Monthly Archives: May 2020

Fire

29 Friday May 2020

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The sun is travelling out now, rising over the water instead of above the pavement in the mornings. We witness its return, soft, silent, and bright. We sip coffee or notice our breathing or stand in tree pose as the morning mist burns away.

This morning before I got out of bed studying the sky, I wondered how to cook the chicken I bought yesterday and realized I have no rice to pair with it. I could feel my face furrow and frown with concern and disappointment and concentration. It’s just too early for this. Then I read the news and I paired my concern and disappointment with pain and that overwhelming helpless feeling. Minneapolis is burning and for good reason.

I am an advocate for loud and inconvenient protest. Nothing changes unless the world sees it and hears it and says, “Well yeah, by golly, maybe cops shouldn’t keep killing unarmed black people.” Yet it seems only meaningful change comes after the wings of fire sweep in. Got your attention, forcing you to ask the question “How did we get here?” Well my dear, it wasn’t via a peaceful knee on a playing field. The sun burns in the morning, a police station burned all night, and I am burning now because I can only type a little screed on a little screen far away and not be with you, wherever you are, to demand equal justice for all.

I am not in favor of harming people or property to deliver a message, though, looking back (and I do so much looking back), it seems we are wired for fire and nothing short of that makes real change come around and *stick.*

Do you know the process for treating genital warts? It ain’t pretty so put your helmets on: by freezing or burning them off. They don’t go away with nice words and fancy words and throwing money at them or prayer. Big change comes after fire, after pain, after enough is enough.

I’ve taken stock of my morning, my life, and re-prioritized. Cooking my chicken is the least of my worries today. My other concerns will be dealt with in some sort of fashion. All I know is, right now, I can’t get “four dead in Ohio” out of my head because our president said, “When the looting starts the shooting starts,” which is not an original thought of his. We are angry. We are grieved. When will real change come and stick?

We Hardly Knew Ye

24 Sunday May 2020

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I did not want to see the attendants take his body away, though I knew it was coming. If I had waited just five minutes more, or checked five minutes before, I would not have witnessed the transition. But maybe I should have seen, maybe it was for the best that I saw the pattern of his blankets.

He was a character. That’s probably the best way to describe him, one all us residents would agree on. He said silly things, used conspiracy words, he played little games with conversation. He made us feel uncomfortable and cringey and weird, befuddled, and some of us downright pissed.

One summer weekend some kids were visiting from out of town, riding their bikes, playing hide and seek everywhere, including our balconies which he did not take kindly to. After he got no satisfaction from their parents he called the cops on the kids. The next day we came out to our respective balconies, he on his, me on mine, (we rarely stood next to each other except for that one time), and I called him out on it: I told him that was a shitty thing to do, calling the cops on the kids. He was angry and went back inside and … after a few weeks he went back to waving hi to me.

They told me not to loan him money anymore because he uses it to buy pot. I often wondered if his lack of filter was due to a head injury. He told me stories of his youth, that once he was in military school. His hair was long and gray and white and braided, then one day it was cut back short like a regular dude hidden beneath a ballcap. I liked it better the other way. He used to take short walks down the balcony, and I think half the reason he went out was to look for someone to tease or be a wiseguy with, not hurting anyone, just looking for someone he could interact with in his weird little way. He had no one else to talk to.

He left the world, he left us, he left everyone, by himself and that’s what bothers me most. I hope his transition, his dying was peaceful. I wish I could ask someone if it was so. I want to believe that it was.

Well, J, it’s someone else’s turn to look after you. I hope you don’t tease and annoy them too much. Take your ease, bro. I think you’ve needed it for a long time.

A Post From A Most Imperfect Mom

20 Wednesday May 2020

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I awoke thinking about connections. That we were once connected. My body has proof, it says we were. I remember your flutter when I sipped vanilla shake from McDonald’s, I could feel the cold going down and sure enough, there was the movement, like you could feel the freezy vanilla, too. Your angles alive in my bowframe, pushing or kicking like a boxer on the speed bag. Today we are connected by the green phone in a speech bubble app. Technology brings the distant close? Is that our miracle? Sometimes it is because when you sent me that hug I could really feel it from here.

We are in strange times right now because of a contagion, one we’re racing to understand, mitigate, and hopefully vaccinate off the planet. We are in quarantine or semi-quarantine, struggling to cope with who and what is essential. No paychecks. Trapped in our homes with wild children or good children turned wild and spouses we thought we recognized but never knew. Many people are turning to their creative side, making, mending, sorting, doing the best with what is at hand and making it better, bringing their children into the activities. Many are bend-breaking in the stress because they feel trapped. Some are sharing cruel words about their kids on social media which brings me here this morning:

I used to laugh at the commercials of parents singing and dancing while going back-to-school shopping as their children dragged themselves miserably in the wake of their parents glee down the aisles. Ha ha, that’s cute. Or teachers who post “here you go, parents, take your kids back, they’re all yours” in June. And now we feel “trapped” with children we chose to bring into the world? How did we lose our connection to our children and families and neighbors and each other? Oh I know how we lost it, the question is rhetorical.

I ask you today, what *will* we do to get our healthy connections back?

May For Me

01 Friday May 2020

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Today is the first of May. A familiar time for someone who grew up in New York disliking winter with its 10-foot piles of snow, the dirty frozen kind you fall on as you’re walking to school and cut your knees on. Come spring, save us from stiff fingers and toes while we’re locked out of the house and snow angels are for people who can breathe and laugh and run in this dry scene, not the rest of us gasping for air.

Welcome, May, a doorway to peace, winter not so far behind, a time for skin to relax and receive heat without fear. I grew up in echoey castles devoted to candles and hymns and discipline. I wanted so much to taste the beef broth that was simmering in the halls when we walked from here to there. In May we went outside and crowned a plaster statue with living flowers and prayed to her, that was somehow supposed to relieve me of the passion and suffering, the bleeding torture and death of the christ we experienced year after year?

My kindest memory of May was a prayer when someone said Mary was the Star of the Sea. I do not know why this went down into me and kept me and held me. Mostly I felt strange to honor a plaster thing in white and blue robes or nearly naked on a bloody cross. All my young being asked what exactly am I doing here and why does this feel so strange honoring a thing with things when what we are feeling is incomprehensible?

Today I recall hearing the prayer that mentions Mary Star of the Sea. I appreciate and approve that devotion though I have never been. The sea is incomprehensible, a dangerous mystery to me, and perhaps I will never comprehend. I feel closer to the mystery outside of me because moonlight and sunrise. The End.