Where have I been?

I Google-d "good rain" to find an image for this post. It was hot, hot, hot on the Gulf today--as it has been for...a very long time. But in my soul, it rained today. I feel refreshed and interested in life again. Throughout the day I took some of the first long, deep breaths I'd taken in weeks.

I guess it's hard to write when it's hard to breathe.


At least once a day, every day since I last wrote, I thought of writing here. Always there was either nothing to say or more to say than I had words to express.

To write

my heart is breaking
i am numb and empty
i am afraid


To ask

am I depressed?
did I fail?
what comes next?


in a blog.

It is a very strange thing even to contemplate. People are blogging about shoes and pencils and nail polish. Clearly "anything goes" where blogs are concerned. It reminds me of playground days in the fifth and sixth grade. Twice a day the protocol of lines and quiet and assigned tasks would disappear and I would find myself surrounded by the chaos of kids in the throes of reckless abandon. All around me, kids were screaming and chasing each other and kicking balls. Here and there small groups stood, heads together, telling dirty jokes or whispering secrets.

Standing on the sideline or trying to join in, I was self conscious. "What are we supposed to be doing? a voice screamed inside my head.

I'm sure my discomfort was due in part to my deep appreciation of the beauty of order. And in part due to social immaturity resulting from the highly ordered and controlled environment of my childhood home. But as with the reckless abandon in evidence in the blogosphere, the playground scene baffled and embarrassed me.

So, for a couple of weeks now, some kind of perverse politeness in me has demanded restraint.


In New Orleans last weekend, I heard about the horrible murder of a smart, beautiful young woman. She was an African American woman and I think, in retrospect, I identified with her. But it was really too horrible to think about very closely. I suppressed my thoughts and feelings about it and/but for the rest of the weekend, termites of grief slowly, silently, ate away at my soul.

On Sunday, I had good talk with Pallas and Jaimie in the morning and that funny Kathy and Mo film at Jaimie's in the evening; but numbness and sadness (deciding to leave my job and Gulfport) and fear of rejection (job hunting....aargh!!! there's nothing more distasteful in the civilized world) and bafflement (the "news" ...Mississippi ...George Bush...my coworkers... my life) had been slow-cooking in me for weeks.

It was gonna take a lot to bring me back around.

Today felt like my "lot" finally kicked in. What turned the tide? I drove to New Orleans! What is finer than driving into New Orleans? With OZ on the radio and the sun shining and fast traffic.... the skyline and bridge coming into view. I wonder how long before returning to New Orleans doesn't make my heart beat stronger and my hips feel sexier and a grin break out on my face?


And I wonder why I don't respond to the chaos and reckless abandon of New Orleans with bafflement and embarrassment? I think it's because most of the time I can feel NOLA's heart and there is a truth and sincerity to the heartbeat that grounds me. Even the horrible and the stupid and the unjust, it really is gumbo.

I want to go home. I need to go home. The Earth is my home. I want to be in New Orleans.

Wakullah

It's still a challenge to verbalize the experience

but heart and soul in Boston is becoming visible. So far I'm finding it, feeling it, where/when some people--not all people--come together and look at each other while they're talking.

As the oldest child of four, one of my favorite pastimes was scaring my younger siblings. Jumping out from the back of a closet and yelling "boo" (why do we yell 'boo'? who chose that word?) probably stirred my adrenalin as much as theirs. I loved it.

For a couple of days now, I've derived a similar perverse and exquisite pleasure from waiting until I'm a few feet away from a Bostonian, just beyond arm's reach, before delivering a triple punch: eye contact, big smile and "Hiya doin'?" It's soooooo much fun!

It's mischief--not connection.

Over on Wakullah in Roxbury, it almost feels like Sesame Street: people out on the stoops and kids playing in the street; at least half of the residents offering a greeting in passing, even to me, a stranger in their midst. I hear a fair number of them were raised in the South, though, so it's no surprise I haven't been able to shock and startle them with the smile-and-speak-routine I've used in Jamaica Plain.

They have a community garden on Wakullah and hold an annual street party/cookout. People not only know their neighbors' names, their lives are sufficiently commingled to produce shared history and memory. They tell and retell stories about great meals and births and deaths. And it was in such a setting, when they were looking at each other and me and talking about something they all remembered, that I perceived the first glimmers of Boston heart and soul. I got this deep feeling of ... I don't know what to call it yet. It's sort of like how I imagine the first day out of prison must feel after maybe 7 years behind bars.

Or like being touched in the small of my back by a friend.

Last night, some of the Wakullah Street folk came here to Jamaica Plain, where I've been staying for several days. My hostess opened her home for a meeting and potluck for Boston-area activists and others who have a Gulf Coast connection of some kind. In the socializing after the meeting, I got another heart-and-soul rush as Monica and Karen and Derrick laughed and chatted together.

I thanked them for being there at one point because I didn't know what else to say. A non-specific sense of well-being radiated from somewhere and warmed my solar plexus and the rear of my skull as they talked. I've never done heroin but I was feeling something akin to the supreme, nodding good feeling that some users describe. I felt like everything's gonna be okay, everything is okay.

Never Alone

Sometimes you just know. Immediately. "I don't like this." You spit it out, you leave the meeting, you return the skirt to the 35%-off table.

Sometimes, you get a weird feeling but you're not sure: maybe if I add a rug and a couple of lamps and paint over the watermarks... Maybe if I study harder and tape record his lectures... You hang in there and make adjustments if you can; or maybe you just wait for things to get better.


You figure: it could just be me--I need to change. Or "this is a cosmic or spiritual lesson or test or opportunity." You remember teachings like "We create reality" and "The world around you reflects the world within you."

Sometimes you watch for signs, set up arbitrary timelines and ultimatums. "If I'm the only one on time tonight...." "If my neck still feels like this on Friday, I'll make an appointment." "If there are no window seats left, I'll know I'm not supposed to make that trip."



Sometimes you come to know. It gradually dawns on you. Or you bolt upright from a !Eureka! dream. Or you pace your way into it on the sands of the Pacific Coast. Or it comes as a resonant recognition from a film or a passage in a book or the mutterings of a mad homeless woman.

Or you say, finally, after however much internal wrangling and contemplation

Show me. I am willing to look at It now.

A Lo Menos

I noticed yesterday that of the several talented, generous, intelligent, hardworking, attractive women with whom I've interacted recently only one is financially solvent. Apparently it takes more than talent, generosity, intelligence, hard work and beauty to be free of money worry.

Also yesterday, a good friend who is about my age announced she is dedicating herself to becoming "financially competent." She's on an earnest mission now to get wise about and pay attention to her finances.

I asked her to share what she learns but this morning I realized that I don't have money and I actually don't want any. (I only want it because other people want me to have it so I can give it to them in rent and cell phone charges.) So, I'm getting just what I want.

I ate leftover West Indian food tonight while reading a newspaper article about The 50% League, a club whose members voluntarily give away at least half of what they make or inherit. They also said it gives them a great feeling.

I feel left out. I want to experience that great feeling. I've changed my mind. I DO want to become financially solvent and competent.

So I can join The 50% League.

Stay tuned.

I Can't Feel My Legs...

Another Boston sojourn.

It's one of those towns that feels paradoxically like a place I've never been before and a place I've never left. It feels like America. What I mean is: it's hard to find my way around Boston--even with a map. And, so far, I can't find a way into Boston--even after friends have introduced me to their favorite restaurants and museums and pubs and I've spent weeks of intuitive wandering around on foot and riding public transit.

I can't find or feel the heart and soul of this place.

I've come to Boston three times now, always by invitation. And yet, I feel again like it doesn't make much difference to Boston that I'm here, no big deal to Boston if I stay or if I go.

I don't feel insulted or abused. Don't feel despised or misunderstood. Don't feel awkward or afraid. Just feel like a superfluous element in a set that could be the backdrop for everywhere or nowhere.

I feel hypnotized or anesthetized. Like I'm moving in only two dimensions. Like not all of my cells survived the trip through the Transporter.

I think about Boston and then I think about New Orleans --where I move in no fewer than three dimensions -- and somehow I'm reminded of Tina Turner's spoken word intro to "Proud Mary"...

You know
Every now and then
I think you’d might like to hear something from us
Nice and easy
But there’s just one thing, you see
We never ever do nothin’ nice and easy
We always do it nice and rough
But we’re gonna take the beginning of this song and do it easy
But then we’re gonna do the finish rough
That’s the way we do
Proud Mary

Love for the South

Granted it’s been less than two years since I arrived, and the only places I’ve lived are New Orleans and Gulfport, and I have heard “white” politicians say things in public here that they’d be loathe to whisper in private most places I’ve lived, and for most of my stay I’ve been blessed to park above the poverty line; but at this point I’d have to say the South is not nearly the hell hole I expected it to be. I know that if I lived in a rural area or on welfare chances are good I’d file a very different report…

For a long time I was afraid to come down here after all the blatant and implied caveats I heard growing up in Indiana. I just knew, as dark as my skin was and with so little “common sense” (my mother’s frequent criticism), venturing into Dixie would have been tantamount to asking to die young. So I stayed away. And, as much as possible, looked the other way; horrible things happened to black people in the South and I felt guilty sometimes about the relative privilege and security I enjoyed as a resident of the North.

I suspect if I’d known there was some place in the States where people still use butter and sugar and smoke cigarettes without apology, where people speak to each other in passing even if they don’t know you, where you don’t have to have a cell phone and voicemail to actively participate in community life, where the posted speed limit in school zones is actually observed, and where hardly anybody is in a hurry to do anything, I’d have made my way southward a long time ago.

It’s not Paradise here. I have a few complaints I could make if it would do any good. But the whole thing about race relations? Well, the grossly exaggerated propaganda I heard prior to coming does not square up with my experience. Specifically, I’m relishing how “white” people here seem to take my blackness for granted. Like they’ve been thinking whatever they think about black folk for a long time. As compared to Northerners who seem to be trying so hard to either recover from or mask their racism. Like they have something to prove to themselves or to me and it’s going to take a long time in either case.

Except for a few times among Unitarian Universalists (a group/movement notoriously and perennially unsettled about racial identity), I’ve been more comfortable and unstressed and un-self-conscious about being “colored” than ever before in my life. In fact, I’m more comfortable and unstressed and un-self-conscious generally since coming here.

Now if I can just develop a social network of folks who like to read and some artists and a few sex perverts and maybe find some men to date…

They Don't Think I'm Funny in Kansas

After a couple hours of piano work tonight, I took out the trash and ran into my neighbor and his friend, out in the parking lot working on his car. As I passed the door to #6, it opened and Tony came out. All three men started talking at once (people do that), stumbling over each other to comment on the music. "There's the piano lady!" "Thank you, Ma'am, for the music!" "That's some mighty fine piano playing!"

I slid into my southern voice (I do that these days) and we chatted for awhile about taking music lessons as a child, about the difficulty (for one of them) of finding time/making time in a grown-up life to play music, about playing in the band in junior high...starting off on trumpet, moving to cornet and later to drums.

I am the Piano Lady to these men and the rest of my neighbors. They all seem to stand up a little straighter when I walk by. They're always flawlessly polite. They nudge their kids into good behavior and respectful greetings when I pass by. They all call me "Ma'am" and "Miss Alex." The noisy neighbors lower their voices if they're being rowdy in the courtyard when I return home.

Somebody ought to write me into a novel.

To most of my UU friends, I am the Passionate Artist. Even to and among these universally acknowledged free thinkers, I'm seen as a step beyond. Because I'm an artist. And a black woman artist at that. Because I create music and theater and do things they say they wish they could do ("why can't you?" I ask then). Because I ask soooo many questions. Because I cry in public. Because I wear bright colors. Because...


To my son's father, I am... Well, I'm the kind of person you take on a tour of the "bohemian" part of town and then buy a bottle of wine to drink by the fountain under the stars and talk into the night. My best guess, from the way he talks about his life, is that he doesn't do that with many if any other people these days. That's what we did the first time we met (although it was beer instead of wine back then), thirty years ago; and that's what we did last Sunday when I stopped through on my way back "home" from Kansas.

We talked of things we have never spoken of before. Finally, together, approached and found courage to touch the shy elephant that has slumbered, snoring gently, in the middle of the room for three decades. Time and wine: an effective formula for unstopping the tongues of intimate strangers. It was a surprisingly deep relief to finally have things said; but more surprising still was how comfortable and easy we felt. I don't remember us ever making such true eye contact in all the years I've known him.

There's still not a question in my mind about the feasibility of partnering with him; I knew then and remain convinced that attempting to make a home with him would have been disastrous. But the son we made together was a crowning success. A gigantic silent moment swelled up within and around us Sunday night after we affirmed our love and pride in the man our child has become. I don't know what he was thinking. I was thinking, Wow! I'm sitting with the only other person in all of the universe, in all of Time, who loves Wade as much I do. And we just acknowledged it out loud, beneath a timeless night sky.

Talk about your a-ha experience....

We are each so many.

Maybe he thinks of me as Mother of My Son. I am not Piano Lady to him. He has never heard me play.

He is Father of My Son to me but higher on the list of identities is The Man Who Does Not Sing. I was dumbfounded when he told me this a few weeks after we met. Had I ever before met a person who never sings and admits it?

And, like the first (and only) family telephone number I knew by heart by age 4, I can't forget it. 944 8873. The Man Who Does Not Sing.