of my back pocket, and I spend too long trying to frame it. When my finger finally finds the button and clicks, the sky goes full dark.  The moon is gone.

###

When I walk like a cat over my neighbor’s apartment, is every footstep taken with purpose? Does everything I put in my body have value to my body, all that I eat and drink? Is every breath nourishing, or are they only half-breaths, or breath-holding, forgetting the long, long path of chi?  Does everything I write have value, if not meaning? What was its purpose?  Was it worth waking up in the dark when the world was still sleeping to see an orange rose come into the sky, to brew a cup of coffee and hear nothing but stillness in the bedroom?  When did the courtyard lights go out? I was too busy writing the dreams to have noticed.  The refrigerator hums, a cardinal is peeping, I can find everything in my house with my eyes closed and cross the floor in the dark without stumbling.  If only the ringing in my ears would go away, but since that’s not gonna happen, guess I’d better fill the air with the sounds of dish washing.

The Senses

09 Friday Dec 2016

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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brother, childhood, faith, father, Godzilla, mother, racism, Senses, truth

I can remember what the plastic-coated railing of my crib tasted like: flat, cool, and sometimes it pinched my tongue and made it bleed a little.   I can remember what breakfast tasted like, little bowls of Apple Jacks or Cheerios, maybe milk toast awesome with butter and a dash of pepper.  Sick bed days were spent on the couch in front of the tube watching Godzilla with grilled cheese and tomato soup, no guilt required.

I can remember what mornings sounded like. The awful squawk of the alarm clock that launched me from my bunk bed, headed me off to the bathroom to wash my teeth but skip my hair because I already had a bath last night, and it didn’t matter that my hair greased geometrically overnight and everyone made fun of me. Slurping down breakfast while listening to the news on the green radio Mom kept on the table.  I can still smell Dad’s Old Spice and wondering where those long, thick scars on his back came from, but I knew better than to ask.

I can remember what nighttime sounded like when our bedroom lights were out but the one in my head stayed on.  I heard their music playing on the stereo:  The Surfaris, Sinatra, Andy Williams, Cher, Simon & Garfunkel, Johnny Cash… a soundtrack for a life still in infancy. Once I heard the crinkle of gift wrap on Christmas Eve, but I knew better than to ask.

I can remember dinners that alternated between Daddy’s home and Daddy’s not home, and it’s unfair and cruel to say which was the best, but when Daddy wasn’t home we took his special quarters and bought pizza from Regina’s and ate like there would never be anything this heavenly again in all our lives–a perfect mozzarella pizza with tiny pepperoni that perfectly cupped the oil.  I can remember mom pouring oil into the electric fry pan and overcooking just about everything, things that were not meant to be soaked in hot oil.  I learned to hate eggplant in that fry pan.  She warmed up peas from a can, and I sat in front of them and the desiccated liver and onion thing, determined to starve and die because it was so awful, and I never gave in, a good ship Resolute.

I can remember Mom playing songs on the organ in our bedroom from a blue denim book. Many were happy and fun like “Camptown Races,” patriotic like “The Marines Hymn,” and some were “spirituals” or work songs.  Mom had no idea these were offensive or hurtful because she grew up believing these were just songs. One of my Catholic school teachers taught us a slave song, and even then it felt wrong to me: “Oh lordie, pick a bale o cotton, o lordie pick a bale a day…”  No.  Just, no.

I can remember Mom putting black pepper in my mouth for saying something horrible about my brother. I can remember Dad making me hold a heavy box with my arms outstretched until they shook because I was a very bad girl at the store. I just closed my eyes and focused on the lamp that rained oil in the stationery store, the one I wanted so badly.

I remember pussy willow buds, so soft and silver-white that bloomed every year in the courtyard, the courtyard that Godzilla never managed to destroy in my dreams.  I remember that clover tasted bitter, grass even worse, and dandelions leave the most wonderful yellow on fingertips. I remember popping open sticky maple seeds and putting them on my nose so I could be a rhinoceros or any other kind of mythical beast. I remember the prickle of sweet gum seeds that felt like porcupines underfoot.

I remember the constant sound of jets taking off or coming back to LaGuardia.  One long, hot day at summer camp I got to see the Concorde flying over the tennis courts as I lay in the grass waiting to play. The sonic boom, the awesomeness of that tiny white delta shape in a perfect blue sky in a place that I hated.  It was a spaceship of amazing, a spirit unbelievable.  God I’ll never forget that Concorde, the mysteries and marvel of its wing.

I remember the heady fragrance of incense, but I don’t remember which resin was burning on that holy day.  I can remember the swish of the priests robes and the clink of the decanter chain, whispers instead of songs.  I remember the bland taste of the Eucharist and that it did not cancel out my doubts, fears, or wonders I’ve had about this life.  The body of Christ tastes like something you must decipher for yourself, and for heaven’s sake don’t chew on it!

I remember growing up in a neighborhood with friends who were of different faiths. The old lady on the park bench, the fixture, always spoke to us nicely and nobody told me she was Jewish until later, and I didn’t know it mattered. The kids I went to camp with were of various faiths and nobody cared, except for that one girl who tried to own the rest of us in her braids and perfect red swimsuit, that horrible bully.   Unfortunately, I lived in a neighborhood where black and brown people were looked on as dangerous or at the very least suspicious, but it was so hard for me to process that because all the kids I went to school with were different colors–a bunch of them were Vietnamese.  I learned to sing “Mary Had a Little Lamb” in Vietnamese,  and maybe that put me on the road to becoming a bleeding heart. At least I know what inclusion means and how it feels. That it looks like my son’s Vietnamese best friend who lived just across the yard, whose family invited us, including my Dad who served in Vietnam, to celebrate their sons birthdays.  We came to their table and ate traditional foods flavored with chopped peanuts and fish sauce, or wrapped in rice paper. How can this happen, and how can I be so lucky? Was my whole life just one big serendip waiting to happen?

Oh god/goddess keep our senses wide open, to see, hear, smell, taste, and touch the world and love it to the fullest.

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