37days

Come, let's ride brightly painted inner tubes, you and I

If you have watched TV commercials for the new teeniny microscopic MacBook Air, perhaps you will recognize this song by Yael Naim. Come, let's ride brightly painted inner tubes, play cymbals in a field of sunflowers, sing with a gorgeous Israeli-French accent, and realize that there is a whole big world out there, ripe for the dancing and for the floating. That's real air.

It takes so little...

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons. - T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

It really takes so very little to amuse me.

Yesterday, I got an email from a favorite bookstore in town: "we'd like to name a drink after you."

Lest we get too carried away with the sheer excitement of it all and before we give in to an exaggerated sense of self-importance that centers solely on espresso drinks (and before we resort to always speaking of our own self in the third person), it's important to know they are creating specialty coffee drinks not just for moi, but for authors or other people hosting events at the bookstore.

Since I host a "Bridging Differences" book club there on the first Monday of each month, I am One of the Chosen to be Memorialized in Caffeine. Though I suppose "memorialized" is not the right word, since I'm still above ground, but I have a way wicked headache right behind my left eye (is that one the eye to my soul? hope not) and can't think of what the right word would be.

I laughed when I read the email. It's clear to me now. After all those years of seeking, my whole life has been directed to this one moment: The Patti Digh Coffee Drink.

D is for dance

Every dance is a kind of fever chart, a graph of the heart. -Martha Graham

In 2008, I will come to be danced.

I had expected to write “D is for direction.” But an email from my friend, Nancy MacDonald, a few days ago changed my mind. She sent me this poem:

We have come to be danced

We have come to be danced

Not the pretty dance
Not the pretty pretty, pick me, pick me dance
But the claw our way back into the belly
Of the sacred, sensual animal dance
The unhinged, unplugged, cat is out of its box dance
The holding the precious moment in the palms
Of our hands and feet dance.

We have come to be danced
Not the jiffy booby, shake your booty for him dance
But the wring the sadness from our skin dance
The blow the chip off our shoulder dance.
The slap the apology from our posture dance.

We have come to be danced
Not the monkey see, monkey do dance
One two dance like you
One two three, dance like me dance
but the grave robber, tomb stalker
Tearing scabs and scars open dance
The rub the rhythm raw against our soul dance.

We have come to be danced
Not the nice, invisible, self-conscious shuffle
But the matted hair flying, voodoo mama
Shaman shakin’ ancient bones dance
The strip us from our casings, return our wings
Sharpen our claws and tongues dance
The shed dead cells and slip into
The luminous skin of love dance.

We have come to be danced
Not the hold our breath and wallow in the shallow end of the floor dance
But the meeting of the trinity, the body breath and beat dance
The shout hallelujah from the top of our thighs dance
The mother may I?
Yes you may take 10 giant leaps dance
The olly olly oxen free free free dance
The everyone can come to our heaven dance.

We have come to be danced
Where the kingdom’s collide
In the cathedral of flesh
To burn back into the light
To unravel, to play, to fly, to pray
To root in skin sanctuary
We have come to be danced

We have come.

-Jewel Mathieson

Intentions: In 2008, I will dance in my car. I will dance like a four-year-old. Every day, I will dance a one-minute dance of how that day felt to me. I will do more than dance. I will come to be danced.

[This poem reminded me of krumping. If you don’t know what krumping is, find out. You can start with the fascinating documentary movie, Rize.]

From the last alphabet challenge: D is for dorodango. Speaking of which, I gave Mr Brilliant two dorodango for Christmas, created for him by dorodango master Bruce Gardner. Being the dirt collector he is, it was the perfect gift. They are gorgeous. As is he.

[Art from here and here]

If you've enjoyed this essay, perhaps you'd also enjoy my upcoming book, LIFE IS A VERB, to be published by Globe Pequot Press in the fall of 2008. For more info, click here! 

N is for now

“Nothing is worth more than this day.” –Goethe

In 2008, I am going to be here now.

When you unpeel it, 37days is all about now, but I find I don’t live in now very often. I live in then, or when, or one day.

I want, instead, to live in Now. This moment. What does that look like? I think it looks like a lot less time on the computer and a lot more time playing Candyland with a four-year-old or making vegan cupcakes with a teenager or raking leaves with Mr Brilliant. I think it looks a lot like paying attention. I think, for me, it looks a lot like writing or being creative every day. Maybe it just looks like breathing deeply every morning before flinging ourselves into the whirling stream of our lives. It is far too easy to be swept into the competing currents.

As Thich Nhat Hanh has written, “Life can be found only in the present moment. The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life.”

Pema Chödrön has reminded us that Now is the only time. That how we relate to Now creates the future. That what we do accumulates and that the future is the result of what we do right now.

I asked Billy Collins (you know, we talk constantly) if death is the main chord of all poetry. “Yes, it is. But poetry isn’t a consolation for death, for the reality that you will die. Instead, it is an expression of gratitude that you’re alive. Poetry italicizes experience or brings it into sharper focus. It provides a fuller immersion into life.” Poetry is about seizing the day, but we only need “carpe diem” if we realize we have a limited number of diems.

Becoming Larger Than Our Skin Allows

And no, that title isn't a reference to overeating.

In the U.S., today is Thanksgiving Day (and my friend Karrie Manson's birthday, so a shout out to her for being so powerful that the nation stops when she ages). This year, I'm not spending Thanksgiving at a long table full of vegan alternatives to turkey, but hunched over a computer screen like a madwoman, panicked at my book deadline next week and snarking at my family when they breathe too loudly. What was I thinking?, I'll be thinking, in one of those beautiful infinite regresses of thinking, the fear that emerges from finality, essays congealed into book form.

Soon, I'm sure I'll give in to the overwhelming urge to eat cranberry sauce from a can, as detailed last year this time on 37days,and will pop the Tofurky into the oven. But not before being thankful, and deeply so, for all of you who come here and read my few words and email and comment and hold me up when I'm falling. My deepest thanks.

My glorious friend Sid Jordan sent a Thanksgiving message this morning that I'd like to share with you this fine day. Let us lift each other up.

Becoming Larger Than Our Skin Allows

We seek metaphors
To describe our friendships
But alas, even these fall short of our true emotions
So we joke, tell stories, and hold each other
Accepting the inner weaving of our connections
As part of the evolving tapestry of our lives

What is amazing to me
Is how little it takes to impact another human being
In profound and deep ways
Simply by being present
By witnessing each others stories
By honoring each others thoughts and feelings

It is physically possible to lift each other up
And hold each other under a starlit sky
Enough to feel the power of the universe enfold us
Wrapping us up with simultaneous feelings of love and immensity
Yes, we are only a speck in the whole of things
Yet, our love mingled with the love of others
Is more immense than we can ever intellectually know

Our ability to tap into the collective energy of the world
Allows us to transcend our language
Each of us becoming larger than our skin allows
Each of us finding power
From the source of our humility and awe
But mostly from each other
As our hands work to lift each other higher

-Doc Klein

Dip your wheels

“Be good to yourself. If you don’t take care of your body, where will you live?”
- Kobi Yamada

Part I.

I went to my first Shaolin Kung-Fu lesson last Monday night. After 15 minutes, I was sweating. I think it was the full-body push-ups with feet up on a bucket and bare knuckles on wooden planks that did it. When the master reminded the group to touch noses to the floor with each push-up, I nearly passed out. “Is this natural?” I thought to myself. “This isn’t natural!” (Answering myself seemed the most expeditious solution).

When he let the group get water after 40 minutes of quad-busting lunges and v-shaped sit-ups (or, more appropriately, struggle-ups), I was the first one to the water cooler, spent, old, and painfully aware of the need for life insurance.

Imagine how exhausted I would have been if I were actually in the class and not just observing it, empathy-sweating at the very idea of all my ab muscles so tragically unprepared.

Surprise gravity

“Speech was given to man to disguise his thoughts.” – Charles M. de Talleyrand

I’m thinking that the human race needs to jump more.

And I’d add something to Mr. de Talleyrand’s thought, above. Not only speech but also gravity disguises man’s thoughts.

Last night, my husband—the marvelous and eclectic and über well-read John—handed me one of his favorite books, one I had long seen on our shelves with its distinctive red and cream and black cover encased in a wonderful thick transparent dust jacket cover, but never read.

I read it just before going to sleep and decided that in addition to dancing in my car more, I need to jump more, leap, evade gravity, go real. And I need to see other people jump more, too.

Ah, welcome to the fine art of Jumpology, sardonically outlined by famous photographer Philippe Halsman in this remarkable and odd and funny little book.

Say WOW when you see a bus

“As once the wingéd energy of delight / carried you over childhood’s dark abysses, now beyond your own life build the great arch / of unimagined bridges.” –Rainer Maria Rilke

There is a pure and shining glory in the world of my 2-year-old daughter, Tess. It is called a bus, a “big, big bus,” to be exact.

There is absolutely no greater joy, no surprise more full, no moment so fantastic as that sheer moment of ecstasy and full body wonder when Tess sees a bus. Like someone with short-term memory loss, each one is her first: “WOW!!! A BUS!!!” she says with every fiber of her being. “A BIG, BIG BUS!” she further elucidates. To be so small, she has quite the lung power, a voice that carries for quite some distance, making heads turn in her wake.

Pop up your Nimrod

“There are three wants which never can be satisfied: that of the rich, who wants something more; that of the sick, who wants something different; and that of the traveler, who says, Anywhere but here.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

I grew up in a small Southern town where nobody knew the street names, but just gave directions by landmarks and events: turn left where the Biltmore Dairy building burned down, go straight past the Pool Hall where Guy "Frog" Ramsey got shot in the face, turn right at Mull's Feed and Seed where evidently nothing of note happened other than the rambunctious selling of feed and seed.

Daddy was the town barber. Mama worked at the bank on the Square with the Town Clock on the side of the building that was always off by 8 minutes but it really didn’t seem to matter to this slow-moving populace, perambulating past my vantage point in Modern Barber Shop like they were wading through tepid water. It was as close to Mayberry as you can get; I was Opie’s missing red-headed sister, working at the public library and taking piano lessons from Myrtle Muench once a week for twelve whole years, culminating (of course) with a slightly mechanical (yet secretly rousing) rendition of Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.”

Find your saxophone

"Follow your bliss. Find where it is and don't be afraid to follow it." -Joseph Campbell

If you’ve read 37 days before, you might have picked up on my love affair with actor Johnny Depp. Beautiful, talented Johnny. Quixotic, funny, odd, quirky Johnny. Did I mention beautiful? Ooh-la-la.

What can I say? There’s no defending it. I won’t pretend it makes sense, this long-distance obsession from North Carolina to France, this enormous, smothering, consuming disdain for that little fragile wispy twig of a French blonde he keeps taking to awards shows and having children with for some unimaginable reason. Why, I could take her out in the blink of an eye, the bat of a more well-nourished eyelash, were I the least bit inclined toward violence, which - of course - I am not, having attended a Quaker college (whose football team was paradoxically the "Fighting Quakers," but I digress).