Hungry Hands

  

     I used to reach with hungry hands towards books that promised to point me in the direction of God. Like a woman with no ground to stand on, without feet earthen enough to bear gruff weight, I searched for a literary substance that could teach me to be good. How can I learn to forgive when I am still furious? How can I say only what is true? How can I destroy the illusion of 'other' and 'self'? How can I dissolve this adamant, feminine rage that has nowhere to go? I read and read and reached and reached. I want to be good. I want to be good.                          Be good.

    Now I toil with books such as these. I wonder if it is similar to cheating in having the answers spread out for me, written by those who only gained their knowing through sacred experience. A life spent locked away in a blank, solitary room, having only books to read can teach a person many things. But a life where you feel hurt, where you watch love take hold of you as if you have no choice over the progression of what is next, a life where you see the ocean, taste the salt, see how it burns you after too much time spent interlaced with it...never to read a page. Which life has learned more?

    These days I have an appetite for books that tell real stories. Books of pain, of pleasure. Books that renounce both. Maybe what most appeals to me is to be shown the answers through a very thin veil. The secrets never fully divulged to me so that I may have a part in it. I don't know that a guidebook on shattering ego will be successful for me in a way that reading the story of a woman deep in her own truth, completely intimate with the aliveness of her own life can show me how possible this is. My taste waxes and wanes. Preferences shift when we expand. The hardest part to learn, I find, is to listen. 

Greener Grass

    The world seems to be engulfed in flames. Plainly and in a metaphorical sense: on fire. Driving down the gloom-riddled streets of home, I wondered where all the good news went. When I learn of a beautiful occurrence, when someone falls in love, a bone heals, why do I find myself with the sense of shock? The two constants of good and bad are but illusions when you hear it from the Buddha and all the others who finally yanked free from their own maya but if all of that is true then why is the Earth ON FIRE?

    I'm not burning up but I can unmistakably feel heat rising all around. People yelling when they could be kissing. That sort of thing. Politics. Politics. Politics. Politics and horror. Will we ever surrender to the wind? Another illusion yet is that I was born in the wrong age. I've always said I would've done better holding a candle in the hallway to get a drink of water from the kitchen. Technology both frightens and delights me. Another sentiment today was one of mourning as I stood frozen in place at my work and realized how much smarter I would be if I never had a phone. Were we actually connected before all of this? We were still killing each other over oil but maybe we looked into each other's eyes more. Maybe some of this was slower. Gentler. 

    The happiest place I can be (subject to change because I haven't been to India yet) is alone in my house. Every light turned off, skin scrubbed clean, wrapped tightly in a loving fabric, with my journal in front of me. Whenever the world is too much and the good news seems to have gotten lost en route, I close my eyes and ask to be shown where the love is. This has become a common visualization practice for me to gain a broader sense of life... because it is still terribly beautiful no matter how atrocious. With eyes closed and my head in the ceiling I saw:

Shiva dancing with one thousand arms, unicorns drinking sugar from a waterfall, towers of rock in Joshua Tree on a wide open plain, the quiet of outer space, my body as complete, a lotus flower opening, a jar of peanut butter, aging and dying. 

    I, a twenty-four year old woman, can not heal the world today. I can not heal the world and it hurts my feelings. What I can always do is understand why density exists. It is something I always seem to write about but only because this is a constant reckoning for me. I find it very confronting no matter how often I look it in the face and say, "I understand". I'm lucky enough to experience it and still believe in greener grass. I will let the density eat me alive but I will never be jaded. I meet lovely people with hope in their eyes everyday. We look to each other and a cord of communion grows. We're all suffering in some way but as my old friend would say, "Goddamn it, the sun's gonna shine. If you can't find yours, you can borrow some of mine."

Tidepool

    My eyebrows are back and the world is different now. I've never been so homesick in my entire life. I missed my blue, shaggy carpet. The feeling of hugging Savannah. Fogging up every window in my house while making hot stew. I make stew like it's the last one I'll ever get to make. The other night I sat at my alter and mediated for a long time. God met me somewhere in the middle and laughed at me, lovingly.

     "Long vacation?"

"I'm sorry it's been so long. I get distracted towards the end of the year. You're still very real to me."

I apologized. It's never been my intention to only commune with God when I am tired and desperate. I want to reach out and touch God at the height of my joy, not when I'm anxious on a plane.

    I am in love and it feels sustainable this time. Like it isn't going anywhere when I turn my back to go write something down. No, it is not some antsy child in constant need of entertainment. It's more like a tidepool. Something with it's own community. With waves of grand elation flooding everything on occasion but mostly with an ecosystem in utter support and serenity. I am no longer struggling to keep dying things breathing. This thing has lungs. 

    Starting this year I find myself broke and yet so spiritually wealthy. I've been wondering if anyone can really reach nirvana on their own accord. The moments in my life where wisdom has punched me in my face have usually been from a friend's mouth unto my ears. I need people to show me God everyday through their laughter and confusion. Through surrender and generosity. 

    Over the holiday I mediated in a moment of shakiness and asked God to show me where the love is. This can be a cruel, shallow place. One where people idealize killing, hurting, breaking what stands in tact. I asked to show me how abundant and glorious my life is outside of this frustrating moment, outside of the noise of desperation. I saw my love and I saying beautiful words to each other, dolphins playing, a secluded cabin in the forest with moss engulfing the roof and front steps. I saw my future bookshelf. The espresso machine at my work. My cat laying in a patch of sun. There is one word for this year and that is: enjoy. There is so much to beam. Let's know what we have. 

Full like a Plate

     Remember that it is all perfect. Every tiny detail of your life. Every splinter in your hand. Every kiss on your eyelid is a step towards where you're getting to go. Remember every trip you go on that you may choose to enter laughing. You get to go somewhere and you are on your way even now. It doesn't matter that you think you are somebody. You are the lack of fear when a bug crawls onto your palms. You are cells. A monkey. God. Remember how hard it can be to juggle divinity and humanity. In no way can this be easy but it is perfect. Open your heart wider despite the sting. Know that it can be excruciating. Know that it is utterly part of it. 

Knowing is Different than Being

    My heart is stretching out like a fat guy on his lazy boy chair and yet I can still find myself being unkind. I see myself mostly as a vessel through which love can be transported from there to here and yet the fact remains: I am tempted to be a human twenty-three year old girl all of the time. 

    Today I was rude to a customer. I suppose it is never a good look for me to be anything other than loving and it shows each time I act out of accordance. That goes for everyone. What about those greedy shits who wipe their wealthy butts with the money that their monkeys broke their backs to make? Am I to be kind to them, too? In addition to the kindness that is easy to give out? The answer is yes. I do not believe that it is my karma to put grumpy people in their place, if not gracefully. This is something I can read loud and clear about myself. There is work to do. 

    I am much too gentle (when I am at my most spacious) to stoop down and get into the mud where kindness can not breathe. So I can sympathize for the ache and the mindlessness of this world but there exists an inner awareness that I did not choose to be a human all over again to get stuck another round. I've arrived again to sit in the lotus. Having knowledge of wisdom is one thing and being the embodiment of wisdom is another. It is an entirely alternative dance. 

    What I'd like to be is a mirage of love. It is not in my heart to want people to perceive that I am lovely but that they know love is real because I'm alive with it. As if there are ribbons of it twirled around my flesh. I can not say how deeply reverent I am that I have gotten to be a barista for so many years. It sounds playful when I say this but this experience has granted me so much spiritual practice. And also many years of spiritual warfare, as my friend Bee and I called it when we worked together in our hometown coffeeshop. A sour customer may alchemize your tender heart, molecule by molecule, if you aren't living too much in your spirit that day. 

    What am I trying to do at the end of all of these interactions? What do I want? After steaming gallons upon gallons of milk, what's the work really about here? I think you know. I'm trying to get free, man!!

Another Café Miracle

     Ribbons are curling and waves are kissing cliffs of moss-riddled rock when I choose to be sweeter than I want to be. A casual temptation to make people feel small or dumb as a result of them stretching out your patience exists in customer service land. A temptation that I have submitted to before in poor moments. I enjoy watching people exit the interaction with more joy than they arrived with. This takes a dance of consideration. This takes presence and attention. Six years into making people coffee and it is a dance that becomes fluid or starkly more difficult depending on where I am at in my heart. 

    Today I felt an exorbitant amount of spaciousness within myself. It could've been the weekend of rest, reading, and movies. Or the hours spent with the person I love laughing in each other's arms and over dinner. It could've been God visiting me in every dream I've had recently. There are a million reasons for me to beam right now but the point is that I am somewhere so, so high in the middle of all of it and I was on fire today. 

    There's an older couple who spend their Sunday mornings in my café every weekend. The woman is very gentle in the way she speaks. She wears a gray pixie cut and always has a gorgeous scarf wrapped around her neck. The man is clever and has something very child-like about his demeanor. He always orders a hot chocolate. I then ask him if he'd like whip cream to which he replies in that "whip cream is not for adults." This is the dance we do every weekend. Today I finished his sentence for him when I asked him if he'd like whip cream. I told him that that would just be too gluttonous, something like that. He winked at me. 

    When ringing up their order I asked both him and his wife their names because I can never remember, despite them both being such a beautiful pair and people who always make me feel lighter after our interaction. We chatted for a bit and they gave me their names. I promised I would remember them by next weekend. I stopped the woman and asked her if I had spelled her name correctly. She looked at me with water brimming in her eyes and said, "Yes, thank you." 

    Later into the morning, she strolled back into the line of people and waited for maybe ten minutes to reach me at the front. 

    "Would you like something else? More matcha?", I asked. She said to me,

    I just wanted to tell you that I really appreciated you asking for both me and my husband's names. Even you checking to make sure that you spelled mine right. That meant a lot to me. I really appreciate people who take their time in interactions that are casual and have the tendency to progress rapidly. That takes presence. You always take your time when we're here. I wanted to thank you."

    Her standing in line just to tell me that she was touched brought so much clarity and softness to my heart. I told her that I feel it is important to ask both names of people in a couple when taking their order. Often we address the man and the woman gets lumped into the order forgotten. It isn't a big deal-it's a coffee order after all, but I like doing this so that women feel seen. Even if it's small, it would make a difference to me. I'm always looking out for the tender, observant types. 

    The woman nodded in agreement and replied, 

    "I think it's intention like that that actually does something to change the world. If everyone just took a little extra time, a little extra care...our interactions with each other would feel so much lighter. I lived in Germany for a long time and I felt like such an outsider. Really alone. It's stuff like this now that means more to me than it ever did. I see you."

    The graceful woman blew me a kiss and went back to her booth, flipping through her book with a look of serenity all over her. Sometimes I encounter older women who in their fluidity, in their humility, in their lovingness-take me to my deepest and wisest parts of myself and something in me says, "fucking TAKE NOTES, girl." Believe me I do. 

Get into Heaven Free

    There's a river. A big river. An infinite stream of living exhale. Unbound by thought. There's an emptiness in the direction that calms the lethargic heart. An absence of worry. Lukewarm, not of this world. You arrive on horseback. They made you shave your head on the way. You can't take anything with you. Not your nana's picture frame of her father. Not your shame. Not your favorite drinking glass; the one with the slender rim. There's no cheating the game or bending the rules. Rules are no good to the water when the water is the law. You'd be ruining your own dessert. You always liked reading the last page of the book first. 

    Empty-handed and bare-necked, you come to the edge of the bank. Imagine the feeling of a slow fall inward. Oncoming weightlessness. Being rocked into a dream as an infant. The face of every person you have ever loved shining in your eyes. Reaching for your arms and finding seafoam instead. A sadness in this experience creates a need to hold yourself. Grab all that you can. The nothingness comes. 

    The river takes you down, the day is new. You do not wonder what comes next because something in you knows. Down the river, kissed by every drop. Gazing directly above you, you see a lightshow of stars and a milky rain falling down. You were beautiful on Earth because you were kind. Remembering all the moments of deep recognition that love is so real that it is mortifying when you can't find it. Shouldn't it always be found left lingering on pillows from the night before? Or on the check at the restaurant? On the eyelids of resting children? In a well-loved fireplace? 

    Do you wish you could journey backwards? Do you think you'd be still this time? We look our end in the face every day, but it hardly changes us. You see misery go unchanged. Hopelessness tended to, pet like a lap dog, even. All of your life, all your embraces, every filthy thought, every smile to a stranger going by. 

    Now there's only you and the river. You, the river. It was all very touching. You might even do it again.