Calm adopted me today. Not anger. A peace neutral enough to let my gripped heart rest. Sunrise met sunset. But I did not rise. I did not fall. I stayed up upon myself, leveled eye to eye to be equal parts me. A balance of soft motion, a mother's sway, a rocking chair, a quiet story.
Hush. Be still, child.
Life goes on and on and on.
So too, go on and on and on.
Let your life carry your waters when your legs cannot, when your heart is heavy like rock. I continue into the night, embracing the darkness as I do light.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
In this Moment
We are who we are in every moment. The moment we lie, we are liars. We tell truth, we are truth tellers. We make love, we are lovers. We teach, we are teachers. We say words to others we wish to tell ourselves or wish were told to us, words we just wish into existence so we say them, and the recipient is the bystander there to witness our moment of birthing life of ourselves into the atmosphere so that we may remind ourselves that YES, I have a voice, thoughts, beliefs, and opinions worth saying, worth hearing aloud into the open and free microphone of someone's ear.
We are in constant movement in and out of each moment. Every moment calculated, known or unknown to us. We are bringing someone closer, or pushing them away. We are giving up or giving in, or not at all giving a damn. We are thinking wheels speaking out of turn or staring beyond the company, trying not to think at all. We are judging, cursing, praising, critiquing, and comparing all that is there, all who is there, inside every moment. In every whole moment, we are whole. Whether we like our whole selves in every whole moment, well, that's saying our shit doesn't stink when it does. See there, I am trying to be funny. Did it work? No one is reading but me, I think I am comical. I achieved it, success. I said what I meant to say, as close to the truth of me in that moment. I can save regret for another whole moment.
This is why I do not believe in contradiction. We are paradox meanings because we mean everything every time we mean something, or don't mean anything at all. We are meaningful only because of that reason. Because we can be everything; not all at once, but we are something in one moment and something else in another and each is who we fully are, sometimes.
I guess what I mean is, it seems kind of enlightening to me to think of every moment as a whole infinity, seamlessly running into other moments with no end or beginning, but yet, separate and distinct. It is inexplicably beyond me to know and understand. I can only try to respect it for what it is - my life in pieces strung together by no one else but me - my words, thoughts, and actions. What I do, what I think, what I am is going to compose the moments of my life and how I live. Align with truth; I can only humbly, and wholly try anew, moment by moment by moment, all my breaths of one whole life.
We are in constant movement in and out of each moment. Every moment calculated, known or unknown to us. We are bringing someone closer, or pushing them away. We are giving up or giving in, or not at all giving a damn. We are thinking wheels speaking out of turn or staring beyond the company, trying not to think at all. We are judging, cursing, praising, critiquing, and comparing all that is there, all who is there, inside every moment. In every whole moment, we are whole. Whether we like our whole selves in every whole moment, well, that's saying our shit doesn't stink when it does. See there, I am trying to be funny. Did it work? No one is reading but me, I think I am comical. I achieved it, success. I said what I meant to say, as close to the truth of me in that moment. I can save regret for another whole moment.
This is why I do not believe in contradiction. We are paradox meanings because we mean everything every time we mean something, or don't mean anything at all. We are meaningful only because of that reason. Because we can be everything; not all at once, but we are something in one moment and something else in another and each is who we fully are, sometimes.
I guess what I mean is, it seems kind of enlightening to me to think of every moment as a whole infinity, seamlessly running into other moments with no end or beginning, but yet, separate and distinct. It is inexplicably beyond me to know and understand. I can only try to respect it for what it is - my life in pieces strung together by no one else but me - my words, thoughts, and actions. What I do, what I think, what I am is going to compose the moments of my life and how I live. Align with truth; I can only humbly, and wholly try anew, moment by moment by moment, all my breaths of one whole life.
Friday, March 11, 2011
Letter to my Dear Friend Sun Hee
My Dear Friend Sun Hee,
I am so sorry that I haven't commented on your writing piece yet...I did leave a comment and plan to revisit it before the end of the month. Danny is out with friends tonight so it has given me some time to read your writings. You are an exquisite writer. What makes you so amazing is that you are poetic without trying. It's like, there's a certain space that is lost in translation but wouldn't be poetry without it.
It makes me sad to think of our distance...you know, we are moving to Boston in a few months. I am sorry that it's been so long since we've seen each other or been in touch. No matter what, I will make sure to make a trip up to see you. You're closer to me in my heart like a sister than a friend, it is hard to describe but I know you understand. What is amazing is that we both love words, both love to write, but never really knew. It was like an undiscovered secret we each hid. In a way, I think it's almost more stunning - to grow a friendship through writing in a way that literally living next to each other could never do. You were and are a cherished friend of mine, but it's really through your writing that I love you even more.
I really understand you, your depth and your dreams, your pain and all the things in between that can't be explained in paper dimensions. You are a lovely, lovely mother. I can tell that this is a part of your constant, unmoving center that both lifts you and breaks you. I feel the exact same way so many times. Part of it, a big part of it, is because we look at ourselves everyday and we think about our own mothers, our lives, our mistakes, our pain, our triumphs - and then we look at our daughters, our children, and don't know what script their life will follow. We want to write it for them; only they own the pen of their own souls. We can only urge them to write truth and love. Out of our own fear - fears buried in our past and fears buried in their future - we try to write upon them our own story, erasing those painful, shameful parts of ourselves and then scrambling to replace them with better words of a better life.
What I, and I think, we, have such a hard time realizing, remembering, and embracing is that it is only because of our story that they can write their own. We cannot be more than who we are, we can only live up to who we are; we are miles of paper space still unwritten; every word a beginning, but words do not erase words. We simply are who we are and nothing more. It will be from our beautifully painful self-acceptance that our children will learn to do the same, tears and pain and love and joy - these inevitably are paragraphs of their life, of their own unwritten story. Theirs are words of a future that we can teach but can never write or live for them. Just as we write our own souls, so must they.
You inspire me and I am so happy to be your long-lost adopted Korean sister.
I love you,
Stacey
I am so sorry that I haven't commented on your writing piece yet...I did leave a comment and plan to revisit it before the end of the month. Danny is out with friends tonight so it has given me some time to read your writings. You are an exquisite writer. What makes you so amazing is that you are poetic without trying. It's like, there's a certain space that is lost in translation but wouldn't be poetry without it.
It makes me sad to think of our distance...you know, we are moving to Boston in a few months. I am sorry that it's been so long since we've seen each other or been in touch. No matter what, I will make sure to make a trip up to see you. You're closer to me in my heart like a sister than a friend, it is hard to describe but I know you understand. What is amazing is that we both love words, both love to write, but never really knew. It was like an undiscovered secret we each hid. In a way, I think it's almost more stunning - to grow a friendship through writing in a way that literally living next to each other could never do. You were and are a cherished friend of mine, but it's really through your writing that I love you even more.
I really understand you, your depth and your dreams, your pain and all the things in between that can't be explained in paper dimensions. You are a lovely, lovely mother. I can tell that this is a part of your constant, unmoving center that both lifts you and breaks you. I feel the exact same way so many times. Part of it, a big part of it, is because we look at ourselves everyday and we think about our own mothers, our lives, our mistakes, our pain, our triumphs - and then we look at our daughters, our children, and don't know what script their life will follow. We want to write it for them; only they own the pen of their own souls. We can only urge them to write truth and love. Out of our own fear - fears buried in our past and fears buried in their future - we try to write upon them our own story, erasing those painful, shameful parts of ourselves and then scrambling to replace them with better words of a better life.
What I, and I think, we, have such a hard time realizing, remembering, and embracing is that it is only because of our story that they can write their own. We cannot be more than who we are, we can only live up to who we are; we are miles of paper space still unwritten; every word a beginning, but words do not erase words. We simply are who we are and nothing more. It will be from our beautifully painful self-acceptance that our children will learn to do the same, tears and pain and love and joy - these inevitably are paragraphs of their life, of their own unwritten story. Theirs are words of a future that we can teach but can never write or live for them. Just as we write our own souls, so must they.
You inspire me and I am so happy to be your long-lost adopted Korean sister.
I love you,
Stacey
Remember Me, Dancing
Joey twirls in front of his television reflection, moving oddly. Addy's fuchsia tutu pulled halfway up to his armpits, the silent gray of the off TV humming for him an imaginary child's song, melodic enough to move him into a waddle dance, turning, for another few minutes, until he wants it "off, off Mommy." I leave the page to take off his tutu, and then, return to the page.
On his tutu-less walk to the kitchen, wanting a pen now that he sees is mine, he is distracted by a tiny yellow Nerd, yesterday's inexplicable treat, and eats it. Lovely. No, truly. Really. It's all lovely. Addy is adorned with her own galavanting attire, the cheap gaudy mess that looks as cheap in the packaging as it does on. The tattering hot pink polyester gown, the goldish yellow crown, hinting almost putrid green, candy medallions and feather shoes. She's covered in three years of freedom, uninhibited at home, looking at me like I'm the fabulous center of her tootsie pop universe. How much she knows already. How much she has yet to know. She goes off to dance alone, twirling life around the fingers of her world. I stay on the page.
I often see these times and these moments through the distant lens of a home movie camera, a far-off future. In my mind (not clear and digital but the old fashioned kind, the reel and sliced cuts and vintage overlay of a 1960s home movie - old, but not too old) I watch my children, grown, watching themselves. I study their expressions. The way their eyes shift, looking across or into or down into a place they forgot or buried. I watch intently, the corner of their mouths. Not a tremble, not a movement. I fear that stareless space, when they can't quite celebrate the childhood I provided, can't quite lift themselves away from the distance. I cannot tell if it is sadness or pain or indifference. I cannot tell because I cannot ask them. They are far away inside a place I cannot change, a place inside me I cannot be. I just watch them, seeing parts of who I raised, and watching me, a young woman. Their mother. A figure of life unrecognizable to them. Or am I?
Sitting, I am stunned for a moment. I need to raise myself up and lower myself down. To their life. To their world. I need to dance long and often with my children. But I also must forgive myself when I do not. When, literally, I cannot. I cannot dance because I must write. I cannot dance because I must be a better part of me. It is all alright.
The page calls me. I write. My children call me. I dance. It is all alright. I dance so that they will recognize the woman in their home movies. So that the corner of their mouths turn upward, to the air, like memories gently lifted off the page in child's song. I write so that I will recognize the woman in their home movies. So that I can be there with them, their mother whole, and not absent, an old woman, missing.
Coming from the living room, appearing close, her eyes sparkling, loving what she sees, she says, in her highest and most noble princess voice: "Do you want to dance with me, my Dearest? Will you marry me? Come dance with me." I leave the page. Gracefully, she takes me into that absent movie frame and we fill it with a splendidly silly dance, a marriage ceremony, and childhood love. For ten whole minutes. Until, she removes her crown, her shoes, and opens the refrigerator for her second mid-morning snack.
Joey appears out of his room, unassuming, holding a wooden train piece and a sock. Who is to say where his life has taken him for those ten whole minutes, never to be retrieved again. I hug him when he walks within fingertip reach, because I can.
Because I wrote it here today, I will remember that I danced. My greatest fear is that they won't.
So, I will come back. Return back. Again and again and again. Back to the page. For them, and for myself. And to remember me, dancing.
On his tutu-less walk to the kitchen, wanting a pen now that he sees is mine, he is distracted by a tiny yellow Nerd, yesterday's inexplicable treat, and eats it. Lovely. No, truly. Really. It's all lovely. Addy is adorned with her own galavanting attire, the cheap gaudy mess that looks as cheap in the packaging as it does on. The tattering hot pink polyester gown, the goldish yellow crown, hinting almost putrid green, candy medallions and feather shoes. She's covered in three years of freedom, uninhibited at home, looking at me like I'm the fabulous center of her tootsie pop universe. How much she knows already. How much she has yet to know. She goes off to dance alone, twirling life around the fingers of her world. I stay on the page.
I often see these times and these moments through the distant lens of a home movie camera, a far-off future. In my mind (not clear and digital but the old fashioned kind, the reel and sliced cuts and vintage overlay of a 1960s home movie - old, but not too old) I watch my children, grown, watching themselves. I study their expressions. The way their eyes shift, looking across or into or down into a place they forgot or buried. I watch intently, the corner of their mouths. Not a tremble, not a movement. I fear that stareless space, when they can't quite celebrate the childhood I provided, can't quite lift themselves away from the distance. I cannot tell if it is sadness or pain or indifference. I cannot tell because I cannot ask them. They are far away inside a place I cannot change, a place inside me I cannot be. I just watch them, seeing parts of who I raised, and watching me, a young woman. Their mother. A figure of life unrecognizable to them. Or am I?
Sitting, I am stunned for a moment. I need to raise myself up and lower myself down. To their life. To their world. I need to dance long and often with my children. But I also must forgive myself when I do not. When, literally, I cannot. I cannot dance because I must write. I cannot dance because I must be a better part of me. It is all alright.
The page calls me. I write. My children call me. I dance. It is all alright. I dance so that they will recognize the woman in their home movies. So that the corner of their mouths turn upward, to the air, like memories gently lifted off the page in child's song. I write so that I will recognize the woman in their home movies. So that I can be there with them, their mother whole, and not absent, an old woman, missing.
Coming from the living room, appearing close, her eyes sparkling, loving what she sees, she says, in her highest and most noble princess voice: "Do you want to dance with me, my Dearest? Will you marry me? Come dance with me." I leave the page. Gracefully, she takes me into that absent movie frame and we fill it with a splendidly silly dance, a marriage ceremony, and childhood love. For ten whole minutes. Until, she removes her crown, her shoes, and opens the refrigerator for her second mid-morning snack.
Joey appears out of his room, unassuming, holding a wooden train piece and a sock. Who is to say where his life has taken him for those ten whole minutes, never to be retrieved again. I hug him when he walks within fingertip reach, because I can.
Because I wrote it here today, I will remember that I danced. My greatest fear is that they won't.
So, I will come back. Return back. Again and again and again. Back to the page. For them, and for myself. And to remember me, dancing.
Beginning
I thought of myself today
As I could be
A morning bloom
Or today's news
Shade of day
My own muse
A child's prayer
A dreaming road
Water's edge
A fisher's boat
I could be
So much, much
More
Beginning with
One tiny
Twist of
My own
Hope
As I could be
A morning bloom
Or today's news
Shade of day
My own muse
A child's prayer
A dreaming road
Water's edge
A fisher's boat
I could be
So much, much
More
Beginning with
One tiny
Twist of
My own
Hope
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Monday, March 7, 2011
Not forever
An old friend,
Revisited.
A lost autumn,
Remembered.
A wise, wise book,
Reread.
A cherished grandparent,
Heard.
Revisited.
A lost autumn,
Remembered.
A wise, wise book,
Reread.
A cherished grandparent,
Heard.
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