form is freedom

Louise led us into poetic thoughts:

I. The Silk Poem

I am unlike silk
in that I am not soft, pliable
I no longer feel the need
to move with ease
through the hands of others
to slide without catch
through outstretched fingertrips
But I can bind
can heft the weight of 
a singular body spinning into me
twine, untwine
can catch the fall
of an aerialist
    dangling in beauty, in strength
in precarious

power

I am no longer wrapped around
another's desires but spinning outward
twine, untwine

I am not unlike the silk that vines upward

- a steadfast hold
- a certainty
- the tumbling release of safety
into trust

I have become this: unbound

II. The Lube Poem

I am unlike lube in that I don't make 
the making of love easier
I want to complicate the idea, the question
I will not ease you into pleasure
but ask you to sit with discomfort

love is a long task
not unlike sex- it is a dying,
a euphoria, a glittering blackness,

a moment of full awakeness

I am not like lube that gives itself to satisfaction
I will not ask you to rush
from the unsettling you hold in your gut

love is an undoing
willing one's self into evolutions
willing one's self past the boundaries of internal
landscapes into the territory of another

I am not like lube inviting your passage
you will have to evoke response through your struggle,
your long journey, your hunger and thirst

I am not like lube-
wet, lush, slippery
I am the desert that beckons you
to wildness
to survive the stripping bare of your pretenses,
your defenses, leaving your very structure exposed

love is an unmaking
of one- a widening

yes,
love will make us wider.

Awoken: Roo Panes

After a week, calling this summer camp feels too dismissive of the beautiful, powerful souls I'm sharing life with here and the work they've done, the explorations we're endeavoring to take together. This group amazes me with its intensity, vulnerability, intelligence, defiance of other-ing. Despite our paths—which have been unalike in so many ways, we are like-minded. We are questioners, weepers, hungry and so full, we are lovers, we come with all we have salvaged from destructions and fears. We are bearing witness to each other.

The Hudson Valley is deep smudges of green sprawling over outcroppings of rock, a haze of humid air like a shroud- paths through woods like a dry creek bed- stepping stones, flashes of light shaken over the grass between the patches of leaf shadow. Amidst all the conversations, dialogues, and sessions the farm has been a much needed space of processing with my body. On Tuesday, I spent the morning harvesting rainbow chard and collards, weeding beds beneath the stirring hush of wind gathering in the leaves lifted by the wind and the sun pressed warm against my back. I've begun again my practice of meditation. These simple things seem the most concrete in living into dissolving the barriers within me, into believing others experience, seeing 'you are my other me.'

Over the week we celebrated Shabot, dove into some text study at Bibles and Bagels, Torah and Treats and, Quran and Cookies. (Yes, there's a theme there.) We've been examining issues of forced migration, forced returns, displacement, the refugee crisis, detention centers, and border imperialism. On Sunday we shared our life journeys over the course of a few hours and all of these stories included moments of rupturings-- for some of us moments where our communities became physically or emotionally unsafe. These stories remain present in our discussions and learnings.  At the beginning of the week as we examined Islamphobia and borders, we held the stories of the lived experience of war in Iraq, of violent repression of revolution in Syria, of Boko Haram in Nigeria, of the Rwandan genocide, and the sanctuary movement at the US/Mexican border.

At the same time we have been learning about earth care in our three faith traditions-- within Christianity the idea that God is manifested as creator, incarnate in Christ, and Holy Ghost –that we understand the oneness of God as God in community. “Building a land ethic causes us to enlarge our community to include soil, water, the plants, etc.” In Islam the concept of ‘amana’ – that everything has a purpose and you should not even kill an ant because you do not know it’s task, you should not take more than you need because nothing is yours alone. I am learning about so many beautiful traditions, passages, and ways of understanding the Divine and delving into so many questions.

For the first time in a long time I feel calm and grounded in so much unknown, so much mystery. My usual frantic planning is quieted by a sense that I am exactly where I need to be.

"Multifaith Social Justice Summer Camp"

"Summer Camp" as I've been referring to this program to explain what I'm doing with my summer is only three days in and I am enchanted with this space and my cohort. The thirteen of us are sharing an old Victorian mansion perched on the hill above the creek with a sunroom, bright wood floors, rugs and worn floral sofas to sink into, and a twenty-person dining table. We've spent the past two nights devouring each other's company late into the night while eating left over ginger bars and oranges. It feels intimate already-- tooth brushing parties and cooking breakfast together. This space feels so sacred and important for me right now-- both radically oriented and rhythmically slow- where people grow food, go kayaking and bird watching, and reflect so they can act and are willing to risk arrest at protests. Several of the founders spent years with Fellowship of Reconciliation, AFSC, and Borderlinks. 

Yesterday began with a tour of Stony Point with a vigorous investigation of the strawberry patch which rewarded us with delicious fresh berries. Later we had an anti-bias/privilege training which fed a rich dialogue about mutual liberation, intersectionality, and how to hold one's own identity while truly being open to the experience of others. My cohort represents Nigeria, Pakistan, Syria, Iraq, and America as well as Jewish, Muslim, and Christian faith traditions. In the afternoon we sat under the shade of one of the campuses giant trees (elm, maple, walnut, beech, magnolia, etc.) and had an Islam 101 class. Rabia, our teacher, hands move to punctuate all her sentences, the fringes of her shawl snapping in movement, she is a sufi mystic and draws us into the narratives and the deep beauty of the tradition. She spoke of the difference between study of religion and lived experience-- "what does it feel like to belief this in your flesh? to hold this inside of you? to have it shape the way you see the world?"

Today on the schedule was "Building a Wigwam" which I assumed was an attempt at clever naming of team-building activities... but we actually were building a wigwam. After breakfast we gathered with Great Chipmunk, an Algonquin shaman, and began with learning about the natives of this land we are living on. We received a name from the bird clan with medicine cards-- mine, the Brown Pelican. We learned some traditional welcoming and blessing songs and offered our prayers and tobacco to the Great Spirit and to the bamboo we cut for the wigwam. We spent the afternoon digging and bending and binding the bamboo while learning about the significance of wigwams and about Chipmunk's tribe. We sang more of the beautiful songs of his tradition and all laid under the 6-point star the crisscross of arcs made learning more about the spiritual understanding of his people. Then we sang blessing from our own faith traditions. 

I am so excited to live and learn with these folks. 

Twenty-Fine.

Oh little life, you are so gloriously good. Thank you. Thank you.

The Wolf Pack

My school year with the kiddos is officially over. I thought I'd feel relief because teaching is exhausting but I'm actually mostly sad. At the last day of after school yesterday I was shocked when the third grade boys all burst into tears. These tough kids who like to play fight and actually fight at every recess were all sitting at a table crying and consoling each other. One of my fifth graders asked me how I could leave them all alone as if me not returning were a complete abandonment and I guess I've felt that, like I'm betraying my seventeen little humans with their complicated emotions and thirty-second full range swings from euphoria to despair. But they've swayed my heart a bit, after two years with the AS program I'm still considering education as a future pursuit.

Today was Wolfe Fest and it was amazing to see the impact a community school makes. From parents demonstrating their newly developed English skills to their kids demonstrating the Spanish literacy they're learning/retaining and the kids performing from their community theater class to their mad dance skills and the food from several of the kids parents' restaurants to the PTO and 100s of snowballs served up by mwah-- it was the neighborhood together.

Mostly today I just feel bursting with pride and affection for this school and my little kiddos so I am posting this video to brag a little.

Democracy as Listening: Reflection on Beyond Gated Politics

I wrote this short essay in 2010 during what would become one of the college courses that influenced me most, Philosophy of the Common Good. I recently unearthed a paper copy of it on which I had scribbled: Do Not Throw Away. I'm not sure if I would still use the term laziness for our tendency toward the easiest path, but maybe it is that. This essay felt timely in the current political context, but more so I see many of these themes present as the manifesto I am trying to live by.

Democracy as Listening:

Coles examines voices that can contribute to democracy and concludes "we could take the perfect storm threatening democracy as an occasion- an instigation- to reinvent boats more worthy of journeys of democratic promise" (pg. 263). One way to do this is through the process of remaining in motion. Deconstruction speaks to this as it cultivates the democratic process of a willingness to become destabilized to peer behind and to hear. Democracy is an art of listening, of re-inventing and re-imagining as we share and mingle with one another. It requires learning to ask better questions of ourselves and of others.
     For most, laziness is our default mode of operation; we exert the least amount of energy possible to accomplish any goal. This laziness has crept into out process of conversation and undermines democratic ways of being. We know very little of how to open ourselves and how to encounter, we rely on formulaic conversation that doesn't breach the surface. Despite our truest and noblest desires to know or be known, questioning and true exploration of others are hindered by what we think we must ask or not ask. These formulaic conversations don't allow for spontaneous or new encounter. We often do not learn or meet things in new ways because we are busy (and lazily) drawing conclusions, categorizing, and organizing people and experiences in our head ahead of hearing them. Our language, rituals, and social structures confine us to the same ways of relating-- even if that leaves us without genuine human interaction or democracy. These formulas also conceal how we really desire to interact or encounter an other, a "You." -- even our self.
      Democracy is birthed from our ability to be listeners. It is not created by a set of rules or exported in a style of government; it is first and foremost the willingness to respond. This is a task of extraordinary attentiveness and of humble self-sacrifice. True listening is an act of surrendering; it is possibly the greatest act of servanthood because it completely subverts our selfish inclinations and at the core validates the other as equal. When we chose to listen to another we open ourselves to the dislodging of our own ideas and values and create a space where ideas can be confronted, reworked, and re-imagined. This is the root of democracy as a theory of remaining in motion, it sets us journeying to find the common good because the new ideas must be processed and categorized. every encounter is dynamic and shaping; though without listening they can be simply mutually reienforcing and undemocratic. When we hear the whole of an other (their values, anticipation, their self) we are forced to recognize their humanity, equality, and right to exist in all the same ways as our self.
      Yet, there are two categories we hear others in: friends and enemies. We easily allow some people to speak into our life while forcefully opposing the voice of others. This has to do with perceived difference, and the threat to our stability and way of seeing-- just as we duck from a branch swinging towards our face, we duck from the presence of others who would disturb our way of being. We believe what we want to beleive, and the way we think actually transforms how we see the world around us, the language we use controls our framework and worldview. How can we truly listen to those we repel because of their confrontation to our self? How do we develop ways of passing people from the category of enemy to friend, from tolerating to listening? What creates in us the ability to be taught-- especially by those we least want to learn from?
      Receptivity cannot be imposed from outside our selves but is cultivated within by living in the paradox of our own identity-- both as a host and a guest, as rooted and sojourner. We must enjoy the exhiliartion of discomfort, of risk, like diving into cold water, participating in an extreme sport, or giving a speech-- one comes to that moment of extreme fear and anticipation and then must plunge in. We must hold our own convictions within hopeful doubt, opening ourselves to keep asking questions, to keep pressing forward in deconstructing, to continue allowing new information in. On a personal and national level, it is this democratic listening and receptivity that protects us from the inclination toward domination. A listener must ask "what does the other feel? what does the other need? How is the other experiencing the system, is this what they desire?" As Coles notes, it is this pursuit of the other that calls us to attentiveness, it is the moral thing which creates our subjectivity-- our very humanity (pg 151).
     What motivates us to becomes listeners is the belief that only through encountering do we progress- only through listening can democracy be formed. There is a need to cultivate our capacity for wonder-- not just at beauty or scenery, but wonder a the mysteries of another person, developing our desire for exploration. As Buber says, "try to meet every person, situation, and object in its own way." Democracy requires of us to continually crack open our habits and examine them. Just as those who travel are inflicted with the "virus" (the travel bug) of craving authentic cultures-- to see new places, to travel for the chance of experiencing profoundness-- once we encounter an other in a genuine way we gain a contagious desire to travel into the profoundness of another person. The way we move forward is to destabilize and question, to draw new lines and merge ideas, to continue in this cycle of unraveling and stitching up. Coles speaks to this in his encouragement to engage with the dangerous and strange within ourselves and others and to develop receptiveness to alterity. "Encounter is the only way to challenge the fantasy and reality between our ideals."
        We will always wrestle with the subtle, yet, powerful forces inside us that wish to dominate and prone to laziness. The forces that desire to colonize the hearts of others with our own values instead of inhabiting another as guest, as a sought after presence and allowing their impression to weigh on the vacancies of our own. Democracy is an art of travel, of remaining in motion. It is the process of finding better questions to ask, more honest ways of seeking and revealing ourselves-- and of allowing others to emerge, not trying to order, control, or possess them but to reach out for genuine human interaction. This is the character of love, to appreciate and hear an other for whom they are, and to sacrificially desire what is best for them.* Democracy is only possible as we become listeners who encounter and respond.

  The End

*I think my idea of love has evolved towards both/and "my liberation is bound up with yours" and that is requires seeking the good of the other as sacrifice of pure self-interest.

//Get up, Get down//

Obsessed with: Slyvan Esso- Coffee. 

Stray thoughts: 
Two days ago I packed up the remnants of my room in the city and made the trek home, completing the millennial trope of moving into my childhood room. Today I got the packing list for "social activism summer camp" (as I've decided to nickname the institute I'm attending).




It feels strange to depart from Baltimore after calling it home for the past three year.

I've been reading The Empathy Essays, a gift received in a package the last day I received mail in the city. It has been a week of goodbyes. A week of surprises too: unexpected encounters with friends who've been states and continents away, a hand delivered "mix tape" tucked into my back door from a friend who just moved back into the city, on to the same street-- arriving just a day before my own departure-- strange currents we humans are carried by.

"Empathy isn't just listening, it's asking the questions whose answers need to be listened to. Empathy requires inquiry as much as imagination. Empathy requires knowing you know nothing. Emapthy means acknowledging a horizon of context that extends perpetually beyond what you can see.... It means realizing no trauma has discrete edges. Trauma bleeds. Out of wounds and across boundaries. Sadness becomes a seizure. Empathy demands another kind of pourousness in response. ... Empathy comes from the Greek empatheia- em (into) and pathos (feeling)-- a penetration, a kind of travel. It suggests you enter another person's pain as you'd enter another country, through immigration and customs, border crossing by way of query."

"I needed people to deliver my feelings back to me in a form that was legible. Which is a superlative kind of empathy to seek, or to supply" an empathy that rearticulates more clearly what it's shown." - L. Jamison

I realized my mind feels pretty ugly, muddy, when I spend to much time forward thinking-- so I've been practicing mediation again, calling myself back over and over to the present moment.

Yes, I'm a Feminist.

Overheard today: "Why do you keep picking up sticks, you're a little girl not a boy, stop playing with sticks." I grinned at the little girl behind her mother's back and I hope she keeps playing however she wants too.

Yelled at me this week: "Hey. Hey honey. Hey pretty lady.  Snowflake. SNOWFLAKE ... Hey... Hey.... Hey! You're not going to talk to me?" He kept muttering about me as I walked home, then on the way back to the metro an hour later: "Hey girl! I'm talking to you cause I like you. Okay, you're not going to talk to me today? I'm going to talk to you tomorrow. and tomorrow. and tomorrow. and tomorrow. and tomorrow." And he was still muttering as I reached the corner of the block.

Piled on top of the news from EMU, new of sexism in the Peace Corps, my friend's recent f/b group, a hollaback-eqsue creation for intimate partner/dating violence, which in 2-days had 800 Baltimore womyn sharing stories... it all feels like more than exhausting- it hurts. This repetitive sense that the world I exist inside does not care about the experience of womyn or our safety and my own experience is just a tip of the iceberg for others who experience the intersectional oppressions of racism, sexism, abelism, classism, etc. It negates the value of female bodied humans when men can remain in powerful positions after harming us or who are given little consequence because their image and ego is considered more important than a womyn's.  It negates the value of female humans when our experiences and feelings are dismissed, mansplained, or trivilized or our emotional labor is expected and unappreciated. It negates our value when we are told (as I was recently) that two of the most important things about being a woman are being able to get pregnant and get wet.

Recently witnessing a frustrating gender-oppression based workshop I felt hurt for my friends who were unheard and subjected to microagressions. The gap is so far. I kept trying to think of what the small next step is, the link these men could make, the reasonable ask... and that also stirred up a rage and grief in me.... why should it be so hard for a male to trust a womyn when she states her experience or simply when she is saying no? Why should it be so hard for males to see womyn as peers, as peoples, and not just for what they can give to a man?

I'm thankful for the womyn in my life and for the males I know who are listening and for all of our continually work to dismantle sexism and patriarchy inside ourselves.

Love & Revolution, dears.

one for sorrow, two for joy

 These past few days have been ones of feeling deep gratitude and contentment for the lives that are connected to mine, in the quiet moments of layering on blankets to sit on the porch and watch the sunset dim the sky as storm clouds rolled in, walking through the farmer's market catching up on our emotional landscapes and escapades in loving others, whispering around the kitchen table when it was later then we meant to be awake, walking country lanes under a still sky- all of it feels drenched in the strong sense of belonging and being knotted into these ties that bind.

Chugging northeast, slowly toward Baltimore through the woods of Virginia I felt filled, brimming with the requited love of this valley. Each time I visit I feel like I have one less reason not to be in H-burg living in proximity to these ones who shape my life. 

Em and I were talking about measuring all that had occurred in our lives in time spans or within presidential terms-- Obama's election in 2008 (living in Uganda) till now... it is almost incomprehensible to me what 8 years has contained... homes in three countries, traveling through 16... submerged in the west coast and the east coast, my entire university experience, my first partnered relationships, women's study, Salinas and Occupy Wall St. and anti-oppression, CHIP and JCC and protests, the national guard with tanks in my cities streets, Black Lives Matter and prison work and all my incarcerated friends... humanitarian aid at the Mexican/US border... learning another language, the euphorias and despairs, depatures and returns... and the countless moments that glow "burn, burn, burn like fabulous roman candles exploding" .... wider and wider the world presses me out to the edges of myself... and each of those experiences held their particularities (the substance of all our love and good art.) 

***

...myselves ask "life, the question how do i drink dream smile 

and how do i prefer this face to another and 

why do i weep eat sleep-what does the whole intend"

 they wonder. oh and they cry "to be, being, that i am alive

 this absurd fraction in its lowest terms 

with everything cancelled

 but shadows

 -what does it all come down to? love? Love
if you like and i like,for the reason that i hate people and lean out of this window is love,love and the reason that i laugh and breathe is oh love and the reason that i do not fall into this street is love."  t.s. eliot. 

I am so small

The last day of school before Spring break I taught my first graders about yoga and for 20 minutes they were captivated by their own movement and breathing, forming animals, trees, mountains. Predictably, my own spirit feels resurrected from winter's withdrawal and hibernation-- as if I am returning to my edges and surface from with a space deep inside myself. I've been waking up at as sunrise fills my room with gold light, watching the red-winged black birds take flight at the lake, sitting in the library's window seat with a cup of coffee and the stillness. These quieter rhythms are taking root.  

Today, I went to a Maudy Thursday meditative space with my mom. It was unexpectedly sacred-- to move barefoot around the darkened room, candles flickering, a small book of poetry and psalms guiding the meditation, prayer moving easily through me- // I don't need a synagogue you said / I can pray inside my body. //  God, in all their mystery, felt near. Lately, in attending the Universalist church with Charina I've found that having this container that is broader than my own journey gives me space to know and unknow, to ask, to seek. It is a gracious space for which I am grateful.

Later, we planted Pansies, English Daisies, Daffodils, Little Leo, and herbs in the garden.  I've been retreating to my parents more and more on the weekends for the escape from the city. It is almost time to leave her. I feel the craving growing every day.

If He
let go of my hand, I would
weep so loudly,

I would petition with all my might, I would cause
so much trouble

that I bet God would come to His senses
and never do that
again.

- Meister Eckhart 

SoulCollage

“Your soul knows the geography of your destiny.  Your soul alone has the map of your future, therefore you can trust this indirect, oblique side of yourself. If you do, it will take you where you need to go, but more important it will teach you a kindness of rhythm in your journey.” - John O'Donohue

This weekend, Charina and I attended her church's SoulCollage workshop. We gathered with a dozen women, most of whom were four or five decades older than I am. SoulCollage is a therapuetic process of intuition and creation-- you build a deck of collages (cards) which represent aspects of your psyche, community, archetypes and can be read to learn from yourself (like a personal tarot in some ways). Though a lot of the time was spent quietly and individually working, I was surprised by how strongly supportive the circle felt. Some of the women shared stories of their pain and of their joys.  We sang a short hymn that had been the wedding march of a lady as she and her bride were walked down the aisle by her mom-- who had also been a mother and nuturer towards her bride since her own mother had kicked her out after coming out. We cried together. Women. Most of the women in the circle had known each other for as long as my lifetime and it made me think with gratitude of the woven branches circling my forearm, of my own circle of friends, of who we will be when we've known each others across two or three decades.

We should do the things that help us remember ourselves.

A late night listening to the rain fall after curling up on Tracie's couch to talk of depression and how to get unstuck, how we begin to believe that pursuing a life of passion and engagement is impractical. I've been feeling lonely lately and at the same time in need of vast spaces of quiet. I've been retreating into studying Spanish and visiting my parent's home to spend time sitting with them or running errands, drinking coffee, walking around the yard to spot the budding crocuses & daffodils with mom, or curled up in my childhood bedroom reading old journals.

Reading Anthony Doerr's exquisite short stories... 

“To consider water on any scale was to confront a boundless repetition of small events. There were the tiny wonders: rain drops, snow crystals, grains of frost aligned on a blade of grass; and there were the wonders so immense it seemed impossible to get his mind around them: global wind, oceanic currents, storms that broke like waves over whole mountain ranges." 

I'm reminded of how much I have to be grateful for, how much leaves me dizzy with euphoria or nostalgia and the luminescent unnamed degrees of joy the heart buzzes in and out of. 

A student told me Wednesday, "This is the best day I've ever had."  The smallest things-- unusually warm days, blue painted houses, neighborhood playgrounds. That evening Claire, Amelia, and I shot hoops on the abandoned courts, scaled the jungle gym, and embarrassed ourselves trying to do pull-ups.  Playing is a thing that helps me remember myself, exerting energy into the world, saying yes to "Ms. Meg can we play the stew pot game." I am constantly learning to go slower, to re-engage my imagination, to never tire of chalk on sidewalks, or lying in a sunbeam, or turning a cartwheel in the grass-- to never tire of being amazed. 

fragments

I keep thinking of Chinatown, lately-- of the faces of the people I knew there. I remember a warm breeze blowing silk against my legs through my bright yellow skirt while I was standing in Remi's front yard looking back at the house. It had been condemned and it sagged into the dry grass as if it was weary-- there were too many holes in the fences, too many stray cats wandering the hallways, skittering past our feet. We'd only been able to walk through the back room before water-damaged hoards cluttered the way. Remi had wanted to return one last time. I remember her standing barefoot in a hospital gown outside Dorothy's. She and Gloria were the first friends I made on the street, in on the homeless community. As he always did, Ellie was busy making her smile, a conversation I couldn't hear. I remember looking back, him holding her frail arm, the social worker a few steps behind them. These memories unravel out of nowhere, like the teal blue strands I used to find stuck to my sweaters months after I'd cut off my hair. I feel suddenly homesick for Salinas walking on Broadway when I pass the Mexican store and mariachi music swells out the open doorway. I've been sketching a picture of Lupita, wondering if Juan is still in school, if Connie is still lugging her trash bags back and forth between the day room and the doorway. That life seems so far away, four years past.

On the way home from school today, still in the neighborhood, O. ran out to greet me and threw his arms around my legs, telling me all about his day since I didn't teach him today. The affection of small children always amazes me, wins my heart.

For awhile I'd been thinking that falling in love is just a desire to propel ourselves out of boredom, to impose a drama on our narrative. Yet, listening to a friend this week made me realize that yes, love makes us do reckless, impulsive things-- but it isn't just to escape the ordinariness of living... love (in any of its forms) is about drama, about the narrative of meaning in our life (as the poets remind us over and over...  it all comes down to love.) Love of people, or a place, or even an idea is a creative force, it can unhinge us from our own expectations and norms, it makes us brave enough to re-imagine our story lines, to risk, to believe again in magic, adventure, and wonder-- even to willingly sacrifice ourselves to remain connected. Our love stories are about encounter, a point of connection and relationship (even if directed inwardly)-- and whether momentary or enduring, whether familial, romantic, amiable, environmental, or spiritual- I suppose it is our love stories that give us meaning.

Dorthy's Place, Chinatown, Salinas is a place I loved-- in all those realms-- and I am still discovering what I learned there. The other day I searched google maps for the driveway off Jefferson street that swept into our yard, beneath that thin willow. I hopped through photos-- down Alisal toward Cesar Chavez park, the bend of concrete where I balance beam walked during countless calls to the East coast. I can still taste warm dust in my mouth, hear the sparse grass of park crunching underfoot and the bark of the scraggly dog that always raced the perimeter of it's fence with aggressive possession, the icecream man's jingle and the shouts from the soccer pitches-- all this background noise to my own thoughts or a friend's voice on the other end. I couldn't trace my paths through the neighborhoods, along the creek and the fences to the skate park, crossing the long roads that stretched to the migrant fields and the Gabilan mountains, east of Eden.  Those paths belonged to the bone-deep sentiments I'd try to loosen by footfall, to the static chirping warning the distance was overcoming me-- despite all that was shifting inside of me as I made my daily treks the feeling I was left with was a determined strength that seemed to be growing, I was okay-- there, marooned in the world of men, piecing myself together, I was okay-- pulling my spine erect, my head lifted.

Love only makes us wider.
Love will be left over. 
Yes, Love will be left over. 

our hands imbibe like roots

School is a constant source of failing and learning and adapting. Tracie pointed out today that even the most life-giving work is also sometimes exhausting or causes us to sigh deeply with relief at the end of the day. I'm growing fond of my kiddos, and the classroom; I'm excited that I'll be there next year. I think they've actually convinced me that I want to pursue teaching credentials. But the future's still far away.

Meanwhile, life is full of poetry, letter writing, reading, coffee and dinners with the house and kindred spirits, celebratory walks in the thawing weather, weekends at the prison, riding the metro, caffeinated/insomnia inspired bursts of research & grant/application writing, netflix binging, sleeping in too late, Spanish lessons, and speedy carpools with bursting jams/cold draft of wind from the driver's window and the bittersweet acidity of smoke (which makes me feel younger and nostalgic for experiences not my own.)