Your meager heart
Will never know
The beauty it denied
I gave you mine
Its love overflowing
You glibly tossed it aside
Junked
letting go
Inheritance
I hear their screams of silent disapproval
Feel their arms, clutching me, holding me back
“Don’t go out there. You’ll die. It’s not safe for us.”
My belly’s a stone
Ingested before I was born
I’ve tried to throw it up
Doesn’t budge, it’s mine now
I carry it with me
This inheritance
This heavy key to the past
This memorial to those before me
This museum housing their lives’ dreams and losses
Maybe it’s not something to pass
Like a kidney stone
Or to be removed like a cancerous growth
Perhaps I need only to lovingly lay it down
At the feet of those whose dreams I am now living
Perhaps their burdens are not mine to carry
But mine just to remember, and know
As I move forward into my own life’s dreams and losses
To be remembered, one day, and known
By those who come behind me
Easy Go
Before I’d even had a serious love affair, there were things I seemed to understand about them anyway.
There were songs about breakups that for whatever reason captured my imagination and moved my emotions. My heart knew what they were about.
One that really resonated with me then, and still today, is a little known song “Tell Me on a Sunday” from the musical “Song and Dance,” with lyrics by Don Black and music by Andrew Lloyd Webber.
The musical is not great, and it’s not a great song musically (sorry, Mr. Webber,) but what the song says is lovely, and it always comes to me when I think about how difficult it is to end something that was once beautiful.
Tell Me on a Sunday
Don’t write a letter when you want to leave
Don’t call me at 3 a.m. from a friend’s apartment
I’d like to choose how I hear the news
Take me to a park that’s covered with trees
Tell me on a Sunday please
Let me down easy
No big song and dance
No long faces, no long looks
No deep conversation
I know the way we should spend that day
Take me to a zoo that’s got chimpanzees
Tell me on a Sunday please
Don’t want to know who’s to blame
It won’t help knowing
Don’t want to fight day and night
Bad enough you’re going
Don’t leave in silence with no word at all
Don’t get drunk and slam the door
That’s no way to end this
I know how I want you to say goodbye
Find a circus ring with a flying trapeze
Tell me on a Sunday please
Don’t want to fight day and night
Bad enough you’re going
Don’t leave in silence with no word at all
Don’t get drunk and slam the door
That’s no way to end this
I know how I want you to say goodbye
Don’t run off in the pouring rain
Don’t call me as they call your plane
Take the hurt out of all the pain
Take me to a park that’s covered with trees
Tell me on a Sunday please
Here’s a nicely acted version by Marti Webb:
Exhalation
How can I release this grip
This clinging on to everything good
As if my life depended on it
It feels so dangerous to release
All that I’m attempting to control
It is exhausting to hold on so tight
But it’s all I’ve ever known
Learned early to clutch and grasp
At what little good was parsed my way
If I loosen my fingers, if I let go my grip
Will I slide into the Void
Disappear into Nothingness
Or will I float into better climes
And find out what Life really feels like
Nesting
With a blog named “Life on the Skinny Branches,” you might surmise that I have a thing about birds. And you’d be right.
I have always felt drawn to birds of all kinds. I think the connection began when I was young when I was first introduced to the great poem by Maya Angelou, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.”
The free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wings
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.
But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings
with fearful trill
of the things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom
The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn
and he names the sky his own.
But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing
The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.
Maya was speaking of many things, experiences that I do not pretend to know about. But also, for me, she spoke about something that I knew firsthand: feeling locked in a cage, grounded, longing for freedom. You see, I, too, know why the caged bird sings. (Maybe in some ways we all do.)
Perhaps that set up my lifelong affinity for and sense of connection to birds, and flying.
In 2016, my words for the year – for what I was calling in for myself – were: Emerge/Celebrate/Express/Reveal. It was a year all about self-expression, growing confidence in myself. And it definitely was that kind of year. I started this blog last year — it was a big deal for me to begin to share my words in a public way. I began intentionally living on the skinny branches, and it has been thrilling.
This year, when I soul-searched for the words to guide my year, they were: Daring Greatly/Stretch/Curious/Creative/Depth/Credibility/Courage. So I expected to be soaring, having jumped off those skinny branches. I expected to be flying high.
And the year started off strong. I was in a play. Then a play reading. I did a short film. Took an incredible trip to Spain.
And then, in March, I was suddenly grounded.
Literally. My whole system shut down.
It was if my body went on strike on behalf of my spirit and said “No more, sister. You are gonna stop and sit for awhile.”
I was forced to stay home. A lot. This was not easy for me. I have always been driven. Have always sort of hurled myself through life, a bit desperate to make up for lost time.
It was humbling to have been so completely drained of vitality that walking down the street was a challenge. But that was my reality.
So I had to stop many beloved activities. And somewhere along the way, I began to listen to whatever it was that my body and soul needed me to hear.
(I also sought professional medical help, and received it. I made many changes in what I was putting into my body and began to look at how to approach my life better, aka how to lesson the internal stress I create for myself as I interact with the external world.)
I am realizing now that it was in this being stopped, it has been in this time of recovery and healing, that I have learned to appreciate the nest.
When I got stopped, I got quiet. I had a great deal of solitude. I have been depressed before. This was not that. It was…me with me. (It was awful at first because a part of me feared I was “losing” more time. That part of me fears it is already too late. That part wants me to run around like a chicken with my head cut off. That part is misguided. I help it along today with a firm but loving hand. No more shoving myself through the world.)
In time, I began to see that this being stopped was helping me to ask new questions and to also really listen to the current answers of old questions. The answers have changed since the days I first asked them. Who knew my body was so very wise? She made me listen. She made me pay attention. She had lots for me to re-cover.
And slowly, I began to heal, and my vitality began to come back. I can say with joy today that I am almost 100% back. But I am not the same.
I cannot run around like I did before. I could, but I do not want to. I am finding new ways to do the things I want and need to do. I am giving myself more time to do these things, to process, to absorb. I am nipping stress in the bud — I simply do not want to waste my precious life energy on certain things any more.
It is a new day. It is a new me. I am finding out all sorts of things. I have much to do, but it will be on new terms. I think they are much better, frankly, than the old ones.
I appreciate the life force that calls me to soar, to live life on the skinny branches and beyond. It is a huge part of who I am.
But every bird also needs some sort of place to call home. A place to hatch their young. A place to refuel.
And so, it is so very clear to me now, do I.
Mistaken Identity
I thought I was broken, thought I was missing
Thought parts of me had just died
Made friends with the holes that I thought you’d made
Made peace with what was left inside
Turns out I was wrong, nothing of me was gone
Certain parts just learned how to hide
I am whole, I am thriving, I am filled with myself
And that truth just cannot be denied
Making Room
In certain recovery circles, there are different slogan versions of the same general theme: “Let it go.” “Turn it over.” “Let go and let God.”
These are usually said in reference of some condition, person, place or thing that is a source of stress, resentment, anger or some other emotion that is potentially dangerous for the person’s serenity/sanity/sobriety.
I’ve had people listen to my tale of woe, and offer as help something like: “Just let it go.”
I always found this very frustrating.
I mean, OK, sure, yeah, I’d love to “let it go!” Who wants to be obsessed with something? Who doesn’t want to release some shit that has a hold on them. I am all for letting it go! But how in the hell do you do that really?
I mean, I can’t just will it away. Been there, tried that. Doesn’t work.
Pray it away? Nope. That has never worked for me. Works for you – have at it. Good for you. Not my thing.
Best thing I ever heard around all of this, something that really helped me understand how this releasing, this turning it over thing really works (at least for me,) was this.
Someone wise once said to me: in order to let it go, just try to loosen my grip around that particular complaint, problem, issue, person, or thing.
To just see if I could release my grip just a bit…
And you know what? That I could do.
I could just try to loosen my hold on it a bit.
And no, the issue did not just disappear as a result. But sure enough, that loosening allowed something to move a bit, and that, it turns out, became the beginning of a shift.
That little release made space for something else to enter into the picture…
What a difference! I was no longer frustrated whenever I had that suggested to me, because now I knew that they key, the starting place, was to just loosen my grip a bit.
It is urban legend that Quincy Jones apparently said to Micheal Jackson, “If a song needs strings, it will tell you. Get out of the way and leave room so that God can walk in.” He later rephrased this to, “You’ve got to leave space for God to walk through the room.”
I am not religious nor do I use the word God to indicate what I believe in spiritually, but I do love and have come to understand this phenomenon experientially in my life: this consciously leaving some space in a situation for something greater than myself to come through with some help, or some magic, or some beauty. At the every least, some new information! I have experienced it a multitude of times.
So now I have my own version of those slogans:
Let it go?! I don’t know. Leave some space? I say yes!
A Tight Squeeze
That’s it.
You’ve gotten all you’re gonna get from me.
Like a tube of toothpaste, you’ve expressed the final remnants of the love I had for you.
Empty, flat and hard, I’m done.
Ch-Ch-Changes
Four months ago, I wrote a whole blog about my experiences finding my inner athlete and how important that has been for me, for my healing. I meant every word.
I called it Athlete, Interrupted because my story really was of how the innate joy of being in my own body had been interrupted in my childhood.
I discovered running while I was on a quest that had begun in 2011 to “rediscover my inner athlete.” From July 2014 until around February of this year, running, training and races were a huge part of my life. If you’d have asked me a year ago if I would ever consider stopping running, I’d have said, “No way!”
I can’t believe it, but something has been shifting in me, and I’ve found it confusing.
It began with the last half marathon I trained for. I trained for 10 weeks, and loved it. On the morning of the race, it felt like any other. I had no idea what was coming.
It was a gorgeous but chilly January day in Central Park. I found my corral, and the race began. This particular race was two laps around the park.
Towards the end of the first lap around, right at the half way point in the race (6.5 mi,) I suddenly realized that I didn’t;t want to run any further. That I truly didn’t care if I finished and had no desire to do so.
Now, over the course of the years since 2012, in training for two marathons, and countless half’s, I’ve had the desire to stop while running. That comes up a lot. You push through, and you are usually the better for it. Sometimes, you really might need to stop, especially if you have the tendency to overtrain (as I have had.)
This was not one of those situations.
I felt so compelled that I ran off the path and let myself stop. I immediately felt overcome with emotion. Something in me was finally being given my own attention, and was so grateful.
But I felt guilty too. And sad. What was happening to me? How could my desire and commitment change so radically?
But was it truly radical? If I’m honest, looking back, I had been pushing myself to keep on running as intently as I had been for at least a year.
I had gotten so caught up in the running culture. It had given me so much joy, and such a respect for my body and its abilities. Awe for my own will and what I can accomplish if I decide to.
How could i be considering letting that go? To what? Run just to run? No more longer distances? No concern for pace?
Who was I to go from 5 days and 30 miles a week to 3-4 and 10- 18 miles? Wasn’t I going to go to hell in a hand basket? How could I change now? What if I reverted to before?
Yet, my spirit wanted other things. I was wanting to bring more creativity in my life. Not revolve my life around my training and running anymore. I felt a drive to write, to create more and revolve my life around that.
I wanted to simplify. I found myself craving other kinds of movement: Gyrotonic, Pilates. I had let those things fall away the last year.
My body was revolting! Calling me to wake up.
I fought the messages it was sending me. I didn’t trust them. What if it was laziness?
But I wanted to move, so it couldn’t be laziness. I even still wanted to run. Just not like I had been since 2012.
My body had to literally break down in order to get my attention. That is another blog when I have more distance. Suffice it to say that this was The Summer of Being Slowed Down. My body made it so that I had to listen.
I am still unraveling why I found it so hard to listen and trust my body. Why I held on so hard to running’s place in my life.
There’s always a part of me unconsciously looking for a formula. If I find something that creates happiness in my life, I want to keep doing A+ B to equal that C. As if as long as I just keep doing A+B, I’ll get C.
I think it has to do with my relationship to change. I mean, I know cerebrally we are supposed to change and grow. Still, some part of me gets scared that in letting go of something good, I will lose the good I have gained.
I guess that reveals a scarcity mentality. Some part of me fears losing what little good she has managed to get, so she thinks she can never change, or else she risks returning to the misery of before.
I am trying to work with the fears of that part of me. Help myself trust that change is good. That I am still being athletic, but in a different way.
And new – different – is good. It brings new – different – experiences. And that brings new information.
And through the new information gained in the experience, I become different. More.
I will help myself meet the change with trust and excitement instead of resistance and fear.
It means I am a living thing, that change-induced growth. Not a computer that can be programmed and set to repeat.
After all, I am always a work in progress. And that’s the way it is supposed to be.
Hollowed Halls
I felt the tickle of a trickle of sweat run down under my arm as I waited just beyond the corner past his locker. My mouth was dry, my heart pounding.
It was now or never.
I had to have a date for the dance coming up next weekend, and he was the only boy I could think of to ask.
He was a Kicker, not in the Popular league, so more within my reach. (Me definitely not being in the Popular League or anywhere near it.)
We got along okay, I thought. I sat behind him in history and sometimes we exchanged a few words. He at least saw me. I made him laugh once with my impromptu impression of the teacher.
I spotted his cowboy hat and forced myself to call his name, my heart suddenly full of hope. He turned and came over my way. I felt like my whole life was about to change.
My words tripped over my tongue and landed between us with a clumsy thud, but he got the gist.
He paused for what seemed a lifetime. My heart sank in the silence.
“Nope, I have to say no. But don’t feel bad. I wouldn’t say yes to a dance, not even if you was Susie Moore.”
Susie Moore was hands down the most popular girl in school. She was everything I was not: pretty, petite, outgoing, a cheerleader, funny.
I laugh a curt, self-derisive laugh and say “Oh yeah, of course!” a little too brightly, a little too pushed.
I walk away, my hope around my ankles, the taste of recognition of my non-Susie Mooreness bitter in my mouth. I’d known it already, but having it stated to your face is a whole different ball of wax. Especially from the mouth of your major crush.
Never again, I vow silently to myself. Never. Again.
Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: popular
I read my writing for the first time in a public forum today. It was amazing to share my words live, and to experience the other writer’s works.
Because I was so involved with that, I thought I’d repost Old Baggage for today’s word prompt, but this came to me instead. 34 years later and I still feel the sting. Isn’t it amazing? How intense our early experiences can be?
Beyond the Skinny Branches 