Permanent

My computer just reminded me that tomorrow is Jon's birthday.

I wouldn't say that I had forgotten, but it did take me by surprise.

It still surprises me - takes my breath away - which makes sense, because I don't expect to lose people. I expect you to be here forever, on the other end of the phone or somewhere out in Facebook land. I expect his voice when I call his number, and am always surprised when I hear the Spanish-speaking woman answer instead.

Which is interesting, to me, because in Spanish, death is temporary. There are two verbs for 'being' in Spanish, and when forced to choose, the fathers of romance decided it would make better poetry to believe something you've never seen. To allow for possibility. So it seems more reasonable in the feverish moments that he might pop back in for a bit, even just in the answering machine. Inviting me to call again, or leave a detailed message.

"I'm out right now, splintered into my elemental pieces, being reborn and recycled, drifting out to the Caribbean and into the Gulf, intermittently haunting the dreams of my loved ones. Leave a message and I'll get back to you as soon as I can, in the form of a door creaking, or a gust of wind, or a sorrowful note...

Or a reminder on your computer, in case you can't bring yourself to delete me...

Merry Christmas, by the way. You're aging well - better than many of my friends, who smoke and drink, who pull "G"s and command troops for a living. I know you've been looking for a few things... Last year you accidentally packed your favorite scarf at the bottom of the box with Christmas cards, the one you were too sorrowful to dig into this year...

Oh, and David Bowie says hi."

The Goblin King and his minions, those dearly departed who tug at our heartstrings, unsteady in their disembodied forms? There is something that draws them closer in the colder, darker days.

And that's a good thing. To feel love.

Which according to Spanish, is permanent.

Lean

Today is the solstice - or maybe I should say tonight is the solstice? I'm not sure. I've appropriated this holiday as a date that represents a scientific occurrence - the great leaning away. But I'm not sure I know what it means for me. It's the middle child between Hannukah and Christmas, the neutral force in the middle that makes no claim to magic, other than the cosmic dance of huge planetary masses floating in time around a fireball, mostly without incident.

I'm on the north side, which feels like a Fact from Science, except that it's arbitrary and man-made, like money and language.

Men make things we cling to, it seems. Like time, space, gravity.

The magic of women cannot be explained, which is why we like to blame ourselves for the things that don't make sense.

Just because we cannot be explained does not mean we are senseless.

The power of a woman is her prayer - her faith that the light will come again, or the baby will come out (even without knowing how the hell it got in there), or the oil will last. Faith is what we practice in the dark, cold moments before the dawn when God leans in and asks what is really inside of our hearts.

Valves - blood - bizarre muscle cells that operate in synchrony, more like a flock of birds turning this way and that, impossibly quickly without someone at the helm commanding "6 degrees right!" The physical heart is so easily explained - it starts from two cells - one with age, wisdom, and experience, and one with a tail. Eighteen days later, a few cells volunteer as tribute and start beating.

The man-splanation of the heart skips over the sorcery required.

I've spent so long on the science of the heart, trying to live in the logical world that I've negated the mystery of love, which cannot so easily be compartmentalized. It would be so nice and tidy - so convenient - to think of love as somewhere in a ventricle, or the result of a particular equation.

But my experience of the essence of the heart defies explanation, as does yours, I imagine. We might say that it is built on a foundation of respect, trust, mutual understanding, and maybe that is true. But at some point the logic fails and there is simply a placeholder for Mystery. And sometimes it manifests out in a manger, like a virgin birth, and the series of events that follows changes the course of the world.

My experience of love is that it is like gravity - evident, observable, reciprocal, and completely illogical.

I have written a book, trying to untangle the tired mess of the men I have and do love. Mother India cracked open the logical scientist in me and invited me to release some heavy and unneeded baggage as I prepare to lean in.

India: Lookout

It is unreasonable that my trip home took only a bit more than a day, but the date never changed. That there is so much more to do, and yet nothing to be done, now that the lesson is clear. Mother India speaks in tricks and pixies. Hitchhikers who board you like pirates and drive you home, monkeys who steal your offerings from the mouths of stone gods. Land that knows nothing of time, whose people shake their heads in such a way to mean, "anything is possible."

Chai is a sacrament with an ancient promise of bringing people together, for appreciating friendship with no common language other than wrinkles and eyelashes and a shared devotion to the cow, the sage who wanders the back steps and rests in the road.

Nothing tangible is practical in the physical world, the higher value is spirit, a sense that everyone else shares - nothing you do will matter. Your body will grow roots or wings, and the pixies in your eyes will fly off to the next world, constellations of your spirit. And India will keep on clicking her heels, spinning around the same sun, but in her own manifestation of time which refuses to be measured by Gregorians or Mayans or anything a man could conceive.

The layers of irony in the Indira Gandhi airport - solar panels in a region that has lost sight of the sun through impossible pollution. Seventeen layers of security to access the hotel juxtaposed to immigration officers who couldn't care less about where you've been or what you've been up to. 

All flights depart at midnight.

I saw the Himalayas at dawn, after a silent screaming match in my head... the driver conspiring with India to make me puke one way or another. We chanted to them, from the edge of the roof, a temple to someone's left breast. And then, as the sun took the sky, they faded behind the haze, their jagged skeletons too temperamental to be bothered with daytime hours. India is all smoke and veils, and the mountains play, too.

I had found a certain peace before I left, and settled into it until everyone pulled me aside to deliver the same message.

Are you sure?

I'd like to be. I'd like to be certain about a few things, put others to bed. But I'm not in charge of fate - mine or yours or ours.

The yogis say to do your work, or sing, or stretch, or learn. Or really all of the above. And more than that, surrender.

Can you? Can I? 

India: Before

I've been packing for weeks – five weeks – to be exact. The decision wasn't easy this time, as it may have been in other moments, as it has been, because I'm timid with self-trust in these days. Instead of the steady intuition I've had in the past, the unwavering trust of my own gut, I've had to relearn how to read the signs – how to diversify my trust, by gathering small pieces from people who seem to have nothing other than my best interest in mind.

Two days ago my suitcase was still only a third filled, and I couldn't think of what else to put in it. Full of snack bars and medications, disposable supplies and just-in-case contingency plans, the suitcase felt very much like my life.

Temporary.

Mostly empty.

Spacious.

The space has been crushing at times, so I've amped up the pace to try and fill it – untethered, I've simply kept moving to create the illusion of a full life.

And so the day before I left, a flurry of requests for things – herbs, vitamins, chocolate, batteries. Offerings for each of the people who has had a hand in this decision to go – the men who have answered my tearful calls in the past year, who have helped me recalibrate the experience of trust and not needed to consume me.

But soon my suitcase will be empty again, as these gifts fall into the hands of those who have lifted me up, as the supplies are used or gifted or abandoned, and I'll be left with all of that space.

Mother India follows the timeline and plan of no man, or so I've heard. She has her own wild ways, her own gifts. A lifetime is insufficient to explore her, as I suppose is true of any woman.

This trip is for me – a symbol, if nothing else – of what gifts I'm ready to receive, having unpacked so much of my own baggage in the past year. Having cleared emotional cobwebs and closets.

 

Proper Nouns

Oh, Fall.

We meet again. Proper nouns and verbs us both. Or at least, you're proper to me.

Carry.

Fall.
For a dozen years now, we've locked eyes in the windstorm, as summer leaves us both in the dust.

And leaves.

We had a romance, once. The fall and I. A magical day on a mountain, unseasonal sunshine, rainstorms of aspen goldness and long shadows. Cool nights and frosty mornings in the arms of various men, clinging to the sparks of summer and hoping it would be enough to light us through the winter.

It's lonely to imagine all of the ways life did not follow my instructions – did not consult my wish list. Lost my letters to Santa. The carefree and careless ways she led me down wrong paths, tempting me to find myself again.

And again.

So here I am, on the precipice of the darkness, in full understanding of the game. Maybe for the first time.

The darkness comes, and goes.

Let it?

Lie down. Surrender. Listen. Magic will come dance with you, mystery will whisper – maybe even destiny – if you shut up and stop looking for a meme or a gif that represents the way you feel (except for all of the yucky bits). Stop trying to bear burdens you can simply set down for awhile – if only for the winter. See how the snow falls and the thaw treats it, and decide in the light of the spring.

You fall, I carry.

Have carried. Maybe this time I'll fall, too?

The beauty of getting lost lies in finding yourself again.

Ten years ago today I got married. Three years ago today I got divorced.

Twelve I got engaged. Two I had surgery.

Last year I waited in vain for someone to rescue me from my circumstances, lost in the sea, clinging to a smoldering, sinking ship.

He left me hanging.

All of these ways I've tried to find myself in the reflection or salvation of another. Excision of the undesirable qualities of me, in an increasingly frantic effort to be exactly right. To do more work, my namesake, carry.

My current season, fall.

Maybe I'll take the hint, and find myself in the spring?

I wrote a book about all of the ways I've fallen in love. Carried myself. It isn't finished yet.

And neither am I.

Happy anniversary, My Ben. This day is yours.

This life is mine.

Hungry

I lost ten pounds recently.

But I didn't post about it here. I didn't share a before and after, because I'm starting to disappear.

That's embarrassing.

I grew up in a household that was well-resourced, with three squares a day, perfectly portioned. It was all pre-determined, sectioned, prepared. No one ever asked me if I wanted seconds.

If I was hungry.

My grandmother would give me a worried look - force feed me homemade chocolate chip cookies until I cried to my mother and she made her stop.

I get the same worried look now from strangers. Or a jealous look from the woman who watches me pick up my breakfast order

"Well you can afford it, you barely exist."

Yes.

I barely exist.

But this waffle is me trying.

I have tried not to exist. To apologize for existing. To fade into the background. To ask myself what
I'm really hungry for.

If only I could figure out what it feels like to be hungry.

Or nourished.

My body has not broken to my will, the trickery of me coaxing it to do the things I had wished it would do. My mind has pushed and fed, then punished and starved the poor vehicle that carries me around.

Yes. I'm starving.

But am I hungry?

Graduation

I have always said that if you seek to teach, buckle up, because life will give you a lesson to learn.
Yoga agrees on this point – that if you don't learn it the first time, that's ok. You'll get the lesson again. And again.

And again.

I have shied away from teaching yoga, in part because I did not feel worthy. For years I attributed this to the Hero's Journey, my reticence to stepping into that role. Who am I? What do I have to offer? A refusal of the call, followed by heeding the call, followed by a return home, changed, lesson learned.

It was not until cambio opened that I decided to step publicly into the role of teacher.

And for years I don't think I had much to teach, because I had not been open to learning. I was operating from a high place, a pedestal, a seat of accomplishment, having done all of the things just right. I was pompous and overconfident, while simultaneously feeling (secretly) unworthy.

Classic imposter syndrome.

I measured my success by counting pats on the back, likes on Facebook, repeat students fawning over me. I was the person in the tight pants, the self-righteous vegan diet, the green smoothies in jars, the mala bead jewelry. And then, I fell from grace. I lost friends and respect – yours and my own.

I burned my life down.

Infertility taught me many things (including and most importantly that I am not, in fact, infertile). My body is not broken – it is on my team – most days it is the captain of my team. It is telling me important information, trying at self-preservation when my mind and spirit run into their self-destructive tendencies.

And so I'm writing to tell you what I have learned on this hero's journey, awash in the sea of the reality of life.

Addiction is no fucking joke, and it is not welcome in the life raft of my joy room. It is not welcome in my body. Only good things are allowed in.

And good things must be let in.

External validation is no substitute for the nutrition that can only come from self-worth.

My starving body has told me this – maybe yours has told you, too?

I have spent so much time apologizing for existing, for not meeting your expectations, for needing anything at all from you. For running on your validation, with which I have sustained myself rather than seeking true sustenance.

I have found my voice, and know my truth. I used to apologize for it.

I am a writer - an anthropologist.

I am ready to graduate.

On Wednesday, I will lead my final class at cambio., and I like to think of this moment as a graduation – a diploma I have earned, having learned so many lessons.

Join me, if you can.

Om bolo satguru bhagavan ki.