Namaste

It's International Yoga Day! Also the Solstice, wherein we celebrate the longest stretch of daylight all year, so--suprisesurprise--I took a beautiful yoga class at my home studio, I pulled weeds in my sweet friends' vineyard, sipped homebrew on their porch overlooking a day's work, and then invited some fam over for an impromptu swim / sausage-and-garlic-scape-(a.k.a. grilled garter snake)-bbq / lightsaber-duel (cousins!kids!) ~ I just wanna give a heartfelt shoutout to all of my [yoga] teachers, especially mi prima, Larita, whose passion brought me to the mat from the start and inspired in me the pull to keep showing up.

Breath::Motion::Peace

To me, yoga is everything the same way music is everything--it is accessed in pulling vineyard weeds while cursing at the most stubborn roots and returning the chickadees' mating volley; in answering sixty-seven questions a minute from a seven-year-old who wants her pond-soaked butt on your lap and in whose wild eyes and sunny freckles you see your entire past; in walking to the grill with a stack of plates in the crook of one arm and her hand in your other hand; in the way you don't just say 'fuckit' and call someone you know you cannot but breathe and change the radio station instead; in squeezing a wedge of lemon into your morning cup and in using the last of your freezer vodka to mix drinks for a houseful of road-weary lunatics at 2am; in vacuuming the ceiling cracks with an extension before strangers arrive; in assuring your best friend who just bought a house that you will be there after the closing to scrub the cupboards before her dead father's favorite pint glass finds its home there; in watching, with beaming admiration, your husband in his grout-caked work pants put on dorky ear protection and hop on the John Deer and mow for hours with his bad posture; in each dip, swallow, and melting exhale; in every slow swooping note and in the sticky staccato ones too; in your hand to your heart when there are a million questions and in your hand to your heart when you are the void with not a thing to ask; in the meander and the punchline and the thesis and the epilogue; in the journey between disregard and supreme care...

Vira. Viraviravira. Warrior. Baby. Old, old lady. Thanks to this practice for letting me in.

Thanks to the sun for shining so long.

Thanks to you for reading and for reciprocating. 

"The light within me honors the light within you ~ Namaste."

M’AIDEZ! M’AIDEZ!: We are stuck, but we’re still moving.

The dandelions are closing up shop as the sun dips behind a mountain in Reed Point, Montana, population 96, the “sheep drive capital of the world.” Lethal, the bartendress at The Waterhole Saloon, fed us deep fried “rocky mountain oysters” (bull testicles) on the house while we waited by the wood stove for the mechanic to call us back about the busted bearings on our trailer. I ordered a burger and two Buds, Suave played Neil Young and The Doors on the jukebox, and Khris lost some money in a slot machine with neon lights and nailed a quarter into a knotty beam alongside hundreds of others—a tradition in this rustic dive, for luck or for wishes or maybe just to kill the boredom—a thing to do with one’s hands and spare change in a place from which some people never leave and to which no one ever comes to stay. We are crawling along I-90 East at five miles per hour, stopping every half mile or so to let the bearings cool again with fifteen miles to go until we hit the town with a mechanic, who is done working for the day and may be able to help us tomorrow, so we’ll likely sleep in the van again until sunrise. Zach is wrapping some sage he found on the side of the road, and Suave is snoring softly again. I may have enough water left in my bottle to brush my teeth, but what I really want is the longest, hottest shower followed by the deepest, darkest sleep. If it sounds like a complaint though, it isn’t—I have made such bold, oddball choices that could have led nowhere but here, and even in my cross-eyed exhaustion with every muscle sore and a touch of homesickness for my mama and her broccoli-tofu-kasha and the big rock by my pond and breathless chatty hikes with my darling Maria, I am fine…we’re all fine. We’re not even silent. We’re actually still laughing.

Our president has declared May 1st as Loyalty Day, a day on which we are asked to blindly and generally assert our national pride, with the tenants of freedom, justice, equality, and independence (“limited government”) in mind—the very tenants that his presidency has repeatedly threatened. He also “humbly thank(ed) our brave service members and veterans”…right after we watched in horror as he congratulated (not thanked) a soldier who lost his leg in battle; trump casually, almost patronizingly, patted the Purple Heart onto the chest of this hero whose life was forever altered after serving his country…He actually congratulated this man for the great honor of receiving a Purple Heart, which allowed him to meet the president, rather than thanking him for his service. May Day, among other things, has been known in the United States as International Workers’ Day, wherein people protest for workers’ rights and other issues of social justice. To celebrate the rights we haven’t yet been granted on this particular day is such a farce and such a transparent attempt at placating a struggling populace: say loud enough and enough times that things are great—“tremendous”—and even those people who can’t feed their children or pay their rent will feel grateful, at least for a moment, to be part of something powerful. They’ll have something to celebrate under a “leader” who promises (in the simplest terms, with no substantive content or plan) to pull them out of the muck; and they’re told that that mucky buildup is the fault of someone else and that we’re on the right path up now. But conmen don’t clear the way for anyone but themselves, and the paradox of asking people to declare loyalty on a day traditionally dedicated to protesting for their own fair treatment is perplexing. It’s downright dizzying.  

Pema Chödrön, from the Afterword to her 20th Anniversary edition of Things Fall Apart: 

“There’s a famous dharma saying that goes: ‘If you want to see what has brought you to this point, look at your past thoughts and actions. If you want to see your future, look at your present thoughts and actions.’ What’s happening in today’s world is the result of the collective thoughts and actions of everyone on the planet. We can’t just erase everything what has led up to this and make things better all at once. But we can each take responsibility for our own state of mind as we for forward into the future. Instead of continuing to close down and defend our own territory, we can learn to relax with the true nature of reality, which is uncertain and unpredictable. This is the only way to transform the world from a place of escalating aggression to a place of awakening. Learning how to relate sanely with our chaotic world is no longer a luxury. It’s our responsibility. Good thing it’s something we’re all capable of doing.”       

Upon the second vehicle breakdown in the same day, I texted a friend asking if it was okay to cry yet. I asked it in earnest in that brief moment, but truthfully, I know how much control I actually have over these thoughts and over the prospect of falling apart or not. Our human capacity is kinda miraculous when we find ourselves living full of dedication and sacrifice to something we believe in. To live true is energizing and is the escape route out of so much injurious inertia; we apply our force to move forward when we BELIEVE. trump and his flying monkeys would prefer us paralyzed in fear and miseducation, but we are better than that. We see clearly, and we can choose to be unrelenting. Tonight from I-90 straddling the rumble strip at 5mph, I’m casting an intention (a prayer if I prayed) for the people I know, for those I haven’t met yet, and for those I never will: I wish you such passion that it renders all the labor—all the bullshit, the soreness, the pitfalls and potholes and breakdowns and bruises—a desperate act of love. I hope you love what you do so much that you’re never bored, and I hope you fight for it every day. M’AIDEZ! M’AIDEZ!—We are certainly stuck here, but we’re still moving, and I hope you whip up all that stuck-ness and longing and frustration into a fiery affair with the ride itself… I mean, how else does one meet a bartender named Lethal in Reed Point, Montana and sample fried bull testicles?  

Meet me there, huh?

Last night, with John Prine on low and the gentle screech of permanent markers to poster board, I made my sign for the Million Women March with my mom and her old friend—an auntie to me, who knitted my green baby blanket. We noticed some flashing lights down by the road, so Suave went to investigate: a man in a pickup truck had come flying around the corner and crashed into a tree. He had been taken to the hospital, and the paramedics said it looked pretty bad. We colored in the block letters on our signs, ate some chili, got in the hot tub, looking down often to see the lights still flashing, then dying out, and finally when just one flare was left, a neighbor called to report that the man in the pickup truck had died…right there in front of us, at the bottom of the driveway, as we colored in the block letters of our protest signs and drank wine and talked about wearing coats with lots of pockets and sighed about the repeal of the healthcare act. A man died. How fast, this life…How fragile. Was he drunk? In a rage? Did he just get some bad news? Was he listening to his favorite song? Who did he love? 

This afternoon, a friend with years of wisdom and good sense on me invited me into her home, cracked me a beer, and let me cry all over her kitchen counter for hours. Kind and sharp, she said things I’ve avoided and needed to hear. What a total miracle people like these are who randomly (or not so), answer the call and say quickly and unequivocally, “C’mon over.” We look into each other’s eyes, when we can.

Straight to rehearsal, loud and bodily and cathartic, where I closed my eyes and sang with my whoooooole being. That shit is freedom. Afterwards we stacked rows and rows of wood in the dark together—bandmates, who are family, who are ridiculous, and who are each other’s company on the weird, weird road. And just now I got off the phone with a friend living far away and fighting a very personal, ongoing, quiet battle. She reached out because I had opened up. What a gift. All this reciprocation. Identification. Acceptance. The guts. The web. 

My darling friends, we are here for each other. That’s the purpose of here, I gotta believe it. There is reason to be open, right now maybe more than ever, because connection between humans is what keeps us afloat in this sea of predators and divisions and hooks and anchors and toxins and fear. When we all show up, the job gets easier; we form a raft, and the seams get tight and true. 

She said it: “Take your broken heart ~ turn it into art.” Repeat. Repeat again. 
I’m showing up. Meet me there, huh? 

"Take your broken heart ~ Turn it into ART." - Carrie Fisher

Key West, Florida is a place of transients, lost souls, guiltless daytime drinkers, corporate burnouts, retirees, northerners downright fed up with long, muscle-tense winters, and broken hearts trying to mend. After a 4:45am drive, three planes, a four-hour bus ride on the one long water-bordered road from Miami (the winds on the key being too wild to land the plane there), and one final cab, I arrived here for the first time with my mom on a rather extravagant birthday excursion and found myself at the hotel bar drinking piña coladas with Susan the bartender who moved here twenty-two years ago after her husband left her for her best friend, taking two of their four cats. And Randy, thin, leathery, flamboyant, and charmingly garish in his love for this place, who owns a members-only restaurant bar and has two black labs he adores, bought me a shot of tequila and took my business card. He has some connections to music venues here, and even though I arrived in a total state of stormy disarray and haven’t been able to make eye contact and greet people on the street the way I often can, I am once again reminded that you get what you give; you cannot make connections if you don’t open your eyes and look into the eyes of others. Ask questions. Be open. Own your heartache. And the empathetic nods and parallel stories are coaxed gently from strangers, who quickly become less strange.

There is a difference between privacy and secrecy. Because I write and sing, I stay pretty wide open. I’ve made it my job to observe, reflect, create, and share, forever seeking deeper connection with whoever is on the other end, hoping to shrink the divide between us, because I really believe (pardon me: my hippie roots are showing) that we are put on this earth to love and take care of each other—to reach out and connect. That’s always been it for me. People. Love. Forming the bonds and tending to them. The past year (ten or so months, to be more exact) has taken that formula to task. I have been quiet. I’ve been private. I have kept secrets. And for someone like me, that can be very harmful. So in the interest of saving the bond I have with myself, which may be the most important one each of us has, I’m going to write my way through my pain and share what I can, in hopes that a healthy dose of harsh truth will simultaneously dip into someone else’s pool of secrecy and make her or him feel a little less guarded, a little more open, and maybe even less alone. While we all maintain the right to hold our truths silently to our chests, sometimes the sweetest gift we can give ourselves is to simply open the cage and watch our own wild, aching birds burst forth into the sky in a flurry of old feathers that no longer serve the wings.

Here goes nothin’. In the spring I fell in love. She is a classically trained viola player from the south, currently an investigator by trade, and she is dynamic and powerful and fun and surprising and bold and frightening, often exceedingly kind and generous, and just as often hot-tempered and rash with a tone of voice that can go from sweet syrup to bitter citrus in an instant—and the sting of that sour note is remarkable, and unforgettable…it’s effective, and it’s excruciating. She has smooth brown skin, she smokes cigarettes, and sometimes she stays up all night partying and sleeps the whole next day. She works hard and shows up to marches for justice; she is trained in it, knows the chants and battlecries, shouts for the crowd to “Stay tight!” when they wander too far outward, and delivers water to weary protestors. She says “Fuck the po-lice,” and she means it. I've wished I was beside her every step of those marches. She is a Bernie supporter, who like many of us, voted for HRC because that’s what the DNC gave us, but she wasn’t proud of it. She considers herself a kind of witch and “manifests” things, willing what she wants into action. She loves lavender and rose gold and pistachio ice cream and elephants. She is passionate and angry and unafraid. These details are only important because I know them. In your story, they are different details, but you know them, so thoroughly, so intimately, and with such deep reverence. Loving her has been one of the most exhilarating and painful things I’ve ever done. I didn’t have a choice…and I didn’t stand a chance.

Falling in love is one of life’s most daring, insane, involuntary, and beautiful events. It’s miraculous. It’s all-encompassing. It’s gigantic and strange. And it’s new every time. But when you are married and falling in love with someone who is not your husband, that love turns strained and desperate. It’s considered shameful. It’s a secret. And it cannot breathe. It is conversations on the phone in dark parked cars. It’s selfies in bathroom stalls. It’s letters. It is broken plans and tears and frustration and longing and apologies. It means that you are deeply disappointing people and yourself, it is often characterized by monstrous guilt, and it becomes a relentless brand of self torture, minute after minute. It’s the rollercoaster ride that doesn’t end because you are strapped in tight and because the track is growing out of itself in real time, the loops and twists built the instant before you reach them, and there is no foresight or prediction, just gut-wrenching swoops, the momentary steady climb, and then the devastating falls. It is revolving ache and relief, euphoria and pain, and it often feels like hugely failing. 

What I haven’t said yet, but what I suppose is implicit, is that I’ve been faced with a crisis of identity. I’m married to a wonderful man who is my best friend, my co-writer, my bandmate, my family, my partner in everything…but he is a man. And where I always figured I fell somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, I didn’t know, because I never tested the waters before I met my life partner—and once you fall in love with the person who will become that life partner, you kind of just assume that the wondering piece is over, and you forge ahead with joy and hope and plans and the best intentions. In our case, we threw a music festival on the property of our converted barn; our neighbors hosted the ceremony officiated by my uncle, and they made the carrot cake and provided the champagne for the toast; my dad wrote a wedding song, and we sang to each other’s faces; I wrote a poem that my cousin read, and in front of everyone we love, we recited the lines of commitment, and we meant them. Blissful and secure and full of a shared appetite for adventure and the desire to experience everything together, she appeared, and we thought, we can do anything. 

I never knew the fissures were there. She found them. She seeped through, pulled at the walls of our good house with her talons, ripped them into gaping holes, tore the whole foundation apart, stomped on the splinters. And I was a part of all of that destruction; I felt it, watched it, helped, covered my eyes, threw my fists into the walls, bandaged them up... Once we were left sitting in the wreckage, unable to see each other through a thick cloud of ruin, she lifted her gaze, saw a bird of almost mythical beauty approaching at top speed, and she reached out, caught hold, and just like that, she was gone. She is gone. Soaring, elated, far away, high above, in some other atmosphere, and she couldn’t care less about me. Or us. Or the damage. She’ll never own it. She feels justified, vindicated, and she let go of me like I was a stack of plates on fire. She saw the route away, and the cycle begins again: she is in love. 

And the shitty truth is that I’m not a good enough person to be happy for her. Not yet. Maybe never. I told myself I would be, when and if this happened—that the best parts of me would surface, and I would turn the wheel, hand over hand, accelerating as I hit that high road; I said I’d choose tenderness and that because so much has passed between us, over a thousand songs and all that hanging on, that the care is what could persist. But she dismantled me. Violently. I am not vilifying someone I have loved this way—it’s just the truth. And now that she’s gone, all I can do is ache and ache. All night last night, not a single minute of sleep, I held my hand to my heart in the hotel bed with crisp white sheets, covering my body (foreign, inferior, not enough) with the extra pillows, breathing, each inhale a labor, not one exhale letting any of the hurt escape…but I’m told (and maybe I know) that over time, that begins—that the breaths get smoother, and the heart stops quaking, and you look up and out and into people’s eyes again and find those moments of connection…and maybe you laugh and laugh and laugh. Grief is unsustainable, thankfully. And I’ve never tended toward it when I can help it.

So what is left of me? Of us? Are the pieces salvageable? Is it maybe the greatest love story of all time? Does the retirement plan on that Tuscan hillside still exist, Suave stirring the sauce as I pluck grapes from the vine and drop them into a bucket for the wine-making? Am I worth forgiving? Can I be with a man, even if he is the best person this twisted, knotty, booby-trap riddled life has shown me? Can I come back? Is there a return path? Can anybody tell me anything? Suave, are you still there, and do you want me, and can we find each other’s hands again? Where is this place? Have I lost altogether?   

I’ve outed myself because silence, for me, for a songbird, for a person built of words and music, is impossible, feels like choking, feels like drowning, and I have kept my mouth shut for too long. And ya know what else?—I need you. I need people. I need your connection, even if you’re angry as hell at me, and you think I’m selfish and horrible. Just say a thing to me. Say anything. I am exhausted by my own silence. I can’t keep it anymore, and I’m desperate for the sound of your call. When I was a kid walking to meet my cousins halfway between our houses in the woods, we called out “Keee-wahhhh-keeee!” to gauge the distance between us. Did we start running when we caught sight of each other? I can’t remember. But I’m calling out to you: Keee-wahhh-keeeee! It’s nonsense, but if you call back out into this cavernous space between us, this colossal, silent space I have wedged between myself and everyone else, I promise I’ll start running as fast as I can.

The only thing that makes these revolutions of new mornings worth their salt is the promise of that connection to other humans—the whole choking, thriving, dying, screaming, terrorizing, warring, fucking, losing, playing, singing, feasting, agonizing, loving lot of us. One day I will likely say I’m glad this all happened because it knocked me down so low that I was forced to use every muscle I have to climb out. I am worse for the wear now, and I will be different then. Tougher too. Love is still the best thing. I believe it, even here, in the January of my heart, disparately sitting on a poolside patio under the brilliant sun by a plantain tree, pop reggae blasting from the tiki bar, the smell of Cuban cigars wafting from the hot tub. I am falling apart in a beautiful place. It’s so strange to be one of the heartbroken here in paradise; I guess many of them must figure it’s easier to heal here than anywhere else, and then they just stay, because when you finally come around to your own happiness again, how totally glorious to be in perfect harmony with the world around you. One day soon, I will look up and there will be a vast murmuration of starlings shifting as one across the sky, and I’ll put my hand to my heart again, find a steadier beat there, knowing that when connected to each other, we are our very best. We can fly. We can do anything. With you, I can do anything.

~

*Suave is strong and steadfast and remains my biggest support. He’s read this piece, and he asks you to please not call him.