how to be alone.

Thank you, Rebel, for reminding me the beauty of one’s own strength that comes from being alone.

“Society is afraid of alone. Like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements. Like people must have problems if, after awhile, nobody is dating them. But lonely is a freedom that breathes easy and weightless and lonely is healing if you make it.”   –Tanya Davis.

Wherever you may find yourself: in a town of less than 8,000 where breaths freeze against windows into oxygenated icicles or one in 8.3 million where the buildings are so tall, you can barely see beyond the door frames. Loneliness exists in crowds and in rooms full of only you. Loneliness exists underground and flying above clouds. Shared meals can be lonely and so can celebrations.

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and books written in a foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers which cannot be given you, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then, gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” –Rainer Maria Rilke

Why must I exist like this?

Can’t I just ignore the bother of my bones?

If I stop looking into my reflection, will I forget about the stranger living inside?

What makes me a poet?

What if I’m not the poet I told you I am?

How can I lift weights to grow muscles in my heart and strengthen my scars into fierce survivors?

Have I lost one more chance at love because of because of all those times I pushed it away?

Will I ever accept my gender?

Now that I’ve spoken on the discombobulation of my body, how do I proceed?

Even though it’s clean, I still fear my blood as though it is an enemy; why?

How do I trust another to accept the disrobe of my body?

How do I trust myself to accept the disrobe of my body?

Does this ever get easier? Or will I ever understand why/how I have remained so long?

 

If I can just hold onto these words, like hands, keeping me safe and balanced. This language will help me to cross the street. These letters will dine with me at night and read alongside me. This dialect will be my guide. My musical accompaniment. This loneliness is my band-aid, preparing every part of me to heal so that when another enters, I will be ready.

 

 

 

 

gathering of rainbows

Follow the green bus. It has been gutted and gathers all those on the way toward (their version of) enlightenment.

What are you in search of?

Several years ago, I hunched back from weight of extensive backpack full of words and clothes over border into Amsterdam. Met poets and Germans and a beautiful psychology student and a doctor and a lesbian who told me she wanted to write like a writer. I fell in love with the foreign side of the moon. I was searching for closure from love in order to make room for more.

On an evening where everything has been watered from a full day of rain, I gaze into the eyes of a Poet who has just come back from several journeys. He tells me of his desire for lust in all forms and I mention to him my recent wanderings within various humans.

I want to gather myself into rainbows and find a hippie to love, I said. I want to burrow into the soil and smell the layers of earth that rarely get noticed. I want to be kissed by a human that understands all my silences……..

Recently, I re-opened several scars and tripped over some love and lust; there has been blood and guts that decorated many Brooklyn sidewalks. I have poem’d and performed on stages, unwrapping these layers of wounds in order to make sense of it all.

Now. I am thinking about a Canadian waterfall. I am contemplating a meditation of disemboweled behaviors and thoughts. I am considering a train ride to a French-speaking province. Or I just may root right here.

What are you in search of?

all of this will soon be past.

“If this life isn’t enough/ then an afterlife won’t be enough”      -fanny howe

Dear Kazim,

There are presents to be received when remaining in the present.

You wrote, “The body is like a day: it begins with the darkness of evening, ends with the ebbing of light.

I say to you: Within this wander, I recognize who remains. That in this present, my past exists like swollen gifts. Some I sense the need not to open. Some I must not only open but rummage and fondle. Kazim, I am tangled. The knots wrestle themselves into my hair and my loins and even in my words. I like your sense of beginning in the dark in order to travel toward light.

There are these humans hovering around me: a music MAker, a soul sister, a brother, several lovers, the satellite that exchanges shapes each night, a Rebel, a father, a gender warrior. Each one tells me in their language how to remain. How to remain.

Kazim, you remind me: “If the plot of my life is writing then I have nothing but time.”

What is this rush to unpack my boxes. Perhaps I need to wander in order to remember what it feels like to be still. The writing exists in me; this earth has many desks and “rooms” that permit and encourage our creativity.

A traveling human tells me that all we really need as writers is time. Space is everywhere.

Several months ago, I met a woman who wore earth on her skin. One day, we sat beside each other in a room full of others and we painted. We were each given blank circles and asked to fill them in with our souls. With our souls, Kazim. Can you imagine this task? So, I painted a tree with branches of words and she combined colors into a womb and sperm and there was dark and light and I could smell her tears even before I noticed them bungee-jumping from her eyes. In this human, I saw hope that even in such sadness, there is desperation to live. To remain. Before I said goodbye to her, I gave her a tulip, which someone else had given me. This flower is like you, I said. Alive. Watered. From the earth. And breathing. And giving. And giving. And giving. 

nadal oodh

How much am I willing to pay for peace?

On my way toward an uptown pub to meet a friend, I inhale the scent of meditation. Outside, there are scarves, carefully folded colors in piles like square clouds. I am early to meet him, so I stroll inside, expanding my lungs as aromatic smoke covers me.

I am brought back to Bob Dylan in tape deck of two door hatchback; I am fifteen. I am a passenger in a car driven by Farrah, the first hippie I ever secretly loved. Her skin was drenched in patchouli and her hair gathered in knots and all those freckles and her long skirts and nose ring. At that time, we both volunteered at the same place, spending hours with humans who were placed in a home because their minds grew differently than other’s. We completed puzzles and drew, listened to music, and donated our time to people who– for the better part of the day– were ignored.

In this tiny store full of homemade candles and tinctures and sweet-scented oils, I spoke with the singular worker about slowing down.

“This is the first moment of my day where I am stopping just to breathe.”

He rubbed a package of incense together and asked me to inhale.

“This is nadal oodh,” he said.

And my knees began to curve from the musk mangling up my insides in the most exquisite way. It was far too pricey, so I began to look around. I breathed in nag champa and frankincense and guggul and camphor. My fingers settled on sandalwood and as we exchanged currency (dollars, receipt), he grabbed one stick of nadal oodh and gave it to me.

“Fill your space with this,” he said. “Save it for a moment when you need your air to tell you things.”

I am percolating in ruminations. My soul has been searching it’s self and sometimes I think about joining in. I am not sure where I should be, but I need to be somewhere.