“Love is not a victory march.”

Posted by | May 24, 2011 | 11 Comments

This being human is a guesthouse…
– Rumi

It was probably the last day of sun before a string of rain days descended upon us, but on this day Spring was decked out in her softest and sunniest white, pink and purple ruffles and her youthful joy just made me all the sadder.

Oh, my love, it is best for us to part. It breaks my heart and yet it must be said.

That was the gist of the letter I’d just read again before sending. It had been on my mind for days, no, weeks, and in some way maybe even months. This was not a surprise of a letter to anyone, which didn’t take away from my sadness.

When I awoke the next morning, Regret and his brother Doubt were standing at my door, anxiously shifting their weight from leg to leg, weary from their travels through the night. Barely the door was open, they hurried into my living room.

“You spoke too soon,” said Regret.

“You don’t really want to lose him, do you?” added Doubt. “You sure do love him. Look at your puffy eyes, would you? Oh honey…”

His voice trailed off and a heavy silence descended upon the house of me. They are right, I thought.

“What a good guy,” said Regret, looking wistfully out the window.

“You certainly could do worse, you know. What a find he is. I mean, was—” Doubt piped in. “He spoke your dad’s language. Remember how you practiced German with him on the dock that day last spring, sitting on the piano bench in the fog with a blanket pulled around you?”

Regret, still looking out the window, added: “You were planting a garden. How could you leave when you were planting a garden! The baby basils were just becoming toddlers—“

I nodded. A set of furrows was settling itself into my brow and a huge lump had lodged itself in my throat.

“And now you’ve gone and lost him. Just you tell me where you will find another chap like he.” Doubt spoke with such old-fashioned grammar.

Minutes later, another knock on the door. I peeked from behind the curtain to find a youngish woman who looked like an over-caffeinated step aerobics teacher from the 90’s with her hair pulled back into the tightest of ponytails. Her shirt said, “Ain’t nothin’ can’t be fixed!” and her shirt sleeves, rolled up to her armpits, gave brand new meaning to “rolling up one’s sleeves.” I do not know how her tight ponytail allowed for even a hint of movement in her face, but she managed to raise an eyebrow while glancing at her watch, then knocking again.

When I opened the door, Ms. Fixit’s knuckles almost rapped me on the forehead, and then she marched right past me, brushing Regret and Doubt aside.

She unzipped her backpack in the middle of my living room and tools of every size and shape spilled out and a hundred bolts of advice went rolling across the floor. There was, “You need to see him. Like now!” And, “You need to stop wanting so much.” And, “You should take the train up there now and fix this. Here’s a schedule.” And, “You should try couples therapy.” And, “You shouldn’t be so bossy–”

That’s when I found my voice. “Excuse me very much, I shouldn’t be so bossy?! Pot ‘n’ kettle, hel-loh!”

She just rolled her eyes, flashed me a “whatever!,” and picked up a tool that, sweartogod, looked like a machete and a hammer and a chainsaw all in one.

Around then was when the movies started: a year’s worth of pictures, snippets of conversations, voiceovers and commentaries on various fight scenes, love scenes, hope and dream scenes, all began scrolling across my mind’s eye, ending, finally, with last Friday’s skype-call with the coach lady, the call that had mainly succeeded in reminding me of just how hard our hard stuff was. Afterwards he had texted me: “I’m going out for a run,” and I had texted back, “A run sounds good. Me too.” And then, without further ado, I did. Go running, that is…

All the way to Whole Foods. All the way to the chocolate-covered almonds that sugar-free-me justified by pointing out that they were made with fruit-sweetened chocolate after all.

The movies left me feeling like my heart had plunged down an elevator shaft into my belly. Someone coughed and that’s when I noticed Rumination running the projector from a chair over in the corner.

Rumination had the longest, most ancient looking of faces you have ever in your life seen. Seriously, his eyebrows had grown so long that I’m quite sure his eyes had only a vague, ancestral memory of sunlight. Also, earhairs? Put it this way: there were no ears to be found.

Blame and Shame did not want to be left out of the sadfest and, sure enough, by midday these two rolly-polly ladies with waggy fingers and not quite securely anchored false teeth had arrived carrying casseroles. (What else!)

“Dahlin’, you’ve gone and lost the best thing ever. You’ll never find better,” muttered Blame as she waddled into my kitchen. “You are a piece of work and you know it,” she went on, taking a red Jello mold out of Shame’s hands and proceeding to cut it as if it were cake.

Back in the living room Shame started in on a long list of thisses and thats, all preceeded by the words, “You are too…” while Blame kept muttering, not enough under her breath, that “no man would want that in a woman…”

My cheeks got redder and redder and it was all I could do not to cry.

“We should know, shouldn’t we!” exclaimed Blame, looking over at her sister. Shame, the quieter of the two, nodded.

“We’ve held onto our men for, oh, what is it now—eleventy hundred years?” Blame went on, proudly. “Oh how time flies when you’re bound in holy wedlock.”

It was the word “lock” that brought me back and I glanced around at the motley crew in my living room. And just when I thought it could not get any more crowded one more guest arrived.

Panic was out of breath when I opened the door. And also? Terrified. The end of the world was upon us, after all. His vocabulary was very limited and pretty much all he managed to say was “On no, oh no, oh no,” which he chanted like a mantra gone awry, all the while pacing about my living room wringing his hands and then smoothing back his hair with a sweaty palm. He knew my deepest fears and managed somehow, in spite of not being able to stand still for so much as a second, to lay a slew of pictures out on the table before me:

There was a snapshot of me hungry and alone… another of the Aardvark leaving me and going back to Africa… another of Heidi’s Table failing disastrously, my appointment book completely empty… another one of never another kiss, ever… culminating in the predictable—Urgency School of Redundancy trained as he is—clincher: a framed 8 x 10 of me dying a godforsaken and lonely death, alone, with nary a soul around.

What a state the house of me was in. And, whatever was I to do with these guests! I did not like them and yet there they were, all doing their best to, from their point of view, help me.

With my heart still in my belly and that lump still in my throat, I walked over to the window. That’s when I noticed her. She was sitting in the big white Adirondack chair on my porch, smoking.

Wait, what?!

I know, right? Smoking! On my porch. The nerve!

I was about to go out and yell at her but something kept my feet glued to the floor, watching.

I was still perturbed when I noticed that the smell wafting in through my window was not of any cigarette I’d ever smelled. In fact, I wasn’t even sure it was a cigarette. What was it, Sandalwood? Cedar? Definitely some Clove. Yes. And something a bit citrus, a bit floral…

I sank into my senses and inhaled deeply—Bergamot! Of course. And something else I hadn’t yet managed to place when she took her last drag and, letting out a loooooong exhale, slowly began turning her head—

I could have ducked but it wouldn’t have mattered. She knew I was there, I could tell, which was confirmed by the fact that she did not even so much as almost blink when her eyes rested on me.

I could not look away. Her face was forever wrinkled in a way that made me look forward to one day being that old. And her eyes were the most curious blend of calm and attention. I could tell that this woman never missed a beat and that nothing ever ruffled her. I wondered if she’d always been that way or if it had something to do with the wrinkles.

She looked at me with kindness, without even a hint of pity, and in that moment I saw myself and the motley crew in my living room through her eyes.

When I turned my attention back into the house of me, my guests were different. No one had left, and yet they had changed.

Regret had found some watercolors and was painting what looked to be an herb garden.

Doubt was talking philosophy over a glass of port with Shame, and in the kitchen I could hear Ms. Fixit and Blame tidying up. Ms. Fixit was saying that there was nothing better than waking up to a shiny sink, and Blame said, “oh, our Heidi could certainly use a little shine these days.”

Panic and Rumination, thick as thieves, were plotting techniques for making a new movie from the footage and photos they had. Rumination wanted some kind of a film noir, and Panic wanted some sort of a mystery-drama.

They were all fine.

I looked back out and the old woman nodded and motioned toward the empty chair next to her. I went out to join her and we shared a smoke. And then I cried and cried. She didn’t mind.

~ * ~

“Love is not a victory march, it’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah”
– Leonard Cohen

 

Postcript:

Thanks to my guests, clearly I’m all set on the advices! But if you care to share a cry or a potion-smoke or a story with me here in the comments, I’d love that. I’m still hangin’ out on the porch with this curious old woman. Turns out her name is Ylang and she’s related to Presence, the hot bartender at The Pause. *ahem!*

Also, gossip alert!  I just learned that Presence is their family name. When I asked Ylang about Presence, the bartender’s, first name, she told me she had been sworn to secrecy. Whatever the name, I am so taken by them all that the Aardvark and I have named a potion for them. Go ahead and guess what it smells like! (And, yep, you can get it over here).

Categories: Getting curious, Heidi's Stories, Re-imagining | Tagged: | 11 Comments

Going back for me-then

Posted by | April 27, 2010 | 6 Comments

You know how people might say something for some kind of ever and you just don’t hear it?

Maybe at some point you begin suspecting just how much you aren’t hearing. You get curious, and with curiosity comes the teensiest opening to the possibility that there could be a vast world of things you’ve closed yourself off to.

And then, seemingly suddenly, you find yourself able to hear some of the subtler pitches, you can see a bit wider, and then maybe your friend or teacher or lover, or maybe your mother, the president or Leonard Cohen (sorry, he just snuck in there!) says the same thing he or she always said but today it gets past the wall of made-up mind: you know, past all the calcified assumptions and hardened beliefs.

Maybe life has changed you —what with its losses and joys, its earthquakes and hurricanes, the comings and goings of people and things, your loves and hopes and dreams— softening you up a bit here, toughening you up over there… And suddenly that thing that you could not ever hear before has a place to land. Or an itty bitty piece of it manages to fly through the crack in the window of you and now it’s in, Baby, IN!

When I first heard Byron Katie say, Everyone always does the best they can, I thought, yeah, right! It sounded nice and all, but what about in such and such? Surely you don’t mean that person over there… And what about that night when I was 26? Surely I could have done better. By “could have” I really meant “should have.” And with this string of surelys came endless waves of shame. I was filled with argument.

But where there is argument there is doubt. And doubt can be a window. And windows can open.

So I asked: is it true I could I have done better when I was 26?

When all argument, excuse and defensiveness is seen through, I find that I can only answer no. Misguided though it was, it was me doing the best I could. Swallowing those pills was the best conclusion I could have come to in the equation of me on that night.

I needed help. I needed to wake up. I needed to not keep seeing the world and myself as I had been. After all, it wasn’t working, and I’d tried all I knew to try. I needed to give up. What I’d done so far, what and whom I’d turned to, hadn’t helped. Ultimately I’d have to meet myself, to look myself square in the eyes, in a way I had no idea how to do then.

Recognizing this now is sweet relief. It is me being a Morning Glory to myself. It’s me going back into the burning building of my life then, and pulling me out: “C’mon Sweetheart, this is no place for you to stay. There are aardvarks in your future! And kisses. And joy. You have no idea!”

Noticing the reality of the situation —that I did what I did and that I was doing the best I could— feels a whole lot like kindness. Like warm oil being rubbed, by the kindest of hands, onto old places of injury. And certainly me-then could use warm oil and kind hands.

Something happens when I meet my hardest places with the kindness of understanding: I begin meeting fewer and fewer people I can’t understand. And when I do find some thing or person that leaves me shaking my head self-righteously muttering “they should know better!,” I can only ever look back inside myself at what I haven’t yet understood, at what might still be hanging from the hook of shame.

This being human is amazing, isn’t it? The hard, the wonderful, the baffling, the mysterious, the all of it…

Rilke comes to mind:

Quiet Friend

Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be the bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself into wine.

In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water speak: I am.
——————
Rainer Maria Rilke
Sonnets to Orpheus, Part 2, XXIX

Categories: Poetry, Re-imagining, Self-care | Tagged: , , | 6 Comments

Once upon a potion…

Posted by | February 9, 2010 | Leave a Comment

Once upon a time there lived a wee girl in the southern part of Chile. She could while away hours grinding up nuts, grasses and wildflowers with smooth river stones on the steps of the country church where her dad was the pastor. The sky and the fields were endless; the skirt of her dress was her basket; the stones were her pestle, and the tiles of the church step her mortar.

One day time entered her world, bringing with it many stories. Wheeeee… more things to love and explore, including– joy of all joys–a whole world of ideas, written words and language.

But with time also came along all manner of assumptions and expectations, and not far behind, beliefs.

Have you ever picked up a belief? Whoa. It can be a back-breaking thing, I tell you. Some beliefs are happy and those are all well and good while they last. But sometimes happy can go and turn on you, leaving you all, hunh? wha–? That wasn’t supposed to go and happen, now was it!

Except for the part where it did.

Over the years time’s bag got rather heavy for the girl. At some point the hard stuff got so cumbersome and awkward to carry she had to trade the little knapsack in for a suitcase. But oh her gosh! A suitcase of hard stuff and beliefs sure did make it hard to explore the sky and fields. And eventually, she totally forgot that she’d ever gathered the world in her skirt and made creations with river stones from grasses and wildflowers.

And one sad day it came to pass that she could move no further for the weight of her suitcase. It was so heavy she wanted it all to be over. But she couldn’t make life stop and it just wouldn’t come to an end, for all she thought she wanted it to.

And that’s a good thing. Because now, years later, with a still-biggish bag but no longer a suitcase, she loves nothing more than grinding up the hard of life—the stuff that makes her and people cry, the stuff that makes people say, “I can’t! I just can’t no more”—with the magics of the earth and the endlessness of the sky.

So that’s the story of how this girl grew up and how she started with this business of mixing up potions for people: all because she loves to and she knows how heavy the suitcase can get. Which is no way to live.

The End. Beginning.

Oh! Except for the part where one day an aardvark comes along to help her. But that’s another story.

Categories: Aardvark Essentials, Once upon..., Re-imagining | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment

Recalculating!

Posted by | February 28, 2009 | 1 Comment

(Last missive from February’s “A Month of Living Curiously”)

Recently I was in a car with a global positioning system. I know, I know. GPS’s are probably old hat for you, but this is me. I’m a public transportation girl.

So my dear friend was driving, and I was curious about this little direction-giving contraption that would say things like, “In 20 feet turn left.” I thought, “How cool is that! I’d love one of those for my life.”

And then, something like a light bulb lit up in my head.

There is, actually, something very much like that in my life but it requires curious and open eyes and ears. And when I am pushing and pulling like crazy I just can’t see or hear it.

Then I asked my friend who was so adeptly navigating New York City traffic with the help of this little gadget: “What does the lovely GPS lady’s voice tell you when you don’t follow her direction and you make a wrong turn?”

So, get this! Ready? If you make a wrong turn, the GPS system will say, very simply, in its inimitably no-muss-no-fuss, a little bit sexy & a little bit business but always calm voice: “Recalculating…”

And then, get this! It will scan to determine exactly where you are presently located (after making that “wrong” turn) and, taking into account where you are trying to get, it will proceed, without a hint of impatience, to give you simple directions, one step at a time, to get you there from where you are now.

Notice that in no moment does the lovely GPS lady ever get snarky and say: “You dumb-ass! What’d you go and turn left for? I never told you to turn left! Now what are we going to do?!” Hmmmmm. She must know that would be of no help at all!

Isn’t that simply the best? So now, I add to my collection of self-in-presence people and things to channel in moments of panic and wrong turns, right there alongside Maya Angelou, the paramedic, and Dagmar from Lars & the Real Girl, none other than the lovely GPS lady-voice.

February’s “A Month of Living Curiously” comes to an end. [Sniffle, sniffle.] You will hear from me again tomorrow just to wrap things up, toot some horns, as we say around here, and give you some info and where to go from here options.

Right now, here, I’d love to take a moment to make a wish for you, dear friend:

May your pausing and your noticing, and all the ways you’ve begun to open your senses curiously toward yourself and the world in this short month, be just a beginning, a mere stepping stone on your continuing journey of a lifetime of living curiously with the one-and-only you.

The way I see it is that life keeps happening anyway. I can either live curiously and enjoy getting to know this amazing, if at times oddly-behaving, creature that is me, or I can kick and scream and complain about who I’ve got tagging along. It’s my choice to make.

And if I miss my turn? Well, thank goodness there’s always RECALCULATING.

Gratefully, curiously, and ever yours,

Heidi

P.S. I’m very excited about the brand-spanking-new AMOLC adventure to start on Sunday, March 1 (if a bit nervous and biting my nails!)

March’s AMOLC will have a side-theme of DREAMS running through it, and I’ve been saving up some nice POETRY, since poets are some of my favorite teachers of curiosity, ever!

So, that’s a little taste of what’s to come. I’d love to have you along if it calls to you to join. You can sign up for the ALL NEW month here.

Thank you. Blowing kisses your way, whether or not you stay!

Categories: Getting curious, Noticing, Re-imagining | | 1 Comment

Move over squirrel. I a hummingbird now.

Posted by | February 13, 2009 | 7 Comments

Somewhere between the if-you-don’t-have-anything-good-to-say-don’t-say-anything-at-all camp and the it’s-still-freaking-winter-and-I’m-climbing-the-walls camp, is a place of OK-ness. You know, OK: you aren’t jumping for joy euphorically, but neither are you throwing in the towel and running the Sylvia Plath bath.

And today, I must say, OK sounds pretty darned good.

To that end I took my butt out for a run, because one sure place not to find OK is within the 4 walls one has been climbing this live-long winter.

So here’s my list of totally random and miscellaneous crap that, oddly enough, makes me feel OK, and, at moments, even happy:

1. The track! It’s been an icy-snowy-eon since anyone’s been able to make out anything resembling a track at my dear Danehy Park, and today, well, there it was! Beeeeauuuuutiful. It was all I could do not to kneel prostrate and kiss its lanes. So thank you thank you for a track to run on.

2. Legs to run with. (Before you go getting too impressed you should know that I am not one of those lithe-bodied chicks who make running look like a breeze… Oh no, it’s me, Heidi. I got me some thick-chick legs here, thanks to my, um, stock. Which brings me to a big tangent (hence “random crap”):

3. About stock… As I pondered the wonders of my thick un-gazelle-like legs moving me about said track, I remembered a phrase my parents used to use—among others—to describe someone: “He comes from good stock” they might say, or some such.

Pray tell, smart reader, to which stock does such expression refer? Are we talking soup? If so, I hope I came from a nice and rich chicken stock with plenty of herbs and garlic.

Are we talking Wall Street? God help us all.

Are we talking warehouse shelves of merchandise? Who knows. Hunh. If so, I can only hope I come from books, or beautiful silk fabrics, or quills to write with, and not, oh, carburetor nuts (is there even such a thing?) or toilet plungers—

4. And speaking of tangents, I gotta come clean on something: I don’t really run. You know, not really really. What I do could best be described as a jogging-walking combo thingie that I simply prefer to call “running” because it sounds sexier. Cooler. Rico suave. Or something.

You: Hey, Heidi, what are you up to?
Me: Oh, I’m about to go out for a run.
You: Cool.

VS.

You: Hey, Heidi, what are you up to?
Me: Oh, I’m about to go out and do my walking-jogging alternating 2 minute thing.
You: Hunh?

See? That’s exactly what I mean. You just made my point.

And, not that you asked but I’m doing the Couch-to-5K thing. As the name implies, it gets you up from the couch to the finish line of a 5K. You build up, incrementally, bit by bit, week by week. It’s pretty cool. I’ve been hanging around on the week 4 regimen for a few months now. Apparently I’m in no hurry about that 5K!

4. I always thought that the animal I most resembled was the squirrel. I have never liked it one bit. Not the squirrel, and obviously then, not resembling it either.

But, in my worst anxious or compulsive or fearful moments? Yeah, pretty much I’m a squirrel.

Last week, walking home from the market, I surprised a squirrel, and rather than scurrying up the tree, it just stood there like a deer squirrel in headlights. You could tell it was anxious. On edge. It was like, “Um, excuse me lady, what are you doing just standing there staring at me?” And I was like, “Um, what are YOU doing just staring at ME!”

After a minute of this I realized I should be the “bigger man” and walk away. So I shrugged nonchalantly and walked on. But not without the niggly feeling, once again, that we have much in common, those squirrels and me: always scurrying about, to and fro, here and there, waiting for crumbs, hoarding nuts for upcoming famine… And I felt pretty much doomed to my squirreldom.

Why can’t I be more like an elephant, I thought. Or a dolphin. Or a whale. But alas, squirrel energy is what I got. (At least when I’m feeling bad about myself and not so much enjoying my company, like in wintertime, like lately). So, I’ve been pretty much just trying to make peace with that—my restless energy—-and then today, my friend Lizi greeted me on the phone with this:

5. “How’s my little hummingbird friend?”

Honest to god those were her words and unbeknownst to her, she gave me a new animal to be and I’m very very excited about that. Truth is, I’ve outgrown squirrel. Not that I don’t have that kind of hyper-alert thing still going on. But I need wider, a fuller view on it all. Enter hummingbird. Or colibrí, as we call them in Spanish.

They hover, doing a helicoptering kind of thing to remain stationery yet aerodynamic in order to suck the nectar out of flowers. They fly. They get the hell around! And they hum. Or rather, their wings make a humming sound from moving so fast.

So, get this: in order to replenish their energies to keep doing all their joyous humming activities, they must rest. A lot. They actually do a hummingbird version of deep bear-like hybernation every day in order to conserve and replenish energy for their strong and busy little wings. And here I thought all they did was hum and hover and fly! Alas, me thinks again.

So, wee-hee! I a hummingbird be! Move along squirrel. My days as you are over.

Categories: Getting curious, Noticing, Re-imagining | Tagged: , | 7 Comments

Thank you thank you thank you!

Posted by | December 24, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Wherever I happen to be, at any given moment, gifts are plenty for the noticing. Even circumstances that on first blush look unfortunate, can be loaded with gifts.

I open my laptop, spill my drink, and make two new friends. On my left and on my right people jump in to help. One saves what’s left of my half-emptied cup. Another laughs and jokes over what I might otherwise see as an annoyance. Everyone is ready to help.

I tell the good people behind the counter that I spilled my drink and that it’s sticky on the floor. Not only do they bring a mop to clean up my mess, but a drink exactly like the one I’d just spilled, whipped cream and all, is set before me.

I receive my gifts and notice smiles of amusement around me.

The bench I sit on supports me, and the ground below that. Never once has this dear Earth I walk upon told me that I’m too much for it, too heavy, or too anything at all. Its support is mine for the receiving.

At the store I invite my dear mom to choose the carton of eggs rather than the styrofoam. My mom seems to care that I care and takes the carton.

Life keeps giving and giving and giving. So generous. So kind. And how kind of me to notice.

Something gives, something receives. Such joy to notice.

Giving happens whether or not I notice but noticing opens my hands much more quickly to give again. And noticing is my gift to me.

I notice how many gifts I never even had to ask for. Santa Claus in so many guises, all year round. And I didn’t even make a list.

How are you today, my friend? Wherever you are, how are you? How goes the receiving of the free gifts around you? If it’d give you joy to tell me, why, I’d love nothing more than to hear.

Receiving the gift of you and so gratefully yours,

Heidi

Categories: Re-imagining | Tagged: | Leave a Comment

That’s plenty

Posted by | December 15, 2008 | 1 Comment

I’ve often been a hold-on-er. A white-knuckle-r afraid to let go of things and people that leave. But it’s no fun to live that way. Not for me, and I’m sure not for them either.

Underneath my grip is a fear of not having enough. Of not being taken care of. Of being alone. When I believe these thoughts, my creative mind, otherwise so adept at creating all manner of joy and humor, goes nuts painting me pictures of me dying alone. It ain’t pretty and it pretty much sucks.

I’m a slow learner when it comes to big life things, but I am starting to see through this whole shenanigans.

So today I was noticing the pervasiveness of that belief that there is not enough. I was noticing how I live my life with that thought. I noticed how greedy I get. How stingy. It makes me hold on really tightly. It makes me suspicious. It makes me cynical and sarcastic. I don’t much like my own company when I’m believing that, which is not so good a thing since regardless of who else may or may not be in my life, my own company is the one I am guaranteed to be keeping every day of my livelong days, so help me god, in sickness and in health, till death do me part, thank you very much.

So I went for a run, or my Heidi-version thereof. Somehow the repetitive motion combined with fresh air have the effect of sifting through my mind in the best of ways. I often see through the lies & fibs I might be believing while I’m circling the track. And somehow the thoughts I’m left with afterwards are pretty much always better for it. Sifting out what’s not true leaves much more room for things like joy. Creativity.

Sometimes, after running, I cry, especially if lots has been happening and I’ve been afraid and hanging on really tightly. And somehow, crying like that, when it’s not a temper-tantrum-y cry, always softens me up in the best of possible ways.

Byron Katie, says it so well: Happiness isn’t getting what you want but wanting what you have.

Without the thought I don’t have enough, I get to notice how much I have. Friends come to mind. And more. I notice how much they’ve given me and how freely they’ve given. I appreciate them. I notice the earth. I notice how generous the air is, always giving me another breath. I notice how strong the ground is, never once having told me I’m too much for it. I go to the store and my legs carry me. I can be grateful for not having a car. I’d weigh at least another 15 pounds if I didn’t walk to the store. I go to pay for my food—so many things I love: a banana, a pomegranate, some cilantro, some rice, some milk, even some ice cream—and I notice I have enough. And that’s plenty.

Categories: Getting curious, Getting to essential, Noticing, Re-imagining | | 1 Comment

Mona Lisa Eyes

Posted by | November 22, 2008 | Leave a Comment

In longing you close your eyes,
but in wonder you open them…
-Myra Shapiro (full poem here)

I started writing—really writing, like my life depended on it—when I was 11 and went off to boarding school for the first time to a country a 10-hour drive plus a 5-hour flight from where my parents and little brother and sister remained.

It was the height of Summer in Chile and in my mind’s eye they were at the lake everyday. Or picking raspberries, which surely they were plopping straight in their mouths rather than saving for dessert. Or roller skating down our street, the cracks and bumps of which I knew by heart. Or playing hide-n-seek well into the evening of late-coming darkness in the Southernmost part of the Southern hemisphere. Pretty much anything I had ever loved, they were doing. Without me.

It was more than jealousy. It was about belonging and wanting to stay a part of it, of them, of what had been us. Writing became connection.

On my first morning not at home, I woke up early. The smells were odd. The sounds were odd. The equatorial light coming through the window was odd. Even I, myself, felt odd. I spoke English with a Spanish accent, and Spanish with a Chilean accent and my clogs and knee-highs looked dorky.

Quietly —so as not to wake my odd roommate— I found a pencil and notebook and began the first of what would become, over the years, hundreds of letters home. I have no doubt that letter was filled with all sorts of details: an obsessive and agonizingly accurate accounting of my brother Karl’s and my first trip alone by airplane.

What I left out, in my desire to prove myself the trustworthy oldest daughter and responsible big sister, the one any parent would be proud of, is that I’d gotten on that jungle-painted airplane and cried and cried and cried. And for all the trying in the world, those tears had not ended until long after my madly-waving parents were the merest fraction of dots in the distance where they stood with white handkerchiefs on the rooftop of the Aeropuerto General Arturo Merino Benitez and I had to close my eyes to make the waving handkerchiefs continue materializing in my mind’s eye.

And so began my closing of the eyes to remember and to make gone things linger a bit longer.

At boarding school I was assigned a light blue metal bed, like a big tin can, with a shelf on the headrest. That’s where I put the picture. My dad developed all his film as slides, and so, snapshots were hard to ever come by. The family portrait at the head of my bed, taken in the States 3-and-a-half years earlier, was the only actual picture my mom had been able to find for me to take.

But I would come to find out it was oddly special: not because we were all posing in our Sunday best; not because a formal family portrait like that only happened every four years; not because my little sister Judy and I were in our very special matching red and white dresses Mom had stayed up sewing for us into the wee hours so we’d have them to wear to church on Christmas; not for any obvious reason, really.

Its specialness was only something a girl that stared at it from every angle could have discovered: my brother Danny’s eyes followed me magically around. I experimented. If I moved to the left, he was there. If I moved to the right, same. Up. Down. All over. Anywhere I went, there he was, looking me right back in the eyes with his silly little half smile.

Years later, at the Louvre in Paris, I would discover that Danny shared those superpower kind of eyes with the Mona Lisa.

Maybe I have Danny to thank. Maybe Leonardo Da Vinci. Maybe my preacher dad with photographer’s eye. Maybe boarding school. Maybe every single thing that ever happened in my odd life, but at some point I started opening my eyes, curious to see what might be looking back at me.

Categories: Growing Up, Once upon..., Re-imagining | Tagged: | Leave a Comment

Sometimes I want to be…

Posted by | September 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Sometimes I want to be my niece Caroline who’s cool and groovy, an awesome swimmer with a butterfly stroke that makes you jump up and down with joy (she’s 8!) and a growing leaf collection. Caroline loves girly things AND earthworms. She thinks slugs are a bit disgusting, but that doesn’t stop her from examining them up close and personal and telling me that I should make a new massage kind of crème from the clay she’s found on the Whidbey Island beach, plus slug guts, ginger-ale (to make it more liquidy) and cinnamon—she only added cinnamon when I said my clients might not want to leave a massage smelling like slug guts. Always creative, Caroline takes things in stride and can sit back quietly. She takes her time to answer a question that she doesn’t know the answer to off the top of her head. She won’t say just anything to make the asker happy.

Sometimes I want to be my quiet writer friend who’s taught himself to play guitar. At home he will sit down on his awesome antique art nouveau couch and just make up songs. He says things succinctly if he says them at all and when he says something it sits there strong and tall like a mountain, sometimes even for days. Or weeks. It is enough to drive an impatient Mexican jumping bean girl crazy but there you have it. Sometimes I wish I could be more like him.

Remember the laps that were comfortable to sit on when you were a kid? Sometimes I want to be like my friend Barbara’s big lap. Figurative big lap, people, figurative. What I mean is that when you talk to Barbara you feel so at ease — she doesn’t have an agenda for you because she knows that you, somewhere inside yourself, know what’s best. People who love you and don’t have an agenda are amazing people to have in your life and hands-down the best listeners. They aren’t just nodding their heads and pretending either. Neither are they playing devils advocate to every thing you mention that sounds the least bit “negative”, neither are they thinking of what they will say next. They don’t freak out if you cry and quickly smother you with Kleenexes. They aren’t afraid of snot. No. They are really just right there with you. Even a half hour of presence like that can turn a whole day around. I can be that way with my clients. And sometimes I am that way with my friends too. I like that.

Sometimes I want to be my stuffed bear Humlum because he never ever tries to change anyone. That doesn’t mean he hangs out with people he doesn’t like for very long, mind you, and I have seen him roll his eyes on occasion, but still. Point made. Humlum does not even try to fix my obsessive habits, like refreshing my email or facebook page to see who loves me. Or who doesn’t. He knows that when I finally have had enough I wil sit still and write or cry or go to the park. He never says I told you so, Heidi. He is endlessly patient. He knows I’m creative and persistent and that in my time I will figure how to wear myself with ease.

Categories: Heidi's Crushes, Poetry, Re-imagining | Tagged: | Leave a Comment

Soggy sardine on the 83

Posted by | September 27, 2008 | 1 Comment

My heart has been bursting for no good reason usually attributed to bursting hearts:

First, I’m in love with no one in particular. This is in spite of crushes all over the freakin’ world! I exaggerate. A bit. But that to say basically it’s just me and my stuffed bear, Humlum (introduced in 22Aug08 note). I am forty and I don’t have many of the things a girl grows up dreaming will make her happy and secure.

Second, the weather—another factor known to buoy spirits—is abysmal. It’s been pouring all day.

Third, I have—for a reason only fate will ever know!—this year become a self-employed small business woman in an economy that has, um, tanked. I know, I know. I didn’t mean to bring that up except to say that this heart burst cannot be attributed to being a woman of monetary means. But we’re working on that.

Fourthly, I have, for the last three hours, been either waiting for a bus, sitting on a bus like a wet sardine among wet sardines in a—did I say wet?—can on wheels, or walking in the rain shlepping bags, including a bag of printer paper for which I am crossing every finger and toe. (The dear cashier triple bagged it for me).

I must digress for a moment about the bus. It was the 83 to be exact. If you are from these parts you might know that the 83 is a bus where someone or other is apt to be wearing a Santa Clause hat no matter what time of year and at least one person will be talking to a someone you can’t see. The 83 makes frequent stops for little old ladies who look to be stocking their pantry shelves with Progresso soup of every flavor for what I can only imagine is a feared impending disaster. The 83 also doubles as a Haitian Creole language immersion program. Seriously, ride the 83 every day for 2 weeks and I guarantee you’ll have reached the equivalent of level 1 Creole, which today would have allowed you to fluently exclaim to me: Kisa ki rive ou?! I would have gotten your drift, to be sure, but being only a sporadic 83 rider I would have needed to resort to the universal signage of raised eyebrow to convey: Um, what happened to me? Hel-lo! Nor’easter here, in case you hadn’t noticed… besides, you ain’t looking so hot yourself there, muffin, or should I say, sardine!

No really. Heart bursting for no good reason needs no reason, obviously, but me being me, I thought about it and, being me, I had to stop somewhere and write it down in my soggy little moleskin.

I love people. At least for today I am a lot in love with people. In spite of all the unfuckingbelievable craziness we live in, I find people are fascinating and hilarious and heartbreaking. I am endlessly curious about you, about me. On the 83 today I imagined a live ticker tape kind of feed of everyone’s thoughts, and I knew I would probably relate in some way to every single soul.

I live in a city. Thank the good lord for that. Don’t get me wrong: I love the ocean and I love the mountains and I love the country too. And I certainly love my quiet and my space. But after a couple weeks visiting suburbia with all its suspicions and paranoia of anything not white, not straight, not beautiful, not made up and rouged, not perfect, not clean, not square, well, I am rather adoring being a city girl surrounded by myriad sounds, languages, orientations, styles, colors, shapes and sizes. I just can’t get enough.

Now where’s my lipstick?

Categories: Getting curious, Noticing, Re-imagining | Tagged: | 1 Comment
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