You are a reborn star.

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The essence of life is that it’s challenging.  Sometimes it is sweet, and sometimes it is bitter.
Sometimes your body tenses, and sometimes it relaxes or opens. 
Sometimes you have a headache, and sometimes you are 100% healthy. 
From an awakened perspective, trying to tie up all the loose ends and
finally get it together is death, because it involves rejecting a lot of your basic experience. 
There is something aggressive about that approach to life,
trying to flatten out all the rough spots and imperfections into a nice smooth ride.  —

Pema Chodron.

Well.  Damn. 

Pema Chodron says that finally getting it together is death.  So, why am I juggling 10,000 things and killing myself to keep them from falling?  I don’t want to die.

She also says that the essence of life is that’s it’s challenging.  Ah.  I have a very lively life then.  She closes with, “There is something aggressive about that approach to life, trying to flatten out all the rough spots and imperfections into a nice smooth ride.”

Hmmmm.  I think I deserve a smooth ride.  I don’t think the human condition should be one of struggles and challenges.  I don’t think having one’s ducks in a row is death.  Respectfully, Miss Pema, I disagree.

The essence of life is the quiet moments.  The big ones – holding your newborn for the first time or looking into your partner’s eyes when you say I love you.  The small ones – those all-too-brief moments on the zafu with the Tibetan prayer beads in hand where you can watch your thoughts like giant soap bubbles pop and dissipate or while sitting on the seashore admiring the enormity of all creation.  The essence of life is the cup of coffee on the deck at sunrise in summertime.  Sandaled feet, but sweatered arms – to keep the morning dew from chilling.

Sometimes life is sweet.  And sometimes it is bitter.  Further, sometimes it is Nirvana, and sometimes it is Hades.  I don’t think The Creator breathed life into us to be constantly nauseated on a roller coaster of sweet and bitter.  Afraid. 

No, we are told again and again by all the great sages, Pema aside, Be ye not afraid.

The bitter will be there, yes that’s true.  It’s our job to rise above it and smooth it out.  To minimize the discord, to work against injustice, to celebrate peace, birthdays, and small fresh-sprouted seedlings.  Life is a teeming of beginnings.  Yes, and endings.  But the endings too should be quiet and expansive — an ushering into the next.

When the body tenses, we lose our equanimity and forget our purpose by thrusting ourselves into fight or flight.  When we relax, open up, we gain connection with the human condition and aren’t fighting against it, but working to maximize potential.

Smooth out those imperfections.  Work for peace.  Drink heavily from the chalice of life.  We are here now and that is a great miracle and a tantalizing mystery.  Enjoy yourself.  It’s later than you think.  Assert yourself.  You are a reborn star.

I have good taste in men.

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I was madly in love with Robert as was half of my fourth-grade class.  He was tall, had a nice smile, and a hint of a dimple.  Plus, he didn’t look like a rock’em sock’em robot when dancing. 

None of us particularly liked the square dancing, but the boys especially seemed to hate it.  Their movements clunky and stilted and out of time.  Not so Robert.  He glided, he turned,  he dosidoed and bowed with a flourish. 

All the little girl hearts went pitter-pat when it was our turn to dance with him.  My hands were always sweaty.  I was near sick for love of him.  He wasn’t in my class.  The only time I saw him was recess, lunch, and music class which had now morphed into dancing.   I actually got to touch him – his hands and back warm and sweaty from exertion, I supposed.  I fair swooned with giddiness.

But the girls could get possessive of their Robert.  I was once elbowed out of the way so that Kelly Ann could dance with Robert.  I glared at her and tried to figure out what to do, but the teacher came over and sorted us out.  Kelly still got to dance with Robert though.  I was incensed.  It seemed to me there was a bit of sadness in his eyes at the loss of his turn dancing with me.  Dare I hope?

At Christmas time, we morphed into a musical dance act of the Twelve Days of Christmas, Hawaiian Style.  I can’t remember if it was the five golden or the eight lords a leaping, but it was redone as fill-in -the-blank cans of Primo in which Robert would pretend to take a swig and then stagger around a bit while wearing a straw hat, Hawaiian shirt, barefoot and holding a can of Primo beer – Hawaii’s own. We thought he was hysterical. 

More swooning.  He was a born actor. 

We were all military kids, referred to as brats in the military jargon, and apt to get transferred at any moment.  I don’t remember if Robert left first or I did.  But time dancing with Robert came to an end.  I thought of him often.  Wondered where he went. 

And then.  Three schools, three states, and a Pacific Ocean crossing later, he showed up in my 7th-grade homeroom.  I shyly waved hello to him.  He seemed relieved to know someone. 

Robert had changed.  He had those puberty boy legs that were too long for his body and made him look ridiculous when he tried to walk fast.  He was sporting a bad case of acne. Really bad.  And his voice was changing.  He was a mess.  And no one, not even me, was in love with him.  But he became my friend in homeroom.  Protected me from the pranks of the other boys.  And was the first to tell me I had bled through my dress and that he was going to walk right behind me to the girls’ bathroom.  Seems Robert had sisters.  Nothing fazed him. 

Robert, I’m certain, grew from a caring boy to a gentleman. I’m sure he outgrew the acne. I’m sure he is tall. And I’m sure that he cares for and protects the person that is his partner. Robert was a class act in 4th grade and again in 7th grade. I have no doubt that he’s a class act now. I had good taste in men even in the way-back, but I’ve outdone myself with The Consort. He’s a peach.

Maisie Anne The Fae

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Maisie Anne O’Keefe looked to be Black Irish – that sumptuous result of Spanish DNA and Irish DNA colliding, but in reality she was Scots. 

Upon her birth, both parents looked at the other and said, “This wee one does not have red hair.”  Both were present at the home birth, or they might have wondered if babies had been confused in the nursery. Maisie Anne was the 7th daughter of a 7th son and and the 7th daughter of a 7th daughter.  Gossip had been rife throughout Adelaide’s pregnancy.  This child is fae, the village folk whispered.

And indeed, Maisie Anne O’Keefe grew into the reputation the village folk had invoked with their words.

Art by Paula Belle Flores

While still small, she exhibited an affinity for and a bond with birds.  Any time she left the cottage, the birds would gather about her.  As they grew bolder, they would perch on her shoulders, her hands, her arms, and even her black tresses.  As time went by, they began gathering at her doorway each morning eager for her exit. 

She kept seeds and whatnot in a pouch tied about her waist and she would feed the birds as she walked to the shoppe in the square where she served tea.

One winter began early and was fierce.  The snows came and stayed and she didn’t have enough seed on hand to adequately feed all the birds that waited outside her door.  She feared for the birds though she wasn’t usually prone to fear.  The birds, the villagers whispered, were her familiars.  Maisie Anne thought of them as her children as the years had gone by and would-be suitors were too intimidated to woo her.  Her parents had died, and her siblings had scattered.  She alone lived in the cottage and had meager means.

That evening she set to with the saw her father had used as well as his hammers and nails.  She needed a warmer hat and the birds needed shelter from the cold.  When she was almost done, she went outside, perched the ladder to the side of the cottage, climbed up, and grabbed some straw.  The cottage had been fresh thatched that autumn and the straw was almost pristine.

When she was done, she had a hat of branches, straw, and wood for the birds to use for warmth.  They flocked to her in numbers the villagers had never seen.  When they asked Maisie Anne what she had done, she replied that she couldn’t keep them from starving, but she could keep them warm.

The following morning, Maisie Anne left the cottage sporting her hat and discovered that during the night the villagers had left bags and bags of seed for the birds and provisions for Maisie Anne.

She and her hat became a spectacle each and every winter from that time forward.  Tourists came from miles around to see the fae0 one feed and shelter the birds.  The tea shoppe did very well with the added custom and Maisie Anne’s wages were increased, but still the villagers provided for her and the birds. 

A Song of Wanderlust

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My heart sings a song of wanderlust – a desire for the exotic, the unfamiliar, a need to feel like the other and not the I. 

Home, though delightful, feels heavy these days.

These walls are solid and safe, well known every inch.

I long for the strange. 

Photo by Mark Tryapichnikov on Unsplash

I long for unexpected angles and curves, passages that take me to vistas unimagined.   I want us to be a couple on a rue in Paris, a calle in Barcelona, an alley in Istanbul.  Walking where feet have trod for hundreds and hundreds of years – not just a couple of centuries. I want to curl up with you in a glass igloo in Norway and watch the northern lights. I want to hold your hand in a bure in Fiji, the thatch rustling0 in the ocean breeze.

I want architecture that begs for our attention and the camera’s lens.  Adobe, stucco, marble.  People who walk differently and speak in a tongue I can’t understand.  I want to eat food I’ve never had in Afghanistan, drink liqueurs with the locals in Greece, and witness the traumatic running of the bulls.  I want to struggle with the language when asking a stranger to take our photo.  Though we are disheveled and jet-lagged, you will put your arm around me and we will smile for the camera capturing our joy in the moment.

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