good with words

Recently, a Rabbi called me a wordsmith. He knew me many years ago, when my hair was a different color. I was not much like this person I am now. I didn’t want him to recognize me, and I was quite pleased that he didn’t.

I read a short poem and words about mourning at a funeral for my uncle. Afterwords, once all the salt that sifted out from both eyes had dissipated, and I, longside five other men, took on the role of pallbearer, he said to me, “You are quite the wordsmith; you should keep at it.”

I smiled because he had no idea how much I needed to be reminded that I do. I smiled because my sister heard and she looked at me with pride.

This man of God, saying to me, a human who teeters on the edge of atheism, that I am good with words. 

On a Friday night, I sit wearing nothing but skin and remnants of sick still stuck to my flesh. I light a stick of incense and encourage the smoke to breathe me in, wrapping its seductive trail all over me. When one stick burns out, I light another. Inhaling this nag champa tickled my stuffed nose, but gathered me into a deeper mindset.

I began to think of the time my mother stormed my bedroom, and threw out all of my incense. She thought I had it because of drugs. She had no idea that I had yet to begin my thunderous battle with addiction; I just enjoyed the smell.

Even now, I like lighting these aromatic perfumed sticks not to mask any other smell, but to remind me to breathe in deeper. To get lost in the curls of smoke.

All I could say was, “thank you,” to the Rabbi, even though I wanted to say so much more.

I wanted to say to the Rabbi, “Do you remember me? I used to be blond and my parents liked each other. But you must see a lot of rotating marriages. It is 2015 and all.”

I wanted to ask him, “I know Jews don’t believe in heaven or hell and I don’t either but. But what do you think about a human who no longer feels comfortable in the body they were born into? There are words for this, but for me, those words don’t quite fit. And Rabbi?” I’d continue.

“Rabbi, what I mean to say is, I’m not so good with words when I need to use them to describe how this all feels. And also….” Here is where I will pause for such a long time, I will watch this scholar of Jewish law, get uncomfortable, and even impatient.

“…The thing is, maybe I just have a difficult time committing to letters. And designations. And clubs. And groups. And classifications. And stereotypes. And….”

The last time I went to synagogue, I sat, nervously reading prayers, translated into English. I was with my partner, who practices.

I practice to0. But not religion.

I practice how to be.

I just said thank you to this Rabbi who knew me before puberty and mental illness and trauma. I’m much better with words on paper; I’m just not so good with words when they want to come out. Sometimes, they just need more time to prepare.

how to invoke religion while holding hands and sharing the heat of approaching summertime.

“I learned how to find the new moon by looking for the circular absence of stars…I learned God’s true language is only silence and breath.”  –Kazim Ali (Bright Felon: Autobiography and Cities)

Last summer, I found religion in the journal of a poet who described his hunger and silence while fasting for ramadan. I walked around taking slow, deliberate bites of whatever was around me. Napped on napping trees. Kissed beneath enough moon shadows to call myself a believer of things. Tried a new cuisine called sloped Brooklyn. Became a smoker briefly because I liked the way my breath would tangle with the invisibleness of air. Had a short love-affair with mayflies. Played ukelele on as many benches as my skin could find.

Weeks wait to be found before summer begins but check out this air! One can call themselves religious just by breathing. Just by emptying the winter from lungs and exhaling bouts of lonely or shiver or hungry. Hours can easily climb mountaintops. Clouds wait to be deciphered into a language of picture maps.

This time is different. You may use the same words for things but meanings no longer need to be still and unwavering. You can memorize a prayer like love and it can be new each time. How amazing! How wonderful to climb hands into another’s and trace the elongation of breath traveling without passport to another country just by feeling your way. 

Bodies are like religious institutions. Stained glass. Memorials. Psalms and palms. Sermons threading together the meanings of things.

We fast (figuratively and metaphorically) to remember why we hunger so much. We gain weight when we allow our bodies permission to hold on to what finally nourishes us.

o el camino solemne del cuerpo empedrado

The stone is grey and freckled with eastern dust. Kept in pocket, it cuts hips. In hand, it digs into palm. When touched, it enhances the heat of who holds it. The stone is trauma’d. It has been displaced and prefers not to talk about its previous amputations. Do not catalogue, organize or nickname the stone. The stone has been shoved into fires of coordinates that stretch beyond state lines, territories and provinces. The stone has been used as a weapon; it has deflated bone. Notice the blood stains against its minerals. The stone cannot keep a lover; its historical uprooting disallows dialogues on monogamy or the existence of marriage. The stone has been a perch for others, glued into walls, walked over by callused feet, and licked by ocean.  The stone is rib’less and gender’less. Call it androgynous, but the stone refuses to pick a side or sign or stagnant approach to infrastructure. The stone is a danger to itself and others; it has seen too much. Never mention the time the stone ********. Just do not mention that, please. The stone suffers from phantom limb syndrome, though its legs have never existed nor arms or approachable neck. The stone is sad. The stone has no womb, yet yearns to engage in the exercise which publicizes fertility. The stone is without race or religion. It’s color exists from the salt of earth’s breaths and fumes from sun. The stone is still in search of its god. The stone does not conform to any political party and yet this stone is queer. And yet this stone marches for the freedom of others and yet this stone is still. And the stone meditates. And the stone chants. And the stone is in search of its ceremonious existence within its scarred and scared packaging. 

the religion of this.

Tell me how it feels to be looked at like that. When your paint is so dramatic, eyes step beyond the taped line. Risk of getting thrown out of museum is worth it just to see that tiny hair– trapped for one hundred and eighty years– caught up in lonely greens and browns. Contemplate how that human called your body’s origin: a violin. What are your parents. What color are you if I dripped you open. We can be allegories on this earth as everything in sight tilts toward our fright. Let’s pretend we only just started to exist. They called my blood stained glass, bent fingers into each other, prayed toward my carbon dioxide. Today, I give away four tablespoons of urine to analyze all the haunts that have ghosted their way in. What is so spiritual about discharge. Owls and graveyards and ruin and I dreamed I had to explain why my wrists have blurred. How to mute the dread of tomorrow, which reeks of the day before and the one which will arrive two days from now. And taciturn and monsoon’d. There is a motif for prayer and it looks like a four-stringed instrument & curled voice of poet pretending how to live. Wonder about monks. Wonder how to rely upon four minute allowance of dress and razor and mercy and water strainer and needle. Wonder how to practice abstinence of appetite, while abstaining from all practices of celibacy. And if one cannot be holy in its intimate form, how to be a hummingbird.  Forage shade as though it can be eaten and when all of it is gone, sleep inside the orthodoxy of dark.

an (atheistic) approach to belief

I carry a bible in my pocket now. It fits inside fake leather dip of hiding space. On the subway, I sneak it between my palms and underline the language that makes my blood seep through the holes in my skin. When I drip, I take note. This has become my companion these days as I gather up bits of moon and shadow, and conversational outbursts with others. Love is found in these pages. No need for beds or hand holding anymore; in this bound collection, I have found what I am most in need of: challenged thought and deeper meanings.

My volume is a bit different. There is God mentioned, but less attached to religion and more saturated by the language of poetics. I call it my bible, but it calls itself: Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke. Sixteen years ago, a teacher of mine gave it to me and I have carried it from home to home in various states and mindsets. What led me to reopen this book and sew it to my body in this way is what I think might lead others to attend to their own searches. Seven years ago, I fell against pavement and received nine stitches among other medical help. One month ago, I fell in a different way and this book is my cane. For now.

I am not sure the moment I started calling myself an atheist. Several events could have led me there, but I believe it became solidified when I couldn’t find meaning to the parts of me stained and scarred by these happenings. I just stopped believing. Though as I look back, I still had/have my beliefs. I believe in magic and found it in humans and love affairs and at the tops of mountains and in cabins. I believe in poetry and the essence of its healing powers.

This is probably what led me to house this particular “bible” in my pocket.

Rilke writes, “…ask yourself…whether you have really lost God. Isn’t it much truer to say that you have never yet possessed him? Why don’t you think of him as the one who is coming, who has been approaching from all eternity, the one who will someday arrive, the ultimate fruit of a tree whose leaves we are? Don’t you see how everything that happens is again and again a beginning, and couldn’t it be His beginning, since, in itself, starting is always so beautiful.”

I replace “God” with “love”. I replace “God” with “words”. I replace “God” with “you”/”your”. 

All of this doesn’t have to be an end to something. That period at the end of the sentence could be its beginning. The loss of another could be the beginning of something so much deeper.

Yesterday, I was thinking about pronouns and how we are given a name at birth and a pronoun attached to it, but what if it doesn’t fit? So we make our own versions of what we need and what we are. This pertains to my atheism or what I thought my spiritual (non)belief was called. Perhaps I was never one. Perhaps there is something in between belief and non. Like: betweeniest. 

My mind is not set. Even at this age, it changes. Sometimes, it falls apart and I have to reshape it. This can be exhausting; however, it offers me a chance to rummage through the parts of myself I so often neglect. We do this sometimes.

So, I take off on a trip and feel the miniature words of Rilke press against me. It is erotic in how alive it makes me feel. Fear is what has kept me away from living (at times). Fear of understanding what I just don’t understand. Finally, finally….I am ready for answers found in these letters written between 1903 to 1908. Still relevant and connected to the language of the earth we all linger on.

And that’s kind of accurate….we linger. We loiter. We endure. And to fill in all the gaps and breaths of silence, we question.

even in doubt there is conviction

Dear Air.

I call you this because I do not see you. And I’d rather call you something that maybe you haven’t been called before. I write letters to you but they pile themselves into my palms and my arms shake. My wrinkles drown beneath the words I do not send you. But if you are all around me then I just may leave these notes on my body. You will find them as you wrap yourself into around me. Forgive my misspellings or unintelligible gasps. This language is heavy and I am tired and I am tired and I am tired. My prayers are edible and I forget to chew and there is choking and sometimes the spice causes me to lose control and when it is bland I rub my sweat into its soundlessness. You will never find me on my knees and my hands do not clasp and I do not wear beads or count blessings. The songs are only about the soil I wish cluttered around my bones because blood is too thin and much more grows out of dirt and clay.

Dear Wind.

I call you this because I hear your hum. And even in my tears, you climb into my salt and press them away. The other day, you lifted me up from path toward underground subway. My toes flew for a moment. If I threw paint against your invisible, you’d be stained glass. You’d be oil slick puddle of rainbow. Believe? Does it matter? I feel and this sense does not need to be in buildings or engage in holy. I do not need to memorize your songs; I have my own. I will not starve or separate or cling. The thing is, I’m still here. I’m still here.

That is enough.

what it looks like to believe

Are you Jewish?

A young girl with brown hair gathered into a neatly assembled ponytail asks me this, as I wait for the 4 train on Franklin Avenue.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been asked this. Many times throughout the year, Orthodox men wearing thick beards and dark clothing have come up to me wanting to give me Shabbas candles or call out the songs of the shofar or just simply pray with me.

In the past, I have said yes. But my answer is far more complicated than that. I am not Jewish.

For a long time, I was Agnostic leaning toward Atheist. Perhaps dabbling in yoga has stretched my body out enough to progress my leaning into full-blown Atheist.

It’s not that I don’t believe in anything. I believe in Poetry. I believe in the magic of nutrition and the reward of eating a good meal and my body’s reaction. I believe in gun control. I believe in global warming. I believe in the power of free speech. I believe.

It’s just that I’ve been inside too many rooms where too much has happened for me to still get down on my knees and pray to a / some God.

I wish. And I have thoughts seeped in devoted pleas, but I’m more moved by the strength and rise of the sun, rather than the inscribed stories written in the best-selling book of all time.

In the past, I have said YES to these religious men who have asked me if I were Jewish because it seemed easier to say one word (that they were already expecting) then qualify my atheism. But two weeks into a new year and I guess I just want to stop obliging so much. So, when this young child asked me, I said: No.

Suddenly my body got really, really hot. Granted, I was wearing many layers at the time, but it is Winter and this is the costume we must wear: scarf, several textures of shirts on top of each other and jacket (maybe 2) and heavy socks and hat and gloves and

I was sweating.

Suddenly, the train came and I watched her and her family get on the same car as me, though we were at different ends.

I looked toward her and noticed her notice me.

Then….her father. Right beside me.

“I think you might be Jewish,” he said.

And I couldn’t help but wonder what about me led him to think this. My bright red hair? The curls? Do Jews have dreadlocks? I’m poorly dressed and have been called messy by a number of women. Is that a tip-off? My nose? My thin lips? My dimples?

“I…I don’t practice,” I said.

“Your parents are Jewish. So you are.”

The thing is, I didn’t feel bombarded. I have a bias against men like him: white, middle-aged. But he wasn’t a man standing in front of me, handing me candles for praying and a pamphlet. He was a devout believer. He wasn’t pushy, nor did I feel threatened by his question in any way.

And I wonder. Why don’t we do this more often.

We ask: how are you?
We ask: what do you do for a living?

But what about:

Are you a Poet?
Are you happy?
What do you believe in?
How do you find a way out of your suffering?
Are you hungry?
What are you reading?
What words stain your wrist?
Where do your tears come from?

These men…this child…they are bold enough…such unwavering believers…that they are fearless. They go up to strangers and ask them this question without any judgement of their answer. Both child and father looked deep into me. My NO did not matter. They saw religion in me. Even if it is the religion of poetry; it is something.

I feel my feet curve from side-to-side in my black boots that are torn and have a not-so-secret hole in the soul sole that invites rainwater in. My migraine is back like a lover that I never loved in the first place. And the pain in my mind tries to take me away from my day. Smothering. Debilitating.

But in the evening, I fall against poets and we pray without finger-clasp. Without stained-glass windows or angels or illuminated memorials. We toast to words and I feel the belief inside them. And I don’t even have to ask. Although…I think I understand the power of hearing one’s answer.

arrival of place

Uptown, there is a church.

It is curvy like a woman should be, wrapping around a corner avenue.

This church is made of stone and wood carvings and stained glass and I spoke to God, even though we aren’t always on speaking terms.

You don’t have to answer me back, I whispered.

Elevated, with stage in front of me, and a jump contemplated and a staircase leading nowhere, I sat on a theatre seat. I tried to ignore the smell of mildew and judgement.

There was a ledge, which looked down on the pews and pulpit. It was protected by a criss-cross see-through fence, that I wanted to sew myself into. Or, peek into each diamond eye and notice the restricted images.

I am preparing for a performance. Of movement. Sexuality. A body. Some revelations. Singing, perhaps. Condoms, because I have always wanted to tear one with my teeth in the house of God and nudity because….well….ditto.

We will make sure to clean the stage, said one of the curators, earlier.

No, I said. I like that it’s dirty.

Prayer dust.
Flakes of skin of mourners, sinners, absolutionists.

I scribbled in my notebook:
body as stained glass
three-dimensional rainbow magnifications of angels and prophets
a shatter
grit
a tutorial of how
sex as performance
the nudity of church or religion or belief

I think I want to believe in something strong enough to get me through all my death thoughts.

I think I want to ask God what s/he thinks about gender and push-up bras and botox and welfare and homelessness and anxiety attacks and fat free everything and student loan debt and the rise in gluten allergies and if it’s OK that I used to be a sex worker.

Forgive me [?]

Friday, June 1st, I press my sexual politics onto a stage in a church in NYC at the Movement Research Festival. And I’m thinking about what it means to talk about sex in a building where God lives or Bibles rest or hands clasp and tongues pray.

Will they let me in?