next to deadly wait forever

The Heart is a Chakra

2011-12-04T21:57:00.000-08:00

Oh these days they get me. Had a twinkle of a love affair with some prince who moved to the coast, a sibling reunion for the first time in six years over turkey and I was downright flabbergasted to witness everyone gobbling pig. I partook.

I have a swiss cheese novel. This means there are still holes in it. My love life is rather swiss cheese as well. Rather cheese cubes boys with fast metabolisms want to nibble at the pre-party then let go the leftovers.

The novel is aging well. It never leaves me.

The sky is striking blue between snow fall. I can't stop looking.

Sheer faith girl-

I like these towers better

2011-09-11T12:08:00.000-07:00

Ten years later I go to Yahoo and Yahoo is featuring tiny images of the Twin Towers over the count of my inbox every day of September until the Eleventh, maybe? Maybe then it will stop. Or perhaps Yahoo would like to accompany me through that entire year. A difficult year. Here now, I am not the person I was. I would simply stop using the Internet.

Every year I feel this day. Not the days I checked into or out of treatment centers or the days I graduated or moved or broke-up. Not days my dogs died. Always birthdays. But everybody will remember September 11th. Talk about where they were. Give everything this, this hissssstory. These markers, and so, I will remember too. I will write about it and share with others and sometimes feel so dramatic like I was there, I was there, I was there.

Though, at some less expected point throughout the day, I will lose myself in a memory of that day and days following, before we called it 9/11. (Though, we did that quickly. September Eleventh is so poetic.) I will completely regress to an otherworldly scar inside myself where a different human being was terrified. Inside that memory, I will shatter like the towers and stop existing for less than a second and there is nothing. Always, I am alone when this commemorative terror strikes. It is not something I can capture for you.

oh men

2011-06-23T22:55:00.001-07:00

Printed on a post card:

Among life's Josephines there is the Josephine who Napoleon divorced out of a desperate need to produce blood offspring. Then she turned to gardening & botany while Napoleon died saying Josephine with his last breath.

Inspired by a print shop project: Naropa Open Post, Summer Writing Program 2011

Sent to ridiculous governors signing anti-abortion bills into law. Dear Governor, please stop the madness. Sincerely.

Abortion is Pro-Life

2011-05-31T00:27:00.000-07:00

“Pro-life” is not a neutral, descriptive term. It is a dagger of psychological warfare that is backed by hate and terror…a profound libel and insult to those who help women. Words kill, and the phrase “pro-life” is an obscene and grotesque sophistry.

–Dr. Warren Hern’s response to the murder of Dr. George Tiller, 2009

We didn’t want to make Dr. Tiller’s death a political occasion, but beginning on the afternoon of May thirty-first we felt that his life should be honored, all of it, not just his work. His life as a husband of forty-five years, a father of four, a grandfather of ten, a navy flight surgeon, a man with great sense of humor, and an individual committed to his church, his community, and the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. It was our job to let the public know that he wasn’t just a human being, but a heroic human being, because we knew that other people were going to be saying a lot of terrible things about him.

–Dan Monnat, recounted in The Wichita Divide.

Often, I struggle with how often I dwell over terrorism in my writing. Still, the implications of such experiences remain unfathomable children I ghost-raise. Their memories run circles around me unpredictably.

An otherwise seasonal, holiday stroll through the Boulder Creek Festival renders a fire truck raising a ladder to the sky for goo-goo-eyed spectators as I count fire trucks and ambulances flying down West Side Highway turning the corner of Canyon Boulevard. Everything gray concrete and rushed and I have the re-epiphany that my memorialized count of dead rescue workers is measly compared to the actual count I knew rather desperately that day. Ten years later, my terror evolves.

In reading The Wichita Divide, I became curious of the Reformation Lutheran Church survivors—the baby scheduled to be baptized, the new folks bound for confirmation. The ushers. Someone’s daughter who reached his gunshot face first. The veterinarian who gave mouth to mouth with the blood on his face. I wonder how their flashbacks and memories unravel.

Not everything—almost nothing— I memorialize of Dr. Tiller is terrible. Indisputably prophetic and deeply skilled, he was a genuinely kind and authentic man with an abiding sense of humor and purpose. Every single thing he did for his community was necessary and good.

On my thirtieth birthday, I drove home via the heartland of the United States for the holidays. I stopped in Wichita for a few things: to memorialize my father’s alma mater and my parents’ first home as newlyweds. And, to see Dr. Tiller’s church. I don’t know exactly why I didn’t desire to visit the now-closed clinic. But I knew in my heart I was supposed to pray in his once-sanctuary.

Last night, as a part of my ongoing search for an abiding sense of balance, I sought my own Sabbath ceremony at Boulder Kirtan, a chanting assembly, and met a sage, great-grandfather, astronomer/astrologer about the size of Dr. Tiller, with similarly warm hands. Gentle being.

Though, aged as Dr. Tiller never will be—white beard, wood cane, and stories of wisdom in rocks. His mission: To cultivate joy in every molecule. At first sight, he claimed to see Kirtan inside me and gave me a peace blessing from my skull to my feet—gave me peace behind, below, above, and before me.

Yes. Please...

Born again and again and again

2011-05-22T21:19:00.000-07:00

Pining always, not always certain what it is I miss, I acquired a free bike from Naropa’s Bike Fleet.

First, Antonio’s gears cracked in motion and the tire flattened over night, then the bike master popped the rear tire on rosy Her-cules—my single-shift, age-old, second choice. Out of the misfit bike rubble, beamed sturdy and shock-absorbent, Mushroom Stew, aka. my new, best friend.

Yesterday was deemed a holy Judgment Day by some, and as the entire world baited breath for a final fulfillment of Christian prophesy, I worked until mid-day.

Recently, certain lifelong friendships have teetered. I’ve witnessed them sign their lives away and devote their entire psyche to the literature of The Bible (perhaps they feel they’ve watched the same in me wanting to provide every kind of health care for women).

I know full well that there are millions of good-hearted Christians all over the world, but my heart is crippled to honor a however-multi-branched religion aligned with stripping Americans of their religious freedom. Believe what you will, I know no prophet who is not pro-choice. Either way, my line of work is the least of sins. I know this in the valves of my heart.

I was young once before helmets. Rode a bike down Ohio riverbed, dead ends, under Pennsylvania evergreens, along rolling hills, got my driver’s license and rarely looked back.

I am certain what it is that I’ve been missing.

Yesterday was deemed a rapturous day, so I worshiped Mushroom Stew toward the flat iron backdrop—praising aquamarine skies, praying to a dedicated wind. I paused along the creek for the singing water to spread my flat, skin back over boulders. A purple butterfly the size of my pinky nail landed on my hip. I cycled my wheels along the creek and was born again.

Who needs heaven in a state ripe with open spaces laws?

Somewhere Over the Red Rocks

2011-05-13T14:58:00.000-07:00

Ghosts. Whoooooooooooo

I barely noticed Bin Laden was dead until I was reading the last piece entitled, Where Victory Lies, in the Time magazine with an X on his face. The writer was waxing on how massive hatred failed to change us. Along the lines of: we’re sill “rambunctious,” but warily so, and I felt so alone.

I have worried every day about terrorism since September 11, 2001, on every plane, train, and bus. My extended family has an emergency plan in light of doomsday.

Simply reading an entire issue devoted to the two towers and Al-Qaida gave me terror. In fact, I’ve hovered somewhere between the opposition and homeland security, trusting little beyond trees in July and August.

There are places where Americans are terrorists. / When pristine things happen, I feel wary.

The Prince of Wales married a common girl into a princess—his straight lace doll. (they do seem genuinely happy and how lovely) Before the comparisons even surfaced, I saw Cinderella and the curtain always falling opportune. The Big Day/ The Island Honeymoon/ The End.

Once, I wanted to marry the prince before his balding. Wanted to write him a letter I was sorry he had to be a prince and to lose his mother. Sorry he had to invite government leaders of killing countries to his monarchist vows. How frightening like someone’s perfection.

I enjoy my new job. So much I’ve learned of how people bleed, breast lumps, and bacterial infections. Though, some moments there is this absence. There is this missing abortion. Missing the life and death.

Pining always.

There are people and things that will break hearts so puzzlingly it’s as if they have taken us away from ourselves like a culposcopy and surely we would take our heart pieces back if we knew their culture would make us rich with nutrients.

Love doesn’t shake me. I’ve grown immune.

Haunted—I do what I want.

Ah, Spring!

2011-03-20T10:20:00.001-07:00

New season New sense of moon New found heart New old self New earthquake New manmade disaster New war Same prayer

Out Like a Lion

2011-03-19T10:21:00.000-07:00

When I turned five, we threw a party, played Pin the Tail on the Donkey and a goofy balloon game, filled the basement with a rainbow of balloons and sat on them. I still see the littlest girl rolling on a green balloon. We raised our hair. It was a blast.

I bought a balloon recently and sat on it—for a while—and it would not pop. It seems these days everything is made to withstand planetary disaster but the world is still misplacing itself beneath us and we cannot contain our nuclear disasters.

Almost every day, I wonder about my decision to go back *into* reproductive health care with this Writing, with this free (expensive) time following the all out desire to ease myself. Today, I took a walk around the block in south Denver (which is rather hazy), and a family—a man, a woman, and a small child covered in a stroller, stopped me for directions. This happens to me always, and though I did not know a thing of where I was, they happened to be going where I was going—to the abortion clinic.

World War is So Last Age

2011-02-19T16:54:00.000-08:00

Trying to conceive a new story that does not unravel according to the Christian calendar that abandoned the lunar cycles. How to write paperback books in a world fixed on short, sweet Web-wise sets and paper is sometimes hazardous waste.

Letting go of the rules is writing the novel. Seeing clearly, obscurely now. The chapters are lining up on the desktop, and by, desktop, I do mean, MacBook. I back the stories up. It feels I’ve let beasts out to play in a field of smooth stones.

I had a sight-changing experience reading The Evolutionary Revolution by Lily Hoang. Her storytelling technique built a crystal castle in my-writer. Hoang wrote magically of an aqua planet, mermen, thigh wings, and two-headed boys.

There is a two-headed snake in Egyptian mythology—Nehebkau.

“His name means that he is the one that brings together the ka - the double of a person, an animal, a plant, a body of water or even a stone - and unites the double with the physical body that the ka would reside in, be it an animate or inanimate object.”

Ka is also the Egyptian word for phallus.

There are two-faced politicians in the United States of America. Privy to stellar, top-shelf healthcare they comfortably eliminate public funding to community clinics that provide care—including preventive measures—for millions of uninsured Americans. Two-faced politicians carve out a country better for wild horses than their own daughters.

Healthcare for low-income families wasn’t the only civil interest kicked to the curb—vital interests called, civil, to erase faces and the future for some, a cover to not have to cry about others’ oppression. To remain civil when the world starts to burn. To not die in the name of Capitalism.

“Changes rammed through the House on Friday and Saturday would shield greenhouse-gas polluters and privately owned colleges from federal regulators; block a plan to clean up the Chesapeake Bay; and bar the government from shutting down mountaintop mines it believes will cause too much water pollution.”

But the Army and Air Force will fix decals to racecars spinning vicious circles to make more War. The always war.

But there are upside synchronicities all over the world: Democracy is viral. The world still has a soul. There are upside synchronicities in magical, mountainous Boulder, Colorado: keen crows, the power of dance, Kerouac’s Belief and Technique for Modern Prose, Joyce Johnson’s Minor Characters, the eighth season of 24…

We streamed Netflix for one month to stream television episodes like researchers, and I found myself shrieking, “Just kill him!” Found that the bad guys shown mercy always come back worse in the terrorist world. The bad guys are sometimes surprising in a terrorist world. Frenetic on daily doses of television.

Found I’m not seeking peace after all. Just justice. Not seeking the next great American novel. Tying the truth in lush bows.

A bo(u)lder shade this harvest

2010-10-17T17:13:00.000-07:00

The flies are circling everywhere. They are not pretty. Saturday morning I killed four while playing post office girl. I sprayed them with eco-friendly cleaner then swatted them with sheets of one-cent Tiffany-lamp stamps and didn’t feel one bit sorry.

I crossed-off the fifteenth of October on the calendar then decided to quit. I am not a government employee. I don’t really care whether or not you can pay a flat-rate fee to ship barbeque sauce to Africa. The discount on kombucha is not worth the time I’m not writing.

There have been more sirens. Every day for three days.

Houseflies live for approximately thirty days. They don’t know winter is coming. They are born just for garbage.

Hallelujah. I am once again jobless. You didn't know I had a job because it was a silly idea.

All’s A-ok.

I received a B in Relaxing. Am learning to carry the shape of an egg in the pits of my arms. Am going into mile-high debt in-order to receive meditation instruction under perpetual sunshine for free, in-order to fall madly deeply in-love with living.

The chapters are lining-up in blizzard clouds accumulating west of the mountains. I hope I hope-

I miss you.

Make a Bow

2010-08-26T09:12:00.000-07:00

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body. -Walt Whitman 1819-1892 from PREFACE T0 LEAVES 0F GRASS  

Sunflowers have been roving my near earth in droves this summer. Wild fields. Community gardens. Ellen’s garden. My parents’ garden. Sunflowers with heads the size of newborn babies. Tall, skinny, sweet, and hung-over men. Three meals in one.

Sunflowers are new beginnings. Roses too. Roses are everything.

My parents have become Ohioians of Lake Erie, which is home. My home gave sweet summer back to me—adorned me with feathers and turquoise jewels. Fed me orange-vanilla twists, bike rides to the cove, a body of water to become a yogi mermaid child, a full-size bed for sleep then another full-size bed to keep, right food, oodles of moula, soulful lolly-gagging, aunties' martinis, a handful of lucky stones, wizzzzdom from mid-June to Colorado.

I go everywhere to never die.

The beetles only leave the roses to die.

My mother drove me though hundreds of windmills and sunflowers. Scrubbed my new bathroom and laid my new kitchen. Told me every single story. Brought Deepak Chopra’s The Book of Secrets: Unlocking the Hidden Dimensions of Your Life. She fell in-love with my new campus, the mountain effect after all. Certainly she sang.

My parents honor the Zen Proverb: Leap and the Net Will Appear. They’ve embossed it on a pillow in the family room.

Naropa University is a rigorous magnificent wonderland. Boulder is a twirling kaleidoscope at noon, a channel to heaven (heaven is here), and Saturn’s return. T’ai Chi will write the book.

Home is a god song

2010-06-29T13:07:00.000-07:00

There was a childhood where church was quite a thing for me: I was an especially dressed star every Sunday, honed the bible with close peers on weekdays—youth-groupie, sing-songy, retreaty missionary. I took it all in with my wide-eyed spirit and open palms raised to the stain glass sky. Praise father god, lord jesus, mother Mary, dragonfly, hummingbird, butterfly, birdie chirp, mustard seed, Om. I rejoiced. I prayed, and there was still something missing.

I imagine ever-lasting love.

I have been traversing for some time now. Sort of bouncing around unable to get comfortable for more than a few years at best. Both proud and afraid of my lack of claim to a hometown. I’ve forgotten sacral things, left them roadside in the last town. Forgotten I've forgotten. Everything seems fleeting and near death.

Again, I return to Ohio to catch a breath between the last of my east-coast life and all’s-lovely-hope is lying out west, to balance my Web. Rather, I am treading water in The Cove of Lake Erie, kicking back with my belly speaking to the art-scape sky and smiling in and smiling out. Only the hungry hawks swarming can drive me to shore. I do feel like a tender walleye, a Funcoast perch. Vulnerable prey in my joy. Paddling like an eager fetus in a womb. I am sort of home.

The Presbyterian steeple, crown of my baptismal sanctuary, is under repair. The church bells still sing at noon.

Terrorism is Every Step

2010-05-31T10:35:00.000-07:00

I have told you once how the bees are our ancestors. Bumble bees. Worker bees. Queen bees. Bee stings. How they contemplate flowers like fiddling with the feet of newborn babies. How they wrassle the petals like play time.

The honeybees appear to be dwindling, and scientists are targeting pesticides. Human development. My ancestors were not so allergic to corn, so bone sensitive to sweeteners when sweetener was not high fructose corn syrup. The messes we make and how we call them necessary.

Are the honeybees dwindling according to honeybees?

My ancestors are farmers. My ancestors are soldiers. My grandpas. My uncles. My cousin. They risked, and in my beloved, young cousin, Captain Jeff Sowecke’s case—do risk, their overall comfort and well-being to defend the lifestyles of the citizens of the United States. And yet I’ve never been able to get past the part where the violence is inhumane, not to mention how some, including myself, can buy their way out of conscious, first-hand experience with systemic, worldwide War.

Scientists are also targeting predisposition to post traumatic stress disorder among soldiers. Aversion to violent human death is only chronically sickening to some.

I left New York City carrying post-traumatic stress like a full-term pregnancy due to be born. It wasn’t the recurring visuals of human bodies dropping from buildings no longer towering into the sky or the rumble of the collapsing pillars or the smell of the crispy skyscraper remains or the surge in everything American flag or how eventually folks returned to being so fucking cool.

I would have become an interior designer specializing in manifesting illusions of creativity for filthy rich folk with money to blow.

It wasn’t the residual senses of terror, the feeling that every day, especially the sunniest days, were plum due for another terrorist attack. It wasn’t even necessarily the abundance of shade and the absence of earth. In hindsight, I can see that I left New York City to obtain a creative writing degree. Additionally, I left behind the daily, haunted inklings of terror.

So the terrorists won.

One year ago today, Dr. George Tiller was shot pointblank in his church lobby while ushering. His wife was seated with the choir. He was shot because he provided abortion with the sweetest zest and sheer mastery of a man called by The Spirit to ensure human dignity, justice, and well-being. He saved lives day after day after day.

It is staggeringly bittersweet to the core of my veryest knowing that the force that was with Dr. Tiller has pixilated into abundant flowery fields, his soul like wild fire, like pollinating bees in love with life. Where once Dr. Tiller was our brooding pillar of hope, there is now an abortion army—peaceful warriors stirring with wands and flutes.

But the anti-abortion terrorists have not gone away. And oh, how their delusional hatred is always one step away from blowing up an abortion clinic or murdering our compassionate doctors in their most sacred spaces. They terrorize women and families and you are still willing to call them pro-life, to question values of women who abort, to buy your way out of having to care that there are war zones in your very own country, right in-front of your face.

So the terrorists win.

One year ago today, I awoke to a crystalline day and the leaves about my locust tree were flickering with the wind and the bird songs and roses were following us everywhere and I didn’t have a care in the world until noon when my dearest friend informed me of our loss.

I have learned to expect devastating news on perfect days. I have wept for our saintly Dr. Tiller over and over and over again. Just sobbed. Just oozed with tears like Niagara Falls and the mists and the rainbows. I have wondered if dying for something is anymore righteous than dying from something when it is all just death in the end.

It isn’t the residual sense of terror, the feeling that every day, especially the most motherly and heartbreaking and abortion-affirming days, are equally laden with gross misperceptions and limited value judgment about my line of work. How people like to try to siphon the baking powder from the abortion chocolate cake. It isn’t even the sadness and how I have toiled over my profession more than I’ve toiled over any loss of a loved one or my sickest, scaredest self.

I’m leaving my profession because terrorists killed our valiant doctor and I want to write an abortion love story with his immortal will that writhes lively on inside of me. I want to wake up to perfect mornings somewhere where terrorists don’t care to exist as much. How I can buy my way through the fear. Experience it. Give it wings.

Terrorists never win in their hearts that still want to ooze with clean honey love, but neither does anyone until everyone is free to fear sweet fear.

So it goes

2010-02-15T11:11:00.000-08:00

With the recent passing of Lucille Clifton, Presidents Day seems the perfect time to consider all the wondrous non-presidents who seem to be launching into space portals like ravens and butterflies: Mary Daly, Marilyn French, Michael Jackson, George Tiller, Eugene Glick, Susan Hill, Jim Carroll, John Updike, J. D. Salinger, Howard Zinn, Alexander McQueen...

Death is becoming a quarterly newsletter. Perhaps this is what it's like to approach 30.

One can only hope their artistry and energy are pollinating here on earth like snow flakes over Mid-Atlantic America, like biodegradable paper, that *we are the ones we've been waiting for.* They are ballroom and break dancing somewhere really neat.

For me, Lucille Clifton was an awesome epiphany in my little writer's life. Her words are easy, elegant, edgy, and evocative. Essential and necessary.

So, her poetry:

Homage to My Hips

these hips are big hips.

they need space to

move around in.

they don't fit into little

petty places. these hips

are free hips.

they don't like to be held back.

these hips have never been enslaved,

they go where they want to go

they do what they want to do.

these hips are mighty hips.

these hips are magic hips.

i have known them

to put a spell on a man and

spin him like a top

won't you celebrate with me

won't you celebrate with me

what i have shaped into

a kind of life? i had no model.

born in babylon

both nonwhite and woman

what did i see to be except myself?

i made it up

here on this bridge between

starshine and clay,

my one hand holding tight

my one hand; come celebrate

with me that everyday

something has tried to kill me

and has failed.

There is a girl inside

There is a girl inside.

She is randy as a wolf.

She will not walk away and leave these bones

to an old woman.

She is a green tree in a forest of kindling.

She is a greeen girl in a used poet.

She has waited patient as a nun

for the second coming,

when she can break through gray hairs

into blossom

and her lovers will harvest

honey and thyme

and the woods will be wild

with the damn wonder of it.

i am accused of tending to the past

i am accused of tending to the past

as if i made it,

as if i sculpted it

with my own hands. i did not.

this past was waiting for me

when i came,

a monstrous unnamed baby,

and i with my mother's itch

took it to breast

and named it

History.

she is more human now,

learning languages everyday,

remembering faces, names and dates.

when she is strong enough to travel

on her own, beware, she will.

Recently read: PUSH by Sapphire

Currently reading: White Teeth by Zadie Smith

I spy with my Year of the Tiger eye

2010-02-14T20:20:00.001-08:00

February is showing me how much it loves me with snow.

Our nation's capital is god's portable snow globe, and god is drinking too much red wine and swinging from willow trees. God is a homesick man. He lost his Mother Nature.

I can't see a thing past the wind.

I jump into steaming showers to liven the tone, craft Valentines and rough stories, writhe in a web of we'll wait to see..., watch mechanical caterpillars crank up my street.

I'm sporting stretch pants, plastic boots like road side warnings, and the pink, lacy, leg sleeves my sister made. People still find space in the blizzard to stare at my knees, and I imagine they wish they had a sister like mine.

February is a ghostly wonderland. The snow is wooing me into bed to read fat novels, to know no one will ever be the same past this snow * * *

Recently, three women moved out of my building that is being force-fed fourteen studios, and in hibernating, it occurred to me that I am now living under a collapsing, pooly roof with a dozen, grumpy men. They shovel the steps, rake the leaves, and trim the trees, then throw fits about the Benjamins and rental agencies.

Shirtless and rotten-mouthed, they post notes about association elections and biological hazards on the bulletin board in the middle of the night.

They claw at my sleep.

Their form of hovering is nitpicking my peace. I want to cross-stitch a Home Sweet Home for them, adorn the entryway with pineapple charms, exorcise their macho fear and hyper-social tendencies.

Though, it seems in the heart of the heart of the heart of my long-winded yet merry, gestating hearts-

I am plum due to leave.

Creativity called your name in their sleep

2010-01-01T21:39:00.000-08:00

Happy birthday - You get an Anti-Abortion stalker!

2009-12-12T20:19:00.000-08:00

The good news: You can learn more about crisis pregnancy centers via the Campaign to Expose Fake Clinics.

The bad news: They spelled my name with a Z.

PS. I had a three-minute time limit

Your Uterus is a Muscle the Size of a Fist

2009-11-08T20:52:00.000-08:00

When I was eight, my mother asked my late Grandpa Sowecke his thoughts on abortion. He said whole-heartedly, It's a woman's right.

For abortion, I have admitted to planting prickly pears amongst the peach trees. I have soured everything. I mash my grievances for jam. Siphon my curiosities, my thoughts, my opinions. I have been demeaned and harassed, called killer, whore, man-hater. Believe it or don't.

I spare you.

I devise complex sentences to divert attention from my blatantly, obvious places of employment: the Center for Choice, the National Abortion Federation, the DC Abortion Fund.

I muse over working at places your mother dreams about, so you can take me home. My romance is a dimly, haunted paperback by Fydor Dostoyevsky. My mother and father, sister, brother, and several best friends have suggested I save my love-affair with abortion for a second date, but my heart has a swinging door, and I am a flaming storyteller inside. A tender mother.

I bottle my octomom for abortion, tie her in white jackets.

This Saturday I counseled eight women - six current mothers. Five obtaining surgeries, two obtaining pills, one referral for Monday. Three cried, seven laughed. All eight displayed various signs of residual regret, guilt, shame. One was in a hurry. Five paid credit-card. Two paid cash. The one waiting for Monday was forty-dollars short.

One woman had private, insurance-coverage for elective abortion. After scrutinizing every possibility of losing her privacy, she opted to override her insurance-coverage with a full, cash payment because she did not wish to see the word >>ABORTION<< on an insurance statement thirty days from now.

Meanwhile, instead of obtaining abortions, actual abortion patients could have been calling C-span, or something, to voice their opinion on abortion prior to congressional sociopaths taking a moment to politically and historically spit on women's faces before proceeding to vote for bullshit.

Mermaid Ancestry

2009-09-11T09:52:00.000-07:00

When I straighten my limbs head to toe, I am afraid I will topple down the hill, but I choose to live my life in love.

Venus by Michael Parkes

Somewhere over the Beltway

2009-07-26T18:54:00.000-07:00

Summer hit me like a fever. Swine flu broke when I was sleeping at an international hostel. I bleached everything, swabbed my nostrils with Neosporin and prayed. I returned home to a city blooming like a rash, met a kindred, aesthetic spirit and my heart soared into delusions of grandeur. Then, my doctor was shot.

Ever since, I have been shoveling a shallow hole in a sand storm, watching words jump out of me onto the screen, sweating in my sleep. Coked on water and air laced with human sloth—I weep until my lids are bloated. My thin skin’s bruising softballs for the season. I leave my windows open for angels to fly in.

Washington’s sun is a city-state, a warrior with a helmet and roses. Its foliage glistens, waltzes and howls. Its flowers—gorgeous, sophisticated, gleeful, mad, darling school children.

Recess.

I am wondering without abandon when the fuck the fancy pants on the congressional floor will situate themselves into a circle and talk about real things happening to real people right now.

Democracy. Salad bowls. Scarlet fever. Determination. Abortion.

HoooooooohHuhmmm.

Businezz not so cazsual

2009-06-15T11:39:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I wore soft white-washed blue jeans for three hours in the morning, and my dear friend with the same name as my sister who I have known for years commented, Oh! I’ve never seen you in jeans.

I only have one pair.

I eventually changed into a dress to explore downtown Chicago and pined to be alone and artful after a few days of a crowded room of trouble-shooting, humor, love, wine and whiiiine.

Everything about abortion. Abortion is life.

I wanted to see the Lake. I wanted to reach the point where the water began—vast and humongous so I could give myself to the sky. The skyscrapers align to delight the beholder of eyes most impressed with invention and geometrical complexity, art in a most unique form. Solid, crisp, authentic. The bean. Everything. Everything is huge.

I venture to cities all about the country and discuss amongst a limited and expertise tight-knit community—Abortion. Abortion occurs so often—sometimes celebratory, sometimes tragedy, always everything in-between, always amongst so many different and beautiful people that I am exposed to so much of everything in my daily aspirations, always during these disszcusszions.

I feel as though I could stretch into even more than two.

The lake is open and blue, and yes, clear, and sailboats float, and the clouds collect in patterns, and everything is open. Everything is flowing and brisk and fresh. Everything in the sky, in the lake. There are glass towers then quirky sculptures, a Blues festival and fountains like islands. Then all of sudden there’s The Sea.

I gave myself to the damp grass, the woven sky, the lively lake.

Gave everything to everything. Artfully / naturally. Super natural deities. My most casual dreams.

They call death heaven only sometimes

2009-06-07T20:10:00.000-07:00

My parents would not allow me to watch MTV throughout my youth—Trust me—I know delusion. I thought, Pour some sugar on me, was an awfully silly song.

I also hoped the protestors would give us a week. One week.

But it has nothing to do with me. Or the women. It’s about the power our mothers have over our gestation, our birth, our existence.

To want dignified abortion care by request is not edgy because abortion is common and I get awfully fiery but it’s not something I‘ve chosen to trouble myself with. It’s troubling.

Those who take the time and money and invest their deepest efforts to build grandiose and dangerous networks to stalk and patronize best survival practices for an evolving species are pro-life even when they’re having their abortions. Villainous, dimwit pests who wish to diminish your reproductive rights before you ever wish to acknowledge them. How we sit around and spout lines we’ve been tube-fed on how to despise women’s experiences without knowing the origin of our reference.

I do what I do because I’ve never seen so many strange and frightening folk who desecrate women’s experiences with lies about a bountiful truth dwelling under the smug heading of Pro-life, who every so often murder our expert medical directors in front of their families.

I’m so sick of hearing about the babies.

Indeed, in his lifetime, Dr. Tiller terminated thousands and thousands of doomed fetuses for real, live, compassionate, breathing women of functioning and malfunctioning families. Shooting him pixilated his spirit. Multiplied him by thousands and thousands. The fruits of his labor—sporogenesis.

This week when I counseled women prior to their abortions despite his death, despite the ever-present rude and crazy prayer-hounds with posters of our deadest babies, I felt my heart had grown—blossomed-outward from the pit in my woeful stomach for our peaceful doctor. My heart bloomed by his words. Indeed.

Artwork: Basimycetes by Ernst Haeckel

They pray for us, prey for us

2009-05-31T22:56:00.000-07:00

I met Doctor Tiller in Canada.

He guided me through the process of digoxin injection over a fascinating pregnant-belly model with needles and ultrasound. His hands were warm. He was patient and attentive and described me as a natural in my approach to pumping salve into the umbilical cord and heart of a mock fetus.

Never mind that I was simply curious and was not licensed to utilize his fascinating skill and wanted to touch his hands.

He sat next to me in Minneapolis, MN, during a session regarding patient counseling at an annual meeting. During the Q &A, he was offered a spotlight to share his vast insight. He stood statuesque, valiant and jolly and urged us to proceed fearless, with love bountiful in our hearts.

When the session concluded, he offered me a few of his precious moments: we shook hands warmly and with energy and I asked with tears welling—who would provide when he no longer provided. He assured me the outcome was faith-full, that others would carry-on.

I rode in the elevator with him during our annual meeting in Portland, OR, in April. He wore his usual leather coat and sense of balance and compassion. He asked me of my evening in the city. Relentless lawsuits, harassment and recent clinic vandalism aside, he was calm. Carrying on.

He was shot point-blank in his church lobby this sun beaming morning. He was ushering and his wife was singing and they killed him in their place of peace.

I’ve had a creeping sense that something terrible would happen. I’ve begun to fear the safety of my clinic as anti-abortion extremists begin to lose their grounding in political clout but I didn’t imagine Dr. Tiller in this sense of doom. He seemed to glide through relentless opposition spiritually unscathed. I imagined him until 100. With years of peace to follow his tireless battle to be subtly, significantly good.

I could only give him these things in my merciless hope for magic: roses from the bishop’s garden, prayers 38-40 in the Bethlehem Chapel by the Way of Peace in the National Cathedral, the sunshine, the drum circle, the half moon.

Oh, Dr. Tiller. I will miss how I adore your daily perseverance, your swift and enlightening presence, your hands. Your eternal and expansive heart.

Witness

2009-05-31T13:15:00.000-07:00

Witness, Nikki McClure, demonstrates the powerful acts of nature that happen in one's own backyard. This was the featured artwork for my calendar in May and I couldn't connect with *why* until the last day of the month...

Play and repeat

2009-05-25T10:10:00.000-07:00

I bought a Neti pot because my older sister said.

When we were young, we developed an elaborate game of shared daydreaming, magical strategizing called, Play. Play was the existential hovering of our make-believe among swing sets and hand-made miniature kitchen sets and dollhouses throughout bike rides and entire days at the beach. Oh--the Barbies. It was important to me to establish exactly why we were imagining these things to pass the day and on what grounds.

My sister and I are intricately fierce beings possessing ironically, starkly opposing traits but similar to each other more than to others. I wear her clothes, use her artistries and toiletries, talk her head off. She admires my intensity, how I cover the bills and buy the Christmas presents then wrap them. I am her emotional thermometer. I give her pretty words.

In the yard, walking down the street, in bunk beds at night or assisting mom with grocery shopping, Play went like this:

"Older sister, when we play I’m going to be married to Tom Cruise and I'll be Whitney Houston and have a pink Corvette, a brick mansion and a beach house, one boy and one girl named x and y and we attend Catholic church because they use holy water and prayer stools and we will eat Swiss cheese not American, etc, etc, etc?"

Or Play went like this:

"Younger sister, if I don’t get to have the purple toothbrush or the Ken or you don’t be quiet right now then I won’t Play anymore."

The idea of not musing out-loud to my sister terrified me. It somehow seemed I would have to stop musing all together.

I bought the Neti pot and tried it and thought it was sort of great but odd that the salt water went down the throat—seemed a cleanse of colon as well. I was doing it wrong. I was not a Neti artist.

Coincidentally, I am not a Neti artist and when I meditate and stretch, I realize I do not breath through my right nostril and when I do, my systems seem to entirely shift. I can imagine what may be lodged in the nasal passages from my left to my right--most likely my real life.

If I could stop talking inside my head, I’m sure it’d come out to play.

money doesn't grow on trees but pretty leaves do

2009-05-12T04:51:00.000-07:00

I believe that when you give to your local abortion fund regularly, you profoundly simplify a potential mother’s life, giving her even the slightest bit more room to breathe, to recognize her potential in this life.

crumbling girl exalted

2009-05-05T19:54:00.000-07:00

There is sometimes something incredibly special about my privilege.

She rocks a mighty fine wink

2009-04-19T11:04:00.000-07:00

Spring, I've had enough of your flings. Now onto forever, date number two. Marx Café--gathering hole of my dreams sometimes--idealizing and its exposed wooden shell, beams, words, windows and red zinfandel. I venture there often to troubleshoot local abortion access and order wine and the Beef Andalusia—four cubes of tender beef on skewers with sauce like gravy. The beef is always tender.

The fellow was kind and thoughtful and interesting but something happened to the traditionally melt-in-my-mouth Beef Andalusia and it was fatty and coarse, so I spit it out in one huge lump on my round, saucer plate at the petite, date table in front of the kind and thoughtful and interesting fellow.

bleeding heart image, © Frank H. Jump, Fading Ad

Saturn returns with moons inside

2009-04-07T09:19:00.000-07:00

I went to California and Idaho and loved it but felt sick and a bit off the entire time, unable to tap in. It was sunny almost always, cool, flowers everywhere. Idaho ended with snow tossing about sun, literal sparkling/glistening, until we drove away. The cloud stayed deep, then parted for the plane to come and take us home. Four flights, three time zones and sixteen hours later: I landed over cherry blossoms just finally willing to sleep, caught the red-eye sunrise.

I danced with vines of moist and tiny oak off the beaten path of Salmon Creek Trail, scaled tree roots in Big Sur. A love-rash essentially attacked my left side—neck to ankles. Small patches, but many. One oozing red thing on my forearm that made a good mother gasp. Poisonous plant, feverish, asked me seriously to sleep it off. Tea tree salve it with love, not fear. Sleep. Dream: about comfortable things instead of uncomfortable things. Finally home. Getting back to SHARP. Ready to tell a story.

I kept pulling the Lovers card in California with Amy. She is my older and only sister. She can be fickle and stuck-up, delightful, goofy, healing, a very best friend. I am pretty certain we extracted exact opposite matter and lineage while hanging in the womb. She thinks I’m dramatically selfish. I think she’s cunningly selfish. Every time I take a deep breath I start crying. She wades past that gully entirely, entirely—until now, ever? We go on to just love, to try to gather a state of grace, not always bottling up, letting go. We’re out to find our Lovers this year. Seems noble, even beautiful.

Pulled the Moon and Stars. If the universe is full of moons let me be full of moon too.

If life is a bowl of cherries how come I'm never in the pits?

2009-04-06T10:52:00.000-07:00

Amy went first thirty years ago

2009-04-05T07:08:00.000-07:00

Welcome home, soul: here and barely able to write a sound, to fit this trip of lifetimes into laudable sentences. Many idle moments still clutching to plumped crevices of my brain. Both beautiful and terrifying. Speechless.

I returned one gray and swampy morning to my small place I have personified where lovely girls dwelled and conjured sun until my return, turned the moon calendar to the Fourth moon. The clouds broke by noon so the sun could remind me.

I’ve wanted so much to share even the slightest of this. Seems the moon calendar knows my spirit and for now will do the trick:

There is an herb, also, or fairy grass, called the Faud Shaughran, or the “stray sod,” and whoever treads the path it grows on is compelled by an irresistible impulse to travel on without stopping, all through the night, delirious and restless, over bog and mountain, through hedges and ditches, till wearied and bruised and cut, [her] garments torn, [her] hands bleeding, [she] finds [her]self in the morning twenty or thirty miles, perhaps, from [her] own home. And those who fall under this strange influence have all the time the sensation of flying and are utterly unable to pause or turn back or change their career.

(Lady Francesca Speranza Wilde)

Listening to:

Up to our nex, Robyn Hitchcock

In my soul, Tavish Graham

Lunaria Lunar Calendar 2009

Bulimia is sick of you

2009-02-24T19:45:00.000-08:00

They will have me believe that I binge and purge because I loathe myself, lack will power. And not this. Industrial nation. Foods I binge then purge are laden with chemicals, laced with acids that make dogs lick their noses dry.

There is far more than fear and self-loathing creeping in eating a dozen donuts, gallons of ice cream, milk chocolate and powdery peanut butter, tarts, cake, muffins, waffles soaked with butter and syrup and burgers and cheese and cookies, pudding, toast and pretty much anything that is decadent and might rush then soften when washed in the tummy with water. Toaster strudels. Icing.

My old blood does not tolerate these worldly concoctions. I am allergic to myself here.

To always say, no thank you, is so lame, has never been my forte. I shame myself to not say no. All the world's a martini, a song and dance, a thriving poem. Please say, yes! With cheese and pie and nuts and cocoa... No no. No more ritualistic celebratory sweets. No more nothing. I do restrict too much. All right, alright, but I have failed to find the in-between. Just enough. It's too heavy.

Then here today. Hooray. These days I find myself walking so fast I'm nearly leaping. Swaying jovially at corners. I have things to celebrate. After thirteen years of hardcore, hours a day, ravenous, seedy and deeply secretive bulimia, I don't binge and purge, don't anything with any of it anymore.

Figured it far differently than they implied I would. Completely dig myself. Can't believe I'm still alive. So feel I could fly.

the pine trees pined for him

2009-02-15T10:37:00.000-08:00

Evolutionaries enlightened me this week with their engaging conversations about the energy in partnerships, perfect example: school spirit. One does not have to believe in evolution. Evolution exists. Darwin's wife was a devout Christian. His child died. We humans deceive ourselves, juggle individuality and commonality like golden tons, poorly. Tongues.

Perhaps, however, we believe in transcendence, in the intertwining of everything past and everything present, spiraling like genes. In becoming even more than human. The spirit of evolution is a belief system, dignified--learning to navigate massive groups of humans beautifully. The science of evolution is the summary, the movable middle, the thing that gets some people awfully awry.

There was a movable middle at Saint-Ex last night but it did not move. In the basement on the square corner of one of the city's hipster joints, lame groups of pretty people and purses like shiny tanks talked until their voices drowned. Uptight in various tight circles and one dreadfully patriarchal, trash-magazine seeming threesome/ the one sort of smelly dude who kept touching my hips like he didn't have bones of his own.

Meanwhile, a trail of dancers celebrating St. Valentine did take it to the floor to fancy beats--no doubt, against the walls. I said my prayers to a giant low-hanging, waning moon that I may be an orchid and not a dandelion. That it hurts because I'm evolving.

4 billion years of evolution unable to prevent area man from drooling on self from the Onion

eventually to ascend into the trees

2009-02-12T19:23:00.000-08:00

In the long history of humankind those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.

(Happy birthday, Charles Darwin)

a rose is a rose is a rose

2009-02-08T15:06:00.000-08:00

My mom called me foggy when I was a child. For a long while I thought she was describing my strange bouts of sadness even then like the morning fog that captured the trees over the river. She was adoringly comparing me to a foghorn. And the neighbors would pass our house on foot and I would be peeking through the front screen. Hi. I'd say with an apparent darling baby drawl. Hi. Hi Kathy. Hi.

When I am gestating/on existential hold, I take fabulously long walks. My hips disappear, my shoulders rise up like sails. I venture the entire city, scale dozens of hills. This time, I am trying to make eye contact, let alone say, Hi!, with neighbors. Of the hundreds, I have locked a rare stare. I suppose it is most important to focus on the straight ahead when traveling in the city. We've rationed out our souls differently this time. The light is a tunnel. I long for something like a rose, a plump ruby red rose cliche. I suppose when our eyes do meet, I'll know.

Evolution is a witch's broom

2009-01-25T09:59:00.000-08:00

I am, by true definition--a sort of witch. It has taken me yards, paths, falls to store this sustainably in house plants, in rows of stones, with words with the sun and the moon. Inspiration whispering from mother's tulips, dashing cardinals, every tree. The wind, goddess lily, jimmies my nerves through my pores. My mother, my aunts, my sister, sisters: we have this. It tugs us.

We have gnawing compassion. I work almost entirely among women, almost entirely with the body. I imagine one day if I can do everything I wish to do, I will both ascend and live on. I will be yin in love with a tender yang. For now, I dwell in instances of heartache mostly. I make light.

The mother earth is sort of falling apart. She can replenish herself. We can stop dying horrifying deaths. Stop the violence and rape, the poison and the plastic. Have things be so hearts jump out to do dances, to hold hands. Galactic bonfires in the wild flower fields. We may bring stars to this earth--not tragically. Magically.

Currently reading:

The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Goddess: 20th Anniversary Edition

By: Starhawk

Release date: 1999-09-22

They'll be moving soon

2009-01-09T10:03:00.000-08:00

I was thinking about reclaiming the elephant. Reclaiming red. About the documentary I viewed of elephants migrating, dying of thirst. Elephants that paint. Elephants in rooms. Vampires who call themselves elephants in politics.

My friend, Alexis, gave me an elephant key chain on new year's eve. I needed one because I lose my keys or generally forget them often. We are detached. Just last month after all these years, I finally succumbed to the locksmith who in all fairness sawed my knob right off and in half. I hung my bras on the other side. They lay in a pile when the door swung open. Bravo.

I lost my keys again last week, regardless. This time they dropped into a booth and despite my best effort, I could not retrieve them. My three keys and the silver elephant are buried in one of the top-ten dive bars in dc, in mount pleasant, perhaps forever.

Another dear friend, my oleander, gave me a buddha head in a box for winter solstice. She wanted the buddha at first but the buddha wanted (do buddhists want?) me. She went back for an elephant for herself. Oleander is reclaiming the elephant. I'm chaining my keys to my tongue in 2009.

Currently reading:

The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You

By: Dorothy Bryant

Release date: 1997-03-25

give a girl the fall she ever wanted

2008-11-20T10:27:00.000-08:00

The ginkgo-biloba trees in Adams-Morgan are peaceful forceful street peppers, sometimes fancy forks. Maidenhair tree. The oldest tree on earth. Sprung from far east. Flower of the Buddhist monasteries. Revered for its medicinal qualities. Keen on short term memory. Well-travelled. Resilient. Able to withstand urban pollution.

Last night the rats were feasting on the fallen gingko stink berries. Mewing. Squeaking. Happy larks. Rats cute like birds with appreciation.

Gingkoes are deciduous, shedding their foliage every season and I lost my memory to the present. It's golden sweet, decidedly beautiful dizzying effect. This here and this now. I'll change then change then change. Deciduous ginkgo, your medicinal effect eludes me for a moment. This not so troubled child. She's dancing in meadows and stuffffff.

Ginkgoes are dioecious. There are male plants. There are female plants. Their organs do not a one tree make. Somewhere on Eighteenth Street, there must be a male but most of these beloved trees are reeking female they'll say. Darned be the females, how they bear a fruit and the season turns so the berries plunge from the tree and they stink. They are slippery.

The females are beloved. The rats of the year are beloved.

sushi for change, aka. my forty-second poem

2008-11-04T17:00:00.001-08:00

Tonight I am treating myself to a quiet and focused meal of a plethora of artfully arranged and delicately decadent raw fish. I am fondly deeming it *my last hopeless meal*.

Currently undefined:

Natural Liberty: Rediscovering Self-Induced Abortion Methods

By: Sage-femme Collective

Release date: 2008-10-01

dancing maple leaf, dancing girl

2008-10-12T20:30:00.000-07:00

I'm fairly certain the moon made love to the sun this evening. Colors unnamed. And the drums made love to the earth. And the drums made love.

American American

2008-10-03T10:33:00.000-07:00

Those who do not live here commonly inquire about the climate of this atmosphere--Washington, D.C. My vote rarely counts. Capitol Hill is a lackluster cluster of romantic architecture set complicated to any buzzing neighborhood, offices where permanent out-of-towners dwell. It's true. I am privy to an incredible amount of detail. Within months of moving here, I had to forego my longstanding devotion to the daily newspaper and NPR. Overwhelming really. Living and working in politics--I'm inundated with goings-on. Never mind that I actually specialize in health care.

The rest of Here is actually quaint and the wind is ornery and the trees are showering us now slowly with their golden leaves. Things feel rather hush.

According to local heresy, there is a You Tube account of a past blessing between a christian clergy and Sarah Palin in which her minister asks her father god to protect her from witchcraft as she rises in office. Verbatim.

I don't know Sarah Palin and didn't expect to like whoever John McCain (who I also don't like. big surprise.) decided to invite into the intended White House. They can stack their House with my dead dog Lily and so long as they nominate more fucking assholes to the supreme court, I will burn down the house. Figuratively.

This I know: if we continue in our current twisted and absolutely unsustainable direction, it will be a detriment to our own bodies, our very souls (for those of us who have one). The laws of artistic success, of moral obligation, they have shifted. Those who cannot grasp this can go ahead and battle at heaven's gate. More earth for the trees.

I think I used to think there would be a quiet lot of land and everyone I knew and loved would gather there and the days would have planting and baking and sewing and writing and the nights would be full of music and dancing. It seems so simple that we no longer know how to do it.

I'm lucky. I see abortion is good. I am willing a society where a woman can access an abortion like she accesses a hair appointment. To take that time. To smell that good. To bask in spectacular lighting and the warm hands of a friendly stylist. Uteri cleansing with dignity and self-love. Indeed her menses flows monthly but it is only every two months or so that she trims the dead ends.

So maybe Sarah Palin has the Bible's God and certainly she'd toast me in a duel. Seedy men are suffocating every establishment in America. Completely emotionally inept. Wasting and taking everything to no avail. If these people have their way, things will get ridiculously messy. Heart-breaking. They may win.

But I ask: Will they ever have poetry?

Currently reading:

Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries

By Naomi Wolf

I know

2008-07-01T14:26:00.000-07:00

I am sleeping next to the most brilliant tree in Washington and it doesn't wonder why I'm always pining for boys.

the roses reach for the trees

2008-05-20T14:25:00.000-07:00

It has rained here now so hard and for so long that the trees swoop down to frolick all along. The gardens are swollen. My heart's an avocado.

Currently reading:

Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born

By Tina Cassidy

war is so romantic

2008-05-12T14:24:00.000-07:00

The roses are just the beginning. They bounce like playful lions, like pudgy babies, like Victorian women with plumes stuffed in their bridled dresses waddling along cobblestone. The roses are free, light bushels of beauty, bella, bouncing uteri, to peel back those softish shells.

They are stronger than we think.

It has been raining. And raining and raining and I have been wearing strange things to adapt—short pants, rubber shoes, a practical raincoat, a fever. When I arrive, my face and hands are wet, my hair is flat as my hood. Everything is green. Mother loving green. I have visions of gorillas and doves and my own bare feet and grass and love. I forget that I am walking to work and jump into puddles just to feel free. I long for the time when strolling for hours in the rain lead to cuddling in a hut with a fire and a feast.

There have been a handful of earthly disasters—a cyclone, an earthquake, a sink hole in Texas, world wars. The tornadoes in the Midwest may have made the air toxic. The air is toxic. Still, I felt my heart open if only a convex mirror and have missed garlicky kale and chocolate covered anything among other things that make me generally nauseous. I met a nice boy.

While the world is a fury and I am receiving jpegs of my heartfelt cousin dressed in guns, Jenna Bush got married in front of a limestone cross and a Methodist minister and took her Henry's name in a simply lavish dress. Since when does the president not cry. Since war.

I viewed the Post's photo gallery fluffed with cream-colored things and veils and angel wings and the very last photo captured a climactic view of a celebration—rainbow flags and light blue luminaries and people dancing in the middle of some calm desert under the bones of a billowing white tent and glowing trees. It looked so jovial and sweet and everything I once thought of a celebration of love, of ribbons, until I realized that American weddings might otherwise fund more meaningful things.

normalizing the most common surgery in the world

2008-04-06T14:22:00.000-07:00

This is what medical students want: to incorporate elective termination into the scope of their family practice. What a beautiful concept.

How to Make a Garden Grow

2008-03-17T19:21:00.000-07:00

I learned some super important stuff back in high school. Crucial. The parts of a cell, the periodic table, the way of the fruit fly. How many minutes it takes me to run a mile. Types of triangles. To type. Fucking crucial. I also learned how to stay there well. How to keep my feelings to myself. Where a penis goes.

Thing is. I didn’t learn enough about the mind-blowing clockwork purpose of my ovaries. My connection to the earth over time. My uterus and its linings, the size of my fist, a house inside. The cervix like the wet tip of a nose, a finger’s length in. Perfect shot. Most people have no idea how safe it can be to get all up in there, how simple, how made. What runs through it. They have no idea what they’re trying to fill.

We learn how to insert a tampon, the reason the blood’s brown, how the sperm entices the egg and boroughs in like a worm in fruit. We get babysitting classes with crying babies, chicken eggs, sewing machines and stoves with over-head mirrors. Now, girls can always know how to bake a mean snicker doodle, how to raise a baby in an industrialized world, how to rim twelve dicks in a row, but have no clue why a condom is of interest. Pretty much only their interest. That their vagina is a pocket. A sanctuary. Anything but a hole.

If a girl has the right to memorize the periodic table then someone should inform her that all that matters are her breasts on television at night. Then she can lie somewhere between a clean slut and a virgin whore and negotiate it all on her own. So sad, so very sad. It is so unfortunate. But so not so surprising to hear. Now girls and their crucial parts are popping up with sex-laden diseases multiplying like fruit flies because abstinence only only has nothing to do with having sex.

peace begins with billions and billions and billions

2008-03-03T14:21:00.000-08:00

A life without freedom is like a body without a soul and freedom without thought is confusion. (Kahlil Gibran)

This is what it now means to be anti-war for me. I think fighting is ridiculous. God damn ridiculous. Every god damn ridiculous. Men unable to exercise emotion, desire, sense of reason, balance? There are billions and billions, that's right billions, of better things to do with this world on this beloved mother earth. (We are crashing into the moon in March to figure out something expensive and probably number eight billion eight on the list of better things to do than to fight Wars.) Ridiculous.

I played War of cards with my grandma for years as a child. We laid playing cards, gathered piles. It was a matter of sheer luck and laughter, something I could not enjoy with anyone other than her. Thank goodness there was no violence involved. I would be a very broken thing.

My cousin, the very first of my second cousins, close enough in age and relationship to be my close cousin, one of very few men labeled Sowecke in this world—joined ROTC, graduated from Bowling Green State University two years behind me, just flew to Iraq via Ireland and Kuwait, says the food's alright but doesn't taste quite right.

I sat next to a young man from the United States Army on my way home from Nebraska last week. He was a something or other—perhaps a Lieutenant, but not an Officer like my cousin—part of the Oregon Color Guard, handsome, military. They fly him to the capital regularly for ceremonies because he and his Oregonian colleagues are good. They are scattered throughout the plane in gym pants and sweat coats. For the ceremony, they dress in full suit and honor and sweat clams and darts while members of the press and invitees dress comfortably in southern city Saturday garb.

He joined the Army while still in high school because his grades were poor because he was confused, intoxicated on something American. He used to feel passionately against women who have multiple abortions. I think it's ridiculous that he likes to shoot birds. He went to Iraq in the beginning. They were trying to find sons of the bad leader. They were blowing up building after building all over Baghdad.

Now. He would love to go to college and major in creative writing but thinks he needs an English background to get in. I assure him he only needs money, some money and a clean break from violence, that it will be delightful, that knowing of more beautiful things than men with guns, with claimed wealth, is worth billions and billions. Billions and billions and billions.

Currently watching:

Elizabeth - The Golden Age (Widescreen Edition)

Release date: 05 February, 2007

A thousand flower infraction

2008-02-15T19:24:00.000-08:00

If I was a hula hoop artist; this week, I might have applied for funding the way forces swung around me. Around and around.
The weather is a cold mother, sick in bed with the fever. Delirious. The tree at the top of my street blooms purpley flowers and birds seen, sing their spring song until it gets so cold that I run to work, wrap myself well within blankets of rings of fire, and soak for hours in a hot tub, curled so the water touches everything.

I flash in and out of connection with the entire world. No television. No wi-fi. No microwave. I only find there is a federal-instated two-hour delay twelve hours later. I choose to vote on paper with a miniature pencil. One day, I attempt to correspond through e-mail and can't get a seat, the next they close early because I am the only customer.

Most importantly, people, in larger and more frequent numbers, are starting to realize that industrialization, capitalism, consumption, self-consumption are fleeting expenditures bubbling over with waste. That wasting doesn't really mean it just goes away. We must start now to undo the things we've done, to make them okay. To yin ourselves now from the yang.

Vegetative State

2008-01-28T14:20:00.000-08:00

Warning: most of your household products are full of chemicals and I feel I may be late to this game but the concept is currently fascinating me—in the plastic around meat and cheese, the Tupperware containers where I lock my vegetables, the bottoms of my pots and pans. There is alcohol in my conditioner, and sulfates…I know very little of chemistry but I know sulfur makes my skin itch, turns me red.

Buy oil in glass containers. Probably best to do something about dish and laundry detergent, packaging, junk mail. When my mother was young they wrapped the day's waste in the day's newspaper. Never mind those plastic bags. Microwaves have always freaked me out.

We have neglected the most natural tenants of our earth. I'm afraid there's no room for the fields where I'd like to plant my own food and wash my hair and harvest my soul and the days away. For now I'll wash my hair with rosemary oil and sea kelp and willow bark, wrap my food in wax paper, pray about mother earth and her abundance and her sweet and leaping mercy on me.

Born again and again and again: Peace begins with me

2007-12-10T19:27:00.000-08:00

And by this we know that [Faith] abides in us, by the Spirit [Faith] has given us. (1 John 3:24)

I am born quietly, staring. No crying. For years I interpret this circumstance as shock. I am most quiet when caught off guard, in storms. I coast along in my head, monitoring my heart. The outcomes have ebbed and flowed throughout the years. I have been born again and again and again.

When things have stirred inside me I have called it God. Surrender tickles me. The trees and the wind lift me. I believe Jesus Christ was a good man. A shift in our focus is long overdue. Reality is suffering. Young men with absentee fathers are all over the place all over the place. They're angry at their *whore* mothers. They take violence for nothing.

I believe in the father, the sun, the holy ghost. I cherish and honor the mother, the daughter, this blessed earth. I am one in infinity for a mere one hundred years. My heart and my actions will last far longer. I want my good parts planted inside and along their way. That invisible strings hold us up like puppets, keep us together and going. That there is a light that burns in similar places throughout everyone. I believe that money and intentional power are the root of all evil. That they often go hand in hand. That there is a place beyond all the fighting that is like dancing and circles and feelings and faith.

I have given it to god and goddess and earth and the trees. I say it with prayers and words and by whispering it first and last thing. Much like a song with crystals and red leaves and acorns and rocks and stones. I am born quietly again and again and again. I understand that when I am silent and aware, I'm simply adjusting. That I can always come back to thank you. Thank you thank you thank you.

somewhat of a dying art

2007-11-21T14:18:00.000-08:00

I like bananas. Despite the fact that they can make my blood sugar soar and are rumored to cause constipation, they are incredibly good for me—loaded with potassium. I appreciate their texture, their sweetness. I find them refreshing. I like to eat mine sliced.

Every weekday I buy a banana at the snack stand between the bus stop and my office. A young man and his daughter run the enterprise and charge me fifty cents for my daily banana. I buy the rest of my preferred produce at a market and the price of my banana certainly doesn't compare. I spend a good one hundred dollars, and more, on my bananas every year.

A thrifty person would tisk-tisk my habit. Certainly a bunch of bananas from Safeway could pad my savings, allow me another yearly trip to Pennsylvania, afford me a fancy dinner at one of the umpteen delightful restaurants in this tasty city, or lend me a handful to give to another charity each year.

But certainly, I pay for more than just my piece of fruit. I love my daily ritual, choosing my daily banana, saying good morning to the local entrepreneurs. The days that I arrive early and the bananas are still in a box, I round the corner and the owner knows exactly who I am. The bananas. He smiles, opens the box, and digs through his supply until he finds a green one. He knows my exact taste. He honors it. On those days, I gladly give him a dollar for my banana and for true conscientious service.

Currently reading:

A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future

By: Daniel H. Pink

Release date: 07 March, 2006

an ode to environmental salve and feeling alive

2007-10-13T19:31:00.000-07:00

I am in love and I'm not talking about my wasteful infatuations with boys or marriage or even compromise. But I will be and am quite delighted to be entwined for a long long time with Seattle. I want to pick up where I left off and land in one of these market booths. I'll sell Oleander's herbs or my words, lotion or cookies or apples or something, anything. I'll throw in touches of feminism for free. This place has been calling my name for years. My head is as light a feather. The canker-sores along my heart have dissolved. The energy is alive and true and well.

"a precious human life"
by, his holiness, fourteenth dalai lama

every day, think as you wake up, today I am fortunate to have woken up. I am alive. I have a precious human life. I am not going to waste it. I am going to use all my energies to develop myself to expand my heart out to others, to acheive enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. I am going to have kind thoughts toward others. I am not going to get angry or think badly about others. I am going to benefit others as much as I can.

the twin towers are merely two buildings

2007-09-11T19:33:00.000-07:00

Today is the first rainy September eleventh since before the September Eleventh. I notice this immediately when I step outside this morning to walk to yoga. I feel relief.

I call my dad. I called my dad that morning. He was the only one I spoke to before leaving everything but my mis-matched pajamas, dwindling cigarette supply, and un-brushed teeth behind. I tell my dad that it feels like letting go, no more cloudless sky frozen in time. I am stretched and enlivened by eight. This time, I am prepared for anything.

I lock my keys in my apartment on my way out the door for work an hour later. I walk umbrella-less to my landlord's office, truly careless of the drizzle. I will never be prepared for the unexpected. It's unexpected. Though, this time I know it's not the end of the world.

Six years past the fact, there is not much I retain from that day. I wonder how I got through. I know that I was really somewhere else—wondering how to get to class on-time, with my paints and a bra. There is a moment or two that flash: all the rescue workers, the sirens, the ship heading to sea, and me imagining scenes from some doomsday flick. None compare to the sight of bodies dropping like coins, the monstrous feeling of death and abandonment when the first building shattered—that I am in a history book when the second tower is nearly gone.

It is unfortunate—what we've become since then. We lost the fundamental depth, the indication, the meaning. For all of the goodness that organized war has beckoned, it has never stopped the hate or the fighting.

We promised we'd make good of September Eleventh with our flags and our tears and our songs and our never-forgets. But we let go of the empathy, the horror of losing monumental buildings, as if one's own country. Losing lives in haste—no matter how misguided or indifferent, is devastating, tragic, downright obscene.

And I keep thinking that we're missing something. Some great green land, vast and quiet, where everyone is everyone. Where everyone is safe.

Listen to my fan and watch the wall

2007-09-01T19:38:00.000-07:00

I have been contemplating a similar novel for a few good years. I have been writing the first two chapters since October. To say that my writing is an ebb and flow, that thing which I most fear, is an understatement. Recently, I finished the first chapter with immense relief and renewed diligence. Then my computer broke.

I am not drawn to technology. It irritates my senses. I don't know boo about functions. I don't like owning expensive things. I have a laptop. That is it and it broke. My employer's IT queen doesn't understand how. She says she's never seen something so corrupt. Once again, the novel is on hold.

In the meantime, I have taken up pen-to-paper journaling—stream of consciousness, short thoughts, my monthly budget. On the bus. At night. Right now, in the park.

Life falls quite lovely when I put it into words. It has a point. A sun all its own. And all that's really necessary is breathing. In and out and through the nose.

I wish I could give my computer, my complicated box of words, mouth to mouth, tangible love, loving touch.

the Throat is a Chakra

2007-07-30T14:17:00.000-07:00

I don't speak much of eating. Of the bulimia. Never enough. A yoga instructor suggested that our deep breaths massage our organs. I wonder what purging does to organs. I take deep breaths. Drink water.

I think I am allergic to nuts and grains and dairy and sugar and caffeine. To gasoline. Alcohol. Jesus Christ. God. Intolerance. Pride. Darkness. Perhaps even sunlight. I wonder why no one else appears to be so forlorn.

Sunday evening, I walk toward the hospital to advocate for a victim of sexual assault, a survivor. It is showering and everything is dark, green, fresh. Damp. I straighten myself. Ask myself what I am trying to do. Peace. It comes fast, hard—in a snap. Quivering. I want peace.

And the taxi ride is exhilarating. The windows are down. The cold mist. The driver keeps handing paper towels to me. Playing nice music on the radio. I thank him for the ride. I call it nice. I haven't had a ride like that in a long time. Haven't felt so close to flying into myself. So sure of what it is that I do.

Currently reading:

A Thousand Splendid Suns

By Khaled Hosseini

Release date: 22 May, 2007

Then the Wind Blew Her Home

2007-07-09T19:40:00.000-07:00

My beloved Oleander came to visit her DC and to see how I live in it. I believe she may have come to see me as well. I believe I am her beloved too. We both have wicked senses of humor, voracious appetites. We are self-centered, unapologetic.

We drank wine, martinis, watched things, ate cheese and vegetables strangled with oil and herbs. We fought about two things: religion and me talking forward as I walked ahead. She got a lot of stomachaches. I complained incessantly about my skin and my past. We spent time in some of the most marvelous parts of this city, ate lots of things prepared by hand, laid all over—on grass, laughed at people, ourselves, spent more time together than I've spent with anyone for a long time, rode the bus.

Oleander had not seen fireworks in years, she claimed it with little care. I see a plethora every year, especially surrounding the Fourth of July. I've seen them in many cities, over many bodies of water, for many things. Last year I saw them over the Huron River. It's best to let your feet dangle, to take it in like an orgasm, like life—the crazy kind that's delightful but there are people all around. I also saw a show over the football stadium of Bowling Green last year. I wasn't expecting them, clear as day, from my porch, with a glass of wine.

This year, Oleander and I saw the fireworks over the Capitol together. Only we were in Dupont Circle away from the crowds and maneuvering. One grand tree was partially involved with our view—a great Oak, just beyond the circle, purging tentacles of fire. And Oleander and I watched while drinking martinis and eating chocolate cake at a glass-ceiling cafe. And she had the best view of them all and I got my magic…

(I found this poem under the sun and the leaves of my local Oak on the dawn of my summer vacation - Excerpt from the Ninth Duino Elegy, by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell.):

Oh not because happiness exists,

that too-hasty profit snatched from approaching loss.

But because truly being here is so much; because everything here

apparently needs us, this fleeting world, which in some strange way

keeps calling to us. Us, the most fleeting of all.

…Ah, but what can we take along

into that other realm? Not the art of looking,

which is learned so slowly, and nothing that happened here. Nothing.

The sufferings, then. And, above all, the heaviness,

And the long experience of love,—just what is wholly

unsayable.