eeo – Page 12 – design • writing • yoga

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I’m a writer, artist and designer who thinks way too much, and tries to see the beauty in the world.

Stones and shells (thoughts while preparing to move)

Poem-sword in one hand, packing tape in the other, recycling bin in my third hand and tissues in my fourth.

(For the dust. It makes me sneeze.)

My fifth hand is clutching a steaming mug and my sixth hand is wasting time on Facebook. My seventh and eighth hands are clasped in some kind of prayer, for forgiveness and strength, and all my other hands are clapping a rhythm to keep the rest of us on task. (Futile).

Later, the right hand will order pizza while the left opens a beer and the others will rest, their weary knuckles lined up still as the stones and shells collected along faraway hills and shores, the useless stones and shells that I tell myself I do not need in this next life.

Stones and shells held in younger palms once, stones and shells cold now, but once warm with the energy of discovery. Every stone, every shell: the most beautiful, the smoothest, the whitest, the thin-as-a-dime, translucent ones, the one black as the cold Pacific on a moonless night, the round one full of holes and light as a bite of sponge cake, the tiny snail shell spiraling the way my heart does, these last days in this home where I spent more years than any other.

(One of my sleeping hands wakes, shakes a finger at me, silently chastising me for being so impossibly sentimental. I tap it with my Ikea hammer—not even that hard, just a little tap—and then feel badly as it recoils in pain. Makes me think of the witch’s foot when the house falls on her in the Wizard of Oz.)

Back on task. My extra hands snap softly, whisper-snapping a nice quiet beat, ceremonial sort of, as I plunge my two hands into the bowl of stones and shells.

It’s a big heavy bowl, overflowing with memories—the brightest, the shiniest, the darkest, the ones dyed ugly purple-pink with my own shame. A few marbles are mixed in: a topaz one, cat’s eye, like the cat who doesn’t live here anymore. There’s a pointy triangular piece of sharp-edged sea glass and an orange gem from a Mancala game, shiny as little girls’ laughter. I have to stop. It’s time. They are only stones and shells.

Such a rattle in my heart, settling and unsettling, as I move on at last.
Peonies remind me of being pregnant

That May the peonies were my countdown—
I knew they would bloom when she did.
That heady hot spring of unfurling expectation,
of watching marching ants making their incredible journeys across Planet Peony
while I marked the days.
Oh, the heaviness in my ankles, the humidity, the wonder of my belly
swelling like a bud about to burst.
Neurons

Like star charts inside my brain
extending to the edges
of me; electricity—
constellations conducting
current, leaping synaptic
gaps to link thought to action
in my dark interior
Letting go

A moment arrives.

You let go and suddenly, nothing is the same.

But the sun shines still,
even on the fallen.
ten thousand flowers in spring

Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn,
a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter.
If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things,
this is the best season of your life.

– Wu Men, 12c Chinese poet
(transl: S. Mitchell)
letting joy surface

I’m realizing the things I liked to do as a kid are still the among the things that bring me the most joy–drawing, writing, exploring. Untimed things. Things with no real point or purpose, except to be free and alive. And they were the things I seemed to think were ‘frills’ when I entered adulthood. I let them go, or (worse) tried to make them things I controlled, like I thought grown ups should do. Isn’t it an adult’s job to worry, after all?

Anxiety for me happens when I try to control things that are beyond my control–which seemed the whole theme of adulthood, until I figured out it didn’t have to be.

What brings you joy? Give yourself permission: make some joy today.
Walking home from CVS

night suddenly pink
under streetlamp moon
drizzle wets black mulch
fragrant as perfume
heady cedar, pencil-shaving,
sandalwood scent

a half-gallon of milk
swinging in my hand
I drink darkness,
taste the sky, swollen with
tulip poplar blooms waving
in the wind
Or maybe it is just too much iced Starbucks?

Every time I travel I am energized and struck by new possibilities. As the plane begins its descent, I wiggle in my seat and think: I could live here (or there or there). The world brims with sparkling promise, the way ocean waves shimmer and dance all the way to the blurry far off horizon on a blue June day.

As the plane lands, I feel so full of life. In a flash I understand completely why even tired old horses prance so excitedly on windy fine mornings. They smell change on the wind.

Suddenly anything seems possible.

I want to run to the edge of the boundaries—those fences I built or the world erected to contain me.

And then to push past that, and find the elusive place where I can live beyond old fears. Where I can revel. And completely relax. It could be anywhere. It could be inside me.

Will people think I’m strange if I prance in this spring wind?
prayer for a windswept walk

To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.

– from “Eagle Poem,” by Joy Harjo

Eagle guarding Eden Park

Brave buds on a cold day.

Ohio River from Eden Park.
Broken or not?

Broken?

Broken or not?

At snack time or lunch, that was a favorite game of my daughters. One would hold up an apple slice or a Ritz cracker or shiny orange Clementine and demand of the other, “Broken or not?”

They were both pretty masterful at holding a broken cracker or piece of fruit in such a way as to camouflage its fault lines. They loved to trick each other, and trick me, too. It was so hard to tell.

Because you cannot always tell if something—or someone—is whole by merely looking, can you?

I remember in the weeks after my father died suddenly, back when I was eighteen. I’d put on lots of mascara every morning, so that I wouldn’t cry, because if I did, it would give me raccoon eyes. I didn’t want any one to know how badly I was hurting. I didn’t know what to do with it, the pain. If I started crying, I might never stop; how embarrassing that would be. No one ever taught me anything but to pretend to be okay, to deny my real feelings. It ran in the family. Schooled from birth, like Tiger Woods was with golf, I was an ace.

My dad pretended he was okay right up until he died from it. Oh, it was a heart attack that killed him, but my personal theory is that sometimes illnesses spring from—or are worsened by— the grinding stress of hiding feelings. And we are trained to hide them, for fear of being labeled ‘broken.’ Our culture demands us to be perfect parents, perfect children, perfect wives, perfect workers. To be magically ‘perfectly adjusted’ without working through grief and trauma.

I used to sometimes reflexively use the phrase, “practice makes perfect,” with my girls, mostly right about when they were supposed to do math homework or play piano or violin. They would always shoot back, “But Mom, you always say that nobody’s perfect!” And I would smile and say, of course, that’s true.

Because I’d say that, too, all the time—like when I’d drop an egg on newly mopped floor, or especially if one of them did.

Of the two old sayings, only “nobody’s perfect” rings true.

The most together-looking people can be the most broken inside. You never really know, unless you get to know someone, unless you earn their trust and confidence, and even then—they have to be open enough or broken enough to expose their hidden wounds.

Which for some people is painfully hard, or even maybe impossible without help and work.

I think the true answer to the broken or not question—as it applies to humans, not fruit or crackers— is that we’re all broken at some point, and not all breaks heal completely. Some wounds ache forever. Being gentle with each other is always a good practice. Because more of us are broken, than not.

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