Processing Sweat Still.

I feel like I should go back to a practice that I was into when I first went crazy in 2006. That was the summer that I opened my eyes for the first time to personal responsibility, to pain, to worry, to becoming fully human. I am sure that i will talk about that time in my life many times after now. That practice is tallying the moods of my days in long scooping arcs above and below the neutral horizon. 9:00 am, line going up. 4:24 pm line going way down.

I want to start now, to see where my feelings take me because after the Lodge, I find myself unbuckling loop by loop.

On Monday, I had my first ceramics class. The class ended up with my sitting by the UCSB pool watching the violent kicking of children feet and professor feet, watching the colored triangle flags quiver over them. I had to leave class and sit alone on my lawn chair. The whole thing was overwhelming. I could have been blind the way I fumbled around the studio. I could have been handless the way the clay felt so foreign on my skin.

So I cried, putting up a steel hand to tell my love to disist from soothing me or helping me. I should have sniffed out the feeling that I would be so overwhelmed by taking this summer-for-fun class. Ceramics is Mariah's home. She did it through the dark period of her life, as a meditative reminder that she-no matter what- always molds her life. Her bowls and mugs make eating full of ritual, spirit, and magic. They are so natural it makes you feel as though God gave you palms, just to hold the line of her pottery. I have never really handled clay. I have never spent time in a studio, with clay spit all over my jeans, or watch my hands become unfortunate features of the human body (uncontrollable and unmotivated). I didn't know the landscape of the ceramic artist. I was completely new. The cement room could have been Mars.

It's true that I am still dehydrated. It's true that I am living in a one bedroom with four people. It's true that maybe I was negligent in tending to my shaken insides from the intensity of the Lodge. The whimpering prayers that may never truly be composted in these bones. But Still-

But still- the class was still too new. I had hoped, in my high expectations, that I would step into the hands of my soulmate by doing her art. I hoped that I would understand her better, and know her inside my own skin. I had hoped that I would build a community of willing adults that were brave enough to try things that are clumsy and awkward in the beginning. The class has exactly three students: Mariah, Me, And Wendy a sixty-something lady who has taken summers and summers of adult ed ceramics. I am a spectacle, a human with new legs.

What I am trying to get at here is that this class that made me sob next to a man in a speedo, is the perfect medicine after the Sweat. It was the universe was trying to show me again that everything will dissolve into something that I won't recognize anymore, and it will be new, I will be new. And I will have to reorient myself in a world I don't know.

For example. I have been afraid of the ocean's powerful force my whole life. Yesterday-I swam to the booey. I have always been afraid, deathly it seems, of closed black spaces. Today I sat in my own coffin. The more I do, the more I see, the less I can count on the world-or me to be the same. And yet I am constantly here. So its the here part that I want to get to know, the part of life that I want to invest in. NOT the successes or the failures. Not the references points of my false personality map. Just that I am here and I am here again and again, during times of complete disappointment or freedom.

So Dear Lodge, I grant you the will to unbuckle my latest reality. Because it will teach me that I am here.

Poem.

two voices.

That was wrong…




You are such a fuckin’ idiot.
still so little,
not yet learned the difference.
first feels and thinks are not
going to hold up this boat

Did you ruin it?
You are small and they know it.
& now They are going to talk about it.
And its going to be dirty
It’s going to stain your love
the one that you have broken your hands for

Now its just something for people.

In the spaceship lit hallway
I smiled before I knew,
“Joseph-I love you”
to the boy with hickeys
and used knee jeans.

The shape of last sound
was thin and white.
an accidental rubberband in the eye.

the other teachers were listening
till my spine unlaced into cold sea
I shut the door and
faced my classroom waiting.


I am just human.

and he looked beat sad.

and teachers want their easy smiles

I just wanted him to rest.

Ten Pounds of Gratitude

I remember when Sarah invited one of her best friends up to our house and he told us stories of transcendence. One story was how a man went insane because he was suspended in water in pitch black, and the absence of any reference point to his physical space made me go insane. Another was about a man who proved to the CIA that his powers of ESP could end the Cold War. And my favorite, because it scared me the most, was about the complete eradication of mind and time in the dark deep realm of Sweat Lodge. I remember Sarah's glass blue eyes get fat in awe. I remember saying that I could never do something like that.


Yesterday I conquered Sweat Lodge.

Heather Tiddens is the yoga teacher that I go to to get my healthy dose of Yin Yoga. The Dark Yoga. The Moon Yoga. She used to be a pro surfer. So the sun bleached hair and the Marlon Brando arms make sense. But still when you look at her, you can tell that she is a hybrid. Part Surfer, Part Native. Her hair with is tied in a deadbeat bun that swings at her shoulders, or it is down, laying on her back in twisted tobacco rolls down to her sacrum. I like her, I trust her because she isn't showy and she laughs at herself. Plus her teachings are simple and direct and they make sense inside me. Heather has had different trainings in her lifetime with a wide spectrum teachers to guide her. One of her certifications is Sweat Lodge Keeper.

For a puny 45 dollars, I spent 11 hours at Heather's property preparing and sweating and letting go of my fear. Dividing her property is clearing with stacks of woods, dirty broken plastic bins, and two skeletons made of willow bone that arched into domes. When I saw the natural curves of the branches, and the space for the door I felt the beginnings of dread. People stood around awaiting commands of the Sweat Lodge Keeper.

This is how you make a Lodge. Willow dome made my the strong and bendable stalks of the tree tied by leather straps. Laid over the bones, painter tarps. Over that, dirty matted quilts. Over that, army blankets. And Finally canvas tarps. The participants (who I have vowed not to speak about) nervously wrapped our new home.

We said our intentions. We bestowed our wish into the Grandparent Rock which was going to blaze and ponder our wishes in the pit. We exhaled our wounds into the logs that would be incinerated. All of these prayers that we made with such gentle asking were done clockwise in a circle. I tried to believe in my prayers, as usually I don't or at least loosen my doubt. It felt good to let down my arms and let the Spirits from all directions hold my humanity. I prayed to be fearless. I prayed to finally let go of the sorrow that I am no longer a child. I prayed to be gentle and thankful. I tried my best to believe after years and mourning the death of my fearless self--she might resurrect.

Then the fire was ready to burn, as our Grandparents and our Suffering came together to find a solution. The fire needed time, so I slept in the grass. When I decided to let the crawlies in the lawn wake me up from my nap I came down to put my commitment ring on the altar. and to wrap up my tobacco offering in black fabric. Black for the West Direction. The Direction of death, of winter, of refuge, of letting go.

And then, after hours of praying, and listening, wrapping and resting, there was nothing else left to do. The Lodge was going to be heated by seven volcanic-hot stones, and be surrounded by pure terrifying blackness. Absolutely no light was let in.

Round 1: Singing, Welcoming our Healers. The singing was loud and haunting, and I sang without insecurity because I had too. The uncomfortable syllables, and the loud peaks of music kept me from thinking about how my molecules could have been floating away and I couldn't watch. It lasted maybe 15 minutes. The songs sounded like they came from ancient peoples who loved both joy and pain. Who cherished all marks of life; even scars. You could hear the mourning's and surprising joys of histories. The heat began to rise, began to swell like a hot open mouth of a whale.

Round 2: Five more stones were brought in (instead of seven). The heat was almost unbearable. Never have I felt so humbled and vulnerable that I would shove my face into a swampy mulch of weeds and mud. For the next two rounds I will be in the same fetal position. Praying. This round was for ourselves. Praying for our healing. Praying for our courage. All of our whimpering prayers sounded the same, and it was the only thing that comforted me.

Round 3: Each time a round ended we would open the flap. Finally the air and light would flood in, revealing the muddy tears, the completely drenched bodied. The wet ragged hair stuck to mud, stuck to sage, stuck to sticks. This round was for others. And we prayed for every being, for specific individuals, for the future population of trees, animals, and famlies. It was so hot, I begged mercilessly in my mind for the others to refrain from going through their entire family trees and pray for them. But the praying was relentless. When it came for me to speak, I could not calculate my thoughts nor my words. I spoke completely spontaneously. it was short,stuttery, and completely from heart.

Round 4. The rocks have cooled slightly but the heat is still something that I could never imagine. But with each prayer water is poured on them, creating thick clouds of steam, crowding our fears and wishes to the outer walls. This round was for gratitude. And this was the round that I was sure I was going to live, and that in itself brought on rivers of thanks. I had heard maybe hours of prayers (the time in Lodge is unknowable) and in that time I had been stripped of the ugly abuse in my mind. I still thought the same things, except my thoughts lived without the heavy shackles of shame. No shame, there wasn't even any room for it under the smoke; the sweaty limbs. I had my face, nostrils, and all in the new mud that I had created with my own sweat. I had the pincher bugs, the weeds crawling where they pleased. I didn't care. I didn't care about my judgements, I didn't care about anyone or anything. I could only care that I was still breathing and that I was going to come out the same person who went in. For a moment I realized that I would be the same person no matter where or what. No matter what happens I have myself (whoever she might be) to come home to. And then I had the way trees will always stand tall. I had the way my lungs breathe in and out. I had my memories, all of them good and bad. I had the earth to walk on. All these things could never be taken away from me. No matter what, I have a home.

Aha, it's here. I have found my gratitude again.

Round 5: This was supposed to be a short additional round to get out anything we needed to say. All at once the prayers were muttered, and it sounded like a circle of Wiccans, or something breathing from the supernatural. The water was poured, and poured, and poured. Until my chest was pressed, my ears seemed to meet. The heat became pressure that squeezed the last bits of doubt right out of me.

The flap was opened for the last time. I crawled out of the small white lit hole, jello legged and armed. I felt like an animal being born. Out of a sticky womb, I squeezed out. Covered in mud. Cold from the ten pounds of sweat i had shed. On all four hands and knees, I bent and touched my head on the cool earth and said " I am here"

Debbie Downers

The past week I've been reading stories the way binge eaters eat oreos. All exstatically and high, while I am accompanied by my good friends calories and fats.

These are the stories gists: a pediphile, a sad lonely mathmatician that overhears people saying sad things about him, a couple that their best friends stand them up at a dinner party and they almost break up because of it, a couple who decided to have a baby that was concieved in a brutal rape, two hospital orderlys that get high and kill baby rabbits, and a man who gets pushy on a 900 number.

Jesus, Someone guide me to the contemporary author who is writing with the same ball-grasping exstacy that John Muir felt for the wilderness. Or that Walt Whitman felt for man. Do you agree that the same total naked baring reality can be found here in this moment of silence in front of a canyon and a hummbing bird in the lavander? I know too well the feelings of loneliness, inward shrinking insecurity, and confusion. I would like to feel rooted.

Where do I Find those stories?


Ps. I love you. I love you because you have eyes, and are breathing, and are beating hearts.

Can There Be Anything Else Besides Narrative

This is an essayish that is not meant to persuade you to do anything, but to relieve some of the fear and judgment around writing whatever comes out of you.



The only experience I have with poetry is the kind that wells out from the fingernails, from the gut meat, or the purple crevices of the mind. Some sense of it comes from my reading too, but let's face it I wouldn't even know where to look for poetry outside the canon. In guidance to where the poetry of the people lives, I don't trust the motivated insecurity of hipsters, and I think I trust the white knuckles of scholars even less. **This is a guarded confession of my little study in the area of poetic theory and criticism.

However! I still count on my hypothesis that: the conventions of staying away from sentimentality, staying clear from harmless egotism has taken a stronghold on a very natural well of creativity--our own sloppy experience.

In my personal understanding of the way things work, Poetry has a very similar evolution as Feminism. What a miraculous voice it was that spoke out of the first people that said, " I am not these lines in which someone else has drawn with a very clumsy pen" Avant-garde, I believe was in some degree the same statement. Both must have come from a first peek of light that belongs to a universe of stars. But it was not the message that made them true, instead it was the vulnerability behind these claims that caused the earth to quiver. The desperateness. It was the boiling energy behind these ideas that made them so human

If you silence a people, which means if you keep them from expressing what life is, in the language most accessible to them-- you are in a sense murdering these people. Feminism, and other ideas of expanding our awareness, usually come from feeling of immediate threat. A voice of utter urgency. " If I cannot use my voice, I am invisible, I am dead."

To devalue Narrative Poetry, is to kill many people. Our personal senses are the only means to understanding our physical world. Our experiences are the only means of understanding our minds. Why, then are we so critical of trite, over sentimental, cliche poetry? I say, if
you are writing simple words about your heartbreak; about your sorrow; you are merely keeping alive by the very small and brave whisper inside you.

Our voice is necessary to live. That is the lesson in any movement towards a compassionate world. Disband the judgmental dialogue around 'good poetry'; dig up the poetry from their graves in the Canon. Let us write poetry that completely involves ourselves.

Oy Vey, with that said:


Just, Fuck you.

A man cussed me out
for parking to close
to a car that wasn't his

& I felt a shiver all day in my elbows
the kind seventeen year olds have
until I blossomed
a very important fact
in this fable.

There are people
who are more unplesant than me.
a-men.

I heard Lucille Clifton

First Year.

At my workplace

if you can call it that,

I am alone in a ruin

of dusty blue gray

houses where the war

has been

and is still flickering

nearby

No one looks at me.

The students stare at me

with numb

distain or hope

that I may not recognize anymore.

the teachers stare at me

from above their desks

and I feel young and

dangerous to the barcade

in which they made

to keep order

and empathy

close to the bullet ash floor.

it makes me doubt

if I still love this

or ever did.

But then

I heard Lucille Clifton

“ I think it’s affirming that

after a tragedy like this

I continue to write, that

I still have poetry left”

Intention of this blog

I think we all have a hard time centering in on our lives. And it seems that the more we try to focus, to bare down, to eat in one bite & enjoy it-- the more broken and distant our lives feel. This is my attempt to write poetry every week; hopefully a gentle way, and for me, an intuitive way to feel closer to my life. So that I may feel an atmosphere of life breathing in my skin, to feel my muscles unsqueeze themselves in the warmth of knowing (not conceptualizing) deeply that Life is always patient.

I have this hunch, we all have hunches on how to live the best life, thats why we have writers and dictators, and families--I have this hunch that poetry specifically can untie us from our anxious holds on our desires and destructions. Because to write a poem, one has to utterly love the poem. You don't need to necessarily love the subject matter all the time, or even the action of shaping clay words; but you must love it the moment you are writing it down. You must love it so much that it becomes real for someone else to hold. For example, if you are writing about how much you hate your mother, you must love the moment when you are brave enough to write it down, you must love all people who hate their mothers, you must love the unbareable sharp tinge when you contemplate why God made bad mothers in the first place. This love is what is going to free the words from your history and allow someone else to make use of it.

You can imagine how painful and difficult it is to love things like your poems, and completely. But I believe its exactly this practice to unbind me, to relax me hating thoughts, so that I may surrender into a place of ease. Maybe it will work for you. I will never tell you what will work for you; that would be counter-intuitive.

And so this is my intention for writing a blog. To love my poems tenderly, and hopefully have that love overflow into other parts of my life. The public aspect of this project, is to love myself in everyone, and in that begin to love openly my human family. If I can know that all people crave the things I do, maybe I'll worry less about us.

** I heard Lucille Clifton is a poem I wrote about my year as a Reading Tutor for Americorps.