Stoned Little Sister

It's raining on a morning in May and we have been writing haikus for each other. 

My little sister calls me with a theory about reincarnation. She's very stoned. 

The law of karma aside, 

What if an individual received a fortunate life, followed by a sorrowful life? Following the subsequent unfortunate life would be another life of fortune and so on. Back and forth. Happiness and despair. Mountain peaks and desolate plains. And what if we reincarnated in this way into infinity? In perfect balance. 

She then asked me, knowing that this was the potential order of the universe, how I would feel about my next life. I told her that I would expect sorrow because I love this life. I am happy in this life. My happiness is from within. She told me that this theory would allow people to feel hopeful for what is to come if they feel that they are in their cycle of misfortune while allowing those who feel fulfilled and lucky in this life to experience deep gratitude for the cards that they've been dealt. For it could be much worse. 

I believe in a different kind of order, however. One that is also but a theory from oral tradition long before me. I believe in love and I believe in many, many lives. I tell myself that I am allowed to believe everything. 

When I was on a long walk with my friend Giuly, years ago, she told me that the idea of Heaven and Hell haunted her and so she simply stopped believing in them. Like closing a laptop. Slamming a door. Breaking away from a kiss. Finality. It did not occur to me at the time that one could choose to lessen their suffering in such a way. Would Heaven and Hell still exist even if my nineteen-year-old friend Giuly refused to believe in them? 

I took after her ambition and pledged to choose. We make our own happiness. Some may not like the sound of that. It holds them accountable. Since then, I've studied and chosen what aligns with my heart in each moment, with each breath. In high school, God used to be smoking weed from an apple with my best friend Alex.  Now it's the blue sky. Even this will change. 

In it and Awake

I want to remember today forever.

I want to document every feeling I have as I drive home. 

Today my color was red and red is not usually my color. It is not a color I feel very deeply or very often. It is not a color I'm attuned to. I see it everywhere on the road leading home. Red brake lights. Stop signs. My dashboard all lit up and beaming. All a passionate hue. What does red feel like to me today? I've decided it is change. 

I'm going to be so many different variations of this person. There's such a palatable feeling of being ready for that. The prospect of continuing to be who I am is sitting so neatly and comfortably inside of me. Who I am and who I was and who I may become in the future is all a construct. Something ancient in me recognizes that I am but a fluid spirit dancing through all of these forms. Caught in an endless dance of creating meaning, attaching to shapes, and then disintegrating all of it into a holy fire. 

I just met Gabi Abrão and I held her hands. She signed my books. I gave her a letter. It was the most nervous I have felt in a very long time. Knots in the stomach. The experience gave me first date jitters. Witnessing her read from her new book was very emotional. Struck with so much curiosity and summon, my heart felt entranced by her words. She tells the truth and I know this because the truth in me recognizes this. The best part of the night was feeling my own sense of confirmation that I must write while I am here.

Lately I have been managing writer's block-adjacent symptoms. There's so much I want to convey. Essence, feeling, thought, absurdity, revolt, awe, melancholia, instinct, romance, perversion, spirit, confusion, mercy, sanctity, the ache of belonging. Acknowledging yourself as your own lush sovereign island, as Gabi would say. Every cell in my body buzzes as I drive home from this experience of meeting her. In my mind, I can clearly see all the future work to be done. The ink to be spilled. 

In my heart I hold the idea that one day I may meet Sotce or that Hitomi and I will be in the same room. These are teachers that I genuinely want to honor. The funny thing is that I do not know these people. I'm only familiar with their work. These are not women I know but women I see. What they want the world to know falls upon my willing ears, and it means so much. A thought of gratitude visits me over and over again...I am so glad that I am alive at the same time as these people. 

Today was a day of so much love. I'm reveling in this feeling of 'I am here'. 

Yesterday my friend was sharing her perception of me with me. She said that I live with so much joy and optimism. It appears that I have no problems to others because of the happiness radiating from me. We laughed at that together. What a funny thing to hear. If I had transcended all suffering, you'd know it and I'd be teaching some class about it somewhere not in America. Of course, I genuinely suffer. Just like you. But I am grateful to any suffering I experience. I am working to transcend my suffering every day, but I am also in it and awake. There is so much to learn from hurting. 

The other night I was laying on my bed, in the dark. Listening to music with my kitten and sobbing with myself. It was terribly sad. In that moment I remembered the deep sadness of being a fifteen-year-old girl. The pit of melancholia. This feeling hit me like a semitruck. It was all at once beautiful and cliche and self-indulgent. It was dark and I was bowing to it. Now I am here. Here in this moment. Driving. Red everywhere. Overflowing. Change. Transcendent of whatever misery stopped in a handful of days ago. Water leaves me. Pieces of me float back to the ocean and dissolve in the air. 

I remember that I do nothing and God does everything. The mystery of it all is at play. Are you aware of how a part of it you are? 

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.