This Just In

SEEN: woman (me) on skates careening down road in Fremont before crashing into bush.

A Guest House

A bit melancholy. Not sure why. Feel like my skin is still holding other people's stories, stretched a little too tight. The girls in the dorm next door woke me up early chattering about a garage sale they were evidently endeavoring to put together which involved rattling carts. While admiring, and to be honest, somewhat loathing their youthful enthusiasm, I slept poorly after that. Rumi wrote that we can be a guest house for our feelings, to welcome each one in as it knocks. Not easy. Today, I am standing at the door of my inner house and offering tea to these blues, this stretchedness. Care for Earl Grey?

Hope

Went to a Al-anon meeting tonight on Capital Hill, and halfway through, I realized that the ache, the loneliness, that seems to camp out in my chest these days, was gone as if it had never existed. So far, the feeling hasn't come back. Gives me hope.

Dinner at our House

My housemates, Bill and Deb, had their weekly potluck tonight. Ten people gathered around our table for rousing and even ribald conversation. Yellow candles were lit. We ate bean soup, fresh greens, chips and avocado dip, apples and raisins, homemade bread. Bill told a funny story of hot tubbing at Doe Bay. Josh talked about preparing for his bar exam. Adam started a discussion about a book he had read. I wandered off to the front porch to watch Lucy put rocks in bottles. Time passed. Thomas Edison wrote in his journal, "Today was an Eden Day." This an Eden evening.

The Flip Side

Today at Folk Life, I saw four young male jugglers. One managed to get ten teenage boys to come up from the audience with no idea what they were volunteering for. Among the feats of daring they participated in was doing the can-can in front of fifty cheering strangers. I, too, laughed and shouted, clapped my hands. Having my true feelings can feel awkward, even excruciating, but can mean this too, unadulterated joy.

My Decent Life

Miserable day yesterday. Everybody seemed to be out of town, even God. My serenity prayer disintegrated into swearing. I said to my Al-anon sponsor, "I had a decent life; maybe, a weird, boundary-blurred life but I want to go back to it. "No, you don't," Maggie said. " I hate it when she's right.

Another Planet

When I go to that place, the place of the tired, there are no Sundays. No river runs through it. Instead, a falling that feels perilous, that I resist, before the naps I would take daily if I could. I drop down until I am flat on my back on the other side of the universe, another planet even. Today, at least, I'm not resisting; it's easier this way.

Finally

Just saw the last episode of this season of Grey's Anatomy. Redemption all around. Of course, in the final minutes of the show, most of the central players ended up kissing, including two women. Lovely. A friend once said I would watch all the badly produced lesbian films in the world just to watch two actresses kiss. Still true.

Worth Keeping

I wanted to know mornings, afternoons, and evenings with her, to see who she really was. I realize now, that's dating. What dating is for. I have so often jumped the gun and "married" the woman first and then spent the following months in a dizzying blur of hormones and melting boundaries. What would it be like to go slow? To let the relationship unfold like a poem, word by word, line by line--see if it really was a poem worth keeping.

God Has Orange Chalk

One morning last week I was feeling really alone and saw the words, "If you fall, I will catch you," written in orange chalk on the sidewalk in front of the First Free Methodist Church near my house. (Lyric from Time After Time by Cyndi Lauper)

To Soak Up the Sun

Half the world was at Golden Gardens today. We were all there for the same reason. To soak up the sun. I sensed a veiled sense of desperation that made me love Seattle. When the sun comes out, we do our best to act like we live in Florida. We drag out our bikinis and shorts, our frisbees, inner tubes, volleyballs, and barbecues and rush to the beach. And try to act casual about the weather.

Another First

The first soft serve ice cream cone of the summer.

Ineffable Grace

Tonight at the rink, I was so aware of the ineffable grace of the skaters around me. It was like getting to be on stage at the ballet with the dancers. I saw an elderly man go into a spin. He raised his eyes towards the ceiling almost as if praying as he spun his body into tighter turns. Beautiful. A teenager with her brown hair tied back practiced her leaps. A young man in jeans and a black turtleneck traced a perfect half-circle, the heels of both skates touching. A boy, not older than four, dashed by me, so swift and sure he could have been running. I was rounding a turn and suddenly was filled with a profound gratefulness. All I could think was: "Thank you." That's all I thought for a while.

Just Shop

In therapy yesterday, Karen said, "Well, you had a huge assignment handed out to you before you were born." I muttered, "Yeah, I wish I'd been in the restroom." Later, I had an image of all these ethereal beings with clipboards trying to find me. "Where is she? Have you seen her? It's almost time." And I'm in my spirit form, sitting in some john, feet up, arms around my knees, eyes darting. If they hadn't found me, I could have been Paris Hilton. Her assignment? Just shop.

Snacks

Brought cookies and milk to therapy today. Cold and raining outside: warm, inside. For the first few minutes, we munched as we talked. I am lucky to have a therapist so comfortable with whatever happens next.

Life in a Jar

WARSAW, Poland: Irena Sendler saved some 2,500 Jewish children from the Holocaust by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto, some in baskets. She died Monday, her family said, at 98. "Sendler was a 29-year-old social worker with the city's welfare department when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, launching World War II. Warsaw's Jews were forced into a walled-off ghetto [...] Sendler masterminded risky rescue operations. Under the pretext of inspecting sanitary conditions during a typhoid outbreak, she and her assistants ventured inside the ghetto — and smuggled out babies and small children in ambulances and in trams, sometimes wrapped up as packages. Records show that Sendler's team of about 20 people saved nearly 2,500 children from the Warsaw Ghetto between October 1940 and its final liquidation in April 1943.[...] In hopes of one day uniting the children with their families — most of whom perished in the Nazis' death camps — Sendler wrote the children's real names on slips of paper that she kept at home. When German police came to arrest her in 1943, an assistant managed to hide the slips, which Sendler later buried in a jar under an apple tree in an associate's yard. The Nazis took her to the notorious Pawiak prison, which few people left alive. Gestapo agents tortured her repeatedly, leaving Sendler with scars on her body — but she refused to betray her team." She was freed when an associate bribed prison guards, and she continued her work, under a different name. (The New York Times.)

Breadcrumbs

On remote today. Dialed up someone, didn't leave a message. Did a guided meditation from a dvd. That helped. Long nap. Three loads of laundry. Balanced my checkbook. Listened to The Beatles. Said The Serenity Prayer in my head numerous times without any real comfort. Fairy tales are full of people, children and adults, lost in the forest. Today, I couldn't quite seem to find that trail of breadcrumbs.

Dr. Oliver Sacks

"Of course, the last thing one would do would be to prescribe illness just for the experience. But if illness or misfortune happens, it forces one to think and to achieve a reconciliation of the deepest and most stable kind."

Popsicles

Just heard the first popsicle truck of the summer. The tinkling sound lifted off the breeze. For years now, noticing the first time I hear it is one of my rituals. Duly noted. Because it marks time. Lifts my heart.

This

"There's a cracking open when [something] dies." (Nancy Cobb).

Not Sure How This Goes

Since yesterday, have turned the light off on a number of well-lit fantasies. God, it's dark in here, inside me now. Realized in therapy last night, that this lonely, empty, hollow place has been in me all my cognitive life. Or even before that. Have tried to fill it with relationships, food, compulsive shopping, busyness, even alcohol. None of those worked. So now it's just me and this. Lovely email from my pal, David, today: It occurs to me that, like hunger, loneliness is the pain that drives us onward to connect with others. In that respect, it’s healthy, albeit, painful as hell.

Therapy

Sometimes the sacred is sitting in a room with someone who cares about you when the worst thing that could happen to you has happened and she is bringing you tea.

New Neighbors

New neighbors in the lilac tree by the mailbox. After dinner, Bill, Deb, Helen, and I went out to see a strangely alien construction, a sock-like nest woven from moss, lichen and spider webs, resting delicately on a branch. Miniature gray birds with the unfortunate name of Bushtit have decided to raise a family here. Their nest is so tiny, it's hard to believe it's a bird condo lined with plant down, fur and feathers. The Bushtits are easily frightened so for the next month we will tiptoe around their nest or they could scatter for good, find a new home elsewhere.

The Artful Dodge

I have a shadow side, the life I make up. The artful dodge. I'm good at it. Have been spinning fantasies since childhood--for essential reasons that don't exist now. But that doesn't stop me. Just now walking to my friend's car with my groceries, I imagine her, the last woman I pursued, walking next to me. In pretend, we are satisfied with our communion, our excellent communication. In real life, who knows? We could have been silent, rife with unresolved tension and an argument about to happen. Pretend is easier. Easier to miss someone, build an altar to the golden crumbs of remembrance than engage, be engaged in life, real life.

In Her Element

I am six feet from a blue heron. She extends her slender neck towards me, the water in diamonds all around her. I think, "You are an oracle. I will offer you a pearl and trouble you with a question." I say out loud, "Will I find love somehow?" But she looks away, not with disdain but with disinterest. She is a bird in her element, being a bird, not a mystery.

Photograph

The ageless simplicity of a black one-piece bathing suit.

Video

Just back from the Seattle Tilth Fair, Bill places a row of 10-inch seedlings on our kichen window sill. "From these little bitty plants will come a massive amount of tomatoes."

On the Ice

At the Highland Ice Rink, there is nothing but white: ice andwalls. Going into the white is what I love about skating. Into the cold of winter or any day of the year. In the center of the rink, the young girls in their spangle skirts practice spins and breathtaking leaps, landing on splindly legs, and none of them care because in their minds, they are beautiful. An old man, hands clasped behind his back, has his own beauty and takes his turns, crossing his skates, each in front of the other, with a stubborn confidence. A father and a daughter play tag. "You're it," he shouts, and she turns laughing, red-faced, loving him. All around me such enthusiasm, even from people who skate like toddlers, chopping headlong across the ice. Over there, a man is holding his girlfriend up as she tries this new way of walking. I skate among the skaters. Have only about ten minutes of wistfulness when I imagine a date skating with me. But can't stay wistful for long because of the spinning girls, the old man, the father and daughter, the couple, and everyone else who have decided to spend their Wednesday night. On the ice.