A few quotes from the most gorgeous, classy, strong-minded, graceful, eloquent, steely, soft, crazy, sharp, wise, loving matriarch anyone could ever be proud to claim as their bloodline. Died 2:05pm May 18th, 5 days after Mothers' Day, 4 days after her 84th birthday. This picture is on her birthday:

"Life is all about love and art...fragile flowers, a silent symphony."

"This is a perfect day, a perfect ending."
(closes eyes.............opens them)
"Am I still alive?"
"Yes."
"This is a perfect day to remember."

"I don't belong here. These people don't remember anything. I have a perfect memory. I even remember the things I'd rather forget."

"Do you remember what you asked me?"
"What?"
"'Have you ever made wild love?'"
(Uproarous laughter)
"Don't be embarrassed. I understand. It's overwhelming."

"You are perfect harmony. My angel."

I love you always, Omie. Now you're truly free to live through us vicariously. You ripped off your clothes. Mom held your naked body in her tearful arms and you told her she'd done everything she could. You ripped out the IV, the catheter, the oxygen. No tethers now! Only our warm embrace.

Pet Gorilla

It wasn't so much the wrong side of the bed as much as the wrong side of her lover. Had they agreed on that term yet? Was this really the fourth stab at such deliberation? So what that another dinner made for two served only one. Life is bigger, right? It must go on. It didn't have to be another woman this time. They were past that. Which is why she finished up her reading last night after her guitar lesson without a peep. Even after he bounced through the living room while they were practicing, overly jovial, and waited for her in bed. He missed dinner and didn't return her phone calls. She was late to bed and leery of an argument.

According to the part of her that had already given up, his nervous attentiveness did not count as an apology. Even after a night's sleep. According to the part of him that feared her, he shouldn't admit anything unless walking a plank over hungry sharks. Cuddling would be much easier if she'd go for it. She wasn't biting. Shit. This might require a talk...He hated the plank and so left, forgetting his phone. She wished things didn't have to go there in the first place. Still, the day wasn't ruined.

She enjoyed a light-hearted session with her client and readied herself for an afternoon colloquium. Amidst her efforts to move on with the day, she couldn't ignore that the habituated seduction of technology would bring him back for a second round. After a short knock, he stalked through the living room headed for his phone, no bouncy 'it's no big deal' joviality this time. "Where's my phone!? I put it right here last night when I came in." She surveyed the dresser and handed him the phone. "Oh." Even if he had stormed out this morning in a cussing fit, he still didn't want to lose her. So he sat down, determined to put her on the plank. She could tell right away that his strategy wasn't going to leave room for much light at the end of the tunnel. An hour and a half of failed signals later, they finally started to find each other.

"It's true. I'm like having a pet gorilla." He snuggles up to her on the couch and leans into her until they’re lying side by side.
She laughs and softens a bit, excited by this unexpected idea. "Yah! Like a pit bull! The kind friends warn about, but the owner swears he's sweet as pie. And he is. He sleeps with her every night, snuggling. Until a sudden appetite for the jugular overwhelms him and all the friends just shake their heads in sorrow. If only she'd listened."
"Um..."
"Not quite what you had in mind?"
"I like the gorilla better. A pit bull is vicious. The gorilla can hurt you without meaning to. It just doesn't know it's own power. Plus, a pit bull would make you white trash." He flashes her a one-front-toothless grin. His implant appointment required a two-month wait.

She laughs and remembers all the gourmet meals he cooked her in the discreet quarters of his old trailer. She'd never been to a trailer park before. She had attended a Seminar on Whiteness at Davis, though, while visiting a friend in grad school last year. An old sticker by his door read, "Don't come a knockin' if the trailer's a rockin'." He's since found residence for more sophisticated tastes in a downtown loft. Gun shots aside, at least the trailer never sported the sound of neighbors in heat while the two of them lay in the cold of an all night stand off.

"It's a good thing you entertain me sometimes or all this emotional drama would bore me to literal tears.” She smiles. ”When in doubt, gimme material."

He squeezes her to him and nuzzles his head to her chest as they buy some time from "Stay or go?"

Memory and Surrender (a long one)

Why resist remembering? For fear memory will leak into longing, maybe even craving? But resistance amplifies. I'm not satisfied with that as a strategy. Besides, memory and surrender aren't necessarily contrary. I'm determined there's a way to honor our memory without taking back the hard won release. So I put on the forbidden album, throw in a load of laundry and listen to Akron Family in the sunshine of my patio, recording thoughts of you, and of me.

It seems as long as I don't indulge in aversion, my heart stays relatively clear of craving. That's where not having a story comes in handy. If I indulge "my side," the nature of things will balance it out. Just the nature of yin/yang. No punishment, no judgement: just nothing exists in isolation, that's all. Kind of comforting actually. Nobody ever gets rejected by nature, though mountains may erupt and the sea might overwhelm the land. Could be interpreted as cause and effect, but that feels too linear. It's more just the way things move. And I'm glad for my moment of aversion because it allowed me to see the craving, which turned around and matched it, in an entirely new light. I wasn't slipping. I was natural. And that very equanimity melted the craving, or at least let it pass through without a spiral of anxiety and self-condemnation.

I'm trying to give up self-condemnation for Lent. It requires vigilant wisdom of perspective nourished by something beyond me. So my prayer to that expanse of mysterious resource is to open daily to the thoughts, beliefs and feelings instrinsic to loving myself deeply. To really be with me. Staying power. The root ball. Breath. Green. Sap moving and flowing amidst knots & knarls & lopped off branches and the rest that axes & storms & stagnation bring. The root keeps breathing, drawing from the heavens and like a billows, blowing into the molten core of the earth. Never holding it in. The wound has to breathe, too. I am not my wound. It just adds a small sweetness of character to the length & breadth of trunk & sunlit greenery & mossy root. I need only remember this and let the aliveness and greenness of breath surge through me. To unravel the rings of time until I can't remember my name. The unamable at once wounded and healed and none of it.

So what of memories? Forgetting him would mean forgetting my life. I'm here now. Yes. I'm also the 10,000 things I have been and will be. So then.

Playing "Festival in the Desert" over and over again. A phase during which he happened to show up on my doorstep night after night. He took "vigilance" seriously. At that time, I was so clear in my solitude, as if I'd steam-bathed my soul for a year and evaporated so much uselessness. It was almost dry, glass-like. And he greeted my post-windex soul with the kind of ebulient gratitude that only comes just after exiting hell and finding your soul miraculously intact. And his flesh was still molten, fluid. Sometimes I wondered if residual poppy pollen still flushed his blood. And sometimes I felt within me the strength and repose of a diamond. I felt it refracting inside me as he wrapped his big arms around me on the porch and my blue light met his molten core. And I felt the privelege of being welcomed there, into his huge gratitude. And as hardness turned to light, we cut straight to our preciousness and languished there, embraced. I'll never forget.

And it was right that later - with more vulnerability - I felt my glass, and how it might shatter, and how the shards would sparkle, too. And it was right - with more humanness - that the gratitude turn to enjoy the delicate feast. We weren't perfect in the beginning and we're not perfect in the end, but it was perfect. All of it. The phone conversations from Oregon or my delight when I saw him again. Or the gourmet meals in his trailer. Or standing in the doorway naked, everything finally on my face. Or together, looking into Julie's eyes on her wedding day. Or his children. Or another bullshit night in the city. Or clicking our heals down the alleyway. Or screaming into the roaring train. Or so many moments when Truth showed up right in our midst.

Because that was the meat of it. Where we sank in our teeth and drank in the honesty as if it were the blood of God. An ineffable experience. Our chemistry was all flesh and divinity. The workings of an outer planet turning in our gut. More gravity even than all the things we never got to do together. All the things I imagined he might do with someone else while he was forgetting me later. More gravity than that. First I attached my redemption to his, then claimed sacred separateness instead. Enough distance to witness his depths. Without control. Without attachment to outcome. But with every intention to love truly. These weren't easy lessons and there were many. And they took time. And so the unity of us bore witness to incredible growth and deep-rooted loving.

It was all right. The late nights talking. How safe he felt inside me. The gut-craving, self-loving split when we parted on bad terms. The summer we found discipline and surrender. The fall we were graced back together again. Cuddling all night on the hood of the Nissan. Trepidation. Giving everything. Building something in tandem. Alchemy in the kitchen. Forgiveness. Satisfaction. Hope. Feather-faces. Bathroom sinks. Mirrors. Not walking away again and again. Staying power. And eventually, the brokenness that came between us. The glass that turned to sand. And I won't say it was all fear and pride. I don't know what it was. The Fate we thought was ours slipped through outstreched fingers. So soft beneath my knees as I knelt before a Greater Hand. Bowed to the mystery between us, the tragedy of our parting, and the grace that embraced us both as we learned to release. Into the sea. The salt. The tears. The waves of grief and gratitude and unknowing. Setting sail some deep integrity, the gravity of a neutral charge. Cutting waters. First moved, then moving. A billowing breath through blood all the way to my molten core. And so again the sharp edges turn to light and I will always be embraced by our loving. And I will never be alone.

Only My Heart

My cravings are mounting, like a horse that wants to be ridden: hard, into the wind. Sometimes I want to be that animal. The one without appoinments and deadlines of time passing too quickly. The animal that simply knows scent and which way the wind blows if a storm is coming and how fast to run if chased. I want to find water and make love behind cattails. Sniff. Smell. Search. Find. Reach deeply into the crevices of my body, pull out my beating heart and eat it. And know it's the only thing at this moment that might satiate this appetite. I need more time to be human, to be animal. To take off into the woods and desert expanse and find that sweet, unforgiving rhythm of a world that is created for me and will take the dust of my body in one swift gulp. Nothing personal. Just death.

Snow on Saguaro

Snow on saguaro. White prickly pear. Ironwoods pose as noble fir. Red room. Sultry voice in black boots. Drinking hot water and lemon at the bar, holding out 'til the smoke threatens the resolve of my recovering cold. Wild horses. Dreams. Has she caught anything yet? That voice. A crater of time. Does that star-dusted scape ever feel desolate? To her? While she sings? Or is it forever full of what happened there, like the pounding heart of another galaxy: immediate, distant, comforting in its insistence. That voice. A crater. Enveloping and austere. Ready to cave with a finger down the spine. Snow melts on saguaros. Ribs. Flesh. Skin glistening in moonlight.

Date with a Rabbi

Last night. Such a lovely evening. Taiji. Rabbi. Girl & guitar, singing on a swing in a downtown artists loft. Salvador. Heart-stopping flamenco. Canopy beds. Child sleeping like a sculpted deity. A camera encases a baby's heart. Portraits of pregnant women. One wears a mask. Dia de los Muertos. SI 11. He pressed into it as the music pressed into me and my spine filled with fluid harmony. Softened at last. Spacious. Like the high-beamed ceiling that held her lilting voice. God is desire with no object. Wonderment from within. Wonder at it all. This I felt. Even with the gritty darkness circling the eyes of the drunken woman dancing. Even beyond the world mirroring back our deepest absorptions and accumulations. Wonder that sees no dark, no light. No centripetal or centrifugal force. No preoccupation with separation or centredness. The night sky when a tear forms from the soaking. What Moses knew and could not say. The kind of speech that transforms law. The consciousness of God itself.