Transmutation

You are the secret transformation.

Kissing me into being.

Bewitched by.

Skin on skin alchemy.

Press of your body against mine.

Until I sink past my boundary, shining.

Unwound.

Calm.

Still.

Connected.

Blushed and warm.

Soft and kind.

Luminous even when my eyes are closed.

I am near you.

With you.

Transmorgrified beyond the inquiry of myself.

Into this filtered sunshine of you.

How I feel held by you in this light.

And in your nearness.

Metabolized by the fall into love.

Soft floating and ethereal.

This collaboration of heart and heat.

Blending me and smudging me with desire.

You impact me.

You engage me.

In the immediacy of joy.

My reverence for you dances beyond my capacity.

To reflect in words.

This mystery.

I have become comfortable in.

Slipping sideways into acceptance.

I disavow my fear to the savory sweetness of you.

The repository of your love.

The beauty of which undoes me.

Opens me.

Breaks my heart, makes it bigger, allowing me to hold more.

Be more.

Shine harder.

Be brighter.

Glowing and illuminated.

For you.

Always.

This love.

Love.

Always.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Doing The Work

And doing the homework while doing the work.

I did both today.

I did a lot today.

It was a day.

Tomorrow will be a day too.

All the days.

All the work.

Letting out slow, long breath and waiting for the tea pot to boil.

It was a good day at work.

It was a good day to do a lot of work.

I’m done with it for the moment and need a reprieve, which will look an awful lot like watching Project Runway and chilling out with an apple after I finish this blog.

I have done enough.

And.

I remind myself that I am enough.

That I am resilient and strong and I have come through so much to be where I am at and I am grateful that I have been carried to a place where I can see that.

It stops with me.

I thought today, a couple of times.

Then.

I thought.

What if that’s just another way of me trying to protect me?

How about I change instead.

How about I look at the trans-generational traumas in my family on my father’s side and on my mother’s side as the things that have made me the diamond that I am.

“Sometimes God uses a heavy hand to create a beautiful thing,” she told me as I sobbed my way through my first real inventory over a decade ago now.

The pressure it takes to create a diamond from the black morass of sadness I was created.

The crucible that holds me I cannot even begin to list all the ways and hows of it.

The secrets and shame and the wildness and the wrong.

The places I have tried to hide and not be found.

I always was.

I always knew.

I know now and it is a deep sadness, but also a formidable strength.

I sometimes can get tired trying to process it all.

“You had this conversation while you were at work?” He asked me aghast on the phone.

I did.

I had a very deep, but not totally deep, there were layers of things left unsaid and things that I still have questions about, but I got what I needed and I could trace the wellsprings of it farther back than I had first suspected.

High temperatures, high drama, high pressures.

I had some clue, but then I had no clue.

And yet, I knew all along.

In fact.

I had avoided making this particular call as I wasn’t sure I really wanted to open the can of worms.

“Sometimes going to far into a genogram can be hard for a client to deal with,” my advisor said to me as I showed him some of the work I had done.

Um.

Yeah.

And there’s so much more.

It’s like a legacy of pain that just rolls through my family.

It is astounding and deep and yet.

I feel that somehow or other I have gotten out, gotten over to the other side and I am looking at it from a distance.

Yet.

There are these ways that I react to the world and there are these defenses I have that I would like to let go of, to open myself up to more life, to not be fearful that I will be shattered again and need to begin again.

The things that worked for me, the safety defenses, they don’t work so much anymore.

And “it stops with me,” in the way that I have used it is not working.

No partner, no relationship, no children.

Because that way I wouldn’t pass it down.

It would really stop with me.

Ultimately that kind of isolation hurts me too.

It’s a solution and a defense that needs to change.

Grateful for the awareness.

Now to wade through the acceptance part and the forgiveness part and get to the action part.

Not sure exactly what action to take, except that right in front of me and to take the suggestions that others have to give me and to not carry the secret or the shame of it that curdles inward and hurts worse than shining the light on it.

Oh.

There are nooks and crannies I’m not too compelled to go spelunking in, at least not right yet, not right now.

I don’t need to stare at my past, I can just look, take it in, and accept it.

And remind myself that acceptance is not approval.

Fuck no

I fucking hella disapprove of the shit that went down.

I do not, I do not, I do not.

That being said, I can’t change it at all.

Although having a different perspective and hearing about some of the things in my family history definitely cast a different light on things.

So much compassion for the human experience.

And that I’m not dead.

For fucks sake.

Or in some straight jacket or in a gutter with a needle in my arm.

The noise of it all.

The machinery of the monsters that clanks down the hall to stumble upon me hiding in the shadows.

I will not have it.

I will not live underneath that banner of fright.

So.

I heal.

Soft and slow.

Gently I go.

It’s the only way.

Compassion and gentleness for myself and awareness that this does take time, perhaps my whole damn life, and that’s ok too, I shall always be seeking and that, that I do believe, is what will make my life that much fuller and richer and deeper and more experiential.

I am not numb.

Granted I am a little tired.

Granted I would like to make a phone call and say.

Come over, hold me, make it all better.

But there is no one to call that can make it all better.

All better is between me and my God.

And so far.

Well.

Things are going ok.

Really.

They are.

And when they are not, I know where to turn and I know that my feelings are fleeting, they pass, the sadness will be followed by joy or awe or discomfort or all of hundreds of other feeling states.

Feelings are not facts and they won’t kill me.

What I hope is that I can lose a little more of my rigidity and become more flexible while not losing myself or my self care.

Find me in the rooms with art.

Find me with flowers in my hair.

Find me with children strewn across my lap, warm, and a sweet and wearing footie pajamas and listening to me read stories.

Find me with love in my heart.

Find me with my heart on my sleeve.

Find me loving, lovable and worthy of love.

Yes.

Love.

Find me there.

In that field of fallen stars, like fireflies in the grass, at the dusk of this purpled twilight of pain and gray sadness a silent reprieve of pearl light and luminous joy, a flower blooming, a remonstrance of family and a flying laugh, a wallop of joy, a holler of thunder in this church of pain.

The doors flung open.

My heart too big to be contained.

Or.

Restrained.

No more.

My.

Love.

Restrain me no more.

You’re Like A Female Version

Of Peewee Herman.

Um.

Thanks?

Hey, Carmen, Peewee Herman is hella cool.

I mean.

Hello.

I may get confused with a hipster at times, affinity for coffee with notes of butterscotch and stone fruit, the one speed whip in the garage, the numerous tattoos, the arty glasses with the wood frames.

But.

The fact is.

I like glitter way too much to ever be a hipster.

Unless they suddenly make glitter in aged wood paneling or something ironic like that.

I also have a pink riding jacket for my scooter and um, heh, my helmet has not only glitter but stars and yes, I did, I have appliqued star stickers on my scooter that I put on myself.

Shut up.

So.

Heh.

I could see what he meant.

And I was flattered.

I mean, really, I haven’t been compared to many famous people, although a legend in my own mind, I don’t have that much claim to fame.

I like to think that I am.

But really.

I am just crazy old me.

“Don’t forget me when you’re famous,” he said to me last week when I saw him and told him about the podcast.

I still don’t know what the hell that means.

I suppose that I will be recorded and to that extent I have been practicing a little.

I love the sound of my voice, except when I hear it recorded.

Ugh.

Then.

Seriously.

Ugh.

Although, I heard a friend’s little guitar riff on his facecrack page and found myself making up little lyrics to it.

I’m not a singer, but I can carry a little breathy tune.

I shared that with my friend who I went to the Paul Simon show with, my vocal abilities, or lack thereof and his response?

Fucking golden.

“That never stopped me,” he replied.

Dude.

That’s right.

But.

I don’t play an instrument, even though I did play cello once upon a time in a land far, far away.

Wisconsin.

And there are days when I think, I should pick that up again.

In what time, Martines, in what time?

But, I do.

I love the sonorous voice of the cello and the prickly velvet thrum in my heart when I have been with an instrument that I connect with.

I had a friend who once took me to the luthier that all the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra uses, he’s a cellist with the San Jose Symphony, and the smell.

Oh.

So delicious.

The wood and the rosin.

The sounds.

I remember, still, it’s been many, many years, picking up a cello and the feeling of it nestled between my thighs and the weight of the scroll against my neck.

I remembered the feeling of the strings under my finger pads.

I pulled the bow across the C string and hit an F# and just about cried with the pleasure of it.

Heh.

Yeah.

I know.

It’s been suggested to me a lot to pick it back up.

And I digress.

A lot.

The Peewee Herman thing had me pause though.

I look like an artist.

But often times feel like I’m not quite the potential I am supposed to be.

That I haven’t done enough, I’m not prolific enough.

Suffice to say, how many of these fucking blogs have I written?

Over 1800.

There’s something prolific happening here.

And maybe it’s just me being kooky and dressing funny.

But really.

It’s just me.

It’s just how I like to be.

The glitter, the heart on my sleeve, the poetry that falls out of my eyes.

I may not have the degree of fame or fortune or whatever it is that I think I’m supposed to have to be considered a successful artist.

But.

I create.

That’s the thing.

I was thinking of a shred of lyric from one of my favorite Paul Simon songs, and not one that most people would quote from either.

It’s from “Hurricane Eye,” from his album “You’re the One.”

You want to be a writer/but you don’t know how or when.

Find a quiet corner/use a humble pen.

And I tell myself that everyday.

I am a writer.

I have my quiet corner.

I use my humble pen.

Fuck.

Thank God I got to Walgreens today.

I was almost out of ink in my last couple of favorite pens.

The last couple of times I was in the store they were out of my favorite and man, it makes a difference, just like the quality of paper that I like when I am doing my morning pages.

I hate those decompostion notebooks with a fervor.

Yeah.

I know.

Ecologically friendly and all that.

But the quality of the paper is shit and it feels like crap when I write on them.

Nope.

No thanks.

I prefer Claire Fontaine notebooks from France.

Or.

When I can’t procure those.

The college ruled glitter notebooks in bright turquoise, silver, and hot pink from Safeway.

Heh.

Yeah.

I told you.

I can’t be a hipster.

I love glitter a little too much.

I don’t have to be anything, I don’t have to fit any category.

I can be the girl, or woman, should you so prefer, who wears flowers in her hair and cries a lot.

“Dude, that’s what you do,” my friend texted me back when I told him that I was in tears half the Paul Simon concert.

I do.

I do, do that.

I sort of leak with gratitude and happiness and joy.

Even when I experience shame over things I can’t control, at least I can forgive myself for that, or self-loathing or self-deprecation, I am learning, slowly, oh so fucking slow, that this is ok.

And after all.

These words are not my choice.

I am the conduit.

I am just dead light pushing crystal spun sugar into the veins of the universe.

I am just the channel through which the words move.

And I cannot tell you.

I cannot tell me.

Why this beleaguered life.

Why on my knees.

I still.

Love.

Love.

Love.

This tumult, this strife.

The promise of every day that breaks.

Across my face, the grey morning light.

The sun sequestered in fog.

The call of the day.

The fall of God.

Into my lap.

The kisses freckled on my skin.

The rapture of song.

The life within.

That small quiet voice.

Always there.

Even when I am hoarse with tears.

There are still flowers in my hair.

And my heart upon my sleeve.

It’s tattooed there.

Lined in the liminal.

Luminous.

Lustrous.

Love.

Of all that is.

Which.

Is.

In the end.

Just.

Love.

 

 

 

I Need Some Arm Candy

I am all yours baby.

That is just the kind of message I need to hear on a Monday afternoon in between cooking three different things for the family, in preparation for the boys coming home from school and the grandparent visit.

Yeah.

I know.

They were just here.

And they are gone, as of probably about a half hour ago.

Only passing through San Francisco on the way to further destinations.

I actually have little gripe with the grandparents, the boys adore them and they keep them busy and it’s nice to see a lot of family interaction.

However.

It is more work for me.

More wrangling, more cooking, more errands, more, well, work.

Fortunately, I was fresh as a daisy this afternoon when I rolled up to work on my scooter.

Yes.

That’s right!

The SFMTA Child Care Permit is in affect.

I am now a scooter girl to work officially.

It was really nice.

And super faster than I thought it would be.

I had almost fifteen minutes to kill before I walked in the door at work today.

I had already had a super full and bright morning.

I wrote.

I read.

I ate a lovely breakfast and had lots of delicious coffee.

And.

Yes.

I did a yoga class.

Like that.

Because, you know, it’s a half block away.

I debated doing one tomorrow morning too, but really, four days in a row is cool, my body probably needs a little rest, though, truth be told, I feel more in my body than I have in quite some time.

And.

That shit is addicting.

“I could get hooked on this,” I thought this morning as my body just collapsed in a puddle.

I had some challenges with my new gear, new mat is slippery, but managed to get it together and do a lot of the poses and really try the ones that I wasn’t even going to attempt even yesterday.

I have had three different teachers at the studio and I have to say they all have great teaching skills and though different, I appreciate the things that each has brought to the classes.

And the floating out the door after an hour and fifteen minutes of studio time is phenomenal.

I mean.

I am feeling alive and energized.

And.

No.

I did not have a late coffee today.

Although I am listening to some Radio Soulwax and that is upbeat–I have gotten up three times now to have a dance party.

I am feeling the need for some dancing, outside of my own studio, soon.

I got happy feet.

I have a happy body.

I also have a happy heart.

It was really sweet to get the message from my new friend that he needed some arm candy this Thursday for an event at the SF Design Center.

I was like.

Um.

Yes.

I have some dresses.

Chuckle.

And some new Fluevogs too.

Heh.

Even though it’s a school night, I’m going.

I haven’t ever been at an event there and I adore my friend.

He’s super handsome, my Puerto Rican fairy god father, and tall, so heels are a must and I am just grateful to get to connect with a good heart and a fun heart and some one who is smart and sassy, just like me.

Ha.

I don’t even care that the mom asked me to come in early on Friday.

The boys don’t have school.

I was like.

Wait?

What?

Didn’t they just have a full week off from school last week?

Oh well.

I can handle it on a Friday and it’s nice to get out early on Fridays and get the weekend started a couple hours earlier than typical.

That’s work.

School’s going well.

I have my reading dialed in for this week and some how, not sure how, even with all the yoga, I’m staying on top of it.

Grateful for that routine that I have got going with it.

And.

I do think there’s less reading, either that or I’m just used to the style of writing now and I’m understanding the material better, I’m definitely kicking through it with less struggle than last semester.

So a little night on the town with Mister Fabulous is just what this lady needs.

I could use a date that’s not late, full of excuses, and desperately sending me text messages to see him again.

Um.

No thank you.

That being said.

I am open.

Available.

And ready for some fun.

Yes.

Yes I am.

Maybe it’s the full moon.

Snow moon.

I had this vision (yesterday’s the daisy sprouting from the crown of my head was pretty awesome, I tried to replicate it, but I wasn’t in the same space at the studio today when asked to set that intention) of a bubble of light.

A crystallized sugar ornament.

Spun like a glass bulb.

Glenda The Good Witch couldn’t have wished for a sweeter bubble of light and candied phosphorescence.

I imagined it full of light and I felt myself ensconced in the midst of it.

Floating.

A bubble.

A small light.

Luminous.

I am a luminary.

I illuminate from within.

Small parts die, burn away, and in the rebirth, the lightness ascends and I am swept up and warmly held, divinely held, swooning with softness and surrender.

Um.

Yeah.

Like that.

It was pretty nice.

And like I said, I could get addicted to that kind of feeling.

That spiritual high.

I accept that like every thing worth having, there is work, great deals of it, involved.

“Just show up to the mat,” I told myself today as I sat and tried to regain my composure after slipping on the mat more than once and feeling wildly out of my comfort zone.

That’s all I have to do.

Simple.

Just show up.

And there it was the light.

I walked out of the studio loose and fluid in my body.

I lifted my head toward the sun and felt it’s warm loving caress on the planes of my face.

I smiled.

“Thank you,” I said out loud.

To the Universe.

To myself.

To the sun in the sky.

To my heart for doing the work to pump the blood through my body, this imperfect, perfect vessel for infinite light.

And.

Love.

Not a bad way to start the week.

Happy Monday!

 

 

Luminous

Don’t put your light under a bushel!

I wanted to grab the woman across from me and give her a hug.

I did later.

But.

In that moment.

I nodded my head, I used a small furthering word, I repeated back what she said.

I used her words.

I heard her.

I really heard her.

I used feeling words and listened.

And.

It was amazing.

“You’re doing it kid!”

I was so excited and present and there.

The classroom fell away, I didn’t hear what was happening with the other dyads that were spread around the room, I didn’t notice anything but the woman across from me, the feelings registering on her face, the words she was saying, the situation she was describing.

The vulnerability.

I could swoon with the honor of bearing witness.

I had my first taped, as in recorded, role-playing session where I was a therapist and my client was herself, ie, not a made up character taken from one of our texts, which is what we have been doing until today.

I will have to transcribe it and I am eager to hear it and loath to as well.

Hearing my own voice recorded is not my favorite thing in the world, although I like my voice, I like reading out loud, I like reciting my poems, I like reading stories to the boys at work.

Speaking of reading.

The artist I collaborated with from Burning Man got back to me and he is very happy with the sonnets.

I reiterate.

I am very happy with the sonnets.

In fact, I think I may rework them a tiny bit and submit them to the Howard Nemerov Sonnet award.

The Formalist is accepting applications to the award until November 15th.

I am going to submit the entire ten as a sequence.

Only one sonnet will win the award, but as a poet I can submit up to twelve sonnets.

I have never submitted more than one that I can think of, at a time.

I have submitted I believe four times.

There were times when I thought, I will just keep submitting until they give me the damn award.

Now.

Well.

Sure.

I want the award, but I think, just as much, I want them to be published.

Even one of them.

They just do make me happy.

Of course, technically, I have published them, here on my blog.

“Quick” is the title of the blog.

Anyway, I digress a touch.

Where I was going with this is that the collaborator wants me to meet with him and read him the works.

I am excited to do that, to read them, just as much as to have them printed off.

There is something really visceral about reading them to someone.

They become more than the words on the page.

Oh.

I want you to see the words on the page too, they are some clever words, and some tidy word play and some great rhymes, but really, I want to perform them for you, read them for you, have my heart in my mouth and my soul bare before you, so that you receive the full song of the sonnets.

The epic.

Well.

Ten sonnets in a row, is not necessarily an epic, but all linked together by the words of another poem, using formal verse, my, my, my, Carmen, I think you made up another nonce.

I’ll take it, thank you very much.

I love poetry.

Not that you can tell.

Ha.

And I love the sound of my own voice and I am not humble at all.

But I have some modicum, every, once in a while, of humility.

That humbles me, that leveling of my ego, the evening out of my pride, that being teachable.

I am teachable.

I am learning.

I feel like I am an ever emerging young adult in the world, open eyes, dancing over the sewer grates of the down town rough and tumble asphalt, innocent, perhaps not, but open, fresh, awakened, alive, a light, a lit, in love with my life.

“You are my light.”

And you mine.

I smile and sink into my heart space and feel surrounded and held and the words float out like holograms.

She used the word again!

Luminous, luminosity.

The depth of seeing that she has for herself that she is not even aware of having, and how she does not want to hide her light and yet feels compelled to dim it down.

Shine brighter love!

Be brighter.

Be your own light.

Be the beacon, the unsheathed light of love.

Let is shine.

Shine darling.

Light up the sky.

I kept my mouth shut.

I let her do the work, which in of itself is a lot of work, a lot of knowing to just listen, to sit back, or forward a little, leaning into the words and cadences of her phrases, seeing how her body would get small, then big, then open and the emotions chasing themselves fleet foot and dancing over the planes of her face, the rich brown eyes deep and doe like, soft with tears.

I’m learning!

I wanted to shout.

I wanted to dance in my chair.

I don’t know that I was exactly articulating that in my head, it was just a nice buzz of knowing of connecting, of being in the moment and being there for that person and knowing, in my heart, deep and true that I was exactly where I was supposed to be, doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing, my gratitude.

It knows no bounds.

It leaps about the room.

It rolls across my bed and giggles.

It kisses my neck and drops me dizzy and divine, my hair fanned out behind me.

Lush.

Luminous.

Light.

Lit up.

Happy.

Joyous.

Free.

Liminal, dancing there, on the threshold.

Lined in love.

Lightened like feathers, swan down, cushions of softness and swathed in light.

All the light.

I wanted to reach across the way, to touch the back of her hand with mine, so I reached with my heart.

I believe it was felt.

I looked with my eyes.

I did not touch with my hands.

Sometimes when I look at you, I am touching you with my hands.

Stroking the soft crown of your head, tracing the bones of your face, holding it dear, sweet, delirious in its humanity in between my cool fingertips, scrolling down the tender nape of your neck, holding you, darling, close to me.

Sometimes I see you so bright and lit and full of love.

It astounds me and I fall aghast with love, adorned with love.

A glow.

And I know.

I know.

I am exactly where I am supposed to be.

Spot lit by love.