OUR LADY OF EXPECTATION—patron saint of storms—stares at me from the wall near my desk. I have a postcard image of her wearing a hot pink spray-painted cloak, a golden crown of glory. We’ve needed her over the last few days—lightning strikes, thunder bolts, tree branches split, leaves still dripping with rain, flooded viaducts (such a Chicago word)—we pray to you, Lady Zapopan, adorned with stars, queen of heaven.
I wake up with a writing reminder on my wall, too: “Say what needs to be said!” “Speak with a subjective curiosity!” Two instructions received in a workshop a while back, when I was feeling lost as a writer and didn’t believe I’d spent all these years scratching words to form sentences that seemed to vanish when I went back to read them. How miraculous that words stitched together on the page seem to stay put in ways that other words wander off into chimera.
Throat, defined. Identity, opened. Mind, defined. Head, opened. Solar plexus, defined. Heart, open. These are the notes I took on human design when I studied these systems during the pandemic—when I was spending hours and hours alone, dreaming up reasons why I’d returned after escaping the story I’d been given.
How strange to wake up and find out that you are the eyes of the world. You thought I was quoting a 1973 Dead song, but I'm also echoing a line from the fourteenth-century Dzogchen teachings of the Tibetan Buddhist master Longchenp. What does it mean? You are the universe experiencing itself.
OK, work with that. Yes, I am.
I collaborate with the light, the way I study pain. I discuss the elements with flowers, the way I stuff the end of a green onion root back into the black dirt. I talk with the birds the way I rally the roses to hush with their thorns. I remember making peace with water, when I lived on an island, the way you can’t pluck a sea urchin’s spiny needles once they’ve punctured through the skin.
YOU ARE NEXT reads a sign on the back of a minibus roaring down the pocked road along the coast, a ladder leading up to the roof, a picture of Bob Marley plastered to the back window. You are next! As in—next to die, or next to arrive?
I used to obsess over the cryptic poetry of public transport in Tanzania and Zanzibar, the way these masters of poetry said their peace in paint before they got behind the wheel to take us anywhere, together, in a cloud of human perfumes—sweat, salt, tears, coconut oil, fish gunk, oud—a menagerie.
You are next. Forgive them, they don’t know any better. Don’t play with me. Give me your report. There is no reason. Most wanted. Life goes on. Don’t worry. Just loveness. Dream came true. Fight for your conditions.
Climb aboard and get where you’re going, we learn throughout life. Arrive and stay for a while. Gather your trinkets and lessons. Leave with an impression, and leave one, too. Energy’s a real thing that lingers in the hands we shake and the eye contact we make and the bread we bake and the give we give and the take we take. Village life taught me this, though I don’t always practice it.
My daddy smiles at me like a patron saint of jazz and joy in his wool jacket and stylish black wool cap, a man with a beard trimmed just how he likes it, forever. Hello, daddy, coming through in the cosmic window provided, through neighborly messages of love and appreciation. And so we know you’re here forever and always, you were next, and I’m next right after you.
I wake up with a writing reminder on my wall, too: “Say what needs to be said!” “Speak with a subjective curiosity!” Two instructions received in a workshop a while back, when I was feeling lost as a writer and didn’t believe I’d spent all these years scratching words to form sentences that seemed to vanish when I went back to read them. How miraculous that words stitched together on the page seem to stay put in ways that other words wander off into chimera.
Throat, defined. Identity, opened. Mind, defined. Head, opened. Solar plexus, defined. Heart, open. These are the notes I took on human design when I studied these systems during the pandemic—when I was spending hours and hours alone, dreaming up reasons why I’d returned after escaping the story I’d been given.
How strange to wake up and find out that you are the eyes of the world. You thought I was quoting a 1973 Dead song, but I'm also echoing a line from the fourteenth-century Dzogchen teachings of the Tibetan Buddhist master Longchenp. What does it mean? You are the universe experiencing itself.
OK, work with that. Yes, I am.
I collaborate with the light, the way I study pain. I discuss the elements with flowers, the way I stuff the end of a green onion root back into the black dirt. I talk with the birds the way I rally the roses to hush with their thorns. I remember making peace with water, when I lived on an island, the way you can’t pluck a sea urchin’s spiny needles once they’ve punctured through the skin.
YOU ARE NEXT reads a sign on the back of a minibus roaring down the pocked road along the coast, a ladder leading up to the roof, a picture of Bob Marley plastered to the back window. You are next! As in—next to die, or next to arrive?
I used to obsess over the cryptic poetry of public transport in Tanzania and Zanzibar, the way these masters of poetry said their peace in paint before they got behind the wheel to take us anywhere, together, in a cloud of human perfumes—sweat, salt, tears, coconut oil, fish gunk, oud—a menagerie.
You are next. Forgive them, they don’t know any better. Don’t play with me. Give me your report. There is no reason. Most wanted. Life goes on. Don’t worry. Just loveness. Dream came true. Fight for your conditions.
Climb aboard and get where you’re going, we learn throughout life. Arrive and stay for a while. Gather your trinkets and lessons. Leave with an impression, and leave one, too. Energy’s a real thing that lingers in the hands we shake and the eye contact we make and the bread we bake and the give we give and the take we take. Village life taught me this, though I don’t always practice it.
My daddy smiles at me like a patron saint of jazz and joy in his wool jacket and stylish black wool cap, a man with a beard trimmed just how he likes it, forever. Hello, daddy, coming through in the cosmic window provided, through neighborly messages of love and appreciation. And so we know you’re here forever and always, you were next, and I’m next right after you.
