First One Down

I did it.

I got my first paper of the semester written and turned in.

It was a small guy, five pages.

I was a bit resentful of it for a few days.

First, fucking christ, the first weekend of classes was last weekend, give me a god damn minute to have some time off.

Second, I got a notification yesterday that it was due at 4p.m. today.

What the fuck?

Four p.m.

Listen.

I have a god damn life, I have things to do, and this day, this was my first day off in two weeks, two, and you’re giving me a hard limit of 4p.m.?

Fuck.

Ugh.

Yeah.

So that I found annoying.

But.

I told myself to shut the fuck up and do the fucking work.

I also let myself sleep in.

I was on the phone late last night with my best friend and my God, do we know how to talk, like two highschool girls on a school night dishing all the things, I could talk forever with my friend, it is always so hard to say goodbye, goodnight, until we talk again, it never feels like it is soon enough before we can talk again.

I was going to go to an early morning yoga class, but decided to just let myself sleep and maybe I would catch an afternoon yoga class after I had written the paper, or maybe nothing, fuck it, fuck yoga, fuck it all.

Except.

Well.

Ha.

My body had other ideas.

Sometimes my feet are smarter than my brain.

I did miss the early yoga class, but I woke up in plenty of time to hit the 10:30 a.m. class.

I still got up and out of bed thinking, telling myself that I wasn’t going to go, I would use the extra time to write my paper, or maybe doing my Morning Pages, God knows I have had plenty of fodder for writing.

Oh my god the amount of morning writing I have done while I have been going through my recent experiences, so much.

But I am grateful for the outlet, grateful for the pen on the paper, the feel of the pen moving across the lines, the words tumbling out, prayers and affirmations, gratitude lists, longings and dreams and desires, all of it, bumbled down on my Claire Fontaine notebook and then a little sweet sticker next to my entry, a way to mark my heart on the page, a mandala, a rose, a butterfly, a baby bunny, something small and sweet to tell me where my heart lies in between the words the dance of magic and poetry that I sense is still there just waiting for the right moment to spring forth again.

Like Athena from the mind of Zeus.

All the poesie and love and magic, the passion, the words, so many words of love and adoration I have.

So many.

Ah.

I digress.

See, I think of love and poetry and get lost.

Adrift in worlds of magic and sorcery and the poetics of my life, the romance.

My God.

The romance of it.

Sometimes, yes, it is a little dark, a lot emotional, a kind of deep swooning romance that is historic and deep and has an uncanny beauty writ large in the stars, the blue moon waxing full.

But it is so beautiful and I am so grateful for it, the gift of it.

Seared into me.

Pierced into me.

Literally.

As such, I was compelled to let myself write, but instead I found myself putting on my yoga clothes and then signing up for the 10:30 a.m. class.

My feet had better ideas than my head.

And I am so glad I went.

It was a terrific class, I got to do a lot of heart openings, as though my heart has not been opened enough of late, but it was good, and hard and painful and when I felt stuck, I just breathed through it harder and thought of the love I had and sent it out into the world.

I thought of wrapping my love around my love, a warm cloak, a blanket, I pictured the sun surrounding me and then held my love in my arms, buried my face in the back of his head and then smelled the nape of his neck and I started to cry in yoga.

Sigh.

Truth be told.

I did not mind.

It felt good, a washing of love, a rendering of myself in the moment, a supplication, a surrender to the feeling, to let it go as I lay prostrate on the mat.

And the sensory feeling of putting my arms around the love of my life and covering him with love was so relieving too, as though I could buffet his heart with my love.

It felt right and good even though it felt sad too, just to have another moment to hold him close to me, even if imagined, even in revery, felt so good and real and right.

So.

Yes.

Grateful I got out to yoga.

And then did all the other things.

Shower, breakfast, reading, writing, working with a new lady who came over to the house and we met and read things and talked about life and recovery and doing the deal and that was fantastic.

And when she left.

I got to it.

I pulled out my books and notebooks and syllabus and I got into the paper.

It flowed so well and smoothly and just dropped out of my head and onto the page, well, I was a little amazed.

It just came and I edited it and read it and tidied it up and had it sent off to my professor by 3:50p.m.

Ten minutes before it was due.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Grateful as hell that I know how to write a paper.

I also collaborated with my partner in another class and mapped out the work that needs to be done for a project in that class.

I have my writing calendared for the next week, mostly next Sunday, but also some writing will have to be done Saturday too, I suspect.

And.

I have all my readings prepped for the next weekend of classes.

I will bring my books with me and again sneak in the pages and chapters when I can, where I can, in between going to and from supervision, work, internship, doing the deal, and all the other things I am juggling.

I will have my books with me and when I can, well, I’ll be reading.

It’s my last semester of my Masters program!

Holy fuck.

I have my first assignment in and done.

One tiny step forward.

One tiny march of faith into the future.

I know not where I am going.

But.

I am assured.

That it will be bright and beautiful and full of love.

Love.

Always that.

Always.

A Crow Will Smile

At your funeral.

Le petit mort.

Or.

Perhaps it is.

The death of self.

It, the crow–

Audacious trickster.

Sits on my open chest.

Eating my heart.

Dismembering it.

Pulling it out with its strong beak.

I can feel it, severing the connections.

The blood pulses and pools.

The crow, grabs it out and flies off.

Carrying my heart across the fields.

Over the desert.

To you.

Will you eat it?

Will it be a fricassee?

Will the fire of blood sate you?

But no.

The crow.

He is a messenger, a courier, a carrier of things.

All the things.

The bright and beautiful.

Magic and mysterious.

They catch his eye.

And he carries them back and forth.

A shuttler of bounty.

A lover who is masked with darkness and the slick oily flutter.

Of his wings.

He settles upon you, my heart in his ebony beak.

A daisy springs from it.

There.

See.

It flowers for you.

You in turn, hand the crow your heart.

Plucked from beneath the cage of your chest.

The crow hops down onto your raised arm and tucks the heart.

My heart.

Into the cavity there.

The blood and sinews collapse upon it and take it into your body.

I am within you.

The crow chortles in its throat.

A satisfied sound.

Then it grasps your heart in the lance of its bill.

And.

Flies back to me.

My chest bared, eyes wide open, laying flat on my back.

Tears spilling down my face.

Knowing that I have given you everything.

Not expecting.

Not once.

To have your heart placed inside my chest.

To have my blood pumping through its chambers.

And yet.

This.

This is exactly what happens.

The dark wings flutter.

The open mouth exhales.

The heart falls from the crows beak.

A rose sprouting from it.

And drops into my open chest.

I sigh.

Such.

Unexpected ecstasy.

Lacing my fingers over the wound which seals itself.

Heals itself.

I arise.

Flowering for you.

You now in me.

As I am.

Within you.

Love betwixt.

Apart.

Yet.

Always.

Together.

I Don’t Know

And I mean that with every ounce of my being.

I don’t know shit.

But.

I’m showing the fuck up anyway.

Doing the deal.

“What are you going to do?” She asked me two years ago this July, we were just pulling into the Caribou Coffee shack on my way to the airport in Minneapolis.

I had been having a rough couple of months.

I had a severe, like ridiculously severe, in an air cast, out of work, in bed, crying like a baby, unable to do anything for myself, except put on funny stripe socks to bolster my mood, ankle injury and I was heading back to precarious work and the not knowing.

The constant not knowing.

It could have killed me.

Or not.

In the end, it didn’t.

I do remember telling her, my friend who doesn’t have my disease but has some sense of it, she’s a smart cookie, that it ultimately doesn’t matter.

I have a purpose.

I have one primary purpose.

And as long as I take care of that I will be alright.

“I just really want to use heroin,” she wept into the phone.

Well fuck that.

We got together.

We sat over tea.

We did the deal.

We hugged it the fuck out.

And I feel like stellar motel in the sky with lucy and diamonds on the soles of my shoes.

I could dance party until dawn and work a full shift with my boys and be absolutely spot on.

It does not matter what I do.

Well.

Ok.

There are some things I need to do, help others, be a good friend, show up, share my experience, strength, hope, the good stuff, the what works for me stuff.

I don’t advise.

I just give some suggestions and let it go.

Sometimes it is heady and intellectual, but tonight, for me, it was all heart and love, unconditional love for a woman who’s name, ha, I just realized, I don’t know her last name.

If this was a lover.

I might, um, a, be you know.

I tiny bit ashamed of myself for not having his last name on the tip of my tongue.

But this?

Fuck no.

It’s not important.

What is important is that I made myself available and I mainly just listened.

I’m not a doctor.

I’m not a therapist.

Yet.

But.

I have a special set of skills and with those and some experiences to share, some working knowledge of a basic text, I have a purpose.

I have a point.

I was just reflecting on this as I was looking over air fare to Wisconsin for July 4th weekend.

Yeah.

I know.

Am I fucking nuts?

The Midwest in July.

Do I want to die?

The mosquitos will be big as rescue helicopters.

The humidity will make my curly hair a wild mess.

I will get some stares.

I have a few tattoos.

And though they are more prolific in the Midwest than they used to be, I guess folks be watching LA Ink or something, there are still few women who have neck tattoos or chest tattoos or partial sleeves, let alone all three.

Plus.

Heh.

My hair will be pink.

Which.

Whatever.

The last time I was there it was half purple and blue.

I got a few looks.

I got proselytized to as well outside of the ice cream store in downtown scenic Hudson on the river.

Nothing like a young girl, a teenager, somewhere between sixteen and eighteen I would guess, talking to me about God.

Oh doll.

I know God.

And I know God well.

Do I understand God?

Fuck no.

Does God understand me?

Yup.

Do I need to know what God is or does or how God works or doesn’t work?

Nope.

I just have this deep, unshakeable belief in this entity that absolutely and completely loves the fuck out of me.

Who also has a wicked sense of humor.

And.

Never, ever, ever.

Ever, ever?

Never.

Has failed to take care of me.

Ever.

I don’t always get what I want.

But I have never not gotten what I needed.

And so often.

All the time really.

I am surprised, blown away, beleaguered by the love I am given.

All I have to do is turn and shine that love on someone else.

And I am taken care of.

Taken care of in the best sense of the world.

Sometimes I imagine, my small, petty, limited mind.

That my God is a gigantic sunken living room with white fur carpet everywhere.

Hella plush.

Big old pillows everywhere.

Warm soft fuzzy

There is a fire pit.

There are big, huge, gigantic floor to ceiling windows with let in oodles of warm gold light.

I am held in this luxurious love.

Sometimes God is a memory.

A sense of flying.

A swimming through the aqua blues and greens of the pool at the high school in DeForest, swimming laps back and forth in the last lane, the one by the windows, when on a quiet Sunday the pool was empty, the parking lot empty, and no one in the pool be me swimming in and out of patches of aquamarine love.

Held.

Perfect.

Serene.

A float.

Sometimes it is the emotional, melodic beat of drums.

The pounding in my heart that echoes a song.

A rhythm.

My body moves without thought and dance.

Dance is God.

Music is God.

Love is God.

All of it.

I am all of it.

Subsumed.

Taken.

Ravished.

Overtaken.

God is art.

God is standing love struck like a bulldozed girl on Valentines day who finally gets the red carnations call over the loud speakers in school from the principal’s office, come get your flowers at lunch break, to find out that it was her secret crush who had a secret crush on her too, in front of Kandinsky’s “Accent en Rose” at the Pompidou when I moved to Paris in my 40th year of life.

Cold.

Wet.

Miserable with the rain and the getting lost and the hungry but not sure for what.

The aching legs from walking lost in the Marais, the wet socks, the squish, so un melodious, of my Converse as I stepped onto the escalator up to the fifth floor.

Sacre Couer in the distance.

The towers of Notre Dame.

Montparnasse.

The sky mottled with grey, purpled, black, silver lined rain clouds, the bent heads scurrying through the courtyard underneath the flimsy arms of tourist stall umbrellas.

Wondering down the hall.

Wonder (ing) in wander.

Wander (ing) in wonder.

Awed and overcome.

Constricted with the pleasure of art unfolding around me.

Then I turn and see the Kandinsky and I am rose flushed.

Flashed out in love.

High on art.

Stranded in the wilderness of my romantic heart.

Bereft and beguiled.

Beatitudes battering my breath.

Caught.

There.

High in my throat.

Tears welling up and sweltering onto my fevered face.

God.

Is in the details.

In the ellipses between the frames.

In the pause before the eruption of fireworks after the rocket has launched into the sky.

God is.

Or God.

Is not.

What is your choice to be?

I already made mine.

Love.

Always there.

Always holding me.

Always this.

Always this.

Always this.

Love.

My love.

Just.

Love.

 

Rounding The Corner

Heading into home.

Almost there.

One more day and it’s a half day.

And I’m done with my reading and my papers, except the one due next week, but let me not go there quite yet.

One more day.

Then one more weekend of classes.

And a lot more papers.

Not too bad on the readings.

I won’t get too swept away in thinking about it.

I’m making it through and I had a good day.

I did not wake up on the wrong side of the bed today, in fact, I woke up pretty well rested all things considered, perhaps the most sleep I have managed to get on a school night since the beginning of my classes.

It wasn’t eight hours.

But it might have been seven.

Considering that most of the nights before I have class average five to six, this was big.

And I could feel it.

I didn’t feel rushed this morning.

I didn’t feel out of step.

I had a nice morning routine and I had a nice breakfast and a couple cups of coffee before heading out the door.

I called for a car.

I got to class almost 25 minutes before it began!

I wasn’t expecting to catch a ride so fast and the traffic was light.

It was actually rather nice to get to school early.

I put away my food and chatted with fellows in other cohorts, I heated up a third cup of coffee, yeah, like that, and I made my way to my first class.

I participated and I got to share some things that were challenging and difficult, but also really quite powerful and I got to see where I have grown.

I also had a much better dyad as the client today and I went into it with an attitude of how to best be of service to the situation.

Because this woman is not really my therapist.

She is my fellow cohort member, she is a student, she is there to learn just as much as I.

I think it went better and I didn’t feel quite so angry after leaving the session as I did yesterday.

I had a nice lunch with a couple of my classmates.

I drank tea with a professor and TA in between classes in the cafe.

I hugged another TA, of course I asked first, and made a nice connection with him.

We have friends in common.

And it is really edifying to have that connection with someone in my program.

A fellow amongst fellows.

So to speak.

The weekend is two-thirds done.

To think it was about a year ago, March 6th, that I received my acceptance letter to the school.

So much has changed since then.

I could not have forecasted the year and how it was to be in any way and it is a very powerful perspective to have.

One that I hold with great gratitude.

I really do show up.

I really do the work.

And there is other work that must be attended to as well.

I slipped into bed last night and just as I was falling asleep I had a little thought and an image sneak into my head.

The image was a bottle of rose wine and a wine glass on a table with a white cloth at an outdoor cafe.

Rose?

What the fuck?

I didn’t fucking drink wine when I was out there.

I did blow and swilled high end IPA’s and bitter ales.

I drank vodka martinis.

On the rocks.

Dirty.

Extra olives.

Blue cheese stuffed if you got them, bitches.

Rose?

That was never a choice I made.

Then the thought, sneaky little fucker, right as I am drifting off to sleep.

“Well, I’ll get good and drunk when the weekend is over.”

What the fuck?

Who put that there?

Oh.

Yeah.

My disease.

I’m not cured.

I have a reprieve.

But I haven’t had as much of that reprieve when I am in a school weekend and yeah, yesterday was long, I was cranky for no identifiable reasons (I found many during the day, but none of them quite stuck), of course my disease is going to pipe up.

When I am vulnerable.

On the cusp of sleep.

I actually shook myself awake, “no fucking way,” I said.

I opened my eyes, I looked up at the night sky out the back door of my studio and saw the sky, dark and vibrant and full of stars and said, “I don’t want to drink.”

And closed my eyes and fell promptly to sleep.

Arising only once before my alarm to go to the bathroom and pee.

I love my cup of tea at the end of the night, but it does facilitate getting up and using the bathroom during the night.

I got my sleep, though, and I checked in with my people on the car ride into class.

It was a good day.

And.

I have one day left.

A half day.

I’ll be out by 4 p.m.

Free to grab dinner somewhere or do the deal or both.

Free to breathe and stretch and walk around and not be sitting in a desk.

Free to be in awe and wonder that I am a graduate school student.

“OH, I have such big respect for psychologist’s,” my drive said tonight, then related a story about getting some much needed help when he was younger and in a bad spot in his life.

“Psychology saved my life,” he said, “you’re going to be a great psychologist.”

I hope so.

That may be in the future.

I had another idea for a possible dissertation topic regarding a theory on Mystification as it’s used in marketing and media to sell a certain kind of body to women and the constant reinforcing of the idea that women are not good enough, despite what they may believe, mystification, to sell products in a Westernized consumeristic culture.

Ahem.

Yeah.

I get ahead of myself.

“I’m going for my Master’s right now,” I said, “psychologist is not on my plate at the moment.”

“It will be, I can tell,” he said with complete assurance and conviction.

Grateful to hear that, even from a complete stranger on a rainy night giving me a ride home through the hilly streets of San Francisco.

The Universe has faith in me and for every small step I take.

Every moment I show up on time and prepared for class.

Every time I make myself vulnerable to the learning and having the humility to be teachable.

Well.

The Universe take a thousand steps towards me.

I am met.

I am held.

I am almost done with the weekend!

Now.

It’s tea time.

Excuse me while I unwind and get my last things done before my last day of classes for my second to last weekend of my first year of graduate school.

What am amazing journey it’s already been.

Luckiest girl in the world.