hurricanes with two eyes can see where they're going

Eulogy for the thing I used to be

That I didn't realize I was dragging around like a kid with their favorite blankie
or 'Unh - uh' as my youngest cousin used to call hers
This thing that I used to get hired for - I could see the light in various employers eyes
As I roared edicts and froze entire oceans of men with the sharpness of my words

The landscape has changed.
Me and my fellow giants huddle together at bars, able to see each other like no one else
can, there are fewer and fewer people who remember how powerful we were
so I get asked dumb questions about my competence from people far less capable then I

I've spent so long proving to the world and myself that I was strong enough,
That I'd fought hard enough to deserve the respect no one would give me
And when I encounter situations where people assume I know what I'm doing,
I almost feel robbed of the righteous anger that used to crackle the air around me

No one can conceive of how hard some of us work, have worked
But in this new landscape that doesn't seem to matter
And my story about how hard I am doesn't fit with my rapidly softening hands and body
and now I am wracked with the memory of the strength that used to course through me

But now I have nothing to be proud of conquering,
myself or others, circumstances, institutions, ways of thinking
Not having to pry my sense of self and worth out of them all
isn't as freeing as I thought it would be

Habits of prying and proving, the language I formed for defending myself from monsters
just rasps at the soft skin of the people that have filled the void where giants used to be
and even I am tired of talking about the shit I went through to stand here
Its clearly time for a new pair of glasses, but why can't I seem to let these old things go?

Watching the holidaze is always illuminating
it strikes me how luxurious it can be to have such a black and white view of everything
no familial bonds makes it easy to not get caught in the aching webs of love and loyalty
shame expectation tenderness frustration longing layered into a rich tapestry

Like Umami, that perfect balance of salty sweet bitter sour
that completes a dish, makes it multidimensional, whole
No one would say I lack dimension, but I am a direct descendant of smoke and mirrors
Learning to be seen at all was like learning a new language

And some things will never quite translate directly
especially if I can't let myself be immersed in muddy murky relationships
to find the contrast to my briny demeanor, the sharp iron taste from tending metal
and flame, something to bring out the subtle chamomile quality underneath it all

I've used my mother's toxic coping mechanisms to their highest capacity
I absolve her of monster status, release her from the labyrinth of my ideas
of self, but how do I hang up my cowboy hat now that the frontier has been settled
how do I stop obsessively searching for new frontiers to conquer

Who am I without the skin suit of all the things I used to be?
A tattoo artist said to me that images become clear just as we cease to need them
anymore, a friend told me recently that I shouldn't force the elusive things I contain to express themselves, but just keep making space for them to arise, on their own time

That doesn't mean I don't miss the powerful things I have been, or the lessons I learned
about what I was capable of along the way, I doesn't mean I'm not proud of the fierce angry
little girl I used to be, and I don't know what to be proud of in this new landscape
and I wrote a Eulogy to try to help let that part of myself live in the past

without me.

the development of eyes as an arms race

My body spoke to me today. Clear as day I could hear its question, the first time I have ever received a direct transmission from myself. My own voice. It took me 30 years to finally have access to it.

It is the ground's job to receive weight and give support, not mine. My job is to give weight and receive support. To witness, to be responsive. It would be redundant to call myself an Empath, because we ALL are, but I forget most of the time how fiercely my empathic capacity is involved in my survival. It suddenly makes so much sense, the intensity of the walls I seem to have built around myself - while the nature of my childhood is definitely a factor, it is a noisy layer in my life story that overshadows the reality of my energetic needs and awarenesses. For a mother who can't fathom the danger she put us in constantly, I realize suddenly how ill equipped she would have been to recognize the subtle damages suffered by a child missing certain crucial walls who was asked to become an adult too soon.

It has taken this recent foray into multiple embodiment practices for the brevity of my sensitivity to come to my own attention. I have been misunderstanding the source of this disconnect on so many more levels than I would have thought possible. I almost can't even believe my previous anger at violent physical reactions to places my body would not let me go - I never once paused to consider that they might be there for an incredibly valuable reason. That my ability to charm dogs, small children and jaded construction workers, to gauge intentions and gain other's trust and confidences might also come with serious repercussions if not handled respectfully. I know, and then I forget.

'I see', said the blind man.

It has taken a week of me wandering around at the precipice of nausea and panic, lost in an ocean of sensory information for me to really understand and appreciate my teacher's approach. By asking us to turn inwards and witness sensations and shadows living inside of ourselves, I got to experience turning that empathic gaze inward, to touch myself with the heat of my own powerful attention. Only I can unlock these walled off places, and forcing my way through them or allowing someone else to remove them leaves me completely unprotected, stripped of even the slightest membrane between me and the world. I am exhausted from my inability to prioritize all of the messages and details being received right now, by the massive multisensory organ of this body.

While some of this embodiment work is simply too much, too fast, like a baby being sat before they have the skills to get in and out of sitting on their own, I still have acquired some information of inestimable value:

trust the process that I have begun, and the woman shining her light on this particular path.  - When my body asks me to stop, there may be a very valid reason. Trespassing on myself may have laid the groundwork for others to follow. It begins and ends with me. - I am not my walls... rather those walls are a container and a clue about something deeply sensitive and incredibly important, and maybe even I wasn't allowed to go there until I could treat it with sufficient respect.

Let Now be our Advent

 

Burn like an ember

Capable of starting fires

Like each moment inspires the next.

Distance provides a kind of grammar.

Seated in the audience for a small dance company's showcase I had designed marketing materials for - the performances were all filled with interesting young women, except for one particular piece. A 70 year old woman, the choreographer and company's focal point moved alone, feet shifting in and out of time to delicate sounds. Like a butterfly, like a crone, halting and awkward one moment, powerful and arched the next, making shapes in the space with her body, her sharp movements, her meandering, emotional pauses, she danced as vigorously as a young woman, whatever one's taste for performance, her presence and sharp awareness were nothing to be overlooked, alone on that stage.

I was struck by both her freedom and control over the movements of her body, and thinking back to people in my life, family members, pseudo role models, teachers, adults I encounter all around me - near her age, some not even close who have lost that sense of connection with themselves. It makes me so angry sometimes, that the people I should have been able to look up to when learning what truths composed the world I exist in seem to have willfully relinquished that awareness, of self, and the space around them. That I could find deeper, more meaningful exchanges with individuals perceived through a screen, remote, unrelated to me, than when drowning deep in the clotted embrace of some of my blood relatives. That a simple movement of an aging figure against a white wall could make me want to cry for the grandmother I should have had, for what the human body could be, could have been. For the wisdom I could have drunk off of knowing individuals at the earliest formation of my own sense of self and concept of power.

Like a prayer, like flagellation, like a nightmare, I can only keep fiercely repeating to my friend walking through the cold next to me, to myself in bed that evening:

I never want to be trapped in my own body, by age or fear or disuse.

Oh god, please.

Hold me like a conversation

Door clicks shut. The instructor's voice cuts through the chatter, as rhythmic, pulsing music washes over the room, baptizing it, transforming the space and our bodies into a sacred space, a port in which to dock our souls, a respite from the pace of the city and our own obsessive feelings of inadequacy. We coalesce on our mats, torsos flowing, cascading over folded thighs, arms reaching and resting in supplication or prayer, stretching the skin of our ribs long and deliciously free. Something about sinking back, hips to heels, sinking into the floor in child's pose, and for the next hour of flowing and rippling, rooting and growing into our musculature and the sophisticated architecture of our bones becomes one liquid blur, like sinking into a hot bath and feeling your whole body yawn, open and loose. Turning our constant ingestion of information inwards, to listen to the silent screaming of our joints and the subtle relocation of ligaments and tendons wrapping muscle around bone, I could feel my soul sinking more deeply in. It finally made a commitment to itself, filling and expanding the space like my breathe filling my lungs, wrapping itself more truly in the crevasses and the wrinkles, getting lost in the striated cords of muscle fiber, impossible to know where inner self ends and physical self begins.

Like parallel existences overlapping in space, sometimes sinking into one's self like this feels like greeting a childhood friend from a hazy past, or a sibling you haven't been in contact with, with a strong sense of having lived a shared experience, but from two different points of view. Disparate, disconnected, but intimately knowledgeable about each other. 

But this time, it was different.

It was myself. I was me. And I was moving through space with gravity, with weight, not the lightness and noncommittal lack of being that is refracted light and projections, smoke and mirrors... but a solid connection between brain and body, material and immaterial. I am not a ghost any more.

The instructor closed the class with a quote:

'you must let go of the life you planned to live, to live the life that is waiting for you.'

Let go. I dare you.

amen.