I had forgotten that it was the 12th, that it was also Thursday the 12th. The day down to the day of the week of a six month anniversary that no one will ever want.
I decided to start going to yoga at the same studio that she went to, the one that I had only been to when she was there or with her son. This was my first class alone.
The first time we went, it was all three of us, in the car before class she told us her secret competition with the teacher - so secret, he didn't even know. At the end of class there is a breath meditation on "Ohm" for one full breath and she tried to hold her's longer than the instructor's. I listened at the end of that class, after my own breath had ended as had her son's next to me, and everyone else fell out while one male and one female voice still rang. Just as slowly as it started, the instructor's breath ended and there was one ringing voice left, her's. It sounded as true and clear as a toe dipped in water creating concentric circles.
My class Wednesday on my own was liberating. I felt like "yea, I can do this by myself." We laid down at the end of class to relax and meditate. There was a small rumbling in my diaphragm and it traveled slowly up my throat to my sinuses where water began to collect in the corners of my eyes. I didn't understand it and just kept breathing. My hands, out to my sides, palms turned up. Something pushed into my left palm, heavy like a glass paper weight but soft like fleece. I didn't dare open my eyes.
"Everyone turn to your right side and slowly, gently, push yourself up with your arms to sitting position."
We all did as instructed, no one rebelling and staying horizontal to fall asleep.
"Now, breathe one deep breath in and we'll let it all out as one Ohm."
My breath filled my entire cavity, diaphragm expanding and my voice rounded out of my mouth creating the letter O until I could no longer and hummed an M. The woman behind me, Jean, with her long dark hair and olive skin, her son sitting next to her on a mat, had just joined the class late. A surprise, but a welcome one. Her voice behind me was pure, someone who had clearly sang before. As each Ohm dropped out of the group, there were two voices left, one male and one female. And as the instructor's voice - lower than the female's - fell to silent, we all heard what I thought I would never again hear, a thick female voice ringing at the end on "mmmm."
Thank you Jean.
Friday, August 14, 2009
Thursday, August 13, 2009
The Tube
I went to London last summer for three weeks to study Shakespeare and all that English nerdy literature stuff that people like me, people who love libraries and paper that's bound together, love. I actually teared up in Westminster Abbey for shear astonishment at all the greatness surrounding me. Yes, I cried in front of Jane Austen's tomb, and on top of Darwin's. But the point is, that is who I have been for twenty one years.
When I was fifteen, I was considered pretty cool. I had the right friends, wore the right clothes, my current boyfriend claims he was intimidated by my so-called "status." The status that I had no idea about, I thought I just had friends. I didn't party like them, I didn't go to their parties and if I did I drank pop. Alcohol wasn't of any interest to me, neither were drugs, clearly the uncool thing to do is exactly what I chose. The things I put value into were not social climbing and playing the "pass-out" game - a little game where kids force themselves to faint, it was the thing to do, no drugs or illegal substances involved - I was so much more interested in Hemmingway and how he achieved certain effects. I sat in my english class Freshman year of High School with my favorite teacher. She encouraged us to write, allowed us to talk freely and eliminated the boundaries of teacher-student, book-test. To her, there were no right answers and English was not a dead subject due to the dawn of technology. This teacher made us write freely at the beginning of each class, "Put your pen or pencil on the paper, your head down, close your eyes if you want to, but do not take that utensil off the page for fifteen minutes." Those were the most well-spent minutes of my High School career. After the period of time she would ding a bell and we'd raise our heads and she called on us to read our pieces allowed, whatever we wrote, there were no expectations for intelligence or even coherence, just that you wrote for fifteen minutes without stopping. I raised my hand, for the first time, shy me who never wanted to read-aloud in school, raised her hand. I was the first to read my piece. The experience was so absolutely mind-blowing. Here was a teacher, standing in front of me, someone a litte younger than my parents, asking me to be creative, asking me to share it, without bounds, and then commending, praising my work. Unbelievable.
As a creative-writing major in a private, liberal-arts university, that High School Freshman English class was the ONLY time that has ever happened. There are so many rules now, creativity is encouraged but not in any kind of real way. You're told to be creative, rules aren't broken so that you can be creative. Rules are not pushed aside to allow the space to become free and flowing.
The same teacher asked us what books are for? Why do they exist? What is their purpose? I felt that the teacher and I had bonded a bit and I felt free to speak my mind without judgment in this class, so I raised my hand again. Everyone had been offering reasons why books are important. I didn't have anything intelligent to say, just something honest that I felt. "Books are an escape." The teacher looked at me a little strangely, as if to say: "at least she's not doing drugs." I felt like my answer wasn't really right, that I shouldn't feel like I had to escape, but I did, and I loved books for creating that space for me to run through.
Until I met someone who became that escape and who taught me how to create my own escapes within me, books were it. Writers became my best friends, plot lines were my hallways to run through, the characters waved to me as I ran trailing pages behind me, ink drops left instead of footprints.
I've now figured out that it isn't all that normal for a fifteen year-old suburbanite to feel that she needs to escape and that my childhood has been exceptional. I now get why an adult who had been through much much more than I cocked her head to the side in curiosity. Not to dim my experiences, but there is a view of students in suburbia, that they are the image of perfection, they have wonderful houses, homes, dogs, two cars, fences - picket or otherwise. Teachers are only human, but they need to let go of the stereotypes too. We all do. We all need to get out of our own heads sometimes. I have met a lot of people and thought "what an idiot" "I wonder what could be wrong in her life" without thinking "Maybe she had a shitty day." Our heads, as a whole, are so far inside themselves and into their own thoughts and pasts that we can't see to the other side of what's in front of us. We need to be more conscious of the people around us because their energies and lives coincide with ours, so as a selfish nation, we can think selfishly in order to serve others - think of yourself, and how your close mindedness to one person will negatively effect you.
My father came up with an analogy of ducks. He says that some people on the outside are as calm and serene as ducks, but beneath the surface their feet are pedaling furiously to stay afloat. Ducks also have feathers that wick away water. Sticking to this analogy, we need to allow negativity and bad energy to roll off us just like water off duck feathers.
I think the point is that we are all, just ducks. Pedaling furiously under the surface to keep afloat, just wanting to take a break.
We are all just ducks.
When I was fifteen, I was considered pretty cool. I had the right friends, wore the right clothes, my current boyfriend claims he was intimidated by my so-called "status." The status that I had no idea about, I thought I just had friends. I didn't party like them, I didn't go to their parties and if I did I drank pop. Alcohol wasn't of any interest to me, neither were drugs, clearly the uncool thing to do is exactly what I chose. The things I put value into were not social climbing and playing the "pass-out" game - a little game where kids force themselves to faint, it was the thing to do, no drugs or illegal substances involved - I was so much more interested in Hemmingway and how he achieved certain effects. I sat in my english class Freshman year of High School with my favorite teacher. She encouraged us to write, allowed us to talk freely and eliminated the boundaries of teacher-student, book-test. To her, there were no right answers and English was not a dead subject due to the dawn of technology. This teacher made us write freely at the beginning of each class, "Put your pen or pencil on the paper, your head down, close your eyes if you want to, but do not take that utensil off the page for fifteen minutes." Those were the most well-spent minutes of my High School career. After the period of time she would ding a bell and we'd raise our heads and she called on us to read our pieces allowed, whatever we wrote, there were no expectations for intelligence or even coherence, just that you wrote for fifteen minutes without stopping. I raised my hand, for the first time, shy me who never wanted to read-aloud in school, raised her hand. I was the first to read my piece. The experience was so absolutely mind-blowing. Here was a teacher, standing in front of me, someone a litte younger than my parents, asking me to be creative, asking me to share it, without bounds, and then commending, praising my work. Unbelievable.
As a creative-writing major in a private, liberal-arts university, that High School Freshman English class was the ONLY time that has ever happened. There are so many rules now, creativity is encouraged but not in any kind of real way. You're told to be creative, rules aren't broken so that you can be creative. Rules are not pushed aside to allow the space to become free and flowing.
The same teacher asked us what books are for? Why do they exist? What is their purpose? I felt that the teacher and I had bonded a bit and I felt free to speak my mind without judgment in this class, so I raised my hand again. Everyone had been offering reasons why books are important. I didn't have anything intelligent to say, just something honest that I felt. "Books are an escape." The teacher looked at me a little strangely, as if to say: "at least she's not doing drugs." I felt like my answer wasn't really right, that I shouldn't feel like I had to escape, but I did, and I loved books for creating that space for me to run through.
Until I met someone who became that escape and who taught me how to create my own escapes within me, books were it. Writers became my best friends, plot lines were my hallways to run through, the characters waved to me as I ran trailing pages behind me, ink drops left instead of footprints.
I've now figured out that it isn't all that normal for a fifteen year-old suburbanite to feel that she needs to escape and that my childhood has been exceptional. I now get why an adult who had been through much much more than I cocked her head to the side in curiosity. Not to dim my experiences, but there is a view of students in suburbia, that they are the image of perfection, they have wonderful houses, homes, dogs, two cars, fences - picket or otherwise. Teachers are only human, but they need to let go of the stereotypes too. We all do. We all need to get out of our own heads sometimes. I have met a lot of people and thought "what an idiot" "I wonder what could be wrong in her life" without thinking "Maybe she had a shitty day." Our heads, as a whole, are so far inside themselves and into their own thoughts and pasts that we can't see to the other side of what's in front of us. We need to be more conscious of the people around us because their energies and lives coincide with ours, so as a selfish nation, we can think selfishly in order to serve others - think of yourself, and how your close mindedness to one person will negatively effect you.
My father came up with an analogy of ducks. He says that some people on the outside are as calm and serene as ducks, but beneath the surface their feet are pedaling furiously to stay afloat. Ducks also have feathers that wick away water. Sticking to this analogy, we need to allow negativity and bad energy to roll off us just like water off duck feathers.
I think the point is that we are all, just ducks. Pedaling furiously under the surface to keep afloat, just wanting to take a break.
We are all just ducks.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Ob La Di Ob La Da
Life goes onnnnn hey! la la la la Life Goes On. -the Beatles
"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: It Goes On" -Robert Frost
This is what she has taught me. Whirling through the kitchen on her toes, wooden spoon in hand diving in for a taste of the sauce we made. Her lungs puffed out like an elegant bird ready to "squawk!" "Ob La Di! Ob La Da! Life goes on!" It is the foremost memory I have and it has the best message. Even though all of our lives will end at some point, life, in general, goes on. Through the small inconveniences, the large stumbles and no matter how far we fall - it goes on. The mother still feeds her child, the store still runs, the cars still move on the highway, the birds still perch in trees, the rain still falls. It feels like it is over, the dark consumes from the inside up my throat and into my mouth, a tiny hand with suchers sewing my lips shut before I can scream. It seems impossible to reach beyond the finality of that feeling. With one hand up, reaching, shoulder back and opening the chest to allow the heart to breathe, Extended Warrior, life goes on. We are all warriors, on our own paths, cutting a path in the over growth, snaking around obstacles and moving them and finding a way to still be ourselves with all the weight that seems to push back. We move forward as does life. Everything can suck sometimes and the comfort of being alone surrounded by nothing but air and down comforters feels safe, but that is the most dangerous place to be. Accepting our source, accepting interconnection and the life of life, the existence that occurs with or without our participation and deciding to participate, revel, and celebrate in it is the safest place.
She taught me a meditation on Yahweh that she did lying down flat on the ground, palms up. She concentrated on the Hebrew letters, yud, hay, vuv, hay (I didn't transliterate correctly, as close as I could). She filled herself with breath, beginning at the feet, "Yud, hay, vuv, hay" and back down, emptying the body of breath, envisioning Yahweh, Adonai, Hashem, Shachinah, filling her up and leaving again. I sat on the edge of a mattress while she in her black office chair that swivelled, faced me. She drew the letters vertically on a page and explained to me her theory of the person, the the letters look like a person. Enforcing her meditation, the Source filling her up and leaving with each breath, the Source being the breath, and the letters stacked to make a person, made more sense to me in that moment than ten years of Sunday School had ever made.
These are the things I carry with me. Recognizing the Source and my origination within it, the breath, the spirit within us, Ob La Di, Ob La Da. Life, it does go on, with each breath it steps forward.
"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: It Goes On" -Robert Frost
This is what she has taught me. Whirling through the kitchen on her toes, wooden spoon in hand diving in for a taste of the sauce we made. Her lungs puffed out like an elegant bird ready to "squawk!" "Ob La Di! Ob La Da! Life goes on!" It is the foremost memory I have and it has the best message. Even though all of our lives will end at some point, life, in general, goes on. Through the small inconveniences, the large stumbles and no matter how far we fall - it goes on. The mother still feeds her child, the store still runs, the cars still move on the highway, the birds still perch in trees, the rain still falls. It feels like it is over, the dark consumes from the inside up my throat and into my mouth, a tiny hand with suchers sewing my lips shut before I can scream. It seems impossible to reach beyond the finality of that feeling. With one hand up, reaching, shoulder back and opening the chest to allow the heart to breathe, Extended Warrior, life goes on. We are all warriors, on our own paths, cutting a path in the over growth, snaking around obstacles and moving them and finding a way to still be ourselves with all the weight that seems to push back. We move forward as does life. Everything can suck sometimes and the comfort of being alone surrounded by nothing but air and down comforters feels safe, but that is the most dangerous place to be. Accepting our source, accepting interconnection and the life of life, the existence that occurs with or without our participation and deciding to participate, revel, and celebrate in it is the safest place.
She taught me a meditation on Yahweh that she did lying down flat on the ground, palms up. She concentrated on the Hebrew letters, yud, hay, vuv, hay (I didn't transliterate correctly, as close as I could). She filled herself with breath, beginning at the feet, "Yud, hay, vuv, hay" and back down, emptying the body of breath, envisioning Yahweh, Adonai, Hashem, Shachinah, filling her up and leaving again. I sat on the edge of a mattress while she in her black office chair that swivelled, faced me. She drew the letters vertically on a page and explained to me her theory of the person, the the letters look like a person. Enforcing her meditation, the Source filling her up and leaving with each breath, the Source being the breath, and the letters stacked to make a person, made more sense to me in that moment than ten years of Sunday School had ever made.
These are the things I carry with me. Recognizing the Source and my origination within it, the breath, the spirit within us, Ob La Di, Ob La Da. Life, it does go on, with each breath it steps forward.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Ain't Nuthin But a G Thang Baby.
G-mail.
The best thing on the internet is a free e-mail server. Quite the prevalent business nowadays. When I was younger we had AOL, America OnLine, so you're not confused about which country the company came from. All of America was OnLine thanks to AOL. It was my first e-mail account, Star4Ever, I know, but come on, I was twelve. From there I discovered chat rooms and news pages. Who knew that a chat room wasn't actually a room but a page, which isn't REALLY a "page" but a window on a computer screen, a two-dimensional block of writing and buttons that will connect you to people with one click.
My best friend in High School was Anna, she didn't know that she was my best friend because I was such a crappy friend but she was it for me. Her bipolar had taken over for most of the school year so we hadn't hung out a lot. Anna's mom was a completely pure and wonderful person, pure meaning genuine, meaning she didn't shit around. Her bird-like laugh "cockadoodledooed" inside the car until neither Anna nor I could hear. We were going to pick up her best friend, Julie. They hugged, allowing their cheeks to touch in such a tender way I thought they were sisters. Immediately their hips were attached and inseperable. No part of my fifteen-year-old mind thought "they met in a chat room." It just didn't happen that way when I was fifteen! Anna's mom was the first person I had met who had an online friend in real life. I had an online friend, lots of them actually, one in particular named John, with whom I am still friends. He's a writer, only five years older than I am. He critiqued my writing and helped me along my way, we talked on the phone occaionally, his dark gristly voice on the other line was so alluring. Then he got a Facebook page, and so did I when I got into college. We were then Facebook friends and the picture in my head was not the picture on his default. It was a disappointement. It makes me doubt eHarmony and dating websites. Looks aren't everything, but physical attraction is a major part of all reationships. We're such a visual culture. I thought the internet was going to change that but it only increased it. Now, instead of seeing the occasional photo of a person online, there is a subtle competition happening for the most photos of oneself on websites such as Facebook. There is an entire MySpace culture vying for attention via strategically taken photos, mirror fully utilized. My youngest sister grew up knowing how to work a computer and "artfully" take a photo of herself without her face being splashed out by the flash reflection in the mirror. Ellie, my sister, grew up without realizing there was a time when webcams and microphones and joysticks didn't always come with a computer. We had a separate microphone that I used to sing into, I had no idea its actual use, perhaps my Dad used it as a dictaphone, I used it to fulfill my rockstar potential.
The thing is, now, my boyfriend's family members all met their significant others on a dating website, the same one in fact. This has become totally and completely normal, all within my short lifetime.
What, I wonder, could possibly be next?
The best thing on the internet is a free e-mail server. Quite the prevalent business nowadays. When I was younger we had AOL, America OnLine, so you're not confused about which country the company came from. All of America was OnLine thanks to AOL. It was my first e-mail account, Star4Ever, I know, but come on, I was twelve. From there I discovered chat rooms and news pages. Who knew that a chat room wasn't actually a room but a page, which isn't REALLY a "page" but a window on a computer screen, a two-dimensional block of writing and buttons that will connect you to people with one click.
My best friend in High School was Anna, she didn't know that she was my best friend because I was such a crappy friend but she was it for me. Her bipolar had taken over for most of the school year so we hadn't hung out a lot. Anna's mom was a completely pure and wonderful person, pure meaning genuine, meaning she didn't shit around. Her bird-like laugh "cockadoodledooed" inside the car until neither Anna nor I could hear. We were going to pick up her best friend, Julie. They hugged, allowing their cheeks to touch in such a tender way I thought they were sisters. Immediately their hips were attached and inseperable. No part of my fifteen-year-old mind thought "they met in a chat room." It just didn't happen that way when I was fifteen! Anna's mom was the first person I had met who had an online friend in real life. I had an online friend, lots of them actually, one in particular named John, with whom I am still friends. He's a writer, only five years older than I am. He critiqued my writing and helped me along my way, we talked on the phone occaionally, his dark gristly voice on the other line was so alluring. Then he got a Facebook page, and so did I when I got into college. We were then Facebook friends and the picture in my head was not the picture on his default. It was a disappointement. It makes me doubt eHarmony and dating websites. Looks aren't everything, but physical attraction is a major part of all reationships. We're such a visual culture. I thought the internet was going to change that but it only increased it. Now, instead of seeing the occasional photo of a person online, there is a subtle competition happening for the most photos of oneself on websites such as Facebook. There is an entire MySpace culture vying for attention via strategically taken photos, mirror fully utilized. My youngest sister grew up knowing how to work a computer and "artfully" take a photo of herself without her face being splashed out by the flash reflection in the mirror. Ellie, my sister, grew up without realizing there was a time when webcams and microphones and joysticks didn't always come with a computer. We had a separate microphone that I used to sing into, I had no idea its actual use, perhaps my Dad used it as a dictaphone, I used it to fulfill my rockstar potential.
The thing is, now, my boyfriend's family members all met their significant others on a dating website, the same one in fact. This has become totally and completely normal, all within my short lifetime.
What, I wonder, could possibly be next?
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Friday, November 7, 2008
poem I revised
Boston, Massachusetts, March 29, 1883
I.
My fingertips are sick with
The chill of your skin.
The maple outside our window
Taps the pane
Until I don’t hear it
Anymore,
Like the clock in our
Dining room that rings
On every hour, until
We stopped listening.
My cheek finds your
Shoulder
Cold and I wish
Your lips would press
Against my forehead,
Forgetting how un-kissable
You’ve become in the past
Hour.
II.
The wind echoes its song
To measure the emptiness
Of walls so bare they feel
Shame.
The sun sprawled in places
I didn’t dare to touch,
Illuminating particles in the air
Making them look like snow.
It reminded me of that December,
Walking through Delaware Park
With you and the snow under
The streetlamp before it melted on my skin.
Pacing on the concrete
Of your sepulcher floor,
My voice crawled out
Into the air as the draft chilled
Only my skin.
I wanted to be where you lie now.
The only thing left
Inside you, Consumption.
I.
My fingertips are sick with
The chill of your skin.
The maple outside our window
Taps the pane
Until I don’t hear it
Anymore,
Like the clock in our
Dining room that rings
On every hour, until
We stopped listening.
My cheek finds your
Shoulder
Cold and I wish
Your lips would press
Against my forehead,
Forgetting how un-kissable
You’ve become in the past
Hour.
II.
The wind echoes its song
To measure the emptiness
Of walls so bare they feel
Shame.
The sun sprawled in places
I didn’t dare to touch,
Illuminating particles in the air
Making them look like snow.
It reminded me of that December,
Walking through Delaware Park
With you and the snow under
The streetlamp before it melted on my skin.
Pacing on the concrete
Of your sepulcher floor,
My voice crawled out
Into the air as the draft chilled
Only my skin.
I wanted to be where you lie now.
The only thing left
Inside you, Consumption.
make a scene
Ages 12-19, I was anorexic. Mom and Dad tried in their own ways to help but nothing did. I did yoga, it made me feel healthy because nothing else did. I came home one night in December and ate a bowl of salad. I was proud of myself. I decided to eat a meal when I got home from yoga, instead of my usual go upstairs and write and read until I was so exhausted I could pass out. Most of the time I would not eat breakfast, chew on sugary gum at school, I had heard this story about a girl who couldn’t open her mouth anymore because she hadn’t chewed in so long, I made sure that wouldn’t be me, then I would go home and up to my room, close and lock the door and stay there, the rest of the night. My family eats dinner together every night, I didn’t go downstairs during dinner. I spent two years not sitting with my family while they ate dinner. It was revolting to me, the smells, the chomping, the saliva. Mastication disgusted me. The night I ate a salad, I was on my way to my room and grabbed an apple, even more proud of myself. Mom decided to say “Is that all you’re going to eat?” ALL!? Fucking all I’m going to eat, mom? Here I was, so fucking proud of myself for eating at all I was beaming and she dared to say that. It got to me, I threw the apple down harder than I’ve ever thrown anything before, it shattered and pulped all over the floor, juice running into cracks and I pulled on my sneakers and ran out the front door. I ran, and ran, and ran, the cold air piercing my lungs. The sky was smoky and pink and grey and it tasted smoky too. I ran to the wooden playground at my elementary school. There’s a huge wooden horse there with tires on the inside that you can sit on, that’s pretty much all you can do on it though, so the horse was for losers, no one played on it. I climbed up inside that horse and sat there, waiting for something to happen, God to smite me, my heart to stop, rain, something. My dad found me. He must have ran out the door right behind me, it took him minutes to find me. We didn’t talk, he grabbed my hand and helped me down and we walked back in silence. A year later I wrote a poem kind of about that story, it was more about how I felt so outside of everyone, my mom loved the poem. That was a punch in the gut. Sometimes I feel like I’m nothing without anorexia. Sometimes I still get that punch of needing something more, some more torture, needing ana. I don’t really want to fight that feeling anymore.
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