An Old Crow

 

A blooming rhododendron 

An old crow's smile

Me with wet hair 

Walking down my road

Knowing a road may never be owned 

Property, illusion 

An old crow is its own master 

I sigh knowing there is nothing to take dominion over

In this passion play

An old crow's age

My endearing steps

Unknowing destination 

Black eyes that have always known

A lover in Spring 

Que Llueva

Everything sings

My ears are eager, honest students

An exercise in feeling without touch

Ancient ruins all over the world are laughing in a language 

That I am slowly learning

In the center of my bed

I ask for a clarifying dream

Que llueva 

Ring of protection 

Flowing river of time

Fruit of the tree

You beckon me forward

And If I Decided to Fall Right In?

I hear the planets are playing with us. 

Lately, I have been trying to imagine a handful of perverse scenarios in which an outside, metaphysical force is pushing and pulling the strings of human hearts. Toying with our patience, humor, and pragmatism. When the rim flies off my car while I'm driving, when someone says something bewildering and off-handed-I can raise my eyes to the stars with a swan's grace and shoot a knowing look. Oh, you again?

Doesn't that make some of this easier?

There's so much to say. 

I've been thinking about how there are many ways to see a singular situation. Sometimes I think of myself as vain. Easily absorbed in image. I get caught in mirrors. I catch myself in motion and I feel very curious. When I was a teenager I would sit on my bathroom counter, brush my hair, listen to Cigarettes After Sex and watch myself turn into a picture. A picture of beautiful, youthful melancholia. That gaping feeling has shifted into something else as I age. But the desire to capture that emotion- to take a picture, to immortalize and cheat time- that has stayed and it is that that keeps me in mirrors.

Vanity can be regarded as self-respect or a general perplexity within the state of being so alive. Now that I've accepted how much I look at myself, I enjoy looking at this routine as myself being a voyeur of life's holy nature. I am just a small part of all of this. It isn't just my face and frame that I am so intrigued by but the truth of my own soul. My heart and its characteristics. 

Meditation has been calling out to me. There are times when I meditate and I am a part of the vast ocean of stillness and care that one can only come to know when they trust God completely. Other times, I sit down and meditate, and I only seem to flirt with a puddle. I have to remember what happens when I fall right in. Avoiding meditation is like avoiding death. 

The sky is more than blue. It is evaporated music. Ancient witness. I let myself dissolve into everything.

Kimo

 Oh, I do not know where all this dying comes from

How many times must we rebel against our own light and brilliance 

before we flash our eyes open to the available worship of living? 

          

I am sitting down at my old cafe. I spent three years inside these walls. 

A customer, Kimo (a man who camps out at a bench here all day with two computer screens, a simple journal, and a quartz crystal) pointed out to me that he loves the coloring of the ceiling in this place. I looked up with curious eyes, realizing that after all of the hours spent in this cafe, I have never once noted the color of the ceiling. A deep blue black. 

Kimo says, 

"A certain shade of night." 

He tells me that when he works in places with high ceilings, he has more expansive thoughts. Breakthroughs. Revelations. That, I think, is the magic of people. The richness of listening to what others may see. I have never noticed the night sky of my old cafe. Now I always will and I bow to that. 

On the drive here today, I saw an ICE agent mace a young man in the eyes, blinding him. Parallel to the main boulevard and amid the clogged toilet of traffic. For everyone to see. For everyone to sink. I drove away taking stock of my feeling of immeasurable fatigue. A small child within me asked, 

"Why?" 

I do not know. I will never know. With a head hung low, I walked into my old cafe. Originally, I was planning on grabbing a tea and reckoning with whatever it was that I just witnessed. Instead, I saw an old regular of mine. Sweet Kimo. A man interested in matcha, telepathy, AI, and so many other beautiful things, I'm sure. He invited me to sit with him. We were laughing immediately and I told him that I no longer work here. That I am good friends with change. 

Kimo said that my old regulars are going to follow my bright laugh all the way to my new job. I recalled that he once talked to me on a day that I was sporting a blue star pimple patch on the space between my eyes-my third eye as my mother would never call it. Giggling kindly, Kimo told me that in his mind, my name is "BBB". I asked him why that was. 

"Bright Blue Bindi." 

Oh, my life. Oh, the people I get to share time and words with. I could spend the whole of this lifetime thanking God and it would not cover an inch of the ocean in my heart. People are good. People are good. There is ICE, but there is Kimo. All is not lost tonight. 

This is what you want 

This is what you get

    Last night I dreamt I was the hero. I remember a psychologist saying that this is a good thing. That it ought to tell the individual something about how they see themselves. In the dream I was avenging my family, assisting strangers, taking the shirt off of my back and giving it to a person who needed it more than I did. 

    Life since Europe has been messy and fast-paced. I have been trying to show people God's love through my smile. I feel that I have the air about me of a girl who had her heart horrendously broken and is finally remembering that she is a beautiful animal. 

        

Houd Je Nog Een Beetje Van Mij?

Cafe De Kat in De Wijngaert, Amsterdam

    Some people have a snout for sniffing out the best bar around. I'm not one of these people but luckily, I was traveling alongside one of these special few. As God would have it, we visited the best bar in the universe last night. At least that’s what Niels, our newfound Dutch friend, said. It started with Jake and I “minding our business”. We ordered a drink each. He played chess and I wrote in my journal about the wonderful day that it had been. When going up to order another drink at the bar, I heard a man yell something across the room, to another man in Spanish. I turned myself and said, “Oh! Hablas Español?” He said, “Y tú, amiga??” That was invitation enough for him to join us at our table.

    It went from there. This perfect night. We talked there for maybe an hour. About America and vulgarity. About how men only want to talk about sports or politics. This theory was proven after I left the table to use the restroom and when I returned, the men had found their way back to the playful violence that both sports and politics contain. I was the only woman in the bar. I did not feel threatened or intimidated. I like to listen to what men have to say. Sometimes they’re begging to be heard, and I’ve always been a very curious cat anyway. I should add that I really only enjoy these kinds of dynamics if the men at hand are reciprocal in their attention. If they are also wondering what my thoughts are on the subject. What I can sniff out, if not the best bar in the universe, is a man pretending to care. 

    Every once in a while, an older man with a gorgeous ponytail, would walk by, looking over Jake’s chess board. He’d sneakily smile and move a piece or keep an opinion about the game to himself. He had humorous, mischievous eyes. We kept asking him to sit and play but I think he was enjoying the other patrons of the bar and the ongoing fútbol game. Niels wrote down the bar-specific cuss words that him and his friends like to use while enjoying their drinks. “Hepatitis B” was my favorite. In hindsight, I think he was the only one using this vocabulary. I say this because he seemed to me one of those people who take part in the world, eagerly, beautifully- and yet spending such a large amount of time dowsed in a world of their own. Sort of like me. 

    I should mention that this entire night began with Jake and I eating Chinese food (really outstanding Chinese food) and arguing over whether or not I have the ability to get drunk. I’ve been convinced that no matter how much I drink lately, I can’t seem to get drunk-even buzzed! He bet me that if we got two drinks in me, I’d be giggling and stumbling over myself. Stumbling over outer space. Cafe De Kat in De Wijngaert is where we arrived to test the theory. My really dumb theory. 

    Drink one went alright. Drink two introduced us to all of our new Dutch friends and it also became my new outfit. As I sat down at the table, with two very fancy glasses of gin and tonic, the one closest to me dumped halfway in my lap. Niels kept saying, “It’s okay, darling. It’s more than okay.” I told him that Jake had officially won our bet. He had also won a skull achingly close chess game earlier that day. I had had enough of Jake winning and told Niels all about how aggravating it is to have lost every single game of chess against him for the last two years that we have been dating. All Niels said was, “Forget that. Dissolve your ego. There’s no winning anyway.” Yea, of course I know that. It still sucks. 

    New characters slowly started trickling into the bar. Xander (ponytail guy) finally stopped and played chess with Jake, promising me to play as brutal as possible. I needed to be avenged and was grateful. Niels talked to me about his mother who passed last August. I asked what she was like. He said, “beautiful”. I could see the grief in his face. I could see him as a young Dutch boy in Amsterdam in a beautiful grocery store walking around with his beautiful mother. Going home to their narrow, brick home. He told me she had died in her sleep. We both smiled. Not everyone gets that lucky.

    Niels kept saying this cute Dutch phrase to patrons as they trinkled into the bar. "Houd Je Nog Een Beetje Van Mij?" I noticed this and asked what it meant. 

"Do you still love me a little?" 

    We all ventured outside for a smoke. Some cigarettes and a joint, provided by Xander (though at this point I was referring to him as Sensei because this is what Niels had been calling him). I can’t remember who brought it up but Pass the Dutchie was the song everyone was singing as we smoked and laughed. I asked Sensei what he laughs like and he got another sneaky look on his face. He kept saying that he didn’t care anymore. That he loved Americans. We won the bar over, it seemed.

    Everyone really hates Trump here. How well informed they are. We shared in our grief and shame for our country. When we praised our new friends for being so up to date with American politics. Niels laughed and said, “We’re bored!” More laughing. More beautiful laughing. Finally, Niels brought out his rosary and started talking about God. He told us that he does not believe in coincidences. My heart must have been running through my ribs. I touched his arm and said, “I don’t believe in God. I know God.” We shared a smile and blabbed about love and life and the movie Amèlie. What a perfect stranger. Though he no longer felt far away in that way. As the night crawled forward, Niels began to feel more like a long-lost friend or a crazy uncle. We took a selfie in the cold. I didn't want to forget his little smile. I didn't want to forget anything. 

    By the end of the night, the bar bill found itself to be almost as high as all of us standing outside and the bar was closing down. We stood around while they locked up the place and we talked some more with this guy from Guatemala and his friend from Morocco. They told us stories about how they met Niels and by this point, everyone was so high and giggly that anything would’ve had us bent over ourselves. They asked if we wanted to join them in finding a different bar, but it was the end of our road. I had laughed enough for the week. 

    We all hugged and said our goodbyes. Xander pulled me in and whispered a very gentle “thank you.” I won over Sensei multiple times over. I'll say one more thing: I'm not a greedy woman with my experiences. I know when I've had enough to drink, enough laughter, enough inspiration to write my next page. We could have followed them to the subsequent bar but what for? With a cup so full, I'm bound to spill. 

Diaries from Europe

Flight to Amsterdam

    Going over the Atlantic Ocean, Jake and I unsuccessfully tried to knock ourselves out with Dramamine. Once we accepted our failure, we watched My Own Private Idaho together. Perfectly syncing our back of the plane chair TVs. It was my second time watching it and I found it less tragic, more Shakespearian. A similar movie came to mind: Paris, Texas. Same long, slow shots over rural America. Same look of desolation and confusion on the main character's faces. 

    I can't believe I am going back to Europe. I'm thinking of my friend Giuly a lot. All of the beautiful things she has seen with her eyes. We were so happy running around Barcelona together a few summers ago. Speaking Spanish and eating strange cuts of meat. Wondering how we thought our stomachs could handle it in the first place. She told us that it is vital to visit Anne Frank's house. I'd like to go and pay her some respect. 

Amsterdam, Netherlands 

   I have never seen an address as long as the one we will be borrowing for 10 days. The travel day ended up wrecking my "holy shit I'm in Europe" attitude. My ears clogged horribly on the plane, and I grew weaker and weaker as we navigated the airport, trains, and a bus to get to where we are staying. I fell asleep after a tired cry. I am so vulnerable when I travel. I'm pretty bad at it. It's a labor of love for me, always. When I woke up from my cat nap, Jake had yogurt, berries (which the Dutch refer to as 'forest fruit'?) and croissants. Some espresso with delicious local cream and I was saved from my own suffering. You must remember: a rough start does not imply a rough stay. Bread and sleep, baby. Bread and sleep.  

Anne Frank Day

    Yesterday we fought through our jet lag and ended up having a very special time in the city. Thanks to our obliterated and out of wack circadian rhythms, we woke up extremely early and waited for a bakery to open. Bakkerji Wolf was the name. Shakshuka for Jake and pancakes for me. We popped our little heads into some shops, embarrassed ourselves badly at a hotel where we tried to con the front desk clerk into giving us a free phone charger adapter, and finally found ourselves at Anne Frank's house. 

    It's difficult to describe how it felt to be inside such a historical and heavy place. The streets of Amsterdam feel so happy, even in Winter. The houses are whimsically built, all in rows and facing gorgeous canals. Everyone is dressed beautifully and biking to what I imagine in their lover's house. How was it that years and years ago Nazis were driving up and down the streets and committing mass murder? Surely that was not here. I remembered that even I live in a place that was brutally stolen. Violent history leaves a rotten stench on even the loveliest modern places. 

    Inside the annex, I stared at Anne Frank's portrait for minutes at a time. It felt as if she were looking back at me. Her biggest dream was to be a successful writer. Her fate was cruel, but I thank God that her dream came true in the end. I found her writing so antsy, hopeful, and youthful. The anticipation and yearning she must have felt, being in hiding for two whole years. Being denied the right to feel the sun on her face. Children need life around them. I felt sickened by what Germany got away with. So many angels in heaven. Anne Frank with her own special seat. 

    After digesting our visit, we walked through the unbelievably stunning nearby church. At Le Bastille, we ate eggplant, fava beans, bell peppers, rice, green beans, and chicken. The chef in the open kitchen ground large amounts of pistachio and hazelnut for baklava. I enjoy the restaurants in Europe and Asia where you walk in and they serve one thing. The day ended softly with Aperol drinks at a bar and a few rounds of playing cards. We watched The Sopranos until our eyes became heavy. 

Wijk aan Zee, Netherlands

    Not working is bliss.  For the past few months, I have been consistently working six-day work weeks, and it has been...harrowing. Being here is relaxing and I am reminded of the fruits of my labor as I enjoy my leisure, far away from my daily routine. These are some of the best moments in life. Where you have the privilege of truly getting away and seeing yourself in a new light. Jake and I took a train to a small Dutch village off the coast of the North Sea. We attended the Tata Steel Chess Tournament. Accidentally arriving early, we killed time by walking along the beach and collecting shells. Later we ate fish soup at a weird seaside cafe. Then we watched the most famous modern chess players compete against each other. The venue was silent. Everyone tuning into each and every move made by the players. It was novel. Jake and I played our own game of chess at the mermaid-esque bar around the way. 

    Hopping back on the bus, and then a train, we arrived back in Amsterdam and ate at Pesca. A restaurant where you pick out your fish and wine in a market. Then they cook it up for you minutes later. We ate ceviche, seaweed butter on bread, potato with grilled leek, prawns, scallops, and burrata and beet salad. Best of all: a salted whole sea bass. Fish is God's meat. 

    Brussels, Belgium

    My twenty-fifth birthday was spent in a state of awe and gratitude. It started with reading Patti Smith's "Bread of Angels" in bed. Just the right book and just the right woman to start the day off with. She's a real guru of mine. An omnipresent grounding force. When I read her writing, I feel like I am taking in sage advice tailored to my very ear. From Patti's pen to my heart. Yoga in the kitchen while Jake sipped coffee and of course...played chess. Woodpecker 47 served us insane pancakes (my favorite thing about America). I was transfixed by Belgium. There are three main languages spoken there: French, Dutch, and German. We discovered the best vintage store in the universe: Melting Pot Kilo. Right there in the middle of the city. 

    Our apartment was also centrally located. Every ten minutes the ancient bones of the apartment would shake with the passing by of the train. Jake bought me a massage in a nice spa where the woman cracked me like a chiropractor. Not exactly what I signed up for but...I feel really good. After being folded in quarters, we ran to this nearby gyro place where we had previously visited the day before. Everything about this gyro was right. We watched one of the Greek staff members of the restaurant chase a crazy (possibly shoplifting) teenager down the cobblestone alley and into a huge crowd of tourists. Yelling in spiteful and passionate French. It was a sight. To digest, a walk uphill, following the beautiful towering view of a church felt poignant. Back to our place for a nap and a Sopranos episode. Dinner was at a Portuguese restaurant where the language barrier was harder than expected. 

    We were on a time limit, with pending tickets to The Toon Theatre. A French theatre that puts on puppet shows a few nights a week. On my birthday, they would be performing "The Three Musketeers". We thought we would miss the show, but we were just lucky enough to make it. It was, naturally, all in French. Despite not understanding the dialogue it was enchanting enough to hold our interest. Hundreds of previously used puppets hung from the ceiling all around the theatre which was, yea, creepy. But awesome. The experience really was fabulous, and my birthday felt just the same. It was one of the first birthdays where I felt zero weirdness. My ground felt a little more established. Look at me, seeing a little French show in a new country with my angel of a boyfriend. Miracles happen every day. I can't say thank you enough...

I am writing this from a beautiful pub back in Holland. I will keep you updated with details as they come. I met a crazy stoned Dutch guy yesterday and I really need to tell you about him. Crazy people are the best. Here's my view from where I wrote all this down: 

Love you!