The Dinghy Tender

What’s a dinghy? 

It’s a little dinghy!

Ruff ruff! You mean like Arnold has a dinghy? 

No, like a small little boat dinghy! 

I grew up around boats, I know about boats. I’ll take it from here, m’ladies. That’s it now! Take it from the stern!

What? What are you talking about?

Oh never mind, it’s boat talk, you’re still new to all this. 

The quartet cruise into the sunset breeze and employ the salty air to reset their ease.

OK, the smell of fish is making me hungry! Back to the dinghy thingy! 

You’ll be fine alone with the whole dinghy situation, right? I’ll just be in the way, I imagine.

Well gee, if you don’t mind…since you know about boats and all.

OK, I’ll steer the ship!

Well no, you don’t have to go that far.

Ah OK, I’ll just grab the clip then…got it. 

Accompaniment 

All of a sudden, the wind picks up and catches the dinghy, carrying the two farther and farther away from the dock.

Two people. One oar. Their comrades and a three-legged dog ashore. 

Just make it to the row of kayaks and from there we can think more clearly and reassess! 

OK well done, here we are. Now, we’ve got a few options. Maybe we could make it to the dock stilts and slowly haul ourselves up against the tide….or….

Hey, look! The wind caught us!

Yah, no shit, I can see that!

OK, maybe if we throw you the line!

All of a sudden, they notice that there’s less thwarting wind now. They’ve found their place in a pocket of reduced hardship and more resonant resource. They proceed earnestly to their destination.

When in doubt, break up the dyad!

Goodbye Vincent

You greeted me so graciously when I moved into the building. I asked how long you’d been living here and you replied, ”Longer than you’ve been alive, Honey!” We both doubled over with laughter.

“I’m eighty-one years old, can you believe that?!”

When we saw one another coming and going, there was always great affection and delight. “Oh it’s so good to see you!” “Oh isn’t that funny seeing you again!”

Some of my strongest memory from the pandemic is sitting outside of our building together. We were on the same wavelength, a rarity under the circumstances. We would confess our fear and also find levity together. While watching some women run inside for the curfew, you protested, “I’m not following any curfew, the sun hasn’t even set yet!” (We stayed three feet from our building’s door, however.)

We didn’t exchange phone numbers nor did we ever knock on one another’s doors. “I think about you often but I respect people’s privacy.” We might drop off a little something or message here and there. I once dropped off some Christmas tree chop from the park and you dropped off a wax-sealed note of thanks. Stamped with “V.” I told our neighbors that you are a living icon and deserved some special treatment on your last birthday. They left cards, flowers and baked goods. “Oh Vincent? Of course!”

A retired stylist with a closet full of high fashion suits, you would tell me “try to dress decently just one day a week.” And to wear “just a little lipstick and tiny bit of blush.” Only from you could I receive such tips with fondness. The two days a year I get dolled up, I’d always just happen to run into you. “Oh wow, you look fabulous!,” you exclaimed with significance.

I didn’t know just how much our chit chats meant to me until they were in jeopardy. I found myself grasping for more stories, more insight, more wit. More intrigue, more serendipity, more time.

In the ambulance, I held your hand and you said, “I feel your strength, don’t let anyone take it for granted.”

The day before you died, you asked me to take out the rest of the air in the helium “I love you” balloon at your hospital bedside. You said that the balloon was a bit depressing because it was now only half inflated. I inhaled the rest of the helium and squealed “Vincent, it’s time to get serious!” The gleaming luminosity in your laughing eyes was surely earned.

When I returned home, waiting for me in our building’s vestibule and just outside your apartment’s door, there was an “I love you” balloon that my brother sent me for my birthday.

How To Stick The Landing

So now you’re free.

You respond to “How are you?” With things like

“I’m busy. I’m tired. And that’s a good thing.”

Or

“Good, all things considered!”

Or

“I’m grateful and I’m struggling. All at once.”

Or

After accounting for all the joy and woe you decide you can honestly still say, “No complaints here!”

You can no longer complain beyond the normal human lamentation of grief, guilt, longing and ongoing broken-heartedness.

You pocket in the little joys way more preciously. “Wow, people are showing up for me!”  The big joys leave you awe-struck for a couple of hours at least. “Oh my goodness, my godson is now dating!” Empowerments bring you more humility instead of “Ah-ha! It’s finally my turn!”

When your cup runneth over, you feel the urge to give back, first those who’ve been part of your success and then others seeding and watering the collective evolution. And others in need of a bit of your special brand of luck, skill and privilege. You know you can go faster alone but farther when you slow down to include the people and groups you care about.

You did some dark nights of the soul…and it got worse before it got better. You see now how you are all of that, too. Yikes! You broke down a couple times. You can be a little narcissist sometimes! Self-loathing! A little up and down…unbalanced even! You know a bit about your addictions, how you cope unhealthily. Maybe you were even lucky enough to get down to something reptilian, something ancient. A ghost, even! Some preverbal grief came up...your amygdala enlarged…you found your wrath and your wail. You remembered the first time you were up against the wall. Some deep trauma bubbled up to dislodge. Your contempt surfaced and you took it out on some poor innocent victim! They didn’t deserve that! But you both made it out alive. Maybe you apologized. Or maybe you didn’t, with good enough reason not to.

And you know there will be more fear and hunger. And you’re willing and able to protect your peace for just a minute as you stay on this plane of contribution. A plateau? Fabulous, thank Goddess.

You’re even ok with still being wrong or bad. Often even! And you don’t stay down there alone too long because you care about your community, you know, animistically!

So sticking the landing. First, do you have a place to land?

Let’s create it. Map it out, maybe.

Who are your people?  Break out the glitter! Even if the webs are thin at the moment, where are you now? From where do you begin? With whom can’t you lie to? Do you have an old ride-or-die? Two? Lucky you! Who is just arriving knowing less about you, giving you space to be different? Those you haven’t had the audacity to be passive aggressive with yet!

Oh wait, first, back up, first came the people who came before you. Bring them in. Behind you. You’re part of a long line. Don’t forget it. You wouldn’t be here without them.

What philosophies hold you? Which ones have weight, depth and strength? You know, the ones bigger than you? And to which industry or institution did you say, “Thanks but no thanks!”

What music, art and healing modalities move you?

What values guide you?

What practices keep you grounded? You know, in your body.

Is there a mental practice too, an affirmation, morning pages or something?

What’s your vision of contribution? Which stage of development, which iteration are you at right now?

Any element, goddess, icon or other muse that you’re worshipping these days? Remember, someone/thing unattainable, never meet them!

Take a slow full breath to let everyone and everything fully in. Make a movement of inclusivity. Let out a sound. A tone. Vuuuuuuu. Create a drawing. Take pleasure in your width. How about that?

Now…held in all that…give space for the hurt, the pain, the suffering.

Oh what babe, bloke or thembot broke your heart?! What abuse and neglect did you experience? Whose heart did you break? Who did you yell at, hit, reject or leave?

Oof. Ouch. A big bear hug to you.

Now don’t linger there too too long. You don’t want to be dragged down into a pit of hell right now. You’ll be revisiting that as it comes.

Is there room for all of that and them too? Breathe out as you unfold your arms.

OK now.

What are your resources? Skills? What have you earned?

Good for you!

Now, what experience or relationship gave you some of your individuated freedom?

Who made you swoooooon like oh I want to be like that toooooo? Who reminded you that envy is a map?

Thank you.

And did someone show you a different way sometime? Did someone have enough that they gave you their extra? Did someone ever stay unmoved as you projected some unseen or unloved part onto them? Did anyone clown some of your silly myopia and in that cackle-back allow you to laugh at you, too? Maybe someone delivered you a nice clean blow, a cleansing and well-earned “Fuck You!” Did anyone give you a secret passageway? An adjustment or movement that diminished your chronic back pain?

Who was generous with you, kept seeing your resplendence with no help from you? Were you ever held, even once, when you had a bad dream?

Thank you.

Did someone let you support them? Received your gifts? Let you sharpen your stuff, improve them, appreciate and amplify them? Did their engagement with you increase your influence and impact?

Thank you.

Let this give you more space, freedom.

Can you hold just one of these miracles as a moving image, a movement, as if an ongoing mental martial arts practice? Feel it. From the width of your hips, your pelvis. Up your shoulders. Back down your legs. Your feet on the Earth. Feeling the sensation of aliveness course through your body and emanate being now.

With a grin on your face,

say to yourself.,

“Oh baby! Oh sugar! We’re well-held here. We’ve got some space to breathe here.”

You’re still. Warm. Awake. Aware.

You’re in the micro and macro all at once.

You’re in the hum of your own cosmic-Earthbound resonance.

Yum.

The West Shield

Every relationship of any depth or duration comes to one or several west shields, periods of tension or crisis with an opportunity to expand, iterate or evolve.

Some relationships continually back off from this point because one or both people aren’t available or willing. That’s OK. Not every relationship has to explicitly name its movements of toward and away. Maybe gentle continual connection and tenderness is enough. Many relationships end after one or several west shield moments, before co-creative contribution can emerge. That’s OK, too. Maybe it’s not OK if everyone is lonely, stuck and unwilling to ever submit to the prescient descent though.

The indigenous medicine wheel uses the four directions as a philosophy to speak to the different parts and phases of being human. When we’re in balance with the different directions, we are in good health and have enough. There is the small caveat that this individual model of health is contained in a healthy culture that respects the Earth and other mysteries.

There are four directions or four shields. There are many associations with each one and they vary amongst different places and tribes.

The south shield is childhood and the physical body.

The west shield is adolescence and the psychological body.

The north shield is adulthood and the intellectual body.

The east shield is elderhood and the spiritual body.

The west shield is where the vision fast or rite of passage into adulthood happens. The wounds of childhood are painstakingly confronted so that a person can then grow up and give back. It’s said that Western culture is stuck in adolescence or the West Shield.

The medicine wheel is a cyclical and nonlinear model of human development. We go from shield to shield through community-based ceremony, practice and ritual in different phases of life but we also encounter the different shields in a year, a month, a week, a day, or an hour. We also experience them in our relationships to people, place, profession and communities.

When we aim to align with Turtle Island’s Land Back movement, we are aligning with the indigenous wisdom that aligns with and respects the Earth’s cyclical wisdom.

Emergently-Abled

When most people see my brother, they will often first notice his disability. They might find a label like intellectually disabled. Often, their primary curiosity is about what makes him other and then him as a person. I wonder often about if we first asked what unique abilities someone like my brother has instead of first tracking his disabilities. 

Hey, check out my new catalog! Yah, look what color dock lines do you like here?

When I see my brother, I am relieved. On one hand, because I’m about to receive a big nervous-system-regulating bear hug and on the other hand, because I am seen and loved.

What is your cousin’s girlfriend’s name? Oh, Emily!

From when I was little, I knew that my brother knew things that others around me didn’t know. On so many occasions, he knew how to transmute our family’s conflict and chaos to levity, laughter and joy. Growing up, some hell might’ve been going down around us but he’d whisk me off for some adventure. Once it was playing in the mud outside. I loved playing in the mud with him just as much as making sure we were all cleaned up afterwards. My brother’s instinct to protect, care for and love his little sister was not impaired. 

What’d you have for dinner? Ravioli? Ooooooooo yum!

When part of who we are is marginalized from the societal center, we can be more easily tapped into the collective emergent edge. We can see and exude what those more in the center have a harder time accessing. We can be aware of what’s missing as it’s part of what we know and have to give that’s missing.

In a way what we call intellectual disability now, to me, contains in it an emergent ability for what we need to grow collectively to our edge. Including and integrating who and what part is excluded and marginalized is part of being fully with where we are so that we can move forward emergently. 

Please tell me how you make that sausage bread again!

In my brother’s disability, he is emergently-abled in his shameless big-hearted embodiment that centers the warm intelligence of the heart over the cold intelligence of the brain. Our over-reliance on cold intelligence hasn’t brought our collective consciousness to a place that can adequately address climate change, gruesome systemic oppression, dehumanizing technology, isolation and other pandemics.

Will you come home more often when I have a boat? Will you be there at my wedding?

Is there a part of you that is divergent from the mainstream or a system that you’re a part of that has medicine or a message to lead us towards our evolutive collective edge?

How can you make space for that part to be more fully seen and acknowledged? Perhaps first just for yourself.

Amò is neopolitan for love (Part 2)

Link to Part One

Link to Part Three

After my friend and I left Sorrento, to my surprise, you called me everyday. Until one day you didn’t. So I texted you “Grazie per tutto, addio!” “Thanks for everything, goodbye!” You called immediately and invited me to “turna a Surriento” for a week, “like the song,” you said. You’d rent us a villa you said. “OK!,” I said.

That fall, I was working on an organic farm outside of Forli. You showed up to help out in the vegetable garden with your Gucci belt on. We rode horses after mucking the stalls. You were terrified and I, as I often did, just acted as if you could do it all without a shred of doubt for your capacity. You loved Valentina. She came when you called her from the pasture. I can still hear you calling, “Vaaaallllleeennnntiiiiiiiiiinaaaaaaaaa!” 

You came to visit again and were weeping when I said, “Welp, I guess this is the end!” You said, “Daiii vieni a Sorrento!” “Come on, come to Sorrento.” I said that I would do no such thing, I’m a serious woman. “I’m not going to just move across the Atlantic ocean for some man.” “Just take a look, just in case!,” you appealed.

I googled “study abroad Sorrento” and had an ideal job, even if you weren’t in the picture, within 24hrs transforming a local language school into a full-fledged study abroad center. And within the year of me living and working there, we did. I’d miss many evenings in the piazza with you, working overtime writing Marine Biology and Volcanology syllabi. You never chastised me for working too much, you told your friends that I was a ragazza molto in gamba. Capable, smart, determined.

I can still smell the sun as I recollect my time with you there, sotto il sole sorrentino. I’m glad to have the sun damage on my shin, like a tattoo, reminding me. We would park the scooter in the olive grove and then climb down to where there were just towels and bodies soaking up the sun, and a tiny shed offering ice cold cans of beer. I never liked the beach or staying in the sun but I liked laying on the sun-drenched windstrewn cliffs there with you.

We lived in a lemon grove near your best friend. We’d scooter down the cobblestone path with walled vineyards on either side. On the way to work, we’d hurriedly get espresso and donuts. On hard days, in your characteristic infinite tenderness, you’d bring me gnocchi alla sorrentina for lunch. 

You’d park your scooter outside the window when I made dinner and dramatically declare, “I feel like one of those men that have a wife at home with dinner waiting for him!” I’d reply, “Amò, amore mio, take out the trash, clean the toilet and do the dishes!” Amò is neapolitan for Love. 

stability is always relative

Stability is always relative. Duh. The Big One knows this. The Little One is too busy drafting escape plans to know this. She does not bow to any fate. Heck no. She does not surrender to destiny. She steers the bloody ship! It’s safer to be the brains of the origin system than develop her own.

Precocity is not cute. 

Stability is always relative. Yikes! Like what, we’re always susceptible to uncertainty, volatility, complexity and ambiguity?

Change. 

Vulnerable to the other’s defense, rejection, assault, lust and deification? 

Danger. 

Whew!

“Look, it’s better the devil you know,” the Little One sighs with faux-wise self-satisfaction.

Stability is always relative. Hmmm. Especially if abandonment is a thing. But no one can abandon you. Except maybe your parents. Not other people, no. They can only leave you. Because of your fangs. Their snaggletooth. Your toward. Their away.

Gulp.

They left me first! It doesn’t matter. Bow to the fate of it. Yours and theirs. Y’alls. 

OK. How do you leave? No one knows how. There are no rules. There is no manual. No set of tenets can contain the infinite situational and character nuances. Maybe try to stand facing forward both separately and together. Try to leave in time to not eradicate respect and gratitude. Both that kind that is earned and that which is intrinsic in the not-yet-realized quantum influence.

I hate you! 

…Ugh, I am that, too…

I love you. Thank you. 

Thank you for traveling with me so darn far! Wow! It’s been an honor and privilege to see and feel the star-stunning miracle that you are. Thank you for being part of my never-ending death praxis. I will smile at you from that just-right loving distance  

Stability is always relative. No one and nothing can take your weight away from you though. Especially when you’ve taken your place and your weight is behind instead of in front or on top of you. So compost the pain. Grieve the loss. Make art. Recollect your weight. Let go of the icky sticky loyalties. Incorporate your experience into the breadth of your existence.

Better guilty for leaving than thwarting your freakish green fuse. 

Integrate your parts. Yah, that real nightmarish one too. Again and again. That’s it. Keep going now. What a beautiful system of becoming you’re creating. Don’t forget to hold dear the fractal beings in your emergent belonging and appreciate something extra those who have been able to stick around.

Don’t look. Close your eyes. Sit down! Be quiet! Plug your ears! 

No.

Stability is always relative. Staying awake, aware and feeling keeps me present down here. My expression moves me and my people forward. And if I must look up, I bow to the stars that brought me here.

answering the call

When the call is answered

There is a death to the seeking

To the feverish fleeing

To the indiscriminate receiving

Don’t misinterpret the discomfort of this freedom

And grab for more

Insight and believing

Instead, lean in

To just enjoy

This sensual wide-bodied piece of completion.

Where the dares have been recollected

Where the convergence has occurred

Where the lost wildness has been found

It’s time then to come forward

Into the spiral

Into the haze

Continue forward

In the tumult

In the responsibility

Continue forward

In the imposible idiosyncracies!

Keep going

With room, too, for the rejection

The blame and blunders

The foils, faults and flaws

Keep going

Not forgetting to pause for decay, separation and integration

Keep going

Keep renewing where your mutant individuation

Meets your invaluable belonging

Where your impatient I can’t wait anymore!

Meets your slowly earned wisdom

As you keep on loving, living and creating

Keep sanding, sharpening and softening what is your contributive best

What of you is needed when and where?

Cowboy or wrangler?

Accompanist, conductor or arranger?

-

In the death of a person, place or thing

There is a peace

Can you stay with it?

Can you hold it?

Can you stand with it?

Right next to it?

Listening humbly and respectfully?

Can you stay there?

Can you hold wonder and awe?

Stay in a way embodying undemanding play?

Beware of the backwards tilt!

The kind that’s not contained in a rocking chair

Swaying you back and not forward

The nostalgic seduction of old wounding!

Whether your liability is entanglement or seclusion

Stay low in gratitude by thanking the trees each day

Give cheap distraction the cold shoulder

Gather your soul’s weight

And then stand there with it now

Hands on your hips

Everyone right there with you

Shoulders back

Head up high

Proceeding as if success was your fate.