I wrote this, directly from my aching heart onto the computer screen, the night S. and I moved into separate rooms. In the months since I have not written a word about the remnants of the life I once lead. I haven’t been able to bring myself to talk to you about the reality of existing in this familiar yet foreign space. I have found it near impossible to find words for the balancing act required to straddle the distance between the places I came from and the places I am headed, especially knowing that some parts of me will always live in this crazy, mixed-up in-between.

I’ve not mentioned the pain, the loss, the anger and bitterness, the omnipresent weight of the guilt that will be my forever baggage. I’ve ignored the heart break, the loneliness, the tears (both shed and possibly more painful, unshed). I haven’t shared with you the breakdowns and the shutdowns and the ache of living with a vast chasm of pain and hurt between myself and the one I have loved for over a decade.

I’ve not talked about my husband, my girls, my home – the wanting to dive in and hold them tight and the desire to shut down, push them away and run, run, run - fast and fierce and far. I’ve neglected to mention my paralyzing fear, all the decisions that must be made, how my financial and logistical future seems tentative at best and perilous at worst. I haven’t once written about how I’ve spent the last several months sticking (nay, ramming) my head deep into the dry packed earth of my adopted desert home – hoping that if I ignore it all for long enough perhaps when I stand up again the storm will have passed me by and life will have returned to normal.

I have kept quiet about the fact that the knowledge of what I have done never, ever fully leaves me, that sometimes I can’t breathe with the weight of it squeezing my chest like a vice. I haven’t mentioned that in retrospect, the first part of this journey seems easy in comparison to the place I find myself now. I haven’t written that instead of feeling strong and confident and bold, I’ve been feeling fragile and brittle and confused beyond all belief. I certainly haven’t told you that I’m scared out of my fucking mind.

It’s been easier to write about the new, the euphoria, the rush of discovery and experience. Crushing, feeling, exploring, falling, blissing out on love. That’s the simple stuff. Even easier than that is not writing at all – staying in the surface of the moments and not daring to go any deeper the way writing demands. But I can’t keep doing that. As I mentioned before, the living of this and the writing of this are so hopelessly intertwined that I cannot possibly separate one from the other for long. If I don’t write, I don’t process and I certainly don’t move forward. I sit, I stagnate, I shrink into myself until I feel like a shell of the woman I know I have the power to become.

The time has come (past come, actually) to start moving again. My life demands movement, direction, forward motion – more than it ever has before. But I cannot move fully into the future until I deal fully with the past. I need to be honest, to own up to the harsh and the ugly and the terribly, terribly sad – and this is where I need to do it.

This blog is my therapy. My writing is my voice, my story, the truth of my journey. My fingers, my keyboard, my computer screen are my tools. And you, my lovely readers, are my wise council. For me, someone who has chronicled her life online for eight years now, all of these things are vital parts of the process.

But beyond all that, what it really comes down to is my heart. I can’t do what I need to do if my heart is on lockdown. I’ve got to bring it out of hiding, unwrap it and put it out there again. Not just for the good and wonderful and beautiful (because these past few months has been filled to overflowing with those things as well), but also for all the less than pretty things that I’d really rather not face. I need to step out of my safe little corner and into the light, sometimes soft and inviting, but often harsh and blinding. I need to tell you my stories, and need to know that you will hear me.

I need to write again. I’m starting now.

Andrea Gibson is a master of spoken word, an award winning slam poet.

“Gibson is also among the nation’s most admired and emulated poets. Her verse is at once personal and political, concrete and abstract, feminist and universal, filled with incinerating verbs and metaphor and delivered with gut-punching urgency. You can hear the ache in her soul every time she utters God’s name, and even her inhales sound desperate. It’s not uncommon for audiences to gasp at some of her turns of phrase or rise to their feet when she finishes a poem.” MATT PEIKEN

She is a woman of uncommon passion, her performances lit by an internal fire that powers her through her poems with the force of a freight train, slicing through lines with the sharpness and precision of sword. She spits her words out like bullets – hitting me right in the gut, and in the next second changes course and breaths out her message with a gentle caress that makes her words drift to my ears like leaves falling softly to the ground. Every word carefully chosen, unflinchingly delivered, cutting through bullshit and convention with the energy of someone determined to create change but also with the tenderness of someone whose heart is so big she has to hurt more than most of us. She performs with ferocity and with compassion and with so much feeling that I am left raw and exposed by the power of her honesty.

I want you to watch these videos. I want you to close your eyes and absorb her words, her passion, her activism, her fire. I want you to feel her work with every fiber of your being. I want your toes to tingle and your heart to pound and for you to feel changed by what you hear. I don’t know exactly why I’m telling you this, why I think you need instructions or set expectations. I can’t quite imagine that you could listen to these words and not do all these things. I don’t know that it is possible to be fully present and aware and NOT be wholly moved by the spirit and soul of what this woman creates in the performance of her art.

Blue Blanket
I am moved by every single piece I have heard her read, but this one – this one more than any other – brings me to my knees. It slams into me and makes my breath feel tight in my lungs and my heart thud in my chest. If you have ever been violated, if you have ever sat and held a woman who has been violated while she cried or sat in horrified numbness, then you will feel this poem with every last cell in your body and the final line will remain a part of you long after you have finished listening.

I do.
Love poem and political statement all at once, this is just one the millions of reasons why it matters that love just be love, without restrictions, or inequality or limits on who and how and why.

“i never needed more
than the stars on your grin to lead me home
for fifty years you were my favorite poem
and i’d read you every night
knowing i might never understand every word
but that was okay cause the lines of you
were the closest thing to holy i’d ever heard
you’d say this kind of love has to be a verb”

Dive
Life dosesn’t rhyme. Paradox, irony, mirrored reflections - it’s all the beautiful grey between stark black and white, it’s the ambiguous spaces between absolutes where the brilliance of life resides.

“”it’s your worst sin saving your fucking life
it’s the devil’s knife carving holes into you soul
so angels will have a place to make their way inside
life doesn’t rhyme
still life is poetry — not math
all the world’s a stage
but the stage is a meditation mat
you tilt your head back
you breathe
when your heart is broken you plant seeds in the cracks
and you pray for rain
and you teach your sons and daughters
there are sharks in the water
but the only way to survive
is to breathe deep
and dive”

Say Yes
The world needs us right now more than it ever has before…this poem is hope - empowering, uplifting hope. This poem is the life I want to live.

For Eli
This is how I feel about war – not just the one we’re in now – but every last one of them.

““one third of the homeless men in this country are veterans
and we have the nerve to Support Our Troops
with pretty yellow ribbons
while giving nothing but dirty looks to their outstretched hands
tell me what land of the free
sets free its eighteen-year-old kids into greedy war zones
hones them like missiles
then returns their bones in the middle of the night
so no one can see”

Check out this link for a few more artists

Once again, thanks to the divine MLC for pointing me directly to brilliance and inspiration.

If you read awakenings with any regularity you know I often find expression for my emotions and experiences through poetry. I revel in the process and therapy of my ‘regular’ writing - of wielding words and digging deep and laying it all out in specific detail. There are times, however, when the structure and punctuation and grammar necessary for good, solid prose makes the words too distant, too removed, too separate to really connect with the heart of my experience. That’s when I turn to poetry.

In many ways, poetry is the truest expression of life experience for me – both writing my own, and reading the words of others. My favorites (Mary Oliver, Audre Lorde, Erica Jong, Rumi, Rilke), the passion and inspiration of spoken word and slam (Alix Olson, Andrea Gibson) and newly discovered gems along the way (so many finding their way to me through kindred spirit MLC).

Poetry lifts me, transports me, echoes my own experiences and takes me to places I’ve never been. I’ve said before that I could happily drown in a good poem, and that has never been more true than during this period of transition in my own life. I think that because these months have been so raw, so honest, so rooted in sex and sensuality and in the down and dirty of intense emotion – it is poetry that provides the greatest release. Poetry has the unique ability transcend my life and to ground me deep within my experience at the same time.

Tongue-tied Blue is one of my favorite bloggers, She writes, always, in poetry. I wonder sometimes when reading her words (words that take me to the most exquisite, sensual, erotic, succulent* places) if I met her in person would she speak in verse? Does she think in the same effortlessly luscious-free-flowing-stream-of-consciousness verse that spills from her fingers onto my computer screen? Her writing is so organic, so immediate, so stripped down to barest truth that as I read I’m right there with her – feeling, touching, experiencing, reacting, knowing – and it’s almost difficult for me to imagine that she exists in another form.

Today I visited her blog and found this:

i love the feeling of her
skin
how she does it, i don’t know
but her skin is
so very smooth and coolly
supple under my hands
endless caressing miles
i could gladly
i do gladly wander, marvel
across her sleek surfaces
the more i let myself worship there
the more i forgive myself
the years of holding this
the most passionate, truest sex mystery
at an uncomfortable distance
my relief and redemption
allowed yet still
in measured, serene, clean-shaved doses
and as to prove the paradox of all truths
and i struggle truly to find words
because this part is wordless
when i bring my full attention
to my face and
when i bring my face
between her thighs and
when i breathe in deeply
the earthy tang of her
the parts of my brain that kick in
are not the parts that bother with words
or with ideas of redemption
or with even identifying the self
instead it is purely sense and sensation
wet curls and silky flesh
hot and salty pressure rocking
deliberately and thoroughly
the tongue with it’s own agenda goes
time? fuck time
she’s moaningand here i am
with no guile, no pretense
sure and present
i know it in my knowing
being
all the way through
this is no theory
no opinion or speculation
no adopted facade to cover
the mad, confused scramble below
here, finally
i am

And I could attempt to explain what it felt like for me to read those words, and read them again, and again – maybe 15 times now - with shivers down my spine and a heart beating with the cadence of the words. I could attempt to explain how it feels to absorb of someone else but to connect so deeply within my own reality. I could attempt to go line by line and tell you why each one resonated with me. How the final words “here, finally i am” nestled themselves into my heart and roared from my lungs because they are my words, my thoughts, my feelings too. I won’t do any of that, because I couldn’t even come close to fully expressing what I want to express, and I won’t because if you’ve been reading this blog - really, really reading it – then you’ll already know.

Share some poetry with me, won’t you? Who are your favorite poets? What poems echo your own experience, allow you to dive within your own reality and explore yourself on a deep level? Do you write poetry? Share it with me here if you will, or email it to me (awakenings.blogsome-at-gmail.com).

*L – if you’re reading, yes…that word is for you…

If you use a browser other than IE can you tell me what the page looks like for you, and if you’re knowledgable about this sort of thing, can you tell me how to fix it?

A million thanks

She asked me this recently, during a quiet moment together in bed. We fit so perfectly together that I tend to forget she hasn’t always been with me and doesn’t already know the answers to all the questions. My mind went blank, and I was surprised to find myself without a response to her query.

I pulled my eyes away from hers and looked down at our bodies, nestled together on my white sheets. My eyes ran across the smooth expanse of her back, her strong shoulders, the curve of her breasts, that perfectly formed space between her ribs and her hips. I lifted my gaze once again to her golden brown eyes, and as my hand traced a path along her arm I was in awe at the almost unreal softness of her skin. I laced my fingers with hers and was swept by a wave of deep contentment and a rush of exhilaration so interconnected that they felt like a single emotion.

This breathtaking sweetness and lightness of being - this is exactly what I wanted for so many years. It’s what I longed for, ached for, dreamed about, yearned to experience. Until recently I didn’t even let myself imagine that I could possibly live this, that it could ever be real. But it is real - aside from the births of my children, it is the most true and honest thing I have ever done.

Lying here like this with a woman - with this amazing, kind, soft, sweet, giving, wonderful woman (who somehow found me despite the fact that I wasn’t looking and was determined not to open myself to possibility) - this goes far beyond anything I could have imagined or dreamed or hoped for.

And so I found my answer,

“This. This is my fantasy.”

And I lay my head against her shoulder, closed my eyes and breathed in the utter perfection of moment.

Sometimes life just works out that way.

____________________________________________________

Apparently this one wanted to be a poem too:

you asked

you asked me for my fantasies
but how could I give you an answer
when
i look down your body
and mine
lying together
at the curve of your breast
and the sweet perfection of your skin
at the way your body curls
into mine
so I cannot tell where
one ends and the other begins
and it’s all curves and softness
and a tangle of limbs
atop a white down duvet
how could I think
of a daydream
when even the briefest touch
causes me to
lose myself
(and find myself)
every single time
and our connection
spirals across time
and space
and makes words unnecessary.
and even hurts and misunderstandings
just seem to swing us closer
and closer
to magic.
why would I spend time on
the imaginary
when even
the most ordinary
moments are
edged in brilliance
and sweetness and
beauty.

and of course that’s the answer
isn’t it?

you, my girl
this, my girl
us, my girl

it’s all fantasy
and it’s so very real.

sometimes life just works out that way.

you look over your shoulder
and see that someone
has come to talk to you
and although you have never seen her
before earlier that same night
(when you noticed her across the room
with her friends
and then again later dancing)
when you look in her eyes
you get that nagging feeling
that maybe, just maybe
you’ve already met.

or if that sounds rather too cheesy
to be believed,
at the very least
you want to prolong the moment
and see where this might lead
so before you leave
you seek her out
and give her your number
(because she had asked earlier
and you didn’t want the opportunity
to pass you by)

and when she puts her arm around you
and leans in close
to be heard over the pounding dance music
you feel a shiver of something…
that you cannot yet name
but that you know you want to explore
(you will later recognize it as the
deep contentment that you always
feel when you are with her)

and then
a few days later,
with no call or text
you enter another bar on the other side of town
(on a first date with another girl, as a matter of fact)
and you see her right away
against the bar, laughing with her friends
and your heart skips a beat.
(because hearts are never afraid to embrace
the cliché and predictable
the way that their owners often are)

and you know that
even though it seems like incredibly poor form
to approach her while your date awaits
that you will have to make contact
before you leave
(because serendipity is a wonderful thing
and such coincidences should never be ignored)
and so you go to the bar
for a drink of water
and you stand right next to her
(with a heightened awareness of
proximity that should likely
have served as a warning
of what was to come)

and you find out that she has your number
correctly in her phone
except for one missing digit
making it utterly useless as a means of connection
and so you add a very, very important number 4
(perhaps the most important number 4 ever,
only time will tell)
and leave with a sense that
something important might just be brewing.

and thus begins
a whirlwind
a chaotic
eyes closed, mind open
heart opening, opening, opening
totally consuming
kind of whirlwind
(so consuming that you’re only just now
coming up for air now to write about it)
and you find that within mere weeks
you (who was so sure she wanted nothing
to do with relationships, or exclusivity, or anything
that remotely sounded like commitment)
have lost your desire
to make new connections,
or even to further ones already begun.

and you are in that giddy place
that infatuation place
that crushing, blushing, so-crazy-into-her place
that preoccupies your thoughts
and steals your breath from time to time.
(because your lungs are not afraid
to embrace cliché or predictable either)
and you spent hours learning about each other
(except she didn’t have to learn anything really,
about your body because she knew all there was to know
from the very first moment of contact
in a deeper, more profound way
than perhaps anyone ever has).

and there was a point when you knew
without a doubt,
that you were in trouble here
and that this girl was not going to fit
nicely and neatly into your plans
for uncommitted dating and emotional detachment.
(because although it totally messed with your intention
to play the field,
you realized quickly that you had no idea
how to casually date her)

maybe it was when she asked
which flowers were your favorite
so she could surprise you with them
on some random moment
or maybe it was the texts she sent
that made you smile in the middle
of your craziest days
or maybe it was the way her golden brown eyes
seem to be able to see right into your soul
so that you communicate
from across the room without saying
a single word.

it might have also been
the kisses that held a million promises
or the way you could fall into a deep sleep in her arms
escaping the wretched insomnia
that had tortured you for months
or the way her touch made your back arch
off the bed
it might have been the emotions that arose
unbidden, in spite of the fact that this
was not the best timing
(for either of you really,
logistics are truly a bitch)
and in spite of all your attempts to deny them
and even though you didn’t trust their
reality or validity.

and although
it made no sense
and it was way too fast
and you feel like someone changed
all the plans
when you weren’t paying attention
you choose the freefall anyway
(as if you really had any choice in the matter)
you stopped fighting the inevitable
(although both of you made an impressive effort)
you accepted the risk
and embraced the exhilaration
and you closed your eyes to the safe
and the slow
and the sensible

and even though you always
laughed condescendingly at people
who (just a month or so after meeting)
want to be together all the time
and who walk around making goo-goo eyes at one another
and who are generally sickeningly sweet
in their total absorption in one another
you find yourself becoming one of them
in spite of yourself.
and yeah, you know that this is all rather ridiculous
and cheesy as hell,
and maybe a little bit annoying even
(because lets be honest,
when it’s somebody else, it usually is)
and that (of course) this might just be
the thrill of early days
and the passion and intensity might just burn out
when the haze of infatuation
finally lifts
you know this, but you really don’t care
(or, at the very least,
you choose not to give it any real attention)

you choose to ignore it all
because falling
is such
an achingly lovely
feeling
(especially when you know
you have a soft place
to land)

the ocean

when I asked
what it was
like
to know a
woman
my dear one
replied
with infinite
wisdom,
“it is like
the ocean”
…..

and I
was
rolling and,
spinning and,
holding
the air
in my
lungs
so I would
not drown

eyes shut
but
mind open
under
and
over
and over
again

waves crashed
hard
and soft
on me.
and I
rode them
to
shore
floated
blissfully free
while tethered to
her.

clarity in
disorientation
the touch of
water
on my
skin
the feel of
heat
on her
breath
the sound of
desire
in
us
and all
around.

diving
and surfacing
above
and below
sounds and light
filtered
through want
and need
from far away
and from
right here

right.
here.

and right
now.

and then
she
touched me
there

there

right there

in that place
beneath the surface
and I gasped
and was
filled
with
rushing water
the power
of the current
taking me
places
I had
not yet been
but wanted
to stay.

I felt the
insatiable
pull of the
tides
gravity and rotation
legs
intertwined
hands
clasped
bodies
with no
spaces
in between.

I was
dizzy
because I
could not find
air
I tasted
salt
on her
skin
and I thought,
my soul
already
knows this
place

because
I am from
the
ocean.

I am
at home
in this
water
in this
sea
in the vast
emptiness
and fullness.
and softness
of these limbs
of this skin
of this moment

floating
weightless
but
falling
just
the
same.

And like the ocean
it was wise
and it was powerful
and it was beyond
my control
and it was strong
and it was gentle
and it was everything
and nothing.

It was
like
the
ocean.

..

The latest episode of The L word ended with a series of particularly….um…shall we say inspiring scenes. Playing in the background was a song I’d never heard before, and the words ‘everything is perfect now’ were repeated over and over again. As often happens, the song somehow got under my skin, and so I downloaded it when I got home that night.

Everything is perfect now. Yes I thought, wouldn’t this be a perfect song to have playing in the background when everything comes together? If I were creating a movie soundtrack for life, this would play at that magical moment when the universe aligns and everything falls into place; when the sun is shining, the birds are singing and (of course) I’m getting a toe-tingling-earth-stopping kiss from the girl of my dreams. I played the song a few times and daydreamed about all those so-perfect-they-sparkle-around-the-edges potential future moments. But of course, as happy as thoughts like that are – they also create this vicious little melancholic cycle – ‘cause I’m not there yet.

When I connect with a song I often set itunes to ‘repeat one’ and let the tune play over and over and over again while I eat, write, sleep. As I do this, the music permeates my soul on a different level. It becomes part of the backdrop of my day and knits itself into the fabric of my conscious and unconscious mind.

And as I was lying in bed the next night, listening to the song for probably the hundredth time, it suddenly came to me…I had it all wrong. ‘Everything is perfect’ wasn’t about some maybe-moment in a far off future. It’s about right now. This moment. This breath. This now.

Not because my life is exactly as I want it, not because there isn’t loss or pain or confusion or fatigue or stress. Not because I’m not wishing or dreaming or yearning for things I don’t yet have. No, everything is perfect now because in this moment, everything is exactly as it should be, as it NEEDS to be, as it MUST be.

The point is not that everything is PERFECT now. It’s that everything is perfect NOW. As it is. Every blissful, joyful, transcendent, orgasmic bit of it. Every screwed up, fucked up, stressful, bewildering, heart wrenching second. Every profound and meaningful or random and pointless interaction. Every moment of bitter loneliness, and every moment of soul-connection. Every first kiss and every last goodbye. Every single emotion we are experiencing. It’s all perfect because it is what IS. Because what IS is exactly what needs to be. What has happened is exactly what needed to happen to get us here, and where we are is exactly where we need to be right now in order to move forward.

And what could be more perfect than that?

My spirituality has evolved considerably in recent years, and the core of my belief system is grounded in a soul-deep understanding of universal energy. That every person, thought, word, deed, object, circumstance, event and place is created from, composed of and guided by this energy. Some of you call this energy God/dess, or fate or karma or destiny or the source, but I believe with my whole heart that we’re ultimately all talking about the same thing. It’s that force that is beyond us and outside of us, but that is also deep within us and, indeed, is us.

I believe this energy to be infinitely wise and undeniably powerful. The times we get ourselves into the worst messes are the ones where we are fighting this energy with everything we have. Unwilling or unable to surrender, to let go, to relinquish control, we fail to accept and embrace. We are unable to exist from a center of gratitude and abundance. We struggle and doubt and wallow in self-pity because we are focusing outside the moment, beyond our reality. We forget that everything is perfect now.

The inimitable Jen Lemen recently interviewed “Momma Zen” author Karen Maezen Miller, and asked her the following question: “When do you feel most happy?”

Miller’s response was a perfect example of profound simplicity…”Now. What other time could there possibly be?”

Now is the only moment that truly exists. It might sound naively simplistic or annoyingly zen – but it is true. What is done is done, and what will be will, ultimately, be - but when it comes right down to it, now is where it’s at. Now is where we are. Now is all we have. Now is all there is.

Of course there are days when I want to pull up the covers and hide in bed, and days when I want run from demons relentlessly chasing me. There will be moments where I’m pissed and stressed and angry at the universe because things are not going according to my plan. I will still struggle, and I will still fall and I will exist in a place that is the very antithesis of enlightenment. When I’m in that space NOW feels as far from perfect as I can possibly imagine. But in those moments I just have to remind myself to come back to the moment, back to my breath, back to my own, personal, undeniable NOW and re-center myself around what is, and not what I would like to be. And as I give myself permission to relax into this, to believe this, to know this as truth, I am filled with peace, serenity, gratitude and joy.

Yes, it’s true. Everything is perfect now. How could it not be?