Where am I?
A washing machine of memories and circumstances blurred together in soapy residue, a mountain of unfolded thoughts and feelings piling up on the chair next to my bed, the stack of calendars, sketchbooks, partially read books, pens, pencils that I sleep next to, shaped like a lover who hogs the bed and won't hold me when I roll over. I don't do full readings these days, I let the tarot cards that I peel off my legs in the morning reveal to me what's coming. This bedroom is Walden pond, and I am a transparent eyeball, a glass orb perceiving everything at once except no one knows when the fortune teller will arrive to translate all of these shadows of what has been, who's inheritance will pay her bill, where the tornado will drop Dorothy - into a land of technicolor dreamscapes or a metropolis built of garbage, the only evidence we were even here at all.
How did I get here?
A decade ago I sat in the kitchen of a steel shop while someone I love like a brother sat frozen in grief - a hole had been found in the heart of his child, 5 months into the intense work of building itself into a full human, nourished in the protective landscape of his wife's body. This man, broader and stronger then I will ever be, his depth of kindness that changed my life, who gets misread constantly by so many as a threat because of that quiet strength, the lack of bravado, and his black body - they decided not to terminate the pregnancy, but carry it full term so they could know their son for the few days of life on earth that he had to give. So much has changed since we worked in rhythm, alongside, in the multitude of constellations two people can support each other in a toxic work environment, and we protected our matching joy, we grew like two impossible plants in a Martian landscape, nourishing each other. He called me the other day - he has acquired the standards of adulthood, decent pay, bought a house, has two kids and driven, happy wife - but his voice was heavy as he told me about the loneliness of this new place, no friends or coworkers to resonate with - he said he would go back in heartbeat, to the shop, where we had each other's backs, and our bodies were strong enough to withstand whatever came at us. Where the feeling of being seen and known was larger and louder then the post-recession blues, and the monsters were vanquishable because we knew we were not alone, strong on multiple fronts.
A month ago I met up with a new friend from this new environment I work in, her movement slow and winding from the late stages of pregnancy she was swimming in. She described feeling alone during our brunch, of years working at this place, but having made only one other friend. The weight of bringing a child into the world with just her and her husband, an island out in the Bronx. As we went to part ways, I told her how glad I was to know her - and the shock in her face was like the shock of a violin stroke out of silence - and the other night, as I left a school with her teaching through her contractions, the beginning stages of labor, her eyes were like pools, bottomless in the early winter darkness as I told her what I had to fight to learn: It is ok to need things, to reach out and communicate those needs to others - never apologize for needing something, especially in the work of bringing this baby into the world. Call me, in the middle of the night, whatever, and do not be ashamed if you or your husband need another body to offer support in this moment. We were never meant to do this alone.
What I did not say, what maybe feels still too vulnerable to name to someone else yet - is how honored I always feel when people acknowledge they need something to me, and trust that I am available and capable to show up in that way. That I hunger for the depth of that kind of connection, that supercedes culturally learned fear, patterns of shame and disconnection. This is when I feel the texture of the fabric that binds me to something, anything - the shape of home I am building and rebuilding for myself constantly - this undercurrent of feeling, offering, receiving support, when the gift of being interconnected goes both ways at the same time and we are brought closer in the process - THIS is what community means. THIS feeling is what we are here to build, this is the architecture of the house I want to live in, a place where we are able to witness each other through the grief and fear and bittersweetness and celebration and hard growth without averting our gaze from each other. Being able to stay with, to BE with, whatever comes.
In so many yoga classes I've taken, the instructors describe space being made in the joints, between bones - it was a revelation in deeper body studies for this confusion of metaphors to be called out - space in the joints actually causes them to malfunction. The deeper and more connected each subtle ball and socket is, the greater the communication of force through that juncture, and the less vulnerable it is to becoming destabilized. So much injury and pain emanates from muscles working at cross purposes, or having learned to do the work of other muscles, parts that go quietly unnoticed instead of being invited into their purpose in supporting the wholeness of our physical expression - learned habits from our earliest encounters with gravity, so hard to know what we have never experienced, but not at all different from our emotional realities and skill sets as well.
Someone asked me the other day about when artmaking feels liberatory for me. I've been thinking a lot about that word. We live inside of such a narrative of Independence and Separation, of bootstrapping ourselves into being, of freedom from responsibility to others. I think the ideas and language crafted by American culture are inherently at cross purposes with what it means to be an agent/member/constituent/participant in our own lives, as well as any kind of communal space. The skills it requires to support others come from having an experience of being supported, the two are not able to be separated - just like Respect in regards to children, you cannot give something you've never safely received, or even tasted the flavor of. I think we need to be more specific about the language of liberation - the freedom from something does not automatically imply what will replace what held us together before, and even if what held us to the earth was toxic - if the only other/safe option is to not be tethered at all, we will not make it very far. Maybe being liberated from what held us back disrupts the narrative of separation in such a way that we can be more wholly, safely enmeshed in the fabric of each others lives - so that we can see each other, hear, feel, support, celebrate each other more freely. A removal of bondage may first require a redefinition of what CAN bind us to ourselves and each other, and the potential waiting for us in that capacity for connectivity.
Maybe this is good moment to switch the lens.
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