Books Read

The Garden of Eve by K.L. Going
Eve's mother was the one that told the stories, but Eve's mother is dead. When her father buys a farm, Eve doesn't want to go. Neither does she want to give up the last piece of clothing that her mother bought her, even though it is too small. The trees of the orchard do not bear fruit, and Eve and her father arrive just as a funeral takes place. The boy she sees playing on gravestones seems to be a ghost. Eve has been bequeathed a seed. How did that happen? Does her mother who told stories about Eve's Garden have anything to do with this? She plants the seed, and only she and the ghost can see the tree that grows from the center of the orchard. Of course she must climb the tree. I am not usually enamored of Biblical metaphor, but I really liked this story that brought archetypal themes of grief and regrowth to a child's world. This might be just the story for a grieving child.

Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli
My favorite book blogger doesn't like this character. I cringed at the meanness of most teens, and admired the tenacity of flower-child Stargirl, and of course the hint of Buddhist thought, even if pop Buddhism, gave me more reason to like it. Mostly I liked her as the girl I wish I could have been.

This is Just to Say: Poems of Apology and Forgiveness
I was very enthusiastic about this book until I read the jacket cover. If at first you think these are poems written by a 6th grade class, inspired by the famous poem of apology by William Carlos Williams, you will love this book. When you find out they're not really, it's still a good book, but not quite as amazing. You can just imagine the two boys whispering, "I'll write a poem on dodgeball if you do." You'll wonder a little more if a girl could really apologize to her teacher over making fun of her dress*, or if a boy would really understand that he picks on a girl because he likes her. Not only poems, it is a vignette, a peek into the lives of 6th graders.

*You smiled
but your smile looked like a frozen pond
People were high-fiving me on the way
Down to lunch, but I felt like a traitor.

Teacher responds:
Just these few warm words
and spring sunlight fills the room;
my dress turns to sky

Gay Pride Parade

THE GUEST HOUSE

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

--The Essential Rumi, Barks, 1995

That poem is so packed, I couldn't just quote a few lines and leave the rest out. I was thinking about what it means to be out, and when I looked over my collected quotes from the past few years, this one spoke to me.

So many people live with secrets. Even without secrets, we have "unexpected visitors," things that we keep from our own consciousness, things that we fear will upset the balance of our lives. When we let our secrets loose, we must be willing to welcome the dark shame, the malices. Some of us never get to that point. Understandably so, as for some it can be a matter of life or death.

Years ago, more than a decade, I experienced my first small slice of a gay pride parade. I had only recently said to myself and my first husband, "I think I could be bisexual." I'd always accepted the idea intellectually, but this was a voice from the heart. My gay co-worker friend invited me to see a bit of the parade on our lunch hour...it passed by only a few blocks away. His partner at the time met us. He said, "Happy gay pride day, Heidi." Our eyes met and I felt a welcome unfolding of recognition. I was happy, and I was queer, and happy to be recognized as queer.

In the years since I haven't been able to attend a parade for various reasons. Work. Too busy. Lazy. One time I remember missing the parade, but catching the fair afterward, visiting booths and seeing women walking about bare-breasted. This year I had a friend in the parade, and I decided to make an effort to join his family in the watching. I found myself extra busy snapping pictures, trying to capture every group. I didn't realize there were so many politicians who wanted in (Portland is a very progressive city), and I didn't realize how many churches were in there showing their support. I felt embarrassed that I haven't got the Buddhist Peace Fellowship in the parade. Next year, a must. My friend asked me at the end, "Did you get a lot of boobie pictures for me?" I don't think I saw one bare breast. The weather was just too nippy for bared nipples I guess. (Oh he's queer, don't doubt it.) It was rather a family friendly event.

When I look at these faces, people happy, celebrating, I can't help but think that each and every one has dealt with his or her shame and malice, and reconciled that they must "meet them at the door laughing."

The parade started with dykes on bikes:



and ended with the boys. (I'm still waiting on that photo...shared a memory card with my friend.)

Here's some looking at me, looking at them:



Gotta love the drag queens:



and the Bears:



and the cult movie enthusiasts. ...quick what movie, before you look at the rest of the photos?



Too fast for me to catch:

Especially eye-catching were the dancing fairies:

and the flaming homos:

Ooh, I like the bad girls (and that's the closest to boobie shots that I got):

You can see all my photos of the parade here. (A few more to come soon.)

New York: Museum of Natural History

we arrive later than intended at the
americanmuseumofnaturalhistory.
only a couple of hours to take it in.

the first floor we explore has
dioramas of dead stuffed animals in their habitat.
he says he doesn't like to look at that.
is that for my benefit?
me the vegetarian, he the carnivore?

he says he really wants to see the dinosaurs,
that they redid those exhibits.
that's what i want to see too,
all the real bones of extinct animals.

as we wander the rooms
i take in the whole
and i look up close.
these fossilized bones,
they once gave structure to flesh.

i think about the flesh attaching to the bones
moving sinuously, gracefully, like animals do.
i think about the teeth tearing or grinding food,
about that food travelling
down the throat to the stomach.

this one must be a plant eater, this mammal.
such a big rib cage, surely it had more than one stomach.
we wander sometimes together
sometimes separately.
he has been aloof,
leaving me wanting some sign that he
does care to be there with me.

as we peer at the dinosaur relics
i tell him about holding in my hand
a bit of dinosaur skin,
that my friend told me this
just as she got me so high
and that it blew my mind that
i was holding dinosaur skin in utah.

he chuckled and said
he didn't think i was into that.
suddenly he was more friendly, flirty.
i said it opens doors. (the short version
of my pot-can-be-a-good-thing-at-
the-right-moment-and-it-was-at-key-
moments-in-my-life speech)

now i am getting so close,
imagining myself seeing those animals
seeing how they fought how they ate how they loved
i come upon a creature that
is sort of like a giant crocodile
i stare intently at the brown bones
and i see myself running from it,
its jaws snapping
but wait a minute i couldn't have been human then
am i another animal?

and suddenly he is there
leans in close and says
are you one with it yet?
and i turn quick to look at him
vision gone, replaced.

he moves around me and says,
i spoke too soon. i interrupted.
i could see you running from it.
i almost squeaked.
you did really?
and our eyes meet for a long second.
i wonder, how does this happen?
how does he know?
and why is he so distant,
but suddenly there's no space between us?
somehow we have a connection
in spite of ourselves.

we continue circumambulating
around the floor with the extinct animals.
now i am feeling very much alive
and wishing to confirm that vitality
through urgent eager pressing of the flesh,
a fucking, sucking, head-exploding makeout session.

i begin to feel too much like prey
among giant teeth with jaws that could
tear off my entire head and torso.
i have made them too much alive in my head
or myself too much in their time
so that i am nervous and wish to flee.

i am relieved when we round the corner
and find giant turtles,
my animal of affinity. i tell him
of my vision during meditation, long ago,
and how my friend (of pot-and-dinosaur-skin)
told me we were of the turtle clan
and that's why we clicked.
that i wasn't trying to take someone
else's spiritual tradition, but it was
an important metaphor to me.
he took my photo with the turtle in the sky.

A Poem: Birthright

let’s face it.
for all our discourse
the snarls lurk
just under the surface.

is it territory
or delight?

a child shines brightly.
no doubt
in her right
to an opinion

years later she sees
and feels
a direct link:
this child to the wounded adult
who mourns for her,
who would have that child
grow
in a wiser love.

some gave that child space,
others confusion.
she can now take it back,
her birthright.
a wild mind
unhindered.

A Poem

Funny how that happens, spring arrives and one of those sap-is-rising poems comes to me.


spring's song

the wind
wraps around
my calves
travels up
under my short skirt

a teasing suggestion
of a hand
asking permission
to enter

to ravish me
and celebrate
the lascivious display
of life all around

Love Poems

I'm dealing with the depression that comes when a romance is over. I've been gathering my thoughts, but I'm not doing very well. From the first, this was a problematic love. Early on, a phrase came to me that I wrote on a postit and stuck to my monitor, "It is as it should be."

What is it about love that makes one write poetry? It seems to me the feeling is just too large to try containing it in prose. Poetry has that odd conundrum of containing more form, more containment, to express these uncontainable things. I wrote some good, some bad. I could never get a response from him. After a brief period in the beginning, he stopped responding to anything I wrote, I think because he wasn't as good at writing. I was left with communication in person and by phone, and he excelled at verbal communication, or should I say, manipulation. So I was left with pouring my heart into it and getting no response. At least with the final of the poems to him he volunteered that he didn't understand it.

I did see him one last time because I wanted to express somehow that there was some nobility to my love. My love was obsessive, lusty, hungry, but I also hoped my loving him could do him some good. I thought long and hard about what I would say. I had a vision of using an arrow, and I thought of the Zen saying, "like arrows meeting in midair." I knew I might only have one chance to find that elusive target, and wrote a small bit on a postit that also made its way to my monitor:

For the arrow
to strike at
the heart of the matter,
be very clear.
Depend on only
One shot.

I told him I hoped his heart would break over the way he hurts people. Of course he received that defensively, but calmed down when I explained that until he could open to such feeling, he couldn't love, couldn't be happy. He understands the harm he's done intellectually, but doesn't feel it. I told him that if or when that happened, I hoped he would remember that a good woman had chosen to fall in love with him knowing that he would break her heart. He couldn't understand that, why someone would choose something that would be so painful. I told him maybe he didn't need to understand it now, but I hoped he would then.

Some good things have come from this. He really wasn't good for me. Once it was over I could look with a critical eye at the ways in which he would deliberately hurt me, chisel little pieces out of my self-esteem, and I realized I really want to do things for me now. I want to be healthier in spirit, emotions, and body, and I made some commitments to that end. I have begun writing and meditating with a feeling of coming home that I haven't felt in years. I have begun some exercises that I find bearable. I told a friend that I felt I had come full circle in this journey of love when I really fell in love for the first time seven years ago, and had my heart broken then.

I'm not out of the woods yet, as I confess in this poem I wrote on December 9, 2004. I don't plan on sharing it with him.

An Avowal

I knew
I knew
that it was
there

but I didn't want
to look.

like the south pole
of a magnet
repulsed by the south pole

my gaze slid
away from those thoughts

...that remnants
of low self-esteem
had been triggered

that karmic ghosts
who don't believe
I deserve better
had been awakened

that somehow
if I tried hard enough
I could make him
love me.

easier to indulge
and fantasize
towards the north pole

attracted to those
sensuous tingles
those dangerous mysteries

never mind that
I could become trapped
unable to extricate myself

with that shadowy underside
tainting the goodness.

I wanted to stretch
the thrill

make it last longer
go deeper.

look too long
at that creepy undercurrent
and I knew the thrill
would fizzle

the poles
might just switch

and I would return
to my normal attractions
less wickedly painful.

I don't yet
trust myself

the attraction
of north to south
still tugs at me

perhaps
I wanted
to lock them
in place.

I still fantasize
about chance meetings

and passions
overcoming integrity

and pain
so delicious.

Life Happens

Life happens, and a month and a half goes by!

I finished this book: Pucker Up: A Hands-on Guide to Ecstatic Sex by Tristan Taormino. Taormino does a regular column for the Village Voice on sexuality. I love this book. I read it on my palm, usually while on the bus, so I've started to get turned on by riding transit! If there was any doubt in my mind, I now know I have strong submissive tendencies. (mmmm, the section on spanking and flogging) Taormino writes from a compassionate view of helping individuals and people in relationships explore their fantasies and inclinations. No judgement, either from the prudish end, or the kinky end (like assuming everyone's a top or bottom.) She writes with a sensitivity for the shyness people can feel about their hidden inclinations. She gives tips on how to broach the subject of fantasies with a possibly reluctant lover.

I went to Fat Girl Speaks, and wrote this poem while still drunk from the many drinks I imbibed with my husband, his girlfriend, and her friends:

i went to 'fat girl speaks' tonight.
and wowed
steve's girlfriend's girl friends.
(they said i'm 'good people')
and got
so fucking turned on
by all the sexy
fat girls
struttin their stuff.

so fuckin incredible
to see fat women
dancing burlesque
and stripping
without that
tentative fat girl
'may i exist?'
body apology.

so fuckin sexy
they were on stage
flabulous
and sexy
(and there were so many lesbians there,
why didn't i get any phone numbers?)

3 versions of 'fat-bottomed girls'
oooooo yeeeaaahh
that's ok
it did not get old

Other things that happened this month:

The new Central Seattle Public Library opened, and I must go see it. I cannot fathom this building until I experience it in person, it's so different.

My husband's birthday came and went. He, his girlfriend, and I went out to dinner at a fabulous restaurant.

My birthday came and went. I got my birthday spanking early at the Masturbate-athon. I organized the cloakroom volunteers and planned the party games, more volunteering than I've done for a Darklady party before. Several of us were quite happy to play Spin the Bottle, having missed our chance when kids. Truth or dare was a hit. My husband and I went to another pretty damn good restaurant on the day of my birthday.

Writing on my novel has taken a back seat to the work behind Change Your Mind Day in Portland. After all that work, I'm hoping a lot of people show up, and I'm nervous that they won't.