what is your creativity made of?

suspensory behaviors

salt flats and brachiation. branching fingers breath river spilling into night sky. prayer. fire. things that come in threes. reaching, always reaching. the earth, the sky, things unknown & unknowable. the thing that happens when i close my eyes.

prayer. please, please, please.

cave paintings and rituals dangled from trees. the water at night, fog, the fire started from nothing, three fossils and a yes. follow the path, lick the salt, open my legs, open my heart. eyes, mouth.

say it. say what it is. and again: say what it is. and again: say what it is.

three things the same, earth, sky, salt. brachiation, breathing in, out, branching and reaching and it is tree bough, lightning storm, blood through veins, dried and aching riverbed. it is prayer. it is telling the things again and again until they settle into the soil and then become stardust and no matter what else happens, someone somewhere will breathe it in, will breathe in the thing, and it is no longer just a thing i know, it is no longer just a way of keeping track.

it is dust in lungs and salt on tongues. it is prayer and incantation. it is fossils in the creekbed, unexpected and surprising. it is child swinging from a tree, it is nebula, it is deep sea unnamed creature, it is unknown and curious and the things i have to say are the air i breathe and the fires we set and the fingers that touch our skin.

it is fucking and laughing and dying and confession and the long journey down the dark mossy road. water cupped in my palms and my eyes adjust to any light and my feet touch the ground.

my feet don't touch the ground. my feet are tools, my feet are diggers. i am a digger, my stories are diggers and there is a moon in the sky and creatures i have never seen and what i will tell you will be carved into the soil. the things you want to know get planted deepest and steep through the long winter until we are hungry again and remember to reach out our hands.

freewrite: what is your creativity made of? 15 minutes.)

leave me to pray

you know. you know.

you know, as far as your eyes can see. you know. windswept plains, cityscape, subterranean cavern, cumulus cloud, as far as your eyes can see, you know. the i-5 corridor, parking lot, hawthorne, lumbering jet, rental car.

there is ice forming. long thick forearms of ice bulging from the eaves. blue sky, grey sky, night sky, northern lights. northern lights. new planets, dying planets, ringed, space debris. you know. you know. polar bear, flock of geese, girl child with frog hat, red cheeks, it's so cold. paw prints, snow. branch bending bending and you know.

this horizon. this landscape. build me a shack and leave me to pray. fly me to the moon. take my hand. kiss me in the rain. smile at me like i am the most special thing you've seen all day. build me a shack and leave me to pray.

leave me to pray holy holy and thank you god and thank you mother and thank you swirling planets, unfurling plants, bear tracks, blue sky, thank you.

leave me to pray and i will turn my head east for rising sun, south for dark shadow noon. turn my head west and i will prepare for sleep. leave me to pray and i will turn, every time, i will turn north and say thank you thank you thank you for this gift of facing death and trusting in my rebirth. every time, i will turn my face north and trust in my rebirth.

you will know me then, upon my rebirth, and you will know me then, you will know me then.

build me a shack and leave me to pray. face toward the sun, moon, shooting stars. you will know me by the iron honey of my my rebirth. you will know how desolate the landscape.

(freewrite: you will know how desolate the landscape, 14 minutes)

to believe

I believe in black pepper. In burning leaves inside my house: sage, mugwort, cedar. I believe in magic.

I believe in transformational moments, gateways, portals, hidden cupboards and secret gardens. I believe in layers upon layers of what is real.

I believe in my digging hands and in the ways I listen to animals. I believe walking barefoot makes me happier, or less sad.

Floodwaters will cleanse us all. I believe in water's edge. I believe in discovering forgotten language, driving all night to get there, pictures of people painted on cave walls, I believe in bats.

I believe in walking it off. Listening to other people's stories until I can think of a new way to tell my own. I believe in grapes after the first frost, whiskey straight up and slow.

I believe in kissing in restaurant booths and up against the wall and under a tree. I believe in trees. Moss and stones and dirt and mud. Avalanche earthquake tsunami hurricane tornado forestfire flashflood rabiddog.

I believe in black bears crossing invisible lines and coyotes trotting through the neighborhoods. Shooting stars, listing docks, baby birds learning to fly.

Owls falcons hawks eagles. I believe in fish as big as my arms spread out and also in the critters rushing my bloodstream that I will never see. I believe in amoeba and protons and dark matter and dust.

I believe in the things you say and I also know enough to believe the things you don't say.

I believe in rings inside a tree and heart-shaped rocks and falling asleep when I'm tired.

I believe in fucking until I can't breathe and then diving deeper until I can't see. I believe in coming back up for air and new prescription lenses.

I believe in atrophy and regeneration. Death, rebirth, liminal spaces.

I believe you when you say the thing and when the door closes on you at the airport.

I believe you when you say the thing and drive away, our dog in the front seat excited to go.

I believe you when you give birth to that baby, when you stand at the edge with me and point out the whales.

I believe in footprints in the snow and antler scrapings and the furtive burrowing of brown furry blind things.

I believe in bears reaching into holes to find honey. I believe in sticky paws and bumble bees and blue summer skies.

I believe in the northern lights and solar flares and that some planets have rings.

I believe in driving fast on country roads, singing along and windows left open.

I believe in rolling over to wake up alone, and I believe in listening to you snore. I believe in underwater caves and calderas and tectonic shifting.

I believe in holding hands and walking with my eyes closed.

I believe in parking on the side of the road to have the talk, to tell the secrets, to sit quietly with my hand on your knee.

I believe in watching you dance and rubbing oil into your knuckles and calling out your name 3000 miles away.

I believe in love letters and canceled stamps and whale songs and bird songs and the song you make up while you're washing the dishes.

I believe in spiced foods and salt and lemon zest and chili on my chocolate.

I believe in standing at the edge for as long as is necessary and I believe in falling, flying, and walking away.

Hot air balloons, orange pickup trucks, gravel roads, kudzu vines and trap doors.

I believe in sleep walking, sleep talking, and love.

I believe in saying yes, repeating stories until I get it right, propping the door open, letting moss grow over the path stones.

I believe in words spray painted on sidewalks, brand new birds' nests and lightning-split trees.

I believe in magic and miracles and fairies and elves and goblins and trolls and wizards and witches. Hobbits, Voldemort, centaurs, giants, bogeymen, shadows, light, and heartbreak.

I believe in what hasn't happened yet, and the color blue and lupines growing up the side of the hill. Gratitude, generosity and forgiveness.

two parts:
(freewrite: list what you doubt, list what you believe: 14 minutes)
(freewrite: what women know about love: 14 minutes.)

never was a little girl

I've lost the box of my growing-up pictures.

There's the possibility I might knock over some box somewhere in this process of moving. I might knock over a box and find the secret hole in the floor where this most important of boxes has fallen. Or maybe I will find the story of its disguise. For now, though, I am preparing for a fresh loss of memory.

Saying goodbye to this house. The fruit trees: plum apple fig. The blackberries. The birds. The view from the bedroom. Love. Saying goodbye to this short walk shorter drive. This home of trying so hard. Of leaving. Of staying. Splitting open shrinking down. That hummingbird. The peregrine falcon she insists I did not see. The raccoons the opossum. That mouse last week. The geese (good morning, girls.) The stranglehold brambles. I will bring the hammock with me, but where will it go? Show my bloody fingers and take a deep breath.

I strike the pose. Mug for the camera. Come too. Come with me.

There are so many ways to tell this story.

(journal entry, 2008)

threaded with love

That's why I want to speak to you now.

To say: no person, trying to take responsibility for her or his identity, should have to be so alone. There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep, and still be counted as warriors. (I make up this strange, angry packet for you, threaded with love.)

I think you thought there was no such place for you, and perhaps there was none then, and perhaps there is none now; but we will have to make it, we who want an end to suffering, who want to change the laws of history, if we are not to give ourselves away.

                                    - Adrienne Rich

reading for belonging

15 books that have helped me learn how i want to belong:

Belonging, by Toko-pa Turner

Belonging: A Culture of Place, by bell hooks

tiny beautiful things, by Cheryl Strayed

salt, by Nayyirah Waheed

A Field Guide to Getting Lost, by Rebecca Solnit

Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, by Adrienne Maree Brown

Braving the Wilderness, by Brené Brown

Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth, by Warsan Shire

The Empathy Exams, by Leslie Jamison

Hunger, by Roxane Gay

The Spell of the Sensuous, by David Abram

The Birth of Pleasure, by Carol Gilligan

Sister Outsider, by Audre Lorde

On Lies, Secrets and Silence, by Adrienne Rich

Harry Potter (all of them), by JK Rowling