Remembering to dance.

That moment when your body remembers a long ago art of movement despite years of disuse and is just as fluid and synchronized as when you first perfected dancing just so.

It's a saffron shaded five minutes of bliss.

Just like that, I remember how beautiful my body can be. How I can move, in a modest tribal outfit or nothing at all. I soak it in, relishing that when I am aware of this form I'm in for my lifetime, it's in admiration.

I don't have time for self-loathing.

When my left hip rolls out, my arm mimics it in a symmetrical arc, my hand structures in a perfect flourette, and I tell you this: the body is the greatest instrument you will ever own. To make beauty, to defend yourself, to type out thoughts as they beat against the side of your head to get out.

Even when it's broken, and damaged, and weakened, it is still the greatest. Appreciate it, since it's closer to you than any lover will be. After all, isn't part of what makes us so bonded to our children is that they came from our BODY, our wombs, and are therefore precious and irreplaceable.

When I'm standing under a clear sky and can hear the ocean, I can't wait for the day I'll be beyond it. As useful and lovely as it can be, my body is a barrier between me and the swirling stardust of the universe, and I do not fear the day when it's time to return to that original home.

My body is a cage that keeps me from dancing with the one I love, but my mind holds the key. Arcade Fire had it right. And also inspires me to dance.

God is a redwood forest.

I remember places I've never been and things I've never done.

I was walking today with some friends through the ancient growth redwood forests, where trees are growing from trees, cavernous roots exposed, bark twisting around the trunk like it was being spun as it grew.

Surrounded by ferns and loamy ground and trees so majestic I was saturated in my own insignificance, I felt deeply at peace. Monumentally calm. Returning, finally, to a home I'd never occupied, laughing with souls who've never stood there with me.

I thought, suddenly, of a guy I went on a date with another lifetime ago. We were discussing meditation and, while I knew of its benefits and uses, I didn't think it was a proactive way to change the world. He fought viciously with me about it, saying Buddhist monks must have had it wrong all these centuries, etc etc. I simply said that we could agree to disagree. Now I understand more fully what I meant, something I couldn't fully express then because I hadn't experienced it yet, but knew it was the way for me.

Being surrounded by true greatness and consequently being humbled by your own mortality, insignificance, grand purpose, is true meditation. At least by my standards. I breathed deeply. I moved intentionally. I felt a welcome wholeness that shored up my inner reserve and it said boldly to continue onward, dear one.

God is a redwood forest. It's my goddaughter asking for me in a far-off desert. It is my parents praying for my happiness before a meal. It is my best friend reading two years worth of blogs and telling me that he loves me, feels closer to me, and is thankful we belong to each other.

That's what love is, you know. At the end of the day, love means that a bit of you belongs to them and that a little part of them fills up that equal space in you. When I'm feeling lost and scattered to the winds, I remember that...my soul is a patchwork quilt of the people who have loved me in this wild, brilliant, terrifying life, and because of their bits, I'll always go bravely forward.

We're all just different views of the whole.

I re-discovered this poem I wrote a few years ago last night as I was editing my collection thus far. It's about one of the first children I was ever a nanny to. Her mom went crazy and abandoned her, then eventually came back, but only on the condition that I would never be allowed to see her again. Her dad was so sad and conflicted, but I made it easier for him, saying simply that she is her mother. It was my first loss of a child I loved, and it devastated me for a long time afterward, and made me scared of loving any of my other friends' children the same.

Still, she carries a piece of me in her love-quilt.

My Secret Keeper

There are kiss-off competitions
in the front room.
They ensue for hours before dreaded bedtime.
Zoe holds my face prone
her shocked expression, where's the camera?
while she kisses the corners of my mouth.
I can hear the victory chortling in her lungs
seconds before the outburst spills forth.
On the evening of her sixth birthday,
she is the epitome of childhood perfection.
I wonder if she'll remember this clandestine utopia,
years from now, as a defense to self-loathing.
Her hair is the soft curling of branches
loving each other, swirling in sisterly dance.
The indent above her lip makes me believe
in the story Bogey told:

it is an indentation of the angel's finger,
pressed to your lips to keep your vast knowledge secret.

My secret keeper; her mouth is shut,
but the hidden treasures her soul knows
flow over from her eyes.
Hidden in that star-swirling: the nature of God.
In my dreams, God is a child,
holding my protesting mouth closed while she kisses me,
laughing triumphantly.

Hold on to what we are.

So, here's the thing: I've been really sad this weekend.

And as of this morning, my gut is in complete rebellion.

With my best friend Kathleen's words echoing in my head, "Work is gonna blow no matter where you are until you're doing a job you love. Hang in there babe," and my mother's quiet reassurances that I can deal with anything until I can't deal anymore and then come home, and Milla's proud speech at her bon voyage breakfast where I got to hug her one last time before she leaves for Africa about how she was so amazed and happy that I up and went on an adventure all by my lonesome have led me to one conclusion:

My sadness is being purged from my body via my butt. It's the only explanation. So I should be right as rain tomorrow.

Really, I tend to get over most funks quickly. The issue is that home is not a place, and never has been for me. Home is a people, MY people, and they are many and glorious and golden and 800 miles south of me. I have always felt emboldened by them to stand straighter and more loudly proclaim who I am and my opinions because I know their love.

And I left them. Because I needed to know I could still stand straight without them 10 minutes away to crumble against when things got terrible. And I think I've proved that to myself, for the most part, which is why missing Kathleen's baby shower and not being able to feel her daughter kick or hug my Evey G and nuzzle my Lottie Loo make weekends like this that follow hard weeks even harder to stand.

I also think this is due, in part, to not being creative lately. I haven't written in months, ever since I started school, and the absence of that is one more thing chipping away at my identity.

I imitate my dad at work, and the doctors think it's hilarious. They've all come to call me Erin-poo, just like my papa does. It's nice, because speaking like him makes me feel closer to him, but it makes me miss him so much too, and my mom.

So, as much as I love it here, I think if I can at least get the pre-req's for nursing done while living here, I'm going to do that and then move home to go to a BSN/MSN program. There's none up here, and I really don't want an associates. A bachelor's or above gives you infinitely more possibilities, and what am I if not a girl who keeps her options open?

I'll keep my eyes open, to who I am, what I can do, and who I love so much. And maybe I can't do it all on my own, but where's the shame in that?

"So hold on,
Hold on to what we are,
Hold on to your heart." - Of Monsters and Men, "Your Bones"