Wrap your head with this material...

You know that music they play in massage salons that's all zen and watery? Sometimes when I hear it, I think about screaming, "No, YOU , calm down!!" 

Things that give me a sense of plenty: an empty drawer, closet, or bookshelf. Spaces you could fill whenever. A beautiful day where you don't take advantage of the weather, instead playing piano and not  taking a moment to notice the warmth of the sun on the back of your neck. Perhaps in those days I am a moon person.  Yesterday was like that. Christmas day, but without the family obligations of getting dressed up or making elaborate dishes or carting presents here or there. In past years, that's made me sad. I've felt the loss of the hubbub of all those people, felt the loss of that rush you get being with people who make you so excited and amped up like my cousins and family did when I was a kid. As an adult, I haven't been able to get over the loss of that as all the cousins have moved on to do their own thing and my own family has unraveled and become a set of beautiful scraps I examine in individual pieces.  But this year, nearly everyone spent Christmas in in a so...

 The morning of the last online class day before Christmas break I usually let my students choose fun activity. They can choose creative writing, Christmas carol around the school, or play games. One year a group of kids picked caroling and two of the boys performed this for the stoic Math teacher. They even had a sweet beat they played on the lockers for it. This year with online learning, it was hard to imagine how we would carol. But have no fear, the kids figured it out. By conspiring with classmates, they got the meeting code to crash another class. My class went to Spanish and sang Feliz Navidad (badly, and I mean  badly). Then we just stayed and played the Kahoot that class was playing and that was super fun. Then in my last class of the day, the boys from last year performed a dramatic poem that was imaginative and fun and a little strange, and dang, do I love to know someone's strange. I feel like it's a reflection of belonging when someone can let their weird spread ...

 I was about to type in a text to a friend a few days ago that said 'oh shit, here comes the guilt and panic.' but then autocorrect changed to it 'guilt and penis' and I decided to consider it an omen and not get myself quite so worked up. Just the next right action. What do I need to do right now? 

I want to sleep beneath the skin of a pond stare at boat bottoms, gliding above me, lay in the muck looking up. Or perhaps I wish to hide in a cabin quiet snow piled around melting it in a pot on the woodstove BUT no, that would not work.  I cannot thaw yet.  I require torpor. I need to dig beneath the earth and feel it press around me its scratchy jabs abrading my flesh the raw of it matching my inside with my outside. The pounding of the living stepping above me-- pause my overactive mind. Beneath the pressure of life above my thousand stinging emotions quelled, I'd know know like, I think I've known before. What I am, and how to live... when I wake from hibernating beneath the earth.

I faced a colossal thing. I looked right at the fact that I'd been pretending in my life for too long and needed to take my marriage off of autopilot. I had to stop letting my deep, wide self float in stagnant waters. I was lost. I was so completely certain of how it would all go. I knew exactly what my husband would say and do and how slimy I'd feel. But then that wasn't what happened at all. He somehow still loves me, wants to fight and grow and build a thing that is all our own, brick-by-brick, daily. Doesn't want to tell me, but show me that it is true.  The colossal thing is telling the whole truth about years of holding back. And we've both done it. It could have started as a kindness, a priority. There's no need to say everything after all. But then it became a withholding. He found something I'd written and it wasn't about him. And yes, I was holding back. Ripping off a scrap here or there of what I might have said, who I might have been... and ...

 Thankful today that I am well that my kids are well A cup of coffee by myself and snuggled my dogs this morning when my husband smiles and hugs our son while he stretches on the floor when our son plays drums The moment when I said, "oh fuck this" about my son hating math because he already got it and wanted to move on, and we did multiplication instead so he could be challenged by something new Figuring out how to teach kids with dyslexia to love literature and books Teaching a gifted boy to play piano and telling him "tough stuff" when he didn't want to do a challenge, the relationship where you can push a kid is gold Teachers Teachers who assign their students to take photos of their pets doing homework  Teachers who do puppet shows on zoom Teachers who make Tik Toks Teachers who cry when school goes online Teachers who love, love, love their kids Teachers who hug Teachers who screw up and parents who shut up when they do Teacher friends Teacher friends who ...

The other day I had my leggings on inside out. I thought they'd had pockets in the past, but couldn't find them.  Once upon a time I got a new refrigerator and had the cleanest refrigerator in all the land. And that was the last time my whole fridge was clean at once.  My son thinks people come in three colors: black, white, and red, with red meaning "redneck." My husband had a dream that he was punishing our younger son's noncompliance with belting out Seal's "Kissed by a Rose" at him whenever he refused to do something or pouted and grouched. He dreamed that he told me and I said what a great strategy it was and how I wondered if we could have his teachers try it. And when he was telling me this I was thinking, "that sounds like an excellent technique I should try."

 I saw one of those stupid trucks today with testicles hanging off its rear bumper and just wished I'd had a diaper to put over that fucking thing. Nursing babies is a problem in society but that jackhole can drive around with fake balls hanging off his vehicle. OK.  What the hell is the matter with people? Perhaps I need to keep a set of adult diapers in my car from now on.

 Last night my 7 year old told me I'd make a great emotional support dog. I asked him what made him think that. He said he could picture me walking around all day telling a kid he could do it and encouraging him. As both a teacher and a mom, I can't imagine a better compliment. 

 I feel like I'm always writing about longing, longing for being a better me, success, better writing, more engagement in my own life longing to escape my flaws In person, I lean into my flaws. I call them by name as if to scale them to a height I can tackle. It's often hilarious. I make incredibly funny mistakes. I am likely to put my underwear on inside out and tell you in a disarming moment. I once fell off of a desk in a roomful of 8th graders during a video so the crash was thunderous. I was bleeding. I couldn't even pretend I was like a cat that hadn't just done that. Last week, I'd had a rough day of sassy backtalk from teenagers at work. This is not common in my relationships with students and I was a little on edge. After school there was a 40 min packed timeframe with my own kids, and to meet it, we'd have to be by-the-minute. I arrived to get one son and he was not ready, though his teacher had said he would be. I walked into his room, told him to get...

 You, the senior English class today, in September of 2020 are the rumble of a dumptruck starting up. That sound is the sensation of a building growl my throat.  I'm supposed to sing the song of tomorrow,       of the promise of college,                      but there is a growl in the way as I tumble.  Instead of a teacher, a cement mixer, I am a stone in the metal bin of a rock tumbler,   grumbling around, hoping I will come out polished and shiny with all the answers for them.  Someday I'll have every detail for you laid out perfectly                                                 a cloth with bedizened items well-lit, displayed   and you'll simply pluck all you need from the pile.  "tada! this one's me."  but for now...

"the thing with feathers" is what Emily Dickinson called Hope  But methinks it's made of rocks you soared above  and then swooped down     allowed them to dazzle you applying the precision vision of a hawk  with the time to scour scree fields on a hike one sunny September raising up broad shoulders that bear profound loads  hoofed piles of rocks down a mountain. and that one rock, especially jaggy and with just a sprig of goat hair so it could remind us what was I supposed to remember?  Bare shoulders? Cashmere?  Mountain goats or a summit? Views or descents? But that wasn't it. Recognition not yet flashing... Was there a note on the back of my hand, a thread tied 'round my finger, an Expo marker phrase on my mirror? Perhaps there was nothing but a golden glint in your eye the memory of which was light as a feather with wisdom of 1861 or 2005 a dog ear in time  creasing the distance  bending across an event horizon  to now 2020...

LOVE is a hush,  of waves after dark the secret of the sands churning against time unmeasured LOVE is a whisper of seedpods in a field, breaking apart and gently blowing every which way a ceasing to control releasing yourself into someone, something LOVE is a snap my ribs cracked wide my chest an emptying cavity, dissipating white fluff on a breeze and if perchance the weather should hit just wrong a xylophone crashing NO. Rejection striking down my spine, the rains would thunder through and fill me with yes,yes,yes oars dipping into bottomless waters rowing further ebb flow yes no he loves me, he loves me not I float opportunities, options are winds, ripping a mountain, I feel the squeeze, burst open and reach.

Lollipops, loop-de-loops, scooters and light sabers, sparklers and skipping. Bubbles abound amid summer sounds. Sprinklers on the hose and crystalized sweat all over us like we're churros, and we crawl under just the sheet for a few stolen minutes as we read, sweat-dried and our food settled. It's afternoon as the clouds thicken and consider whether there's enough there for rain. I hope there is so we can read longer, so we can play music or paint, but I also hope for sun so we can try out new binoculars. Summer is this energizing time when all of the minutes can be filled. We can hang a hammock and swim until the sun bakes us into submission. The songs lope and bop, filled with horchata and new best friends with lipgloss that glints from within like that connection you feel with a friend your soul has met again and again, tumbled together repeatedly through the drum of time, colliding and recognizing each other quicker each time. Man, that one friend you make is as exc...

Do you ever suddenly scent someone? I mean someone not near you physically but you sense them like your own arm, and know their soul brushes yours? Distances or worlds are irrelevant. He could be right here or hundreds of miles away. I wonder if that is another reality so close, truth permeates this place. The ripples of the worlds atop one another, folded, creased together closest when I am about to drift off. It's right there, isn't it? I can smell it. I am hope, floating wispy and secret across a darkened night sky. No guiding stars, only a scent. And I release into a fecund night, my strings cut quick and off I float as a kite. Clouds that conjoin and dissipate, reform and streak, filmy advancing across a shadowy sky. The sensation of my nose gently grazing your neck, the laugh lines of my checks against your stubble. But aren't I asleep? Aren't you elsewhere? Yet, I feel the length of your body fit a crescent line against the back of mine, a support beam, a f...

Do we need to debrief? Is it the same as bitching and moaning and generally degrading the quality of our conversation? Or is it a necessary process after going through something together. And I mean, in some sense we didn't even go through it together. After all, you were in your living room, and I in mine. Or your bed and my wingback chair. Or my kitchen table and your couch. Maybe we were so the same, and not; and so together, and yet not; that we've forgotten. We've survived a scary near-apocalypse. Don't get me wrong, I realize it could still happen. The virus is by no means over. I'm aware that in six months when the weather makes outdoor time more challenging, this may be a different world. But I was afraid I could catch it by running through a place someone had breathed hours before just ten weeks ago. So didn't we survive something? You and me. You in your Jeep and me hiking up a trail. Me in my barren Aspen grove and you in a waders in a stream? ...

In the quiet before everyone wakes, when all the options are not yet selected and the day is empty fill-in-the-blanks, I taste time, a sip at a time from my mug, cream, the dregs reheated, the last sip has three granules in it and I can swallow past them, ignore the grit of my life, or I can bite down into the bitter. I reheated it in the microwave and the cup didn't get too hot, nor did the coffee have swirls of too-cool. The day wasn't bright enough to call me to move yet. The keyboard made me want to clack clack. I didn't want to share the disgust of my nights, dreadful fits of near-strangers entering my dreams, trying to pry their way into today's storyline. By night when I give up the blanks and fall to sleep, I'm occasionally stabby with self-destruction. It's not that I want to hurt myself, exactly, as much as I want the oily black guck of the day and all that has gotten on my soul by then out, off, drained, emptied. The muck= the story of a jogger at...

While I have no peaches and cream view of this pandemic, I am enjoying being home. I love being home for long periods of time. I love reading and playing piano and being reminded of the adventure that's immediately outside my door. I know in time this will wear on me and on everyone else. As the hill we've been hiking every day to get our yayas out turns muddy and slick in the coming weeks, we will be challenged to find ways to get exercise. Today we made snow angels and my son prayed for the elderly and healthcare workers. Today we made banana bread and didn't fight about who does what jobs. Today was good. My kids won't be satisfied with seeing their friends on video calls forever and only each other and us as companions. And I won't even touch the ways in which I can make myself crazy with fearful conjecture into the future. It's not all warm bread and books. But today was good. When I first got the news that we would be in our houses for such a length of...

I have a memory of a version of myself I've never been. It is a classic ski, sliding dimly beneath the surface of snow, a remnant of another life climbing uphill. I feel the drive to find that person. I know I am that person, though she has never been me. She is bold and risky. She stays up all night dancing; at dawn she considers the feel of words in her mouth, like melting creamy moonlit ice cream fellated on a layered spoon. She is selfsame purity I cannot reach. An essence, a true name. You know me too. I feel it. "Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along." Rumi, remember? You're in me. We've met in this never-place of sleptover castle walls. You've climbed to me a thousand lifetimes already. And yet, tonight, I worry you've forgotten. Perhaps I've grown over with moss and you don't recognize me this lifetime. "I'm trapped within you" a dream pebble in your palm. Clench your fist and you'l...

Feet of snow,  waves of it over days Pelting windows Sniffing graves A big enough storm stops everyone  Opportunities are mounds next to every walkway The experience of a snow storm is all the days you’ve ever spent, all the chances to be your full self...  but you stoked the fire of nevernever Perhaps hid under bridges from the one-time chance Or admitted you’d never felt Snow Grow wet Drenching an inner troll Surprising you when you thought life was softer  than the fairlane on a five-star course And instead it hurt impact shocked bare feet The blizzard soaked your carefully laid plans Spoiled your coiled coif And left you feeling less than Less than what anticipation prepared you to be. The experience of a snow storm is all the days you’ve ever spent, all the chances to be your full self... In its face, you boasted To know it all Spewed false information Defended your view like a cat who never did admit she’d...

How are you? The people I can deliver full and complete answers to this question are not the ones I have time to give full and complete answers to. Last night Gavin unexpectedly threw a toddler-level tantrum over finding out it wasn't his night for snuggles. That was all. And he FREAKED and it scared me because he never loses it like that but he was throwing his pillows on the ground and when he realized the consequences of having no more time to read, he hit himself in the head with a closed fist and I tried to hold him to keep my heart from breaking but it didn't work. My heart cracked open like a raw egg and hurt dripped down everywhere. He hurt and all I could do was hold him but I was so much better at it with him than I ever was with Magnus. I didn't feel triggered or frustrated, just terribly sad and like I wanted to heal all his cracks with love. What will I do one day when someone hurts him and he won't let me hold him? All the seams in my sewn-up places i...

If I didn't Ski OR Run this New Year's There's shit on my skis and snow on the sidewalk I don't want to ski through shit and I don't want to run through snow I want to press my fingers into keys and my muscles into action and not to think but for greatness to flow In magical times, there's a tide an artist rides but more often there's hard work hours upon hours building chops sculpting muscles, readying for challenge and how do I prepare my words for writing? by obsessing about love or worrying... these calistenics don't work i should be running or skiing even if my feet have to pound through even if my skis have to glide through shit But if I were loving? in the sense of the verb... What then? An inciting incident & a rush there would be flow my breath--raspy, fast and low My typing would pulsate the inside of my wrist gently brushed by your lips Rising action inside of my thigh pressed by the jut of your hip ...