Posted on by d

I’m a monster.

What sound does an owl make?

Who whoooooo

What sound does a monster make?

Cheep cheep.

That’s not a very scary monster.

Scary monster up there.

Where?

In the trees. In in in the CLOUDS.

You mean like a storm?

Yeth.

Storms scare you?

YETH.

So, who were you before this?

In… In the clouds. In the MOON.

You were up there with the clouds and the moon?

Yeth.

Did you like it?

YETH.

Do you like it now?

Yeth.

Here, she begins running circles around me.

I make circle.

She runs definitively for a few rounds.

Circle are. Monster out. Monster up there.

Posted on by d

I’ve got my back to the moonlight.

For the moment, anyway. The window ledge is extra wide and lined with plants. i’ve got pillows propped up against it, but later when i go to bed, i’ll lie flat, and fall asleep with the moon in my face. the bed is on the floor since my daughter sleeps in it with me and I have, for many years, been pretty much a floor dweller anyway.

I like most things low.

Of course, saying this I am remembering those last moments of pregnancy where my daughter had gotten a lot more low, and those were aching days. I loved being pregnant until then, until I became cumbersome and so did she and I was ready for the next step of miracle to begin.

My due date came and went. Days and days went by. Finally, she came.

Now she sleeps next to me each night. I love sleeping with her, mostly. And then there are times when I miss my own life of defining who got to sleep in my bed, when, and how…

But like any love relationship, this here and now of having her there is something sweet that I can count on right now.

This now is fleeting as many things in childhood are, except those things we fight, and then relax into saving…

So I accept that no one else will be joining me here for the moment. It is worth that small sacrifice for this, though, for the regularity of this sweetness and comfort, for the gifts of the present.

I know, too, that my choices from here on out, and that the others who may eventually sleep in my bed, will be and are affected by her presence, regardless, in a way those choices and people never were before – thank god, it means I have more respect for myself, more responsibility to care for myself, to do only those things (and people) that serve my highest good. This is actually a very good thing.

This does not mean, however, that I feel any guilt whatsoever about going out last night, enjoying some social lubrication, dancing to great live music and exchanging pleasantries with a really good-looking someone else who “didn’t have the kids tonight”. It’s nice to be understood in that respect.

I am pretty sure I didn’t make too much of a fool of myself except in all the very best ways, and I drank a lot of water the last hour I was there, went to bed sober, got up on time, did a quick excuse for yoga and resumed the everyday tasks of feeding and wiping and dressing and Duplo-assembling and hugging and kissing and redirecting impending blowouts and I thought to myself, there are some times when the high road is appropriate. And sometimes, such a rare and unpredictable sometimes, tequila is what gets me high.

Shaking an uninhibited ass on a dance floor does the same thing as often as I can (which at this rate is about four times a year). And all this makes me a better parent. Swear it.

Just an hour of silliness and flirting reminds me of how I became a parent in the first place – there is a me that has opened, fully, that has flowered and then bloomed, ecstatically.

Eventually, I believe my daughter will look back upon me and see my faults, see the things I have fought to learn that the following generation is always so lucky to have handed to them. I hope, too, tho, that my daughter can look back at me and believe that I loved as wisely as I foolishly allowed myself to, that I laughed a lot and danced when spirit (or good bass) moved me, and that I had a good understanding of my medicines.

Posted on by d

Spider

There weren’t that many spiders in New York. We were used to cockroaches but spiders were cause for alarm.

I finally left and moved to portland (i know, original). I moved there during the fall, one of two seasons in which spiders explode in population. I knew people who kept a broom on their front porch so you could sweep through the webs on your way to the sidewalk.

I would forget sometimes.

In time I grew to marvel at them, from what became a shorter and shorter safe distance. Contact was still beyond my abilities to handle, and then I was bit by one. A bad one.

I was healed by Chinese and indigenous South American medicines.

That following year and some of the next I spent wandering around Mexico and Guatemala, mostly, and my dealings with spiders were on another level altogether. This time i knew how to ask one to comfortably share a room. It all had to do with where I was coming from.

My last month in Mexico was spent on the desert floor of a mountain range in northern Mexico. The area was known to bring people seeking communion with a cactus that grows wild there.

I was there for that, too. But first the place made me soak in it – everything from the horror to the stark beauties of it all. And when the medicine and I finally found each other, it was with Its help that I noticed, finally, the colony of black widows I had been sharing space with that past month.

They were there, and they had left me alone. Now that I knew they were there I had to be more conscious to return the favor.

They were still there the next day. So was I.

So now I am living at the base of a mountain in far Northern California and I live in a house of spiders – there are spider plants everywhere, and at least three or four different kinds of actual Arachnida dwelling here along with us all. I found a black widow in a closet and begged it for days to relocate, and eventually it did. I could not think of the alternative. I had made a promise.

I have not seen another black widow since, and so I examine the rest from a safe distance. I check my daughter’s clothes and shoes before she puts them on, and I check my own shoes, too. I look at the sophistication and varied techniques in their webs, study their body structures and watch their patterns – some build squat, thick webs they appear to sit on, and position themselves in the same place for days. There are two such as this that I am observing at the moment along with a myriad of the long-legged wispy ones, and I am ever on the lookout for the brown recluse.

The spider, she keeps me conscious and aware.

Posted on by d

Taste.

Was just looking more deeply into my travel itch (paloma and i got our passports done/renewed and they are on their way) and envisioning going somewhere awesome with her, somewhere both of our senses of wonder are equally exploding with the juicy joy of life. i am good on the road. depth comes easy there. and clarity. I throw myself into change and scenery because it is easy to grow in that process and place.

I love my current project but it is a means to a different kind of end, for sure, something that will give my daughter and i a home base somewhere chill and cheap. Somewhere to stop and make decisions and bask in a sense of home.

right now that goal is pretty all-consuming and leaves little time for an explosive sense of wonder that is easy for me to come by. Oh, therein lies the rub, and the work is clear, digging for joy in every moment (which reminds me, mostly, of a few miserable days of digging out what felt like miles of acequias in southwest new mexico and which, of course, i now look back upon with romantic fondness).

but jeez… Make it easy here and there, just for kicks, okay? Brief little moments are perfect, just enough to leave me with a touch of ache and yearning. It is such food for the journey.

Posted on by d

thunderstorm

There is nothing else

like the slow, cool entrance

of a thunderstorm

or the feathery breath

of my infant daughter

asleep in my bed,

lying there,

a tiny temptress who knows

that the proper thing to do

when a thunderstorm makes

his slow, cool way in the door

is to simply lie back and enjoy it

for all it’s worth

but i am not so easily wooed anymore

not so quickly swayed by slow and cool

and so sometimes i forget

to simply lie back and enjoy

and instead i hold out

a little while longer

until soon, his breath is on my neck

and his hand grips my arm

until i feel his force

and his flashing eyes.

but these are things

she’ll learn with age

how to draw out the pleasures

(and sometimes the pain,

because sometimes

he explodes

pelting me with

millions of hailstones

and pounding on the windows:

LET ME IN).

better to savor the innocence

of new experience

as long as possible

i will teach

and she will help me

remember.