Episode 46: MEMENTO MORI 💀

I am not some blank page, some clean slate of a woman. I have love branded on me. I am steeped in experience. I am a wealth of knowledge and baggage… REMEMBER THAT YOU WILL DIE!!! Your lips, soft, inside my mouth. NOT BREATHING!!! “This is some high school level BULLSHIT!!!” NO EXPECTATIONS!!! WILD STALLIONS!!! DYING FOXES!!! Vivid with a capital “V” technicolor. THE EITHER!!! WE ARE GOD!!! Presence. Overwhelm. Pause. REALITY VS CYNICISM!!! “May you never stop searching” HOLD STEADY!!! Falling in love… & WHAT IF?!!

EXCERPT:

“So I’m sitting in silence, in my studio, as the light slowly goes down in the afternoon, listening to the crunch of crackers between my teeth…

I’ve covered a Bijou-aged-goat-cheese Crottin with honey and just a touch of Maldon salt.

When I was 20 and working as a Cheesemonger, I used to call this combination orgasmic to customers. It still is.

I’ll do anything to procrastinate,

even sit in silence alone with my own thoughts.

It’s like a superpower my procrastination,

I can get so much housework done, I can observe my breath, I can listen to nothing but my teeth.

I’ve just sent a text message I’m worried about.

It says, “I don’t know that I’ve ever wanted to belong to somebody. But I don’t think I would mind belonging to you….”

It was meant more in a sensual context.

But now I’m realizing maybe I mean it in more contexts than that.

Last night you said, “WHAT’S UP FATHER IN LAWWW (we were talking about my father)… Ops and now we’re married! How do you feel about that?!” as a joke…

And I didn’t flinch? I didn’t flinch at all?

Not even a twinge.

“That’s great! I feel good about that…” my reply: instant…

Uncalculated, natural, like breathing.

Which I forget to do often.

How can something so hard be so easy?

You,

Not breathing.

But maybe breathing too.

My fitness tracker notified me that my heart rate skyrocketed to 145 in an instant when I called you last night.

You make my heart race.

But it’s not fear, it’s anticipation.

Mingled with fear… am I not going to be enough? Smart enough to entertain you, gentile enough to hold you. Wild enough to keep you begging for more…

What if I am mere woman?

Fail-able,

Imperfect. With a racing heart and shaking hands.

Three years ago me would have sat across from me and chastised, “This is some high school level BULLSHIT!”

“Why are you dancing alone in your kitchen like an idiot? Happiness is for suckers/you’re crazy/it’ll never work/don’t get your hopes up/remember how it ended the last time/why are you such an optimist/it never works out.”

But the woman staring at me from inside the mirror is smiling,

is scared but patient,

is not going anywhere, is steady.

I said last night, that I had no expectations. Because I want to know who and what you are. If I have expectations then you are trying to live up to them or work around them, and I am not getting the real you. If you don’t want to talk to me for a couple of weeks, great, I want to know that. If you want to call me every night, great, I want to know that too.

And I may never trust, (beyond the expectations of human decency, like that you are kind, generous, open, honest) I may never trust that you will stay.

The nature of the universe is change.

Change is the only constant.

I would have to be married to you with a child on the way,

and still, you could walk out of the door one morning and never come back.

It would take so much, for me to look into your eyes and believe you would stay no matter what.

I don’t know if I would ever believe someone.

I have done enough believing for one lifetime.

All I know is I’M not going anywhere.

Feet planted firmly on the ground when I would run…

All I know Is I’ll be here, like I always am, for everyone.

And for you too.

Even after you leave me, I’ll still be here.

I was always here loving you.

At least that’s been my story.

No matter how much I have tried to change it. I don’t know if I am capable of that.

So if you want to love me, you will have to love me practical. Love my silly, love me whimsical.

But mostly practical.

Even when my imagination runs off like a wild stallion.

Even when my heart wants to run after you dragging my brain in tow. Love me practical.

But don’t love me too practical you won’t rip off my work pants and work boots

and throw me down on the floor by the fire and….

Don’t love me too practical you don’t bring me into your wild world

of Vivid with a capital “V” technicolor fantasy

where I can close my eyes and feel the grass and your fingers pulling my hair….

And then part of me says.

Stop.

Don’t read too much,

time to run. Before they do. Come on. It would be so easy… just back away slowly, like from a wild animal, cooing and breaking bread and tossing crumbs in front of you, and you are gone…

Isn’t that safety? You don’t want to feel like this anymore.

The swell in your chest is dangerous, it’s a pipe bomb, it’s what happens when the world gets too volatile, it’s swallows everything whole.

And what happens if this feeling swallows me whole?

Will I run at it with abandon?

Scream love from the rooftops like some innocent teenager, in love for the first time.

Or will I get lost? Lose myself entirely to my bed and praying for your arrival.

The ultimate test. Can we fall in love thousands of miles away from each other?

Where’s the honeymoon period going to go,

the either?

Aren’t we supposed to be holding hands?

Is this some cruel universal joke?

I don’t know if I want to feel like this anymore.

I just don’t know.

And then I pick up my phone.

And I hear your voice.

And I think…. aren’t all the flowers so pretty and pink in spring?

And maybe if it’s meant to be you can’t mess it up.

And maybe it’s all worth it.

And maybe If I follow your breath I’ll find it…

That indescribable thing I’m looking for.

Your fingertips across my face,

your lips soft in my mouth, my fingers tangled in your hair.

The world melting into oblivion around us.

It doesn’t matter if I’m good enough anymore.

Good enough is for the half dying.

Devour me bare…

While we’re living.

Here.

In

this.

Moment.

Nothing matters.

We are both god.

Life’s been strange lately. I’ll blame it on the sub-zero temperate, or the state of the world, I’ll blame it on my body, on my heart. On the dead of winter.

But really it’s just that life is always strange. But often we are too disconnected or distracted to notice. The more we are present and sink into whatever is, the more wild it becomes. Today, for instance, I spent many hours both helping people and holding the crossroads between life and death crouched on the side of the road with a dying fox under my hands, while also getting wildly sexy text messages from a lover and not knowing how to say: “hold on, I’ve got a dying animal that someone hit that I don’t know what to do with here, I’m the freezing cold on the side of the road, and I’ve just gotten off the phone with someone I used to have a wild crush on that I haven’t talked to in months because they were the person my friend told me to call who might know what to do, and now it seems like my only job is to walk away and get back in my car before my hands freeze and leave the rest to nature. And 10 year old me would have tried to wrap the fox in a blanket and taken it home but adult me knows how dangerous that would be. And I have to go record this show because I’m on a deadline, and thank you for your sexy sexy messages reminding me that life goes on in the midst of tragedy. And my heart pulls in a hundred directions and yet somehow I’m here. Sitting in my car on the crucible of it.

Yeah, that’s a wordy text to send. Best just to say nothing.

And this week I sit with my feelings wrapped in my chest and I can’t seem to make sense of any of them.

This week I’m torn between running and staying. Beaten down by the cold, in the month where you forget that there ever was a spring. That buds come and flowers bloom and life begins again.

And I pray, that if I can just steady my hands they will know how to act. How to formulate the next right thing. How to hold it all with grace.

And I’ll stay present with it. With it all. And do what I always tell you all to do when you don’t know what to do. I’ll hold still. I’ll stay quiet, stay here, with my hand over my heart, wondering what to do next. Most of the time the answer to what to do next is just… homework.

And I think that state of overwhelm is really real. I’m taking on this whole teaching program. I’m doing my Master Reiki Practitioner training in a month. And I’m holding down my own business as best I can, and I’m somehow managing to also figure out falling for someone who lives across the country. And it’s all a lot. And that’s ok. I can acknowledge that. I can recognize it. And try my best, to sink into the present and just do one thing at a time.

I went to a yoga class at Greenhouse Yoga last night; yoga under the heat lamps. And I sweat and I moved and I pushed myself and I breathed through discomfort. Because it starts in the body and ends in the body. And I needed to remember that.

And while I’m sore, and exhausted today. I feel a little more like myself. A little more capable, a little more grounded. But grounded in what? Reality? Or cynicism? I try to check myself. Am I being cautiously optimistic? Or am I replaying an old narrative? One where I can’t hold it all.

And I try to steer clear of the trap that is my mind. Sink in, meditate, move, feel. Let whatever thoughts I am having wash away.

But every cell in my body screams for me to get back in my car, pick the wounded fox up off of the road, and take it home. Until I remember: I am not a savior. I am not a martyr. I do not know everything. So I step back. And I hold space, I hold love, I hold reiki. Between my arms. And pray.

So with that, I’ll play you some music, because god I just don’t know what else to do.

Here’s Oh No, by Biig Piig.

Followed shortly thereafter by Goodpain by Yoke Lore

Which I’ll dedicate to the honor I had of being the last being to hold the dying spirit of the fox. I don’t know why. But it must have needed me there somehow. Or I wouldn’t have been there to bear witness.

So I’ll be here,

holding the contradictions of life and love in both hands.

Remembering that if you aren’t walking the paradox you aren’t walking the path…. Whatever that means.”

EXCERPT 2:

“And I guess all I can do now is hold steady. My heart, my hands, my life.

Hold steady.

Keep working on what I can change, hoping to be at peace with what I can’t.

Knowing that if I just hold still. And have faith, that the next right thing will come to me. That the next best thing to do will present itself. Knowing that I cannot know the outcomes. Finding peace in that.

Hoping that what is meant for me will find me. And trying to take a pause, a bath, a break to go within, to calm my nerves, my restless heart.

And to remember that at the core of me, I am love.

To remember that I dream of sunflowers and white dresses, and damp grass on my bare feet.

That I am a story unfolding.

A body unlearning.

And hold again the vision, of a garden, of a house full of laughter and love. Of running through rainstorms naked and screaming with joy. Of deep rest and heldness. Of autumn leaves and sharing the smell of fall. Of the quieting of my heartbeat, the settling of my bones into a place that was always meant for me.

And for now, I’ll hold that vision.

While simultaneously remembering that it starts here. In my body, in my mind, in my heart, as it is right now.

And I’ll stand alone in my kitchen, and cook myself dinner.

And snuggle my dog.

And weave myself a new story.

One where I am healing.

And I’ll knit myself another scarf.

And practice the breaking down of walls.

Because it is braver to be vulnerable. It takes more strength to let it in than it does to walk away.

And all of the stories, written on my bones, of the woman I used to be… Are simply that. Stories.

Memento mori: remember you must die. That all thing begin to end and begin again. And to be humble.

To be epically humble.

Because if my life thus far has taught me anything it is humility.

At the end of the day, I bow my head, humbly, to the great unknown. To the vastness of the universe. To the small and yet somehow significant part of the world, I inhabit.

And all of us, are alive only for an instant. In the great and unfolding tapestry of the cosmos. And therefore we must live as though we are dying and yet somehow infinite.

I am everything and nothing.

I am dying and living.

I am creation and destruction.

I am certain and uncertain.

I am falling and somehow catching myself all at the same time.

And in that, somewhere, I will find a softening. A surrender to what is. A compassion for myself and others. Because ultimately. I do believe in some part, that my destiny, is written. I have seen too many times in my life, how experiences I thought were insignificant, people I thought were merely passing through, moments I couldn’t understand became the woven thread through the core of my being. Made me into the woman I am today.

The chance encounter that changed the trajectory of my life forever.

The love I could never let go of, that shaped me into the person that I am.

“M’s” hands tracing over my arms, 10 years later became the basis of the reason I am a Reiki Practitioner. The energy I could feel moving so many years ago. The hours I spent listening to them talk about Buddhism and philosophy became the basis of my Tibetan Tantric practices, and their love, the reason I am who I am today. I take refuge, in Lama Buddha Dharma, for them. Because of them. And now for myself.

“N’s” cooking… watching their knife, watching them move, drill me over and over again to pick out the flavors of a dish, to test my palate, the gardens we grew in the summer, the hours we spent talking about the universe, watching them spin a staff, spar with the air, controlled, delicate, elegant. The basis for how I hold a knife, how I plan a menu, how I taste and smell, how I move through a kitchen with grace.

I am a golden tapestry, of all the love I have held in my life.

I am woven together by love and heartbreak.

It has driven me.

Pushed me to learn, to grow, to change.

And sometimes I feel like that was enough.

And I am tired. And I am weary.

And I have loved and lost so much in my life, how could I possibly keep going. To risk it all again.

How can I even begin to imagine that there might be someone capable of holding all of that with me?

I am not some blank page, some clean slate of a woman. I have love branded on me, I am steeped in experience, I am a wealth of knowledge and baggage.

I am scarred and bruised and burned, and I came into the world that way. And I’ve fought to get here. I’ve fought to love myself. I’ve fought to unlearn, or learn, to be brave enough to face it all.

And it still haunts me sometimes.

Like a ghost in this bed.

Like a kettle boiling.

Like incense burning.

Like sunlight slanting.

And it is no one else’s responsibility but my own, to care for that.

How could I ask another person to hold that all with me?

Why would they even want to?

Because I am brilliant. And multifaceted. And knowledgeable and compassionate.

And yet sometimes I wonder. Will that be enough?

New love, however lovely. Drags you through every wound you didn’t see was there.

It confronts you, with every story you have built yourself a home in.

It reminds you that you are built of other tongues other houses other languages other lives other hearts.

And you have to be brave though to know that all. And strong enough to own it.

To somewhere inside of it find a still point.

The calm at the center of your being.

Where everything is clear. And it is just you, and the other person.

As though it is the first time you have ever touched another human with longing.

And that is the work that cannot be done alone. Because alone I am myself. Standing, mostly, on solid ground.

But together, there is a realm of possibility, terrifying, beautiful, and unnamed to unfold into.

And while I do not know if I am ready.

I do not think there is another choice.

Because as you all should remember. The heart has a mind of its own. (I mean really it does, it’s called the heart-brain, look it up)

And the feeling in my body is stronger than my rational or intellectualization.

It’s a rush of my blood, a pull in my chest.

To where, well I guess we will just have to find out.

Into the great unknown.”