From: Me, To: You, Re: Thanks

“Parents are people, people with children.”
—Harry Belafonte & Marlo Thomas

They always taught me to speak up.
They always said — probably they didn’t even say, it was so obvious that it needed not even to be said — that my voice was worth hearing in the wider world. That I — smart, funny, interesting, well-read — had the tools to create and think, that I had the right and responsibility to exist in public, to speak my mind, to push back in public discourse against those ideas which I thought were wrong-headed, ill-considered or damaging.

It is essential to recover the fundamental ways in which these two people (the same people who bought me the Marlo Thomas record “Free to be You and Me”) taught me to be who I am, in which they REQUIRED it, in which they reveled in my original, thoughtful, active self.

It is essential because I could spend four incalculable eons listing the ways they wanted me to behave which I resisted, ignored, rejected. Maybe the list starts with wearing skirts to church, maybe with some other troublesome thing. Conflicting notions of female desirability without sexuality, perplexing ideas of humans as grasping, flawed and sinful, ideas about pushing yourself even when it doesn’t feel good in the name of commitment.

But these pieces don’t need to be centered today.

The basic truths about my right to be in the world (vocally, publicly and honestly) are direct hand-offs from my parents. I cultivated them, like bonsai, making adjustments for the ways I think it’s important to walk through the world.

For instance, it’s important not only to speak out against things that you believe are unfair, unkind, or unreasonable, but to speak for the things that are dear to your heart — to speak for love and understanding, to speak for people and families who need help, to speak for a higher way of existing in this world, which is so often lived moment-to-moment in a flurry of digitized, consumerized activity.

As a wise woman at UU church said today, there comes a time when you must negotiate a new relationship with the people who raised you: Part of this relationship is that they treat you like a grown-up. The other part is that you get to treat them as people.

I love this idea. Just people, who are allowed to be flawed, who come through when they can, who do care, who may not have given you everything you needed to get by, who may have left you floundering when you could have used a voice of wisdom because they had complicated stuff of their own to deal with.

When I acknowledge the beauty in the basic lessons they taught me, we cannot be enemies. We are at work on the same project. Yes, it’s complicated. Still, the colors are bright — even shadow is usually layered with color if you look. I think my growing understanding of the beautiful things of which I am capable, of which humans are capable if we can find a way past entrenched cultural barriers and our own resistance, is coupled with increased peace with failure, mine and other people’s.

Thank you and namaste. Thank you for being willing to teach me. Thank you for failing and succeeding. I continue your tradition, I work, I love, I fail and I succeed.

“Not to acknowledge any favor is a sign of ignorance.
The knowledge of the Truth and cognizance of God is but to give each man his due.”
—M. Shabistari, “Garden of Mystery”

Love and oatmeal

“Connections are made slowly, sometimes they grow underground.” — Marge Piercy

I think a lot about how to love people. What does love look like? How can I best love people, acknowledging their dignity and difference from me? How can I extend that kind, empowering love to my own self?
When I think of treating people with respect and love, no strings attached, I think of my friend R.
R. is abnormally gifted at loving people even when they don’t give her what she wants, when they are demanding or boring, when they don’t make sense or are lazy. She offers friends a love that makes me think of oatmeal (the kind with cinnamon and honey). It’s nourishing and substantive. It’s not particularly fancy — it is homey, warm and full of good humor. She doesn’t have any complicated requirements about how you have to act in order to deserve it, either. There’s no oatmeal-exchange agreement you have to sign, no proof that you’ll return this love in kind. Her friendship is welcoming. I learn, slowly, how to take part in this warm and bracing exchange. 
In the winter in New England, we're forced to move a little bit more slowly. There's ice, and weather that resists your efforts to be out and about. The time we spend inside with warm food is sacred. Warm oatmeal turns into an event, a ritual, a joy. When it's bitterly cold outside, when the wind is blowing every well-defined thought out of my head, I'm thankful for R, who offers me a space of peace, acceptance and warmth.

Texture of wealth and other odd consumer sensations

I went inside in flip-flops, one of those enormous, high-ceilinged shops, for rich people, with recessed lighting and odd displays with elements you might not expect to see in a shop - a disembodied tap with real running water, sepia photographs of somebody's brother and father, hands on hips, standing on a freshly mowed lawn, and in the window long, long strips of newspaper glued together from floor to ceiling. Every so often there were stuffed chairs made of printed canvas that you could sit in for a moment but which were also for sale, so in sitting you felt slightly guilty, as if you were breaking the rules, because the chair cost 1498 dollars.
Shirts with eyelets, pants costing $168 with ridiculously flared bottoms that you know will raise anyone, even you, up to the height of fashion, and tiny - just tiny - pairs of jeans, for girls who never have to ask you to scoot your chair closer to the table so they can squeeze by.
I try the lotion, I turn it upside down to see the price on the bottom, feeling painfully gauche - this is the sort of thing that goes on in other stores, but here, if you have to ask... It was only ten dollars, but smelled to me like somebody's rose-handed grandmother, loose skin, slow moving in the delicate morning in an empty house.
The dresses were all too small, and some designed so short they would barely cover a bottom, but this is the style now.
The textures are inviting - there are woven throws and wall-hangings, thick wool, like I've seen in South America (for less than five dollars U.S.) in muted greens and what here is probably called "creme."
I am drawn to a crinkled skirt, purple the color of raspberry sherbet - surprising but organic, brown undertones,  and I reach out for it, because it looks so soft, and it is - I can't stop touching, I try to look as though I'm browsing, as though I have a right to touch, but really I'm just captivated. I look at the price again - compulsion, apparently - and the skirt is $98. It seems to stand up on its own and I realize it must have a lining, maybe crinoline. I lift up the skirt, feeling as though I am invading its privacy, looking where I shouldn't, like a dirty old man checking out the goods, or a dirty old woman biting the coin with rotted tooth to be sure it's really gold.
The underskirt is soft linen with lace and I touch it too, imagining what it would feel like against my thighs - it would be like floating through the day, like skating. Some things are created for use, some for whimsy, often without regard for comfort, and it occurs to me that luxury is soft against your skin. This is why women pay 98 dollars for a skirt. Some women, but not me. I don't.
I watch the women who shop here. Some leave with very small bags, others come in with teenage daughters, younger children, and I - compulsion - begin to do the calculations in my head - one item for each child... Clothing perhaps as cheap as $50 for a thin, unbearably gossamer t-shirt - you can see your fingers through it - wearing would be like swimming in a cloud - would my whole demeanor change? Would my life be different if the clothing I bought were soft?
I see $6 mugs with the alphabet on them, consider buying one for my brother and one for his fiance, but I feel as if my hands and stomach are full already, with the smells and the canvas and the curtains, newspaper, bell-bottoms and the sweaters with knobby mustard-colored flowers tucked into a corner like a small country, going about its business, propagating its culture, thick and soft.

Building blocks of narrative

Is narrative is a building, a shape established and carried out for a given set of materials? Can we even assume a given set of materials? Perhaps as the building is coming together, the tools in my hands keep changing, the materials feeling more weighty to the touch as I realize what I have... or as what looked solid now with closer examination seems to be hollow.

The materials might be flimsy, but they might be put together to maximum advantage, offering harmony and shelter. The materials might be shaped to keep out inclement weather or to deter people who wish us harm.

The materials might be top-notch but the design might be so unfocused that it provides no shelter or sustenance — even with great material, the narrative might be basically useless.

Sometimes, in describing our realities, we can lock ourselves inside an unhelpful narrative. I talked to a friend this week who was in incredible pain. He described himself as a car whose battery had run out, who needed a jump from another car to get going again. If he accepts this car narrative to be true, how can he possibly help himself? No matter how well the stalled car as an icon describes what he feels in this moment — tired, out of juice, in need of inspiration — this metaphor as a governing narrative is limiting. I would argue for changing the metaphor before hoping to change anything else.

Still, it must be acknowledged that there is some redemptive power in saying "I." Building narrative is power, regardless of materials or skill. Build the structure and see how it works. Change it if you need to. Tell your story. Even if he or I or you paint any one of ourselves into a corner, we can always paint ourselves out again.

In trying to shape a narrative, any narrative, I convince myself and others who may be listening that I do in fact exist — I am a thinker, an actor. I am voicing a present. Whatever may come after, I.

Waiting for snow

Here the days are clear and cold as we wait for snow to arrive. The city seems to feel a mix of dread and anticipation, like what it was like to be a twelve-year-old girl waiting for puberty. We all know the change will be uncomfortable, terrifying, harsh but probably kind of fun, and whatever the hell it will be it's awfully slow in coming. This is the sky in Boston Commons. Impossibly clear. crisp. blue.

Thoughts on a Young Rilke

You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in our heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. —RMR, "Letters to a Young Poet"

Rainer Maria Rilke was, as a young man, intellectually gifted, sensitive, and an appalling sentimentalist. He was concerned with cataloguing moments, with creating pristine frames for the scenes his eyes witnessed, with drifting through nature appreciating natural beauty, even as his sharp critic's mind analyzed the avant-garde in arts and letters. He studied Russian, met (and was cowed by) Tolstoy. Rilke was enthusiastic, and sometimes a nuisance to himself and others, who respected his persistent insights but sometimes wanted him to go away. His enthusiasm could get in the way of their work — he craved connection and worshipped at the temples where he found it. His adoration threw off at least one friend's writing schedule - as she wrote chapters of a novel, Lou Andreas-Salome fought Rainer for the time to pursue her own ideas. On at least one occasion she asked her maid to pretend she was not at home when he came to call, so she might spend time with the characters she was creating, rather than being drawn into the forests around her home, walking barefoot with Rilke. These details I have learned by reading some of the letters they shared.

Rainer's early indiscretions comfort me. This must be how he knows, for certain, that "young people are not prepared for such difficult loving... Young people who love each other fling themselves to each other... They don't notice at all what a lack of mutual esteem lies in this disordered giving of themselves... They must not forget, when they love, that they are beginners, bunglers of life, apprentices in love - must learn love." Rilke's abiding friendship with Andreas-Salome, as they grew older and left behind the sexual nature of their relationship, is also a comfort. Their love affair shifts into a deep friendship, of which intellectual support and friendly interest between them are key components. Their genuine interest in each other, their dedication to hearing and sharing ideas, their mutual hope for health and growth, all these qualities remain strong, though the sexual element of their relationship had gone.

I can imagine Lou, married, intellectually mature and curious, diving into the pool of this hot-blooded young man fourteen years her junior. I can imagine her calm, world-wise countenance as he vents his spleen, perhaps gentle amusement as he tries feverishly to capture moments she sees with a more seasoned eye, as she pets this boy genius she must have contemplated the blurring of the line between mother and lover. Perhaps she was more comfortable in one role than in the other - perhaps she saw the roles knit together into a sensual, intimate, forbidden, primal mantle. Perhaps this is why Rilke's early letters rail against her patience, her wisdom. He doesn't want her to be a mother figure, but an equal.

I love Rilke's assertion that love is difficult and requires substantial study beforehand. "Whoever wants to have a deep love in his life must collect and save for it and gather honey." To make one's life sweeter, to increase the depth and breadth of one's experience, to order one's life, these are such pleasures, and I happen to believe (as does Rilke) that they make us better lovers of other people and better lovers of ourselves.

Sleeping Slantwise

I often sleep slantwise on my bed. Mostly this is fine, but sometimes I wonder if I am truly, deeply, irretrievably contrarian.
Could it denote some kind of medical or mental disorder? Uncertain.
Most likely it's because of the papers where my feet should be.