altared

We arrive, quiet, one by one, just after dark. We carry offerings: candles, food cooked at home, and photos of recently (and not so recently) departed loved ones. The gate stands open at the old house near the river, which means the dogs must be detained or distracted elsewhere. The immense grandmother cottonwood keeps her sheltering watch overhead. Chill blue sky, sighing of nearing frost, swirls clear and bright above the gardens in back of the house, over the ochre ache of marigolds in full bloom.

In the kitchen on the antique cookstove, beans, pumpkin soup, atole, and cafe de olla (like sweet, thick, dark edible earth) steam and mingle their scents. Our host mops the dusty wood floor in the living room, which is cleared of all furniture save a perimeter of folding chairs. He gives two of us scissors and asks us to go out to the garden and cut two oversized buckets of marigolds -- "the best ones" -- for the building of the altar.

This will be my first complete velación-- the all-night vigil of remembrance held, in this case, on Dia de los Muertos. Over the last nearly-three years as part of this community, I've made less-committed efforts to attend on this night. I've stuck my foot in the water a couple of times and then retreated. But this year I need to commit. No person has asked this of me. The circle itself has asked this of me, as I've finally learned a little trust of the unfamiliar, and I'm of a mind to say yes. Thanks to recent unexpected circumstances, I have no job to go to in the morning, as some do. I am blessed with the absence of any distracting obligation.

Except, perhaps, this one: to maintain equanimity in the presence of the two exes who will also be here tonight. And of the polar opposites of heartache they bring to my perception of any space we may share. To stand between these two, as in fact the actions of the circle often require of me, is to know how a magnet buzzes when set between two other powerful magnets. It is to know how sea breathes, between moon and earth. Poles of opposed desire and despair. Forces reaching to remake and unmake these alternate positive and negative ends of my story, though both, ultimately, are endings. Equally unjust openings and closings, limboed in unresolution. Existential invisible YES and NO, two wholehearted pleas that will remain without witness and without answer. The photos don't represent the only departed in this roomful of memories. I meet my own spirits, here at this momentary crossing of dimensions. And this inner vigil -- for my own attempt at wellness, for respect of my community, for my intention of outward peace -- I hold, perpetually, alone.

But for now the lights are bright, and the vibe is cheerful cooperation. The altar is begun as a low table draped with a simple wool blanket. Someone brings in a heavy tray of fruit, and arranges apples, oranges, bananas, pears, and tunas -- the oval green fruit of the nopal cactus -- around five loaves of pan de muerto (sweet heavy bread made just for this day). Others add bowls of soup, earthen mugs of atole and coffee, and small dishes of the food that each of us brought to share. The departed will get a taste of everything we're having, as well as the drinks or sweets that were their favorites in this life. Next, the photos are arranged with great care among the edible abundance. A varied collection of frames holds images of parents, grandparents, friends, cousins, and the yellow lab that just left this world a couple weeks ago. Each item is blessed with the smoke of copal incense before it is set in its precise balancing place. Several vases of the marigolds are brought in. The glow of their yellow, orange, and red-rust petals are like bursts of bright flame among the memories. Tall votive candles of all colors, and white candles of varying size and significance, are set at predetermined points above, on and in front of the table. The resulting arrangement is stunning: it would be a still-life masterpiece, only it's not still. Already it hums with life and energy, and the real ceremony hasn't even started yet.

The sonorous note of a conch shell sounds, and we all gather in the small room. Our chief gives each person a role to serve in the hours that will follow. Each will take a turn to lead a song, and to come forward and enact a particular stage of the process that will transform the altar from inanimate object to espacio para las animas -- a space for the energy of souls to inhabit. Lest this sound spacy or seance-like, let me be clear: there is no magic or occultism here. This is of the heart, and this is real. If my limited understanding serves, the space we create (to put it in more psychological terms) is a temporal, non-rational, agreement. A space-between-spaces, an alternate awareness in which our living souls may seek, and in some way meet, that which continues of those who have passed from this life. Whatever mixture that may be of memory, energy, spirit, love...

This expressed intention, inviting our dear ones to "come in and sit a spell", is one I hadn't fully considered before. How nice, I had thought on first hearing years ago of the traditions of Dia de los Muertos: the departed get a token remembrance. A candle or a plate of cookies. Perhaps the lack of connection was in part that I went for years, somehow, without losing anyone close to me to death. This year I lost my dearest grandmother, the primary (and sometimes only) source of unconditional love in my younger life. I also lost a cousin, whose leaving, though we weren't close, shook me because he was only 28. Both left this lesson and inspiration: they embraced life unreservedly. My grandmother embodied welcome, with a keen enthusiasm for the diversity of people, their problems, and their life-stories that belied her small-town environment (and shook that small town's expectations, more than once). My cousin left on an exchange program for Argentina at age 17. After a year there, he committed himself to living and travelling in South America, which he did for the next 11 years. I have a renewed sense of the courage I draw from them both, as I sit now for a night in view of their smiling photographs. Particularly I hadn't realized how I'd missed my grandmother, and how I'd repressed that missing. Just a few more minutes of her vivacious, openhearted company -- before she got so tired, frustrated, forgetful; back when she sang constantly, savored food and experience, and flirted with every man she knew, young and old -- what a gift that would be. Glancing throughout the night at her photo, with her favorite hot-pink jacket and her radiant smile, I feel that something like an agreement has been made. I feel that I've invited her (whatever that means) into a good and welcoming place. I feel that (in whatever way) she was/would be/is happy to be there. I also become a little clearer on what an intimate relation there is, unresolvedly paradoxical, between holding someone tight in memory and letting them go.

Maybe I should thank the presence of my grandmother's healing energy -- and that of the other grandmothers and dear ones in the room -- for the elevation that comes to me, toward 3 a.m. or so. Around that time (a guess, since there are no clocks) all the familiar and protective and necessary defending walls...disappear. Between past and present. Between the so-called dead and living. Between me and the wish to belong. Between the US in the room, and all we still don't know of each other, or each other's families, or pasts, and the fact that here, now, we are totally present to each other. Present to an endeavor greater and more beautiful than the sum of its parts. Even the painful past-relationship-energy...well, that doesn't disappear. It is...softened, in a sense. Mercifully more distant. Like a photographic image in soft focus. Like an aged, weathered photo of a beloved one long gone. Blurred the clarity of detail, visible and still present the form, thanks to the light that illuminated it for one moment, at once preserved and lost.

Of respect for sacred things, I won't speak of all that fills the night. The building of the altar is pure act of devotion, luminous work of creation, collective birthing and then transforming of a kind of living light. It is the complete quickening of an inanimate physical environment, and the psychic emptying of self that seems only to be found in sacred ritual, fasting, or the extremes of traumatic or euphoric events. It actually takes several hours to accomplish. I can only say that, by the ceremony's completion an hour or so before dawn, I am undone. Completed and undone, in the most beautiful way possible. Constructed into the work that we have made. Devoted, anew, to the cause and the wellbeing of my community. Given up, as one lost, in grief, abandoned, hopeless, detached, untouchable, possibly, one of these days, free. Given up, as offering of praise, gratitude, service, reverence for all those ancestors, spirits, valiant ones, those lights that led us here. Changed, for now, into emptiness, into sacred space: I am altared.

the human mic

It was chilly last night, and I was tired. I had meant to shut the world out, read my book awhile, go to bed early. But just after dark I started to wonder what they were doing two blocks away, at UNM, at the site that was until 3 days ago the Occupy Albuquerque encampment. I was out of town when the big action went down, UNM President Schmidly refusing to meet with protestors or to renew their permit, the advance on his office building, and later the face-off with police that ended in 15 arrests. Earlier in the afternoon university police had formed a line across the now-forbidden greensward, and the people had gathered, bunched up, quiet, and pensive, on the sidewalks just out front of them and on the other side of Central. It had looked like nothing or anything could happen. Somebody had told me the coffee shop on the non-university side had offered their patio for the evening, but there hadn't been any sign of that happening earlier. I bundled up, decided just to walk to the light by the Frontier where I could get a second look at the place.

Yale Park looked wide and empty with the signs, the info table, and the kitchen tent taken down. The police were still there, standing silent and evenly spaced. But out on the sidewalk -- in the six feet or so of undisputed, concrete free zone -- about 50 people were, with enthusiasm and great efficiency, holding the nightly General Assembly. As I approached I could hear them using the 'human mic': the practice of repeating a speaker's words in unison, in small increments, so that everyone in the crowd could hear them. They had it down to an art form, on this night. It was an immediate call-and-response that bounced one phrase, and then the next, around the tight concentric huddle almost as fast as the mind could process it. It was almost like an echo of one voice: "Next agenda item/NEXT AGENDA ITEM! We have a proposal/WE HAVE A PROPOSAL!" Without missing a beat they covered the day's announcements, read a notice of support from several of the city's unions, and then a statement about standing with our communities' workers and their families as they struggle to create a better world. I was elated to learn that 'consensing' is now a verb, and to witness that action flowing round the circle like the firing of synapses. Fingers waved their assent like live neurons in the moment made visible. The tide of rising and falling voices was a joy to listen to, and to join my voice with the others was to dive into a warm, translucent sea of shared optimism and competence.

The evening's four facilitators moved expertly through the agenda, following the agreed procedures of speaking in turn, acknowledgement, deep listening. But they were interrupted at one point by another voice. A UNM professor stepped up, a man who made possible the recent teach-ins, and possibly some of the dialogue (as one-sided as much of it was) with university administration. Facing the circle he announced (apologizing for the break of respectful protocols) that the UNM police standing several yards away wanted to express their appreciation for our fine way of handling the awkward situation which their bosses had put them and all of us in. A great cheer went up from the group, and about a hundred waving consensing hands. Somebody yelled, "Cops are part of the 99% too!" Since we were maintaining the human mic, most people immediately repeated this exclamation, as we turned smiling to face the quiet line of men and women. They made no response, having apparently said their piece and, possibly, risked their job security enough for one evening.

The meeting returned to the agenda. They had agreed to pause at 8 p.m. and observe a moment of silence in honor of Occupy Oakland, and Scott Olsen in particular. "Does anyone NOT know who Scott Olsen is?" called out the chubby young man keeping the minutes on his laptop. One hand went up in the back. "Will someone please get with that man and inform him?" the minute-keeper cried. Without a pause, someone moved in the indicated direction, and the talk continued.

As 8:00 drew closer, one of the facilitators motioned to a man standing just behind her. The man - stocky, late-40's perhaps, thin mustache, long braid down his back - looked Native American and Mexican, with the added, unnaturally intense coloring of someone who's been living without shelter for a while. "We have a proposal," the facilitator called out (WE HAVE A PROPOSAL)to include this man's girlfriend in the moment of silence. She died this week. Her name was Stephanie." "Would the man like to say a few words about her?" a woman asked. The facilitator turned to him in silent question. The expression on his round face was the saddest I've seen in a very long time. He was silent a few seconds. Then he spoke, not very loudly. "She died four days ago." The human mic, primed by now to a heartbeat-length response, echoed his words: SHE DIED FOUR DAYS AGO. People glanced around as they said this to each other. He breathed, looked down, spoke again. "She died in my lap." There was a just-audible pause, then SHE DIED IN MY LAP, repeated the people. I could barely see the man at this point, ducking down as I was to fight off a wave of tears. I only hope he heard the repetition the way I did: an honoring of his story, a momentary re-telling of his sorrow into the collective memory.

At 8:00, at someone else's suggestion, we spread out along the sidewalk holding hands, and began 5 minutes of complete silence. There were enough of us that our human chain stretched the entire length of the park - maybe a little over a city block. The cars that passed continued to honk their approval, but for this moment we made no response. When the meeting reconvened, I was too far adrift in the sadness, gratitude, and deep deep peace to join them again. I said goodnight to a couple of friends, and started home.

At the crowd's edge, the man we had held part of our silence for was sitting on a low concrete wall. His expression was as vacant and without purpose as the park behind us. Three or four young people sat near him, not talking, just keeping a sort of quiet offer of company or vigil. I crouched in front of him, said "I'm sorry for your loss." Without entirely looking up, he reached out his right arm to hug me. "I hear you, sister," he said in his bone-weary voice. "I hear you."

compliment

Best compliment today that I've had in quite a while. Some of the most heartening words, too. After la danza, a compadre I don't know as well asks me, "How long have you been dancing?" He's lived in NM awhile, but originally comes from Mexico City and has danced with other groups in Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and Denver. So, he's seen the scene. I sigh and answer, full of the everpresent frustration at my slowness, "Two and a half years." "Really?" he exclaims. "You dance this well after such a short time?"

2Jungquotesforme

"Loneliness does not come from having no people about one but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible."

"The unexpected and the incredible belong to this world. Only then is life whole."

--C. Jung

better yet

what can I give you then
I can't take your pain
or even sit with it an hour
can't unmake years of unknown sorrow
or a lifetime of small disappointments
your accumulating years of not-enough
and quiet desperation
I can't make you better
you or the belabored world
but can I offer a few images to imagine
some small gifts of the road
should they lift your spirit
or raise your eyes to something more
and o there is something more
outside the plastic and the package they have sold you
outside the trauma and the thousand lies they told you
outside the media and all mediators unneeded
so many many paths to freedom
as many ways as there are humans
as many doors as there are moments
and here are just a few of mine
that opened the real
re-membered to belonging
broke me into beauty
and counted to One

sunbright clearing sung with dragonflies and hummingbirds
Colorado breathed from its blinding crystal summit
lightning crash and the bliss of safety stolen then returned
bear elk and owl shiver reason's edges as they pass

last weary roadbend opens onto to ocean
stranger's kind word at the farthest point from home
the dream is a map of the road is protection
those with the least give the wealth of their welcome to you

stories passed over pinon fire on a starry mesa
rain breaking midnight with tin roof song
the clarity of light seen through hunger
the vibrance of green after drought

baby smiles you message from the infinite: you are perfectly accepted
homeless man calls you angel and pulls back the veil
priest at the altar laughs spontaneous, good-humored, at his own mistake
silent room of silver-haireds in meditation bends and bursts on a wave of laughter irresistible

carrots that still taste of earth and peaches still of sunshine
dirt beneath your fingernails
endorphin ache of giving more than all to the dance
blessed imperfection of the thing you built by hand

one bird startling skyward out of cedar spiral
dreamtime welcome to your homeground and community's embrace
dawn over deep water as sky sings your secret name
recognition returning your tribe after so long apart
this is not all there is
this is suffering and this is love
it gets worse and it gets better yet
there is more
there is more
there is more...

better

It's the sitting area outside a clinic, inside UNM hospital. I'm waiting for a door to open and somebody to call my name. And trying to ignore the everpresent TV just overhead, in the meantime. Or, failing that, to be grateful for the reminder, for the moment of perspective: few things like a public waiting room -- at any institution, really -- explain as well why so much of humankind is operating at the level that it is. The observations of the level of physical and emotional survival of so many are an invaluable insight. As are the inventories of what 'the masses' are given -- their diet of food, medicine, and mainstream media, to name a few -- with which to nourish body and soul. What they're given, and what they continue to accept.

I'm trying not to judge here. Really. Trying not to think in terms of motives or other things that I can't actually know about people. Just to explain, or at best to empathize. To imagine how my mind would function, if consistently exposed to the tangible and intangible mind-altering drug that is commercial television. To say nothing of the commercials themselves. After so many years of having been with decreasing frequency in its company, I'm just nothing but startled at what comes out of that little box. I truly can't believe that anybody ever thought of this stuff. Much less that others would choose to watch it, for entertainment. For any purpose not forced on them.

The program on right now involves a short thin woman asking a tall, slightly overweight woman how to shop for healthy groceries, while "staying on budget". They walk around a florescent-lit supermarket, pushing a loaded shopping cart down aisles as they talk. "What should we look for, if we want to be sure we're eating healthy?" asks the short woman. The taller expert advises scanning the labels of these many plastic-wrapped objects for the words 'organic', 'all-natural' or 'whole-grain'. Although, she points out, "'natural' means something different to every company, and is not regulated by the government like 'organic' is..." That's for sure -- "natural" is one of those words that should only appear in the public sphere surrounded by bold-face quotation marks. But, what's this? We need written directions, key-word-recognition, to inform us what foods nurture us? I know not everyone got the benefit of the high-intensity whole-foods experiment that my family subjected itself to when I was a kid (produce we planted, weeded, picked, washed ourselves; super-density bread that began with grinding wheat kernels in a food processor), but...really? Do we not come with any more help from our own operating systems? Is this what a lifetime of choosing one plastic bag over another does to the powers of discernment?

The expert is pointing out another budget strategy: using coupons that are good for all the items of a certain brand to get a more expensive jar of 'organic' tomato sauce, for example, for the price of the conventional. "It is NOT unethical", she assures her companion, "to use these coupons for the organic product." What a relief, that we're allowed to raise our sights just a little without compromising our consumer values. Just don't mention going for any ideals here: this is daytime TV...

We break for commercials. I almost laugh out loud when I see that even the name of the show is a relative term: "Better". We can't possibly see our benumbed collective way to "Ideal" or "Real" or "Best". Only to some middle-ground plateau between our physical and intellectual poverty, and what (some of us believe) we were created to be.

Can't bear to see the commercials. Nothing in the reality I understand moves that fast, or is that garish. I glance around the room. Of the 13 people waiting, 7 have heads bowed, communing with a faraway someone through texting. A young couple is arguing, in painfully honest terms, over all the ways each has wounded the other and whether or not they can forgive. They sit barely making eye contact, separated by two empty chairs, but the tension that pulls them toward each other is palpable. Two women in the room have young daughters with them; one mother gazes into the crystal display of her phone while her girl plays with an electronic talking toy. The other is wonderfully engaged with her one-or-two-year-old, talking, gesturing, responding to the little one's happy incoherent sounds. Against the far wall, a man and woman in army drab and boots sit side by side, wearing the same name on their uniform shirts. They talk very little, mostly gaze straight ahead, but both are smiling as if they know a happy secret.

Perhaps I could feel some relief that all 13 people aren't turning identical glazed stares toward the TV set. Maybe our mediaddictions don't pervade the way I thought they did. I look around again. A sign at the reception desk reads, "please do not use cell phone during your exam". Nope. I think it's a collective habit we've got, if there's a need for a sign such as that.

The woman at the desk gives me a paper affirming that UNMCare is committed to a program of "quality, excellence and compassion". I'd believe it. Almost everyone I've dealt with - doctors, assistants, receptionists - has been courteous, willing to listen and to answer questions. It occurs to me that their vision statement would be useful to offer to oneself, on the journey of getting well and staying well. Do I maintain a standing offer of quality, excellence and compassion in my dealings with myself? In the health that I create for me, as far as it's up to me? In the terms and conditions of the everyday I inhabit? Maybe...maybe not. I do gift myself with a healthier-than-average diet (as plastic-free as possible, and natural without the quote marks), but when it comes to the kind of inner compassion and forgiveness proposed, for example, by the book I'm carrying (from which I read a few more pages, here in the waiting room, before the TV's electronic hum distracted me), I've got room for improvement in my own vision, as well.

Again, I don't want to criticize the fellow humans that I see in public spaces. We all sit in some limbo of our own here. We're all waiting, looking sometimes for a way from here to there. Reaching for some level of healthy, alive, free. The sincerity of our effort is sometimes as painful to consider as are our failures to try. But why don't we want to try more? How can we, so many of us, be fine with remaining in our seats, letting the TV tell us what things like health and quality of life are? Why don't more people trapped under the glare of televisions rise up in indignation at its suggestions -- or at least laugh out loud once in a while? How can they be content with its shrink-wrapped propositions? Don't we originate with, or at least find along the way, many more stimulating possibilities? Don't we have that in ourselves, whether or not we were educated to seek it? When I described this scene, a friend commented, "For some, dreaming is all they want from life." Wow. If this is dreaming, I could dream of a life a whole lot healthier, juicier, more free than what that little screen boxes in. Even when I don't have any idea how to get there. Doesn't anybody else dream of 'better', without quotation marks? Or even, dare I say it, of their own unlimited vision of 'best'?

raindance

unlatch latent atmosphere
unlock water's bond with air
and inundate and sate this waiting ground

let earth exhale its weight of tension
pure survival in attention held so long
fine light find every separate surface
diamond it with drops of life
unite again above below
put to flight doubts of abundance
droughts of substance sustenance
and of beauty

recall leaves true green
lost shine verdant vibrance
land's life lease renew
oppressive heat release
let sky sign message of continuing

rewrite secret ciphers
drops rearranging dust
a hundred hidden messages on
every occluded surface
leave us to decode, conclude
or only joy in mystery reexposed

breeze away stagnation
breathing scent of infinite
in finished and unfinished
finesse of essences
blessed presences manifest
tell us we are not deserted
on this high and dry
but cycling in circle of completeness
time and timing poverty and sweetness
re-rhythm us free drink deep dreaming
sink new roots to share save circulate
all our regeneration

volando

Charango, guitar and a long arc of percussion wove a waiting forest clearing into which his wooden flute's music alit. Never had I heard a simple flute played with such sweetness and clarity of inflection. I had to keep my eyes closed while he was playing (even though he was in fact beautiful to look at, flowing black hair and all), because with sight it was just another afternoon in the desert, a crowd of people dancing up dust under a big cottonwood. Without -- or rather, within, inside that spontaneous sonic unsighted space, the music's essence portalled another world. A winding path opened through vinelaced primordial trees, sunshot illumination filtered slowly down, and a giant greengold butterfly waved sinuous wings above and ahead of me. I left all the world behind just to know where that butterfly would go, and in the moment even that wish vanished: it was enough just to follow (feet not touching the ground, at times) and watch its luminous lilt catch the treelight now on one wing, now the other...

dancing quotes

A few lines I copied down from a recent read: Dancing in Cuba, by Alma Guillermoprieto.


There was a prevailing sense of immobility, and since nothing ever seemed to happen, the hours abounded.

It was a fervor that came to find me as I trotted through my daily itinerary...deeply immersed in my ongoing arguments for and against myself and my life.

...it seems...when he distanced himself from the gangsterish student groups who controlled the political life of the university, Fidel opted for romanticism as an existential posture...the one who excited and moved me was not the Marxist or the troublemaker but the armed dreamer.

"There should always be avant-garde, but not everyone should have to endure it."

"It's just that we're still living like consumers of culture here...Why don't we produce it ourselves?"

But we were afraid of the void and longed for the order of the Revolution.

Determined to find some answers, I spent that whole night in dialogue with myself, and though I listened very carefully, I was impossible to understand.

(Jose Marti) He admired the vigor of the North American culture he inhabited for so long, and by writing he found ways to keep from drowning in it.

loco motor

Just a little found-poem I came across today in a borrowed book on Alexander Technique. The author (Missy Vineyard, How You Stand, How You Move, How You Live), is explaining the challenges and advantages of being bipedal, beginning with a bit of an evolutionary biology lesson. But her review of invertebrates and quadrupeds also seemed to offer some nice implications about personal, inner evolution, and the drive to move and advance: within the self, among life's elemental forces, and as part of whatever greater context that self may perceive...


all
possess their own
complex locomotor strategies
move individual parts
as well as the whole

earliest
in a watery world
range of motion
spanned the length
generating rhythmically alternating contractions
this sideward bending was not random
functioned to orient and propel
body followed head's direction

moved out of the water
strategies were derived as offshoots
turned scales
into feathers
leave the ground altogether

supported
upward from below
the body up off the ground
nature layered new
double helix arrangement
wrapped around the trunk and spiraled downward
onto the limbs

means of propulsion
no longer a laterally bending
leveraging against water's resistance
but
coordinated synchrony
pushing against the ground
forward
not through water but air

still toward its head
now a second orienting direction
toward the earth and gravity's pull
every weight-bearing step
musculature
coordinated its movement
ground

standing on two feet
a delicately adjusting and readjusting
balancing act
step onto each successive forward limb
toward the front
transfer
entire body from single limb to single limb
we run
become limbless again, propelling
into space and leaving the earth
(for brief moments) altogether

el círculo

!Como extraño a mi círculo de danza cuando no estoy con ellos! How I have missed my circle, la danza. My most beautiful community. Today we gather beneath skies finally blue again, instead of copper-grey from the smoke of distant forest fires. The space we're given at this event (the annual fiesta of a Catholic church in Barelas, just off downtown) is mid-side-street, across from the main stage where the ranchera band plays. Fewer than ten people wander over to observe. But as always, I'm pleasantly surprised at the willingness of those coming from very different places in this life -- even from 'organized' religion -- to simply observe our form of embodied prayer and song. This is certainly not the world of angry closed minds that I grew up in.

And I've got no desire for 'audiences' anyway. This is personal: between us and Earth. La danza is an offering. And as always, it asks me to offer everything I've got. The asphalt surface starts to raise blisters, even with huaraches on, by the second dance. My legs are stronger than they used to be, but my lungs still don't quite make it, and by the time I offer my dance I'm nearly always close to collapse. I try to put mind over matter, drink air like water, welcome the copal smoke as the nourishment that it often is. But I'm swaying on my feet, under this sun that seems to have found a hole in the top of my head, and is radiating straight into the center of my brain. And I'm thinking that pretty soon, in these rays, I'll change from the only gringa in the group to la roja - the red one - and wondering if that'll be an improvement.

What in the world am I doing here? I still wonder -- and yes, at times, feel fairly uncomfortable -- about my place in this circle. Not only because it's possibly the hardest thing I've ever done. I'm not of the right genetic or cultural background for this. Obviously. Once, at some event, an observer asked our jefe more or less that question. The man's intent seemed a curiosity more friendly than otherwise (there certainly are those of the sincere opinion that nobody with my skin color should be part of any circle). El Jefe answered with his usual charisma and inclusive enthusiasm: "She is here representing that aspect of humanity that is without race or color or borders." Wow, I told him, I hope I can live up to that.

What am I doing here? Simplest answer: I'm here because, almost two and a half years ago, I had a companion whose life orbited this circle, and he invited me to join them. I soon found in the group an expression of kind community, of whole-being, nonideological prayer, and of self-challenge that left my previous definition all of those concepts in the dust.

Answer harder to put (few) words to: I'm here because, three years ago this month, I walked out of the Hostal Catedral in El Centro de Mexico D.F., el Ombligo del Universo (as I was soon informed), and plunged into a sonic ocean of heartbeats magnified ten thousand times and shooting skyward in every direction: the reverberation of the four wooden drums of four separate circles of danzantes, bouncing off the storied stone walls of El Palacio Nacional and the other four facets of this titanic and troubled diamond called the Zocalo. It was like nothing I'd ever heard, or felt. I could not move anywhere other than toward the heart of the sound, and there, seated on a low stone ledge in sight of the Templo Mayor, shoulder to shoulder with the tourists, travellers, and weary walkers of the City, to try and drink it in. First a man came by playing up the tourist crowd with a printed sheet on Mexica cosmology; I gave him a few cents for one, just to be neighborly, but when he asked where I was from and heard "Nuevo Mexico" he smiled and exclaimed "Ah, eres vecina entonces!" and I felt, suddenly, welcome.

Then, a short time later, a quiet voice materialized next to my left shoulder, and began, without preamble, a detailed, unhurried discourse on the history of the danzantes and the society in which they had their origin. The source of this voice looked like a young homeless man, my age at most, with waist-length dreds matted into one massive plume down his back, wisp of mustache over friendly smile, tattered NFL-logo jacket held together with safety pins and duct tape, holy shoes. He didn't ask my name, didn't offer the slightest hint of flirtation like I'd already seen round that block, didn't ask for anything. Only murmured, like a clear stream, an astonishing current of seasons, origins, social orders, details of dress, diet, medicine, rhythms of songs and of stars. It was a dream of wholeness, of right relating with earth, the pueblo, and the heavens. He said he had learned these things while studying to be a shaman, but had to leave off his studies. Of course, having lived in Santa Fe, a declaration like this comes of necessity as somewhat suspect. But his humility impressed me: this was obviously a guy with little to prove. As did the expanse and conscientiousness of his information. And I was later to hear many of the same details repeated by others; as far as I can tell, this strange traveller spoke well.

I spent about a week at the Hostal, and the drums pulled me back outside every evening. The dancers were there every day. In sun, in rain, in darkness at times. They didn't stop for anything. They were clearly there for the audience - some even put out little baskets for donations - but they weren't showy. There was an inwardness, a collectivity, a focus about the groups that I found attractive. I drank in the color, movement and sound at every chance that week. Not at all imagining, of course, that it had anything to do with me.

I continued not to imagine this for the first several months that I came to the circle here in the South Valley of Albuquerque. The glaring difference of my background alone was always with me, even though everyone was friendly and accepting (and although, when I started, there was another gringa as well as a Navajo woman in the group). The physical endurance was a greater challenge than I had taken on in almost twenty years, and I was sadly unready for it. The complexity of the dances eluded me for months, and when there came the time that I was asked to offer one on my own, I cringed at my lack of memory, skill, and grace. And, strange as it may sound, the 'acceptance of being accepted' by a solid, almost family-like community touched childhood psychic wounds not, at times, like healing balm, but more like the alcohol that burns away a potential infection. It took all the will I had, every week, to keep going back to what body, mind and spirit were both wary of and craving intensely, at the same time. And even coming up on two and a half years, I can still say the same at times: it's perhaps the most impossible and the most necessary effort I've ever taken on.

That's a lot about the personal. What of the bigger picture? What is the circle doing here? How, here, now, after centuries, after conquest and defeat, after materialism and industrialization and forgetting and loss and the burial of Tenochtitlan under time and earth and blood and asphalt? I can only, at this point, speak a regrettably small and subjective response. I can't properly cite and footnote, only retell and respect. I've been told of survivors of la Conquista who, seeing their imminent assimilation and their worldview's disappearance, began quietly and in secret to preserve in the collective memory the songs, dances and other knowledge of their past, often cloaking them for their own survival in the terms and forms of Church and Empire (sounding somewhat similar to the historic response that's always fascinated me on the part of the Celtic peoples). I've heard that the threads of continuity were spun out over surprisingly long years, thanks to their being woven into the structures of extended family. I've also heard suggested, and would imagine, that the effort found much of its momentum reclaimed in the years of the Chicano Movement. John Ross identifies the discovery of the eight-ton Coyolxauhqui stone with its carved 'moon goddess', during the Capital's Metro excavations in 1978, as the moment that 'set the wheels in motion for a revival of pride in the Aztec past'. With how few threads can you span five centuries and arrive, to some degree unchanged, in the now?

I could read up a lot more on this. But I haven't, maybe because there are so many books and so little time (an easy answer). Or maybe because this is personal. This isn't at all intellectual for me. I don't know if it's possible to say that, because I'm not Chicana, or Mexicana, I have no cultural or political point to make in this discussion. Maybe not. And I suppose I've taken on a similar personal responsibility, or lack of same, for the particular implications of the 'Aztec past' as I have for the particular implications of the USAmerican present: I claim marginal acceptance of categories, as an (in many ways) marginalized and barely-existent citizen. I am both victim and chooser of all my names. There isn't a clear answer. But I often don't expect that from Life, so I often don't demand it of myself.

But yes, I'm here, in a sense, precisely because I have no cultural background. I come from ancestors who immigrated and then assimilated as quickly and completely as possible. No language, no traditions, no history. Barely a few old photos. I spent almost 40 years of life without knowing the support and structure of a tradition, and then one was offered, and I met it on the terms with which it spoke to me: engagement with elemental, cyclical, humble and human bearings. And I'm here because, after I accepted the invitation, it was renewed time and time again. In the pain and the healing of muscle and heartbeat and breath. In the acceptance of the comadres and compadres who keep welcoming me. In the affirmation of luminous dreams and of momentary visions so exquisite, so intense that I feel obligated to honor them with my grateful silence. And in the reconnection that I know each time my feet speak their prayers directly to the listening earth, and the voice of the drum realigns my heart with a true pulse. That's the circle that has encircled me.

papercuts

I've been trying, for months now, to put some kind of words to my last year's experience. Or, more to the point, to release somehow my last year's experience, using words. A year spent in giving ceaselessly, willingly, and illogically far more than I had to give. Of time, energy, emotion, money, ideas, and opportunities. To a supposed partner, and to a living situation shared with his mother and his two children, and his unemployment, and his personal struggles and his unfulfilled dreams and potentials, and his - best I can tell - near complete lack of genuine interest in me.

I can't do it. At least not for now. Even though I've been out of the situation almost six months, it's still too tangled and toxic. The unresolved questions, conversations, anger and sadness find me at the most inopportune moments -- 2 a.m. when sleep leaves, or 4 p.m. on deliveries, or mid-chat with a kinder friend. But they refuse to find their way into poetry, prose, or a word picture, so as to find their way out of me and on downstream.

Except, maybe, for this little image. Not the most impressive analogy ever, but it'll do for now. The pain of the experience is not, nor was it at any point, a mortal blow or a gaping wound. Nothing so acceptedly or obviously insidious occurred that I can point to it and justify this pervasive, whole-self accumulation of suffering and self-second-guessing that I now walk around with. But the experience was, overall, kind of like getting 1,000 papercuts. One after another after another. And now I have them all over. They are on every part of me: on mind, on body, on psyche, on heart. They are inside and out. They amplify my raised pulse-rate in their raw surfaces like any new cut does. And they're healing really, really slowly.

It gets hard to sit still for long, without rubbing against a few dozen of them. I turn over in the night and awaken the sting of several more. A well-intentioned acquaintance gives me a hug, or claps me on the shoulder, and wonders why I burst into tears. Spring wind picks up dust and grit off the sidewalk and I run flinching for the nearest shelter. Working with my hands, even typing, is difficult for the slices running across fingerprints and lifelines. I see them scarring my cheeks and lips when I look in the mirror, and wonder if anybody else notices this. I breathe deep, asking the body to give up just a shred of its tensed outrage and trauma, and feel the tiny slices burning in the lining of my stomach. Those, of course, come from all the words that I swallowed.

I'm not going to attempt to write about how exactly the papercuts happened. The analogy would start to break down there. And anyway, that's another part of the pain: he and I never, ever could agree on how any painful situation came about. It was my fault, or some personal problem of mine:  that was the only conclusion. And all the little incidents were so mundane, or so personal, or both, that they simply can't be respoken. It was really the razor of their unexpectedness that made the cut, every time. So. I'm leaving the subject it as it is: unhealed. And, for the moment (and maybe for the indefinite) a largely inexplicable, and largely failed experiment at understanding. I'm not asking for excessive amounts of sympathy here. I should've let it go a lot sooner. I can see that I was overly optimistic and patient. If not downright certifiable, for accepting some aspects of it. But if you see me on the street or at the coffeeshop, don't mention those lines on my face, okay? Hopefully, they're temporary. And pardon me if you offer a hand or a hug and I back away. It's nothing personal. It's just that my skin needs more time to knit itself back together again.

allegiance to beauty

"Perception...is a blood sport. Life itself sometimes hangs by a thread made of nothing but the spirit in which we see. And with life itself at stake, I grew suspicious of my eyes' many easy, dark conclusions. Even the most warranted pessimism began to feel unwarranted. I began to see that hope, however feeble its apparent foundation, bespeaks allegiance to every unlikely beauty that remains intact on Earth."
-- David James Duncan, My Story As Told By Water

downriver

Thanks to the creek at Big Tesuque


when wind first woke me with a whisper
time to leave the mountain shoulder
brave the boulder currents
join the ride downriver

I was unready to release my hold
small but anchored to a homeground
where I hoped to thrive not trade
connection for detachment
or a place for motion

yet she sighed me roots and all
screeing off my steep glissade
tumbling sliding sidling over
spring-fed mountainsiding fall
joining water's season

drawn reluctant from the verge
to spin and spiral and submerge
surge, resurface, pooling
spilling over each obstructing edge
again be running rapid

others find the current
skimming perfect likeness of the sky-map
still reflecting on the depths
leaf-mold algae lichen
sunparched needles aspen parchments
silt and sifted grains of granite settle
gaining ground one granule at a time
gypsy seeds alight where earth assembles
germinate convivial pauses where at last to
hold our ground where only water flowed before
now something starts to grow

you
catch on too as you scrape by
gliding homeward on the run
going with the flow
stick with me if I'm stuck here
drop what burdens we were ferrying
mid-watershed seed exchanges
decayed debris lodged with us
flotsam converts to fertile home
in drifts chinampas islands
and finally new shoreline
we recast the riffle then the current
then we rift the water
shift the stream by aggregating
far downriver from our origin
the offering of invisible mountains
where we first released into the flow

unkindled

one full season's memory of honey sweetness
embodied sunlight sings the deep kiss of vermillion flowers
the gathering work of a thousand slow and purposed hours
essence of greengrowing, nearly still alive
with care distilled from secret safety of the hive
purified and shaped while still spun gold, mutable

each light given its pair to shine with
twined to shared center potential
two radii turn hidden heat to radiance
only awaiting the strike of a match
touch flame to inner core

but now it's stilled, cool, quiet
solid where joyful dissolution should be
though they sing the sunglow's golden shade
the light within is hidden
this flame will not ignite
this fire is left unkindled

I too sleep on this quiescent shelf but
you still burn me to the wick in dreams
of flowergold and timeless blaze expanding
over all the gifts you shared but never gave
only in that other realm I shed -- my only hope --
superfluous exterior with each igniting
finally requiting weight of outer layers
leaving only sweetest honey smoke as proof

poverty3: past interest

Why in this world did I think it was a good idea to ask for more awareness of the world's poverty? Whatever was I thinking? Nothing. I was feeling. Feeling the planet's incredible injustice. And the undeniable need for more empathy.

In no way does my own poverty, if I can even call it that, compare to the world's.  But I have this dilemma in common with a part of humanity: while they don't create a dire survival mode, the struggles of my everyday are exactly complicated and distracting enough to leave little or no hope of forward motion.

Here then is what I got in the last two weeks, for that well-intentioned asking: a job that pays a wage so low I have been embarrassed to tell it to anybody. 40 hours a week for more or less the same income I had as a part-time driver. And yeah, I was spending far too much on gas before. But the days also had room to read, to think, to take care of the business of life. And now they don't. Working every Saturday and one Sunday a month means effectively giving up almost all the community events that makes living here worthwhile. And working for so little, I know from past experience, can quickly lead to paying for the past while you're still earning the present...

I asked for a quiet, peaceful home-space. And I got a place that's noisy, roach-infested, and has been under plumbing renovations for two weeks now, with no end in sight. (But yeah, it's all mine...) Every morning I rearrange the stuff that's not already piled in a heap, so the workmen have easy access to the closet, to the bathroom, under the sink. I try to do my stretches, make coffee, greet the morning sun while ignoring the holes cut in the walls for new pipes, the film of sheetrock dust on everything, the dirty tracks on the floor. I try to focus on the four tiny seedlings in the window-boxes, and the so-far empty pots that hold more wishful seeding, and not the barren, dry disconnect with the earth outside. I try to forget, every day, the house I was living in 3 months ago that had almost half an acre of garden, two wells, a chicken coop, and far too many earthy dreams for one weary, overworked, barely-grounded person to act on alone.  Alone in the company of 4 other people.

I asked, it seems, for another chance to deconstruct this incredible inexplicable tangle that, in my world, is relationship. And got, simultaneously, another yes and another frayed knot. Another round of all the things we're both too afraid to ask for, or too self-protective to offer, or too caught up in our own chaos to share. But also another try at friendship, and this intense concentrate-of-conversation which, hopefully, we can keep diluting to a drinkable strength.  Alright then. How many potential presents can one painful past sabotage? And how much not-quite can two people possibly create together?

Read only a few pages of The End of Poverty this morning. Sachs describes one of his investigatory travels as a consultant, to western Kenya. After yet another concise and clearly-detailed outline of the (very possible) actions that would bring this rural region out of its poverty, he offers a fascinating (and deplorable) pair of statistics (as of 2005, the time of the book's writing). Current international donor support annually to Kenya amounts to about 100 million dollars. And Kenya's current debt service amounts to $600 million a year. Can you dig it? It doesn't matter what well-meaning rich countries are giving, intending, or recommending. The people can't climb out at this rate. They can't even pay the past's interest with what they are receiving from the present.

...and, in the moment, I think know exactly how that situation feels...

poverty2: diminishment

When I started reading The End of Poverty two weeks ago, I made this request of Life: open me up. Make this more than an intellectual effort. Books are such portals, given the chance. It'd be well-timed with other openings in my little existence: show me, to whatever limited extent I'm capable of knowing it, more of the lack that so much of this world knows as living. Tune me in to the poverty frequency. If You think I can take it.

And Life, being ever so compassionate and creative at once, has answered that request in the most surprising and bearable ways. My job, just after increasing my hours, had a problem in accounting and only gave us half our earnings on the last paycheck. The other half will be along in two weeks, they said. In the meantime, every dollar gains just a little more value than it already had, becomes just a little more weighty and unwieldy. Every purchase a momentary cause for contemplation. Next, my apartment building, home now for three weeks, has to be replumbed. We're asked to clear space for the workmen, to put up with noise, and to expect them coming into our homes at random over one to two weeks' time -- just when I was starting to feel settled again. And finally, I asked my friendly neighborhood anarchists for a mattress to help with the chronic insomnia, and when they kindly gifted me with a most comfortable futon, it turned out to be home to a thriving population of bedbugs. At least I think that's what it was -- online research turned up a couple of simple fixes that worked well (steam-ironing and then vacuuming). And the work became a surprisingly joyful meditation on all the abundance that I have (even/especially the free and recycled abundance), as well as a prayer for all those living on the street (odds are this bed gave a homeless person rest at at least one point). All the men and women who don't even have the simple human option of bathing as often as they need to.

Okay, none of that's suffering, really: just stress. An upward twist on the control knob labelled 'Insecurity'. An accumulation of diminishment that's a threat to nothing more than tangible wellbeing. But then Life breathes in my ear: so, you're alright with the practical opportunities. How ready is your heart to open more? And then leads me to a dear friend in Santa Fe, who I haven't seen in several months. He's from central Mexico, but has lived in the States about half his life, pursuing that American Dream with a gusto and a struggle that most of us only heard about from our great-grandparents. Today he tells me that his younger brother, who lived with him for a time and then went to California, was recently deported. Like my friend, this 27-year-old had come here legal-fair-and-square, but unlike his brother who's by-the-book conscientious, this young man was living on an expired visa. He had a fairly successful contractor business going, my friend tells me, and had to sell everything. How long, I ask, over the sinking sensation of an empathetic punch to the gut. How long did he have to do that? 3 days, is the answer. They arrested him on a Friday, and by Monday he was back in Mexico.

If nothing else, he went back to family, and to a homespace. Their parents, unlike so many, haven't lost all of the old rancho that the grandfather left them. I never met the guy but I'm glad to think that at least he's not alone, or homeless. But an odd comparison occurs. Maybe it's because, at the moment I hear this story, I'm on the way to work at my dad's house. My dad began his meteoric career path with the government around age 40, after a bankruptcy and a nasty divorce. He's pursued his progress with the kind of wholehearted dedication usually expressed by immigrants, refugees, or others who in their own fates have previously lost everything. Just recently he accepted yet another fabulous promotion. I'm gearing up to play the personal assistant in organizing his next move, as I've done a couple of times already. This image crossed my mind (and not without equal sadness in contemplating): my dad, leaving work one afternoon, is accosted by armed men who tell him that he has three days to liquidate his assets, make a couple of personal calls or visits perhaps, and then he has to go spend the rest of his life in the depressed, backwater small town we all grew up in. He'll be free to move about once there, to seek employment where he likes (Wal-mart and the tourist industry have long been significant employers); he's even got family there, so he won't be alone. And this is all, unfortunately, necessary because a few months back he let his driver's license expire...

Is that fair? Is that far too simplistic? If so, somebody let me know why, cause I can't figure out the difference. Other than that one man and his laminated paper abstractions happened to be born here in the world's richest country, and the other wasn't. That one happened to have great-grandparents that made of their entire lives that struggle, so that by the time of his own birth he didn't have to. I realize there's some fundamental principle of political-entitlement-by-birth that I'm failing to include here, because I fail completely, as a human being, to grasp it. And sadness has my reason not exactly at its most expansive at the moment. While I'd never for a minute wish such a fate on my dad, I wish he could see for one second my strange vision of his life that won't happen. If only for the chance to reconsider the support and assent he gives, despite his generous nature and thanks to the culture of his workplace, to the deep toxicity of the extreme conservative agenda.

At the moment, I'm trying to remember that poem we all learned in high school. The 'no man is an island' one, you know? Which, okay, it's about a more permanent loss. But I'm thinking of 'Every man's death diminishes me'. Is that how the line goes? Personally, internally, I feel diminished for this story I heard today. It's one thing, and an easy one with our more and more, to talk of living with less. Another altogether to contemplate, essentially, the taking away of a person's life. Their chance at being alive, in all the ways we supposedly define it in this country. This reality, even as remotely and collectively as its tide washes me, is an aspect of poverty I don't feel remotely ready to tune in. Only empathetically, on the wave of sadness it brings.

poverty1

Conversation among the inner voices, recorded this morning:
"How can you sit in a lovely, safe space, enjoying the luxury of a hot breakfast cooked for you by others, and read a book on poverty?"
"How can I not?"

I'm on the way to work (for the 6th day in a row). It's the weekend as well as spring break, so free computers are in short supply at the moment (I'm writing from kinko's). My laptop just died, but there are too many observations and other blessings to let exorbitant computer fees stop me (on occasion). Here, then, are just a few lines that astounded me this morning from Jeffrey Sachs' The End of Poverty. I offer them out of their (very astute) context of discussion, but hopefully something of their impact will communicate here. They're taken from a series of insights onto the causes and factors at work in global poverty. So many things which I for one never considered; others whose phrasing brings unexpected new light. By which, in some cases, I was almost moved to tears.

I suppose, for the moment, I only ask/invite you to feel into this subject with me, although it's a difficult one. Next time I'll try to summarize some of his very optimistic but convincing arguments on what can actually be done about it.

For now, the quotes:

"Consider the plight of inventors in an impoverished country."

"There is no margin of income above survival that can be invested for the future."

"It is no coincidence that Mexico's assembly sector is right along the Rio Grande River, since Mexico's economically relevant "coast" is its border with the United States."
(talking of the contrast of geographical and political, natural and contrived: the fact that we, among other wealthy countries, began life as a nation with the immense benefit of extensive natural coastlines for trade, yet have converted our neighbor's "virtual coastline" into a militarized "border" instead...)

"...the government may lack the resources to pay for the infrastructure on which economic growth depends...the population itself may be impoverished, so taxation of the population is not feasible."

"Children can be treated for disease to better ensure their survival, meaning that parents can have fewer children, feeling secure that they will survive to take care of their parents in old age."

And of course this line almost brought tears of a different kind:
"Americans, for example, believe that they earned their wealth all by themselves."

meant to say

Almost every single thing I've written here has arrived with regrets. Second thoughts, second guesses, second third and fourth revisions. Missing phrases or single words that didn't arrive til hours or even days later. I suppose writers much more skilled than me contend with this.

What a medium is this charged real-time electronic page! Bringing to light how solid and how mutable words are. Clear, and ever open to interpretation. Ready, and never complete. And for the sincere mind that wants to speak something useful into being, what a current of potential found and lost constantly circulates - on the page and in the blood. And in the mind, where those inner voices have their way and their play with it.

Today the voices in my head are saying I spoke too simply, that I was facile even, on a weighty subject yesterday. Some of them must be those activist voices that found their way in thanks to various heavy-minded acquaintances. I'm gonna start calling them 'reactivists': that's more their style. Always a word for what's wrong with the world, with the scene, with me, and never an affirmation. Never a truly original thought.

I know good and well it's deep water I was skimming over yesterday. So deep I can barely stand to look into its glassy green depths. But I'm gonna go deeper. This is certainly my intention. Every prayer-full night and every listening day. I'm gonna go deeper, in understanding, just by reading this book on world poverty and inequality. And when I join friends later this week, to plan the year's community garden for immigrant families that are barely making ends meet. I'm constantly asking Life to speak to me, with these and other currents of the Now, about how much longer I can be just another person working for a living. Or whether for the life in me I need to take a more significant path in the world. In this little wordspace I only hope to practice a few minutes of affirmation. To sidle up to the depth on careful, maybe philosophical, maybe even humorous terms if I'm lucky. To polish a tiny pane of light in all this dinginess. To speak to what IS, in all the NOT. That's the sort of word I meant to say -- the sort of uncapturable thing I dared to hope words could sort of capture -- again yesterday.

forget about the tomatoes

It's one of those portals in conversation that comes now and then. When, with just a sentence, the door to the world bangs open. Leaves you spinning as all Life blows in. Knocks all your carefully arranged papers and things off the shelves and the tables. One moment, a single aside, can easily do this. You've seen it, right?

We're talking, he and I, for the first time in a while, about nothing more than our everydays. How his entrepreneurial effort, surprisingly, continues to go well despite the economic worries of so many. How happy I've been, lately, to find again that living simply, even doing without, is so very possible. How I wish more people could see the liberation -- the elation, even -- in getting outside comforts so taken for granted. In seeing what abundance we still have, at any moment when we have less.

"And of course," he continues, "I've been in places where it was so much poorer than anything people can imagine here..." I know this, but then he says something in passing about back when Mexico devalued the peso, and I realize all of a sudden: he was THERE for that. Somehow I never thought of it before. "I cannot imagine how people dealt with such a thing", I reply, knowing what a hopeless understatement is any comment I can make. How in reality I will probably never begin to imagine. "Oh, you know" he replies, in his almost dangerously offhand way, "You just eat more beans...forget about the tomatoes and all that sort of thing." I wish he would say more, but that's all he says on the subject.

And what can we know about it here? All over this world are millions who have lived for years with 'downturns'. Or whose turns have never gone upward in the first place. On so many parts of this planet are people for whom crisis, violence, disaster, has never been front-page news; it's only life as they know it. The only moment in this so-very-privileged land when we can ever say we are alone in our experience is when we find ourselves, by intent or by circumstance, outside the struggle.

Two other moments coincided, this week, with the preceding words. At the library, I came across The End of Poverty, by Jeffrey Sachs. My lifetime awareness of global history and economics has been sadly limited, but this is a fascinating and very accessible book. As far as I've gotten into its 450 pages. It's only a small effort, motivated partly by that conversation about the tomatoes, to keep the door open. And also to make some much-needed improvements to vocabulary, where the language of justice is concerned.

A couple days before that, my sister announced that she was giving up Facebook for Lent. "I'm not Catholic" she wrote, "but I like to observe Lent because it's conscious...." Her choice startled me, and in a good way, with the reminder again: how varied our range of choices, and how easy our liberation. Arriving together on my doorstep, as they did, these three voices brought much-appreciated reminders. Why don't we who live in abundance try giving up the tomatoes a lot more often? Not to mention the virtual reality? Not because we have to -- before we have to. Or even out of sheer gratitude that we don't have to. It'd be a practice. Practice-makes-perfect becomes fire-drill-preparedness becomes spiritual practice. Traditions such as Lent -- which I'm actually kind of pleasantly surprised to hear of anyone, religious and otherwise, still practicing in this country -- yes, could still have their place, in that kind of awareness. Really, if we lived more consciously, it seems we might practice giving up something different every week, right? This could get interesting.

I can't label as inherently 'wrong' or 'bad' (like some of my activist acquaintances) the beautiful things that comprise so many of our privileges. That's missing the point, to me. Partly since the point to giving anything up, intentionally, would be to regain the gratitude and the very beauty that excess desensitizes us to. Never to add more shame or negativity to the world. Neither am I suggesting that going without sufficient food and going without facebook are in the same category of experience. Only that I think our intention counts, and our alignment in whatever way possible with the world's realities. And this is by no means a complete anything: just a few thoughts on beginnings, since we in this country sit at the beginning of so many of these lessons. But beginning counts. And compassion always counts. My sister wrote today of "remembering the other mind" in her newfound offline spaciousness, a phrase that just sings to me. After reading her post, I decided to go vegetarian for the same 40 days. It seems one of the very simplest ways that I can find just to remember all the choices that so much of humanity goes without, every day.

And my larger intention, growing for some time now, is to keep that door open. Whatever that means (and it means many things). Even if the stuff inside won't stay where I put it because of those currents swirling in.

her legacy

I've been out and about with May again. That's not her real name, but it's a name she sometimes uses, and I need a name to call her by: my oldest-youngest craziest-sanest friend. We're pulling up to the curb in front of her apartment building. "I'd like to invite you in," she begins, in her precise, ever-courteous way, "but I have to warn you that there is now a rather shocking presence in my living room." "Really," I ask, trying to imagine what 'shocking' may be in her terms. She's frequently apologized for the 'mess' when her apartment always looks immaculate to me. She hardly owns enough to constitute clutter in one room, much less the three she inhabits so lightly, precariously. "Yes," she continues, "it's my latest sculptural work. And it's rather large. I call it 'My Legacy'. You'll have to negotiate your way around it if you come in." Alright, I'm ready. For some reason -- maybe the combination of her foreboding tone and the word 'sculpture' -- I'm picturing a larger-than-life, grotesquely proportioned female figure. Her art doesn't normally turn toward the grotesque, but I've learned with May to let nothing surprise me.

Or to try. She surprises me this time. 'My Legacy' is a swaying wall of paper chains, suspended from ceiling to floor, made from carefully sliced and glued strips of the advertising circulars most people throw away as junk mail every week. This wavy curtain bisects her living room diagonally, taped to the ceiling from corner to corner, beginning just inside the front door like an invitation. I can't resist following. The paper links radiate every color in the spectrum, although there are patterns in places: all pink here, alternating red and green in another part. The promoted products are just visible in the curves of each paper link: 1o-pound hams, stereos, avocados, diamond rings. On nearby surfaces appear shards of prices: $49.99. 2 for a dollar. Half off, Saturday only. I start to smile. She sees me getting it. "Yes", she pronounces proudly, "It's all that I'm leaving to the world." "Because you never bought any of it!" I realize. "Exactly," she replies.

I navigate this permeable wall's length, rustling through its strands from one side to the other. I can't resist fingering the smooth circles, holding new splashes of color up to the light. It's not a straight diagonal - there's a slight sinuous curve to it. With its consumptive messages relegated mostly to the background, if only by the chaos of the total, the bright primary blues, greens, reds and yellows are free to make stronger impressions. And having divided up the coherence of the advertisers' hoped-for messages, she's released odd insights into the field of vision. Faded vegetables and over-brilliant gold jewelry compete for sightings. Words out of their context offer new messages: "You more real", "time only". Prices seem more absurd, standing apart from the build-up, the concerted displays of objects-of-desire.

It's not just entertaining, or even a relief from commercial overstimulation. May's done something truly redemptive here. She's changing the purpose of things. I remember the time, several years ago, when I politely battled the mail carrier for a couple months for the right not to receive these same fliers in my box every week. He was a nice guy, and finally agreed. That felt like a small victory, but May's achieved something more powerful. She's accepted the unwanted, then challenged it at the level of its essence. Using the lowliest of materials she's voiced one of art's highest callings: transformation. Sure, the simple, literal act that transforms refuse into recycling into creativity is always commendable, and a welcome release for the sensitive conscience. But this is also one observer calling another to see in a new way. See from the outside of the system. See from the senses instead of the intellect. See the potential for creativity and beauty in the most ugly and utilitarian. See from the what-could-be instead of the dreariness of what is. This quality of seeing, surely, is among the most lovely and lively of gifts that we can hope to pass on to each other.

between addresses

Not many know yet that I don't live at my address any more. I don't live at any address, for that matter. I'm off the map. Between addresses. Literally: I'm staying in an RV which is parked between two friends' houses. One friend invited me to housesit, when I had to get out for just a little bit. The others let me use this camper, when I needed to leave for longer. I've been here for two weeks now. What am I doing here? I can't exactly say. Looking for what comes next. Camped out in the meantime. But limbo's never been so comfortable.

It's a 22-foot breadbox-shaped vehicle. The front door is in the side. Two seats and a steering wheel take up the front end. Bed-niche and bathroom-closet occupy the back, and in the middle are a complete kitchen, and a fold-out table with two bench seats. It's cozy. It's also oddly familiar: as a kid I spent serious summer time in a camper much like this, that belonged to my grandparents. Then later my parents, following their back-to-the-lander dream, borrowed another one to live in while they built a house. Five of us stayed in that one. For nine months. I have no idea how. But for just one person in need of a little space (a very little space), this arrangement's the lap of luxury.

While it might sound strange, among the most luxurious aspects of this home-for-now is all that it lets me do without. There's not room for a bookshelf (the other seat at the table has that role), or a music rack (a few CDs fit on the console by the driver's seat), so what's here is what matters. The closet holds about 3 square feet of clothes. The mini-refrigerator seems to work on its own schedule, and doesn't hold much anyway, so for the time being I'm almost vegetarian. The stove runs on propane which has to be refilled every couple of weeks, so cooking is a small-scale effort, a little more conscious than usual.

But the practice that gets my attention here is the use of water. This breadbox's water supply is stored in a plastic tank beneath the bed. I don't know how many gallons it holds, but it occupies about the dimensions of a normal single mattress. With such visibly limited provisioning, I've tried to take thought for the resources I use. Which, as it happens, was already one of the keenest needs that I couldn't meet in my former homespace. Taking thought for the use of precious resources. Or rather, I keenly wanted not to be the only one taking thought of this. For that matter alone, I am thoroughly at home in this limited liminal space.

Every morning I get up and turn on one of the stove's three burners. On the flame goes one small saucepan of water: the first two cups are for coffee (in a press) and the remainder usually cooks oatmeal. This is replaced (before the burner goes off) by half a teakettle of water, heated up to wash the dishes. Each evening I refill the gallon jug that holds drinking/cooking water. Under the table is a 3-gallon jug of tap water for hand-and-dish-washing. Since the water supply is chemical-treated, they advised me not to use it for personal hygiene. But takes no more than a cup of water to brush teeth, and both neighbors have been kind enough to offer the use of their showers. The closet-toilet, best of all, probably uses about a cup of water to flush.

I don't mean to sound self-congratulatory. After all, it's the generosity of friends that lets me try this little experiment. More to convey the sheer relief I find at remembering how easy it is, how possible, to use so little. Depending on the online source I look at, the average American apparently uses something between 60 and 100 gallons of water per day. Trying to avoid too-righteous indignation while trying to imagine how this is even possible, I can certainly think of many moments when I too could've used less. But as an idealist, my poor-boundaried conscience has been hurting for my own actions as well as for humanity's at large. Well, here's a chance, as me only, to try and make it up to the earth. Or at least to express the wish.

Except. I came home today, and with snow falling and temperatures dropping fast, the RV's owner had decided to take the precaution of emptying the water system. To avoid a busted pipe or other consequence of the sub-freezing weather predicted for tonight. It's an understandable move, of course. But as they opened the drain and then turned on all the faucets at once, I thought, there's gotta be some kinda message here -- if not some kind of joke --from Life to me. For two weeks now I've done my sincerest to conserve, and now in a few minutes' time the result of my careful effort is undone. Although for an arguably important reason. There's gotta be some metaphorical consolation -- if not some lesson for the road ahead -- that I can derive from this. Just give me a minute.

no knowing

I know next to nothing about anything. And less every day. Every new day leaves the mind's load lighter. And often, for this, the heart's heavier.

I don't know how to breathe well. How to listen with complete attention. How to laugh aloud, spontaneously. How to make really good bread. How to get meaningful work. How to make eye contact. How to shape some thing of beauty with my hands, or to dream it before making. How to maintain sufficient connection with earth. How to ask for the kindness that I need.

I don't know how to sleep: this skill seems a complete luck of the draw, and tonight I drew the low card, and nevermind the pills, and the teas, and the meditations: that's that.

I don't know how to pray. Though soul holds a channel always open. Though heart surfs constant tides of gratitude and need. Though senses stretch toward every greengold whisper spoken in earthtime and in dreamtime. Though in afternoon, when sunshot skies of a sudden folded soft into clouds, like two peaceful hands coming together, and I beneath the five diamond drops of rain that fell as an afterthought was clasped in the center of a prayer, it wasn't my prayer, but the sky's. But that, in the moment, was certainly more than enough.

I can only pray that earth and sky haven't forgotten what they know: that aside from their infinities, they know me as well. As well as they did, back when we were so connected I never stopped to think about what I didn't know.

quote: accept

"He had no choice."
"He did. It was as hard as hell, but he could have gone on. Gone on making himself more and more unhappy. But what he chose to do instead was to go to the brink and look beyond. And he saw what was there and he chose to accept it...Sometimes what seems like surrender isn't surrender at all. It's about what's going on in our hearts. About seeing clearly the way life is and accepting it and being true to it, whatever the pain, because the pain of not being true to it is far, far greater..."
-- Nicholas Evans, The Horse Whisperer

house/sitting

There is no television in this house. No microwave, and no stereo except a portable player, currently unplugged. There was no computer til I brought in my laptop. Outside there are no barking dogs, no music or loud voices to show that the neighbors are home. Inside, the heater isn't running nonstop: in fact it's a little chilly here, but it's quiet. Oh, so quiet.

There are no children in this house. No running feet echoing the floors, no singing or nonsense noises, no fighting, shrieking, screaming, or crying. No sounds at all, except the whirbling of this laptop and an occasional staccato from the corner, where a rabbit sits in a cage. Those are the only sounds. Really. I have to listen again to convince myself it's true.

This house has nearly equal amounts of space and stuff. The part that makes it most beautiful to me. That, and all the stuff seems to be here for a reason. There is one couch only, in the living room. One large plant by the window. Blinds on the windows that face the street, and not on those facing the fenced back yard. Matched handmade pottery bowls on open kitchen shelves. Unvarnished wood counters and stainless-steel appliances. It's a kitchen to be in for a reason. Gourmet cooking, or maybe writing. Or maybe thinking about my own reasons for being here. Not 'here' in any existential sense. Here, instead of the house in which I normally live. In which I normally survive.

The saddest part of survival mode is getting used to thinking in not's. First there's the extras that you negate. Purchases, dreams, soul-nutrition: the category of 'extra' is expansive, and always expandable. Not right now, we can't do that. Not this month. Not this season. Not this year. Then there's the not-rationalization, where you try to feel better about your situation, and perhaps about your choices (if you acknowledge such things as part of the situation). At least we're not ___. At least we didn't do ___. At least ___ didn't happen. At least we have it better than ___.

Sure there's some intention of gratitude in those negatives. But my point is, there are so many lovely yes's in this world, waiting to be appreciated as well. So many powerful yes's, waiting to be given life. When do they get their turn?
When in holding one's own does growth become an option?
Where in the struggle for us does compassion for others get an invitation?
When, in the constant sound, does silence get its moment?
Where in the nonstop asking does gratitude get its place?
Where in the tangle of electrical wires and piped-in entertainment do we find acceptance of all we can live without - and all we can let go?
Where in the giving-up and going-without is there a welcome to all the potential yet invited to live with us?

There are no visible yes's in this house. Nothing that I need to plan, intend, or be on time for. Nothing to which I am asked to adjust or commit or contribute. Only bring in the mail, turn on a few lights, feed the rabbit. There are no no's here either. It's a fine place to rest, in the absence of both answers, until something comes a little clearer.

unraveling

sleep's an unraveling blanket
already barely sufficient for cover
already thin enough for cold wind to discover
every gap in your frayed but implacable conscience

rest is a word about surplus
supposed companion to sleep
supposed reward of a long hard day's labor
too often a luxury for the already-unconscious

present's a gift so misleading
all of the wisdom you thought you were heeding
all of the subleties of pattern repeating
until you step backward uncovered exposed to the whole

relationship's essence is weaving
cross-purposing filaments filling the void between two
no rest can't avoid this arresting design on your life
that uncovers the hidden the unworked the holes
all your frayed threads, afraid nots, offenses
you enter the fray only half-clothed, defenseless
like the dreams where you're trying to dress and redress
while you follow confounding guidance to find
ravel inverted to marvel and wonder
attempt the astounding and maybe impossible
to wake up, rewoven, together

*******

And for my partner-in-lucha, for the first time, I tried translating this using GoogleTranslate. It's not the most intuitive application, so I reworked a lot of this on my own. The wordplays never translate - or perhaps that's only a reflection of my level of Spanish. Maybe if anybody bilingual sees this they can tell me how far off I am.
*******

enredo

el sueño es una manta desenredando
ya apenas suficiente para que cubre
ya bastante delgada que el viento frío descubre
cada hueco en la conciencia deteriorada pero implacable

el descanso es una palabra acerca de sobra
compañera supuesta a dormir
recompensa supuesta de un dia larga de labor
con demasiada frecuencia un lujo para las ya inconscientes

el presente es un regalo tan engañoso
toda la sabiduría a que pensabas que atendaste
todas las sutilezas del patrón que se repiten
hasta que el paso hacia atrás, no mas cubierto, expuesto al todo

la esencia de la relación es tejeduría
filamentos de propositos cruzados llenan el vacío entre dos
no hay descanso, no se puede evitar este diseño que arresta tu vida
que descubre lo oculto el bruto y los agujeros
todos los hilos rotos, las ofensas y los miedos
tu la entras en la refriega sólo media vestida, indefensa
como los sueños en que tratas de vestirte y de remediar
mientras sigas la dirección confundente para encontrar
enredo invertido para la maravilla y el asombro
el intento al pasmoso y tal vez lo imposible:
para despertarse, retejido, juntos