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.
Tag: dreams
On Dreams
Last night, I’m immersed in The Sopranos Season 1, Episode 2, and all of a sudden, Tony starts describing this bizarre dream he had. The dream involves a vicious bird, a lost penis, and an auto mechanic, and the whole thing makes me chuckle to myself, especially after Tony says, “and I’m holding it (his penis) up, and this bird swoops down, and grabs it in his beak, and flies off with it.” You see Tony gesturing with his hand to demonstrate the scene, then the camera immediately switches back to the therapist’s forced-imperturbable face. It’s perfect. You have to laugh.
This scene also makes me think. Why are dreams so mysterious, and so varied? Sometimes they’re ludicrous to the point of being comical. But the ludicrous can turn out to be sad. Like Tony’s ducks. He loved those ducks. He truly loved them, and truly felt a loss when they were gone. It doesn’t make any sense, and that’s okay. Sometimes (most of the time) life doesn’t make any sense at all. I know dreams are proof that we work through shit while we sleep. I also think dreams are proof that hardly anything we do, or decide, is rational.
Sometimes I wake up, terrified that what I’ve dreamed has actually happened. The feeling of relief is so magnificent when I realize I still have “control” over my life, and the terrible dream-thing did not happen. But my body has adjusted to the dream, somehow. My body has, in those few moments or hours of dreaming, accepted that the dream is real. And it takes a few moments after I wake up to readjust. Recalibrate to reality.
Sometimes I wake up with the name of a past lover still on my lips, the feeling of losing them so present in my body that it feels like we just said goodbye the day before. It is real longing, conjured up by a dream. And not only longing, but clarity as well. As if, through the experience of that relationship from the dream perspective, I have actually developed a fresh sense of myself in relation to that other being. The dream is not just some fantasy that doesn’t affect me in real life. The dream has transformed my life.
And sometimes, I wake up remembering nothing at all from my dreams.
Dreams are also tied up in memory and identity for me. I remember some of my dreams, from my childhood and teen years, as if they were memories. Fully-formed, tangible memories. You know how we change and shape our memories into stories as we remember them over and over again? Some of my older dreams are like that. I know them now like stories. They’re stories of myself. These dream memories help to form my understanding of myself, my current self, in the current world. They’re important to my identity. They’re resources for me to use, lenses through which I can filter new information.
Dreams are a portal into another realm. We might think that we’re rational beings with free will, but we seem to be operating based on much more ancient, and much less linear, program than we imagine. We like to giggle incredulously at our dreams, at the weird, nonsensical situations we create in our sleeping minds, but is reality much different?
On Rage
quiet rage
beginning to announce
her speechless marriage
sweeping through, screaming
their Names
dancing then, after
only after
only after
Socks
are the only thing keeping
me from falling apart
!
One small barrier
(between me and the world)
:
The one thing
that separates me from the dream.
My
dreams were preferable
to this
.
Much softer and filled with
more desire.
May
there is a time to rest
among the soft flowers
[they exist
whether you are there
or not]
More Than Us
inspired by the squirrels living in our ceiling
I have dreams about large animals
lounging in the rafters
smiling down at me with their kind eyes
lifting feathers with their sighs
the footsteps in my ceiling
they keep me up at night
I imagine they belong to gentle bears
or doves in quiet pairs
this house is home to more than us
but we’ll never see their glorious
asleep behind the table there
aglow with dreams of steadfast care
this house is home to more than us
I wake up to the dinosaurs
trudging through the yard
crying tears and tears and tears and tears and tears
surprised to end up here
polar bears and elephants
otters kissing lambs
I can hear their heartbeats pressed against the walls
I listen for their calls
this house is home to more than us
but we’ll never see their glorious
asleep behind the table there
aglow with dreams of steadfast care
this house is home to more than us
Siena Rose 