#$^%$#&^

I am so incredibly angry.

I feel so wronged. But I can't say anything!!

Music for my Heart

Feel good:

Jonsi - Go Do
Gaudi - Sufani
Gaudi - Hotel Caledonia

Soooo good.

Mi Familia

(To B)

Yesterday my mom left.

We kind of knew that she would for some time. Growing up, she'd take leave of absence from family life for weeks, a month, several months. She'd want time for herself and come back with a fixed nose, a face lift, liposuction, some kind of cosmetic procedural addiction - and she'd come back seemingly more confident, more able to take a grasp on what is Us. I think this time around is eye laser surgery. Whatever she needs, I assure myself.

She was gone when I got home from work yesterday evening, and there was this part in my stomach that felt still. Replacing it was this stiffening in my lower back. When my mom is absent, I slip into a bigger mother role than I usually take. I take careful measure of what my brothers are eating, usually just by asking what they need or want. I fill in a joy of doing work around the house and being in their presence much more without my mom around. Whenever she leaves like this, we get closer. I remember when I was in the 10th grade, my mom left for several months. Every night, we'd climb into her queen size bed and slept together, holding each other. Those memories stand out really clearly for me.

Tonight, my brothers and I hung out in my brothers' room, and the youngest one taught me how to do circular breathing (I thought of you). This morning, the older one confided in me his concerns regarding Anthony's obvious ventures in internet pornography. We take chores more seriously, fulfilling responsibilities because we want to, not because they are obligations. I noticed something we never would do with my mom around. Before going to class, I ran upstairs to shower, and asked Tom, can you load out the dishwasher so I can empty the sink? His quick and attentive reply, Sure! One, he'd usually ignore such requests. Two, if I were to do that within my mom's hearing, she'd tell me that I was lazy and too reliant about duties that should only belong to me. She'd never let my brothers touch kitchen chores. She believes that belongs to the woman.

I know that my brothers and I all have this tightening around our spines. The anxiety of taking care of ourselves without the regiment of my mom's strict supervision. In some ways, I try to ease it, but I also really enjoy the way that they - and I - hold ourselves without being regimented constantly. It feels like we're empowered, and we don't take the responsibility lightly.

Just now - I remember one contributing factor to my emotional turmoil last winter before moving home. My mom had just lost her job. One day after her last day at work, she left for several months, missing my birthday and several holidays, narrowly missing Christmas. I was already floundering at that point - in the 8th show of my 12-show high-stress phase, abusing substances, feeling vulnerable and isolated, sleeping with a guy who made me feel ashamed about sleeping with him. During that time, I'd come home every other day, driving from the city. I'd make sure the refrigerator was stocked, checked if their schedules were okay for Tom to pick up Anthony from school or practice, just constantly checking, worried and unworried at the same time. One night, Tom called me to tell me he got into a car accident driving from a game in Davis - at 2am. I asked who was home with Anthony, and he said no one. It was just utter terror for me. Wanting to drive to Tom, who was actually fully capable of getting home, just shaken. And driving to Los Gatos to check in on Anthony who was either up doing homework or talking to his girlfriend, or deeply asleep. It was actually more terrifying than when we were children and I was driving without a license to get them to school every morning, and managing the funds that my mom had left at home.

I still wonder why I can't resent my mom.

Anyways. I raced home tonight to make sure that they're okay. I know that they're fully capable, and still I worry, I have a mother's worry. And yet I maintain my sister relationship in relating to them, it's what I hope for. It's strange to be proud and sad about this attachment that I have to my family. I think I'll be torn apart when/if a sharp separation needs to happen. I have a defined purpose here. That can't be enough.

I'm sorry that this is just pouring out. I imagine that you get exasperated when I talk about family matters, especially my bullshit. It's touchy for everyone.

Trying to enjoy my mom's absence. :)

Love you,
Cindy

2000 VW Golf

Your golden car looks like rusting vomit.
You show me your displeasure when I say this.
Shrugging, I never know that you didn't like this.
"I grimace! Like this!" He shows me.
I tell him,
Where I come from, grimaces are an expression of acceptance.
He countered with something about the Vietnamese.
I forget sometimes that people see me as ethnically different.
I don't see it.
When I said,
'Where I come from...'
I meant a place in myself.

My Favorite Season

The fluttering V's swimming south in the greying haze above the reddening oranges of tapered leaves obscuring the vision of my words making themselves seen in the chill that is the air blanketing a world gasping its final breaths as we find ourselves in the dying of autumn.

Impact on Tracks

They were dropped off by the last train running through town.
He told me he slept on tracks and needed some food.
At first I was abrasive. We deal with these people in the city.
He called me, "amigo." A couple of things wrong here.
But my heart said 'yes,' and I gave him my bridge toll money.
He softened, and in that moment, I got his world.
We exchanged words, and then I drove off.

Watch videos here.

The Encounter

I discover myself through Thou
and Thou discovers through I

Tonight, it will turn dark - and I accept this.

To North Berkeley

The rear view mirror reflected headlight shades across his eyes. As he entertained our backseat passengers, my heart swelled. I chose to be with this, this closeness. We are family, and I can feel the familiarity that is he, because he and I are we.

To Breann

Your slow, shy smile
spreading its way
to the ships that sail
to the depths of your heart
as he stood there radiating
about your Love together.

The Unquiet Awakening

Of what avail is an open eye,
if the heart is blind?

For more context: Daniel Kendall's blog

the ashes came in clouds -
they fell like snow
all about this infant planet
filled with illuminated creatures
searching for a light
that would meet it
at its fervent intensity

The cold of the stream took over my body's flow; I was washed over, rising with its swelling, sinking as it pulled itself closer to its pebbly underbelly. When the body of water and mine became in sync, I woke up to the amazement of feeling: it was as if I had returned to the familiarity of the womb of my mother's, of my own! The beauty of the surrounding energy greeted as I flowed downstream. The earthy dirt, and fair-faced trees, and aged stones all spoke, and tears began forming at my heart, curdling at something close to Awe. When my heart felt full of this - this nurtured knowing that I no longer fear Loving as fully as I want to love and a capability to be without expectation or resentment, I became open - and the tears released into the Mother-body that holds me. I no longer had control, I no longer expected self-worth - only this soft knowing of universal connectedness leading me to a love of all persons, beings, fantasies, words. It lead me to my tenderness, the child-like grief; she resides gently in me. And within that, a joy of all heaviness, lightness, unfeeling, explosions of want, jealousy, anger, sweetness - my heart felt it all, and I felt the radiance of my Being achieving this incredible spectrum of simple humanity. I sobbed loudly from the depths of my heart, and from that place, I laughed vibrantly into the canopy highs of our trees, and maybe further than that, maybe I reached the heavens. The earth breathe from my pores, and the roots of the fauna is my hair, and the water was my menstrual flow. When this subsided, the glow of feeling everything tucked underneath my skin, and I rose out of the stream, like a goddess sampling a fine universe.

I felt others grasping onto trees, watching my explosions of feeling, appreciating me, and I loved them. My big brother was walking by as I rose from the stream. I beckoned him towards me and holding his hands I felt him feel me and I laughed, because it tickled everywhere. I loved him as he continued.

I felt my lover's eyes gaze heavily down at me from his tree. Eagerly, I approached him, and feeling his heavy heart, I wrapped my arms around his backside.

My love,
our breath was hot
your cheek felt bark
and I felt the roughness
that is your cheek -
and we wonder at all the hurt -

My body trembled on yours -
the foundation of your support
was this gosling tree
mine is the hope of your carcass,
filled with the light of your spirit
that will never be wholly
accessible to my vibrant love

I cried,
I love you, I love you

and we trembled
and cried at this breathtaking hurt

Reborn
into a world
in which
I am Seen
I am Felt
I am Loved
We are children born of fire

Muggy and Hazy and Heated

I'm discovering loneliness again.

I found it in the pumpkin patches,
the season that allows me to see my breath in chilled air
scarves and hats with tassels at the ears;
I see couples hand in hand, children at play -
welcoming the festivity into their lives.

And I'm finding myself... feeling alone.
That I don't have a friend who will pick out pumpkins with me.
Or laugh with me as we dive into fallen orange leaves,
giggling as we hold each other, feeling celebration in our stomachs.

Last year, I spent my holidays with Charlotte. Halloween, dressed up and drinking on the bus, sprinting through the city. My birthday, which always sits closely by Thanksgiving. Buying presents.

This year, I'm ironically not close with anyone anymore. Not terribly close, I mean. I've grown more sensitive and expressive and happier. I greatly desire my community home - I can just do all of these holiday activities with the friends living with me. Why can't I just ask them now? Is it the physical distance that scares me, or the fear that no one will have the time and space for me?

Will I be able to ask you to spend seasons with me?

Row - by Mary Oliver

Repost from Kendra. Days when I'm woken up to words like these are the days that I remember.

You are young.

So you know everything.

You leap into the boat and begin rowing.

But listen to me.

Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without any doubt,

I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me.

Lift the oars from the water, let your arms rest, and your heart, and heart’s little intelligence, and listen to me.

There is life without love.

It is not worth a bent penny, or a scuffed shoe. It is not worth the body of a dead dog nine days unburied.

When you hear, a mile away and still out of sight,

the churn of the water as it begins to swirl and roil,

fretting around the sharp rocks – when you hear that unmistakable pounding – when you feel the mist on your mouth

and sense ahead the embattlement,

the long falls plunging and steaming – then row,row for your life

toward it.

Mama Come Clean

I can't say I know who you are or what it is that you fully want.
I think it's because you don't know who you are or what it is that you want.
The reason this is the case must be my fault.

I'm tired of these must's and should's.
I can only feel your resentment, anger - your complaints against my very way of being, your sweltering 24 years of rage against my very existence - that I was born.

You are my mother who couldn't be a mother.
You are the woman who offers me contempt when I wanted nurturing,
hurt when I needed to be held,
longing when I seek acceptance.

You are my mother. And I am your burden.