Nomadics

Lord, I was born a ramblin man [sic].

Well, I was. I am a restless soul, apparently. I've lived in every time zone in the U.S., inhabited dozens of different apartments and houses. I've lived in cities, suburbs and out in the country. I've lived by the ocean, up in the mountains, on the plains, the Pacific Northwest, now the midatlantic swamps. I've lived alone (not for a long time, though), and with a variety of co-inhabitants. In spite of all the hassles involved with moving, I find the process exciting. I like reinventing my "lifestyle," finding rhythms that suit the shape of whatever new space I inhabit. There is a way in which, when I move, I become a brand new version of myself by virtue of the difference in how I cut through time/space. Does that make sense? It does to me.

The past nine+ years here on Tennessee Avenue are an anomaly in the life story of a Bedouin such as myself. I rented this space in a state of desperation, assumed I would only stay a short time, maybe a year or so, then move on. But I was so wrong. Whoa. Or should I say wow? Why have I stayed so long? That's easy: everything works, in the house, with my housemates, and on the block where I live. For so many years, every time I got restless, the guidance that came to me was If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

But everything has a lifespan, everything. I'm bearing down hard now on what is to come; the life I've lived for the past decade is fading, unwinding. It's spectral now, barely visible. The old world is passing away, oh yeah.

I should be packing right now! Onwards and upwards. Shalom.



I absolutely love these ancient tv videos from the 60's. The quality sucks. Sweet, isn't it?

The Weather Predicts Me

Hibiscus seems so tender, but those flowers are tough!

The sky is metallic gray, the air is thick, hazy, heavy and toxic. It's going to be a Code Red day in DC today. On Code Red days the air is so poisonous, everyone is advised to stay indoors, not just the "sensitives." A Code Red day is summer on steroids. Yikes.

Though I tend to enjoy tilting against the weather, I might skip the punishment today. It's best not to tangle with a Code Red day. There's still a lot of work I need to do to get ready for the move and anyway sometimes I need to break my own rules, just to remind myself I can.

I remember that after fifteen years in San Francisco, the drastic weather in DC was such a shock, but I've been here awhile now. I love the dramatic seasons, love all the extremes, oh yeah. Drastic weather is an intrinsic characteristic of this beautiful, powerful, wounded city. To be honest, I find it charming, I do. I bow low before the weather gods, I succumb, I surrender.


Friends Effie and Andrew yesterday morning, before it got so damn hot.

One or Two Things

In April of 1991, at my first initiation, one of my initiators read this poem aloud to me. I have been reading it ever since then, over and over again. I believe I am finally beginning to actually understand. I love this poem. Happy Monday, y'all. Shalom.

ONE OR TWO THINGS

1.
Don’t bother me.
I’ve just
been born.

2.
The butterfly’s loping flight
carries it through the country of the leaves
delicately, and well enough to get it
where it wants to go, wherever that is, stopping
here and there to fuzzle the damp throats
of flowers and the black mud; up
and down it swings, frenzied and aimless; and sometimes

for long delicious moments it is perfectly
lazy, riding motionless in the breeze on the soft stalk
of some ordinary flower.

3.
The god of dirt
came up to me many times and said
so many wise and delectable things, I lay
on the grass listening
to his dog voice,
crow voice,
frog voice; now,
he said, and now,

and never once mentioned forever,

4.
which has nevertheless always been,
like a sharp iron hoof,
at the center of my mind.

5.
One or two things are all you need
to travel over the blue pond, over the deep
roughage of the trees and through the stiff
flowers of lightning — some deep
memory of pleasure, some cutting
knowledge of pain.

6.
But to lift the hoof!
For that you need an idea.

7.
For years and years I struggled
just to love my life. And then

the butterfly rose, weightless, in the wind.
“Don’t love your life too much,” it said,

and vanished into the world.

--Mary Oliver

Declarations

"When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation...."

Bless their subversive hearts! Our founding fathers were cheeky, they were. I always like to imagine the King's reactions when he read the Declaration of Independence. I'm betting he was surprised in a royal How DARE They? kind of way, you think? Right after that, I imagine his face getting very red. I "see" him saying out loud - or at least thinking - the 18th century version of, Those little shits. I'll teach them a lesson!

The founding brothers weren't perfect - far from it in fact, but they had a lot of nerve, they had conviction. Wow! I wish I had that level of faith, that degree of self confidence. Oh yeah.

May we all be liberated from the things that oppress us: our fears, our worries, guilt, bouts of the shoulds. May each of us muster the nerve to declare ourselves independent and interdependent, may we find within ourselves the confidence to get out from under the thumb of whatever weighs us down. May freedom ring. Cheers!

Thanks, Walt

Thus in silence in dreams' projections,
Returning, resuming, I thread my way through the hospitals;
The hurt and wounded I pacify with soothing hand,
I sit by the restless all dark night - some are so young;
Some suffer so much - I recall the experience sweet and sad...

--Walt Whitman, from Leaves of Grass, 1876

Labors of Love

George Washington's Masonic temple in Alexandria, Virginia.

A friend and I were talking about love recently. She was saying that the word itself is inadequate to explain all the different strains of love in the world. She mentioned that Arctic indigenous people use 37 words for snow. Seems to her that we should have at least 37 words for love. The people I know use adjectives in front of the word to further define it: romantic love, motherly, brotherly, etc. I have to agree with her that none of these attempts to put words to the situation of love are in any way up to the task. Thirty seven words for love? Might as well have 37,000 or 37 million. Right?

Of course I've prayed for guidance around love many times in my life, because encountering love is always strenuous. It's possible I've tried to figure it out at least 37 million times, maybe more. I'm not the first, nor am I by any means the last, to try to understand the mystery of love. My heart has felt the force of love many times, so many times. I have loved people I'm not supposed to, failed to love people I should love. I have tried hard to make myself love (that never works) and have also tried to NOT feel love. Sometimes I feel love for a person the second I meet them, sometimes love grows slowly. Is it any wonder I can't wrap my mind around it?

One thing I know for sure is that no one can control love. I often think of it as a force of nature, like the wind. Who can control Brother Wind? Please. All those phrases like falling in love and swept off her feet refer to its power. No one can control the way love flows or the emotions that come up around it. Sometimes love is blissful, other times it really hurts or creates intense sensations of hunger, thirst, longing and lust. I have experienced love that's like a huge emptiness (both the "good" and "bad" kinds of emptiness) but I've also felt love as a sublime fullness - sometimes simultaneously. Love stretches the heart and renders us more humane. Is that true? I hope so.

Don Shapiro, a writer with an interactive fan page on Facebook, says, Love is a spiritual state, not an emotion. He had some other thoughts about love, but it's the above that caught my attention. Taking love out of the emotional range, lifting it up into the realm of spirit, is a really intriguing way to think about it! Thanks, Don.

Love, love, love. I am soaking in it these days, feeling love 37 different ways, minute to minute, for friends, family, colleagues, neighbors, animals, this beautiful, wounded city, stars and planets, guides and God, for the Sufi acupuncturist, my soon to be ex-housemates and my dear deep soulmate as well. I don't get it, but I feel it, I do. All I can say is: wow.

Now What?

June was a long month for me. Did it seem that way to you? The fabulous Dr. Brian Cox, as well as Dr. Brian Greene (hmmm ... are all physicists named Brian?) like to explain that the way each of us cuts through time/space in the course of our daily activities creates a serious impact on our perceptions of "reality," including our perception of the fourth dimension. Ain't it the truth?

June was a month of huge internal shifts and changes for me, so no wonder the first part of the month flew by, while the weeks surrounding solstice dragged. Solstice was a bitch this year. Whoa. I was a wreck for awhile; lower than a snake's belly, as my friend Lisa used to say. She also used to say sometimes that she felt lower than dog's breakfast. You can't get much lower than that, can you? Lisa was from Austin, Texas, where she picked up many charming colloquialisms.

During the past few days, at last, time is moving faster again. I guess that's a good thing. Now it's July. For the next couple of weeks, all that internal movement will shake out into the external realm as I make the transition into my new apartment.

Cheryl, of the blog Lizzy Frizzrock, suggested that I place boxes in a spiral around my room, one for papers and art supplies, one for clothing, one for books, etc. In this way I am now able to literally dance the spiral as I unwind this chapter of my life. Cheryl, you are a genius. It's really working!

Fall down once, get up twice. Will do! My optimism is returning. Shalom.