As he and I watched the sunset on my last evening in North Carolina, he said, “I’m so jealous. I’d be riding a wind current up there, like a hawk, not even flapping my wings.” I stared out at the sky, at the birds, black swatches against the pinkening horizon. I was reminded of The Once and Future King, when Merlin teaches The Wart by allowing him to inhabit animal bodies: ants, geese, fish.
What would it be like to have the strength of imagination, or memory, to know what that would feel like, deep in the marrow of your bones?
Category: Nature
like planets
there’s blood
between the cracks in stone
someone has left it there
tiny, congealing spheres
like planets
whole
and undisturbed
perhaps the blade was too new
or the hand gone rogue in a too-small kitchen
or, perhaps, in some frantic war
the red settled into piles
of chalky rubble
in between the stones
in obvious relief
bright and tired and exposed to the sun
grieving or relieved
Below my eastern window
A yellow leaf floats to the ground
I am not sure if I am grieving
Or relieved.
Here is a chance to slow down,
Maybe even to reflect,
To practice letting go of the enormous effort
It takes to sustain summer’s brilliant theater.
Here is my sadness,
Here is a death
And the possibility of being reborn.
Manifesto
My job is to live in the liminal spaces.
My job is to recognize the unique core of every person I meet.
My job is to merge life and death until they are indistinguishable.
My job is to lie down in city graveyards.
My job is to stare at the trees dancing in the late August wind.
My job is to close my eyes and recognize the infinite grasping and gulping for air.
My job is to watch the blades of grass caress the cut stone of the graves, to absorb the desperation and intention with which humans desire permanence.
My job is to find people who will build me up and create a clear space for work and play.
My job is to stay clear on what my job is.
My job is to find ways to do my job.
My job is to remain open to new channels.
My job is to break myself open, again and again, trusting that I will always be whole, even as I fall apart.
My job is to expect nothing and everything all at once, forever.
My job is to be human and allow others to witness me being human.
My job is to create spaces for people to feel safe being human in concert with one another.
My job is to ask questions.
My job is to be part of nature.
My job is to gently unfold the blocks inside of me, inquiring into what might lie behind, underneath, and between them.
My job is to look at my hands in wonder.
My job is to use my hands to create music, writing, dance, thus communicating in the most direct way I know how.
My job is to feel the earth holding me.
My job is to discern discomfort from endangerment.
My job is to cherish the creative connections, friendships, and relationships I have been gifted with.
My job is to lead with honesty and compassion.
My job is to remain present with the stuff that feels ambiguous, confusing, murky, muddy, in between, and fuzzy.
My job is to translate the immediacy of life and death into art.
My job is to hold hope.
My job is to feel the seasons change.
My job is to let go of “shoulds” and find what feels good.
My job is to decorate Easter Eggs with tiny broken treasures I’ve slowly and intentionally collected over the years.
My job is to listen to the small voices, and report back.
My job is to commune with souls while “performing” (sharing, broadcasting, communicating) music and spoken word on stages, in living rooms, and in headphones.
My job is to turn towards the truth of being alive in the chaos.
My job is knowing myself well enough to know when something in my life is dying.
My job is to hold hands.
My job is to dance, sweaty and joyful, among people I love.
My job is to recognize the the sadness and hurt in others, and to hold space for it without becoming it myself.
My job is to lean into sensation if it’s pleasurable, and say no to sensation if it’s unwanted.
My job is to surrender to the mystery.
My job is to shout my humanness from the tallest hill where somebody and nobody can hear me.
My job is to follow the softness.
My job is to pull up my socks and keep going.
we are always changing (the ocean)
The ocean is always changing.
I’ve read that, in various forms and architectures, many times over the years. So many iterations of the same, ancient human knowledge, and yet I have never truly known, not really, until today. I don’t think I fully understand anything until I’ve experienced it, viscerally, without analysis.
The thing about the ocean is that the waves are always there, the water always has a relatively consistent chemical makeup, and the sand changes so imperceptibly that it appears to remain the same for thousands of years.
And yet.
Every single time I walk to the beach and stand facing the horizon, the ocean is new. Completely, astonishingly new. There will never be another day, and never has been, when the ocean has been this particular shade of purple as the sun rests behind charcoal grey storm clouds, or this pale, shimmering blue like the inside of an oyster shell, or this impossible frothy thing, awash with orange as the last daylight slips beyond the horizon.
She is untamable.
The crests of her waves shine with bright pleasure one day, and the next she is throwing herself against the sand in grief. Just when I think I know her, can pin her down, find a pattern, she is off again. Using some other palette, some other context. Of course, we hear that the ocean is wild, in “the literature” (to be read with a posh British accent and a sardonic smile). She is a wild, mystical beast, you cannot tame her.
I plant my feet in the sand and gaze out at the water, open to whatever she has to say. Needing a guide. Needing connection. Hoping that her magnetic dance can draw me out of the cramped body I reside in. I have collected so many barriers that it often feels like I’m wandering a maze of my own design. Each wall has helped me, protected me, in moments of extreme distress, but now I need to let some go. I need a dissolving.
And she is here. She is as ephemeral as she is powerful. Her body never stops changing. Her shape never stops shifting. Her context never stops evolving, each part responding to another part, a tapestry of overlapping elements and systems.
I face the ocean and ask her the one question I am always asking.
A vision comes back to me. It is 2018. Tara Brach is guiding me through a meditation. I bring my most heavy, unmanageable problem to the feet of my most wise self. I ask for her guidance. I surrender to presence, breathing in and out. By way of an answer, I receive an image, clear and colorful. I am standing on a grassy riverbed. I am full of something. Is it hope? Is it peace? Is it fierceness? It is something close to equanimity. My bare feet rest firmly in the grass, arms relaxed by my side, as I look slightly up and to my left. I can see my back and the slender, half-moon shape of my profile, and my hands, like dancers by my sides. I see the river, slow, dark, wide. I see all of this from ten paces behind myself, watching the energetic breeze lift my long, brown hair, my fingertips sway slightly with the movement of the wind. I am alone, and yet, I am not alone in the slightest.
I think of this now as I stand before the ocean. Is this an answer? Or simply a continuation of the question. Does having an answer matter? The cycle continues. Just as the cycle of the tide, of each wave, even, has no ending, so does this question I am asking. This need. There will never be a question and answer that satisfies the longing, just as there will never be a moment when the ocean is exactly the same as she was before.
The ocean is always changing. She is wild, untamable, a beast, a mystery. Is she so different from us, then? Is she so separate? One day I am dancing down the sidewalk in the dark, and the next I am wishing I were gone. The parade, no, the circus, of emotions, saturates my body almost every moment of every day. I am elated, now I am scared, now I am heavy with regret. Nothing is constant. Just like her.
And I smile, then, because I realize that the ocean is teaching me. And the question will be asked, and the need will be presented, over and over, and true power will be created by the cyclical movement of it all. I realize that this power, the kind that I had in my vision, comes from being a witness to it all. I realize that it is not a dissolving I need, but an opening. I realize that my feet are holding up my body, pressing firmly into the earth, and that I am looking up and slightly to my left. And I am here.
Ocean
I am in love with Ocean
lifting her thousands of white hats
in the chop of the storm,
or lying smooth and blue, the
loveliest bed in the world.
In the personal life, there is
always grief more than enough,
a heart-load for each of us
on the dusty road. I suppose
there is a reason for this, so I will be
patient, acquiescent. But I will live
nowhere except here, by Ocean, trusting
equally in all the blast and welcome
of her sorrowless, salt self.
-Mary Oliver, from Red Bird
sure of the tide
These waters
Pull at me
Lap at my hips
I learned to swim
In the roughest weather
So here
I am
Breathing in
Sure of myself
Sure of the tide
That always takes me
To you
I wanted to be good
I wanted to be good.
I needed everything.
I conducted ceremonies.
I climbed up, even as I dreaded falling off.
I made myself jump.
I wanted wholeness.
I came across myself many times over.
I knew I would always be leaving a version of myself behind.
I lived anyway.
the monsters aren’t what you think they are
I am terrified that nobody will see.
I am terrified that someone will see.
I am terrified that nobody will ask me if I’m okay.
I am terrified that someone will ask me if I’m okay.
I long to stay hidden forever.
I long to be seen.
I long to suddenly cease to exist.
I long to live.
These are all stories we tell ourselves. All of it. The heartbreak. The childhood. The loves. The things we’re good at, the people we want to be around, the places we find joy, all of it. Every last drop is a story we tell ourselves.
Except the body. The body speaks only in memory. In grief. In imprints. There are no tales to weave here. The body cannot lie. Here, there is only an unraveling of what is already whole and perfect and older than we can imagine.
The monsters aren’t what you think they are.
This is our work, this task of ‘being human.’ None of us are prepared. We don’t know how to live. We try anyway. We want to allow our deepest desires to come up for air, but we are terrified of what they will do to our lives. We condemn our fears, even as we lean in closer to listen to their warnings.
The monsters aren’t what you think they are.
We long for a soft landing. We want beauty to be simple, joy to be pure, and growth to be painless. We are ashamed when our lives are complex and difficult. We condemn our darkness, even as it reaches up to us, a gentle suppliant.
The monsters aren’t what you think they are.
The body knows darkness. It knows the darkness that envelops the moon each month, the darkness of incubation, the bearer of life. Incapable of masking, paraphrasing, mitigating, or pretending to be something it’s not, the darkness simply is.
This terrifies us. We have no control. We try, desperately, to maintain the illusion that we are separate from our darkness. We are determined to chase our myth of perfection. We are determined to deny the murk collecting in our torsos, in our jawbones, our hands.
The monsters aren’t what you think they are.
The body knows murk.
The murk is the soft darkness after a parent says goodnight, when you can still hear voices murmuring on the other side of the door. The murk is the stillness of a summer evening, draping itself leisurely out over the white hay bales. The murk is not a sinister mystery. Instead, it is a circle of your younger selves. They are pulling memories out from the depths of their backpacks, showing you each precious piece, proud, triumphant, a little self-conscious. They are naming their grief. They are showing you their wounds. They are waiting for you to touch their shoulders, to smile at their tales, to come to know their desires.
The monsters aren’t what you think they are. Most often, they are scared children, desperate to be heard.
These are all stories we tell ourselves. The darkness teaches us how to notice our stories. How to ask questions. How to be quiet. How to listen. How to love. How to live.
Hi all. You can read one of the seeds for this piece here.
-Siena
Leaning into humanness
Can I sacrifice my pull towards gathering power in order to lean into my humanness? There is poetry in this, if I stop believing that I have to be perfect. If I slow down and unplug for long enough to hear myself feel. There has always been poetry here. I can feel my beating heart, puffy eyes, my warm toes. I lie in content, open to my unfolding.
Seven Years Can Be a Lifetime
Dear Twenty-Year Old Me,
I know it’s been awhile since you felt loved. I was with you in your bedroom on your birthday that night on Dorset Street. You were listening to “I Hope You Dance Radio” on Pandora while ripping off curls of blue and pink wrapping paper from the boxes. I saw you crying, heaving with sobs over the small piles of tufted paper and ribbon. I could see that you were hurting. I loved you then.
I know you wanted somebody to see, and you also hoped so fervently that nobody would see. I was there with you when you downed a bottle of red wine on a Thursday night, taking big gulps straight from the bottle, blasting “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” by Frankie Vallie on your iHome. I loved how you twirled around the room, screaming into the wine bottle as a microphone. I loved you then.
I know you feel so alone. I can see your core, glimmering like well-loved embers, but I can see that you have no access to it at all. I heard your footsteps as you padded down his hall late at night, feeling a hard knot in the pit of your stomach, approaching the inevitable atrophy of your self-esteem with grim dedication. I loved you then.
I know you do not feel like yourself. I was with you as you crouched in the corner of his kitchen, exploding with rage and terror, screaming out expletives about love and devotion. You succumbed to the hurt, cowering animal inside you. You spit and snarled. You clawed at the air. You couldn’t expand your body enough to express the weight of your anger. I loved you then.
I hear you. You are so afraid that you don’t exist. I hear you. You are so tired. I hear you. You feel eighty years old and you are only twenty. I know you are tired. I am always here with you. I will never leave you. I will love you forever.
With all of my love,
Twenty-Seven Year Old Me
Siena Rose 