adrift

i see them all the time. the wounded girls. in their summer clothes, bags in hand. wandering the streets with their hearts on their sleeves, their heartbreak on their faces. i walk among them, moving in the same direction, but apart. separate. above.

or so i thought.

it drifts in, you know ... the doubt, the insecurity, the fear, the ache ... like the ocean you can't see, but you can smell. it drifts in ... creating a storm in my brain. making me angry and sullen. i breathe fire.

it drifts in ... when the things that are momentous to me are of little moment to others. when i catch a glimpse of the life that was slapped away. when the ghosts climb in my buggy. when i realize i'm a ripple, and not the tidal wave i'd hoped to be.

it drifts in ... and the words won't come. or come in fits and starts, like my breath. it drifts in and my tongue dissolves into a pillar of salt. i close my eyes and put my guard up. i practice not loving you. to keep it at bay. i sting as i lick my own wounds.

i walk home in the heavy evening air. a long walk. unwelcome tonight. my eyes, bee-stung from crying and aching with the newness of it all.

(i have to admit, i find my own weakness embarrassing.)

i come upon another wounded girl, parked too far from home and waiting for the light to change. (aren't we all waiting for the light to change?)

'break up with your boyfriend, too?' she asks.

'he's not my boyfriend,' i say.

and she laughs. loud. long. surprising us both.

and just for a fleeting moment, like lightning hanging in the summer sky, i am myself again. the girl who makes people laugh. the girl with the perfect hair who holds hands and listens to sad stories and who makes things better.

and the corner girl, she'll never know me any differently. which is good. because as she walks away, laughing still, i feel you catch in my throat. and i can smell the ocean again.

all about eve

i love eve ensler. i do. especially now...

Eve Ensler, the American playwright, performer, feminist and activist best known for 'The Vagina Monologues', wrote the following about Sarah Palin:

Drill, Drill, Drill

I am having Sarah Palin nightmares.

I dreamt last night that she was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starved polar bears around their necks. I have a particular thing for Polar Bears.

Maybe it's their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they live in the arctic or that I have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice. Whatever it is, I need the polar bears.

I don't like raging at women.

I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.

But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story -- connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.

I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country choose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with regularity.

Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God's plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list. The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, 'It was a task from God.'

Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or not.

She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes. Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking.

From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference. This is a woman who could and might very well be the next president of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth.

Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air.

Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. But when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in God's name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried to be.

I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing.

It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, 'Drill Drill Drill.'

I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.

Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?

Eve Ensler
September 5, 2008

when it don't come easy

this song used to remind me of the person i wanted to be. i listened to it this evening and it occurred to me that it's about the person i've become ... that best version of myself ... the one who revealed herself the day i met you. how lucky for us both.


patty griffin - when it don't come easy

what if?

over and over there's a thought that stays with me ...

what if everyone else got it wrong? what if 'the way it's supposed to be' isn't the way it's supposed to be at all? what if it is just this easy and we're the only ones in on the joke?

wouldn't that be funny?

make it yours

this is my favorite song. watching this might just make it yours, too. (i dare you not to dance along.)

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ie1Qsh6AnS4

the edge

after running circle after circle, i am standing somewhere i've never stood before ... right on the edge of everything i want.

over my shoulder is the long road i took to get here ... winding and rocky and paved with the best of intentions. and up ahead is a grove and a voice whispering in my ear and for the first time, my excitement is greater than my fear.

tomorrow is the day i take the first step forward ... out of my head and on with my life.

what am i gonna wear?

enough

the first time you fall in love, it changes you forever.

i know.

his name was e. he was tall and funny and i loved him more that winter than i've loved anyone since ... strong and true and completely without fear or guile ... the way i hope to love again someday.

when he ended things, it was over the phone. it was vague. and i was undone. i never knew the reason for the split and it was there, i think, that my imagination began its marathon ... running far and fast ahead of me, dodging logic and running circles 'round reason. i assumed he'd found someone more beautiful, more intelligent, closer to home ... more of everything and less of me. i figured - no, i knew - i wasn't enough.

i wasn't entirely wrong.

i saw him one last time, in a hallway. he was standing with his back to me and she was leaning into him. it was she who saw me first and when he turned, he seemed embarrassed. sad, too. he shrugged, a meager attempt at an apology, i imagined, as the girl revealed herself and my world skipped a beat.

her name was k. and she was my arch nemesis. (when you're sixteen - all elbows and lip gloss and drama, it's okay to have an arch nemesis. it's expected, even.)

she was tall and blonde and beautiful ... cool, in that effortless way the wealthy seem born with. she was the opposite of me in every way. we knew each other, though not well, through competition; always finishing first and second, always wanting to best the other.

she smiled, then, slyly and looked down at me, heavy lidded and pleased with herself ... smug and victorious ... and held him, tightly - the way she'd hold any other trophy.

i didn't know what to do, so i did what it turns out i now always do when i hear my heart start to break ... i smiled, as warmly as i could, took a few steps backwards and walked away. and i never looked back.

i almost never look back.

that cut was deep and the scar remains ... thick, though softer now with age, and fading slightly. it manifests itself in my overdeveloped fear of rejection. unwarranted, some say, but still, i am who i am and i do what i do. and in the beginnings of things, or in the middle (when i'm happy and my guard is down), i am certain that it's waiting around the next corner, at the end of the hallway, leaning against a wall.

it goes away. it does. it burns off, with heat and light, like the fog outside my window and i like to think it keeps me humble, grateful, present. but mostly, i think it means i miss the simple joy of things ... of a compliment, of a conversation, of a meal ... and i don't want to do that. i think it means i push when i don't mean to and race ahead when i really would be content to walk ... and i don't want to do that. i don't want to make it easy for people to walk right in and out of my life. not anymore. i've had enough.

i want to give myself a chance to feel in this moment - as this moment - and not with any eye to yesterday or tomorrow. i want to just be ... for myself ... right now. there is time. there is always time.

i know.

because e. and i found each other again and are friends, now. the best kind. (the kind who keeps the connection to the person i used to be - that earliest version of myself, when the whole wide world was open to me and all i had to do was choose a direction, pick my path. the kind who represents potential and possibility in their purest forms - before heartbreak. or doubt. or envy. or vanity. before responsibility. and obligation. and compromise. before. the kind who knows my history and keeps my secrets and who understands the power of gravity.)

and last night, he told me the story of the hallway. from his side. and how he's never been more at odds with himself than he was in that moment - one girl wrapped around him; the other deep inside him. and how, when he needed them most, his words failed him. how, in that moment, and in the days and weeks before, he was the one who wasn't 'enough.' it was never about me at all. not everything is about me.

and suddenly, everything looks a little different. and the fog is burning off. and so is the fear.

yeah. the first time i fell in love, it changed me forever.

it's changing me again.