Gravity

If you know me, you might know that I like being in the world. I'm made pretty glad by "small things". I like when a stranger holds a door. I like how bad weather makes commuters act like we're all in it together. I like the rainbows that the sun makes in my eyelashes when I’m not wearing mascara. I get down on my knees to look at snow when it’s doing that sparkle thing at night. (If you look close then, you’ll see that the regular snowflakes are dusted through with flat, glassy cut-outs of shiny snowflake-shaped confetti.) I like when I can see the stars, and I like the glowy orange sky above a city where I can’t.

I enjoy milestones and accomplishments too, but the best joy sometimes comes with seeing a bird taking a dirt bath or a person shoveling a sidewalk. Since I was a kid I've felt the most happiness in those slim glimmery moments when I'm awake enough to realize that I am here... even when nothing is being won or achieved. 

Sometimes when I feel that joy, I write. It's like a sort of flood-control system; a way to catch some gratitude and make something of it before it spills back into the ground. It's also a way to feel like I am sharing that joy with someone. 

Here’s an example of a time like that. It’s from a few years ago when I first came to Chicago temporarily for a job. I wrote it as a reminder for myself-- or for anyone who might need it someday.  

Just for tonight, have all of this. Every bit of being that is here with you. You may have spent a lifetime—even time before time—asking for everything you have now. You may have longed for it so long that longing became a habit. Wishing, wanting, waiting, hoping to have a life. And now that you have life, you still want it. You still get caught up in wishing you were here, wishing that you had it all.

So just for tonight, maybe try not to touch anything with longing, but with having. Let your hands run over the softness of the blankets that keep you warm, and listen to the sounds outside that sing you to sleep. Let yourself have the gentle motion of your breath, and the sweet familiar smells of nighttime that normally slip kindly into your nostrils unnoticed. Have the cradle of the gravity that holds you perfectly, helplessly here because of the impossible spin of a globe around a star that keeps you, even when you’re sleeping, even when you can’t see it, but are being carried on your way back to face it every day, nevertheless. 

Let yourself have that to start. And if you can stand the ridiculous reckoning that having it brings, have everything else. Have every friend and family member who has ever spoken to you gently. Every eye that has ever shined because of you. Every person who has carried a part of the world’s great love for you in their heart. Have every kind word that has ever been said to you. Every single time someone has held your hand. Every phone call someone made, or almost made to you. Every time you ever made someone laugh or catch their breath. Let yourself have every single word anyone has ever used to say “I love you”. Have all of that, plus every prayer any person has ever said for you while they were falling asleep. Because all of that is yours. It is for you. 

And if you can handle all that, then keep going and let yourself have every generosity that has ever been given between members of your species! Let yourself have every place that exists right now, tonight, that breathes and sighs and churns and runs and bleeds and grows and freezes and blooms. Let yourself have all the rivers running quietly, all the traffic caught in tunnels, all the laundry left hanging on lines over cool, sweet, cricket-filled grass. Every glass toasting and every street full of the smell of bread baking, or lined by sidewalks that so many women have walked down, linking arms; so many men have walked down, laughing loudly, so many women and men have walked down, holding hands. Let yourself have every star that shines in the sky. And every wheel and every spoke of every wheel that was ever made to move you safely from one place to another. Have every hand-tooled detail of every building you live in or work in or learn in. Let yourself have all the labor and generosity and care that has gone into every meal that has ever been gathered and made and served to you. 

Have every bell ringing and every cheek being kissed, every wound healing and every bird nesting in the night. And every instrument that was ever made and was ever found by a nine year old person. Because all of this is yours. And all of it is here with you, along with all the candles being blown out in churches and mosques and temples, and night flowers blooming and lullabies being sung. Let yourself have every single lullaby being sung in the world tonight. 

These are just a few suggestions. There is so much more we have. Tonight walking home, I let myself have my hands, and my breath on this cold night. And the bright street lights reflecting off wet roads and the sound of passing tires, and I let myself have the long, high cathedral of trees above the street, shining wet and drawn black in a million fine lines against the glowing city sky. And I let myself have the water that fell out of the sky and on to my face, as snow, as mist, as rain. And I let myself have my face. Like it is my one and only. Like it is exactly what I asked for. Like all of this is exactly what I asked for. I let myself have it. And it felt like the single most radical, most irreverent, most revolutionary thing I could ever do.

I used to write that kind of thing a lot. Not exactly like that, but a lot of the adventures I chose to make into stories or performance had at their heart a certain winding up at home again, or reckoning with the so-much-more-than-enoughness of pervasive daily majesty. I wanted to give voice to the part of any of us that takes pleasure in just being here. The part that is inexplicably dazzled by being alive. It is a young, beautiful, wise old thing in us, and I think it can go quiet and get lost. 

I stopped writing recently-- for about three years-- because I stopped feeling joy like that. I went through a heartbreak that was a doozy. It was a time that broke my trust in things I had trusted, both in myself and in the world. The loss was of a big love and some common friends who had rejoiced with me in the mundane. They were people who went on planned or ambling adventures with me, and laughed with me like children, swam in the lake and danced for the moon and gathered others for stories and games, and fell asleep on rooftops together under the summer sky. They joined me in the dazzled gratitude that I'd always felt oddly alone in. And with them, I didn't feel alone anymore. After they were gone, each time I felt joy rise up, it was quickly joined by grief at the loss of them. The pain filled me up like a dye that reached into my bones. and it did not fade with time. I stopped wanting to feel joy because of that pain that rose with it. Without joy life got different, and I stopped writing.

~

This blog has been different. I started it with a choice to write about ugly and miserable things. Fear and anger and grief. Perhaps just because I wanted to write again, and they grimmer stuff is just what's going on. Waiting around to feel Awash In The Magic before I picked up a keyboard wasn't being super productive. So I decided to write right where I am. Which has been akin to (or maybe just another way of) learning to join and accept myself in hard places. In the classes I teach (Acting, Live Lit, Storytelling and Improv), I tell my students all the time that every emotion is welcome in performance. And that an artist who shares any aspect of honest emotional experience without shame or greed is giving a gift. I see this as true off-stage as well. Online and in real life, I see people sharing challenges openly with less shame, which helps others to feel less alone with whatever their challenges are—quitting smoking, battling depression, addressing racism or sexism, recovering from abuse or betrayal, getting fit or losing body shame. With less shame, it's easier to support each other and be supported. It is good to know that when we struggle we are not alone. 

One of the things I have been ashamed of, but am coming to accept, is the fact that I have been sick a lot in my life. Not in a way that is as difficult as many people experience. All bodies are different and I feel like any discussion of this requires a disclaimer of real gratitude for my health, to say that I realize a lot of people have physical challenges that are far more challenging than mine, and handle them with far more grace. I don’t pretend to feel sorry for myself. I just am feeling tired of being in my body right now. And rather than keep that a secret, I’m going to talk about it a little.

Right now I’m tired of my body hurting and not working and being sick. I’m tired of how badly my back hurts with this scoliosis that I’ve had forever. I hate that the pain wakes me out of sleep. I’m tired of the hole in the cochlea of my inner ear causing the ringing, pounding, throbbing, pressure and vertigo… telling me I’m flipping, spinning, falling on a daily basis if I’m not careful to avoid bending over, coughing, or laughing. That thing with my ear has been happening for over eight years now, and I am tiiiiired of it. I am tired of every cold I get morphing into a sinus infection because of my deformed sinuses. I hate sinus infections. I hate the headaches and pressure and fever and having to be put on antibiotics twice a year. 

There have been other things that I hated while they happened, but that now, because they healed, I don’t really hate. Healing is a pretty amazing experience, and it can make you very grateful. The acute case of mono I had as a kid that damaged a heart valve that took 5 years to repair itself… intense migraines in my teens… a brain tumor in my early 20’s and the seizures that accompanied it… an intestinal parasite that lasted for 9 months and turned me into a skeleton before they tested & treated me for it in my late 20’s… pericarditis (swollen lining of the heart) and a lung infection that last three months in my early 30’s. These things all passed. And they were awful while they were happening, but also not so awful. They left me with understandings that I will be grateful for forever.

But the lot of them together has left me feeling ashamed. Like my body is weak or faulty or broken. Especially right now, when I am dealing with yet another thing. The insulinoma (pancreatic neuro-endocrine tumor) feels like too much sometimes. Like after everything else this is more than I expected, and more than I can handle. All these things together can make me feel that the vessel I’m in isn't fit to carry me though life. It can be sometimes hard to love life when you feel like the part of life that you are, is faulty. 

Worse than feeling physically unfit, though, is when this history makes me feel that I am morally, willfully or mentally weak because I have “allowed” or “caused” these things to happen to me. Even for people who don’t partake in any New Age philosophy that espouses the idea that we create our own illness, it is common to treat people who have variable constitutions like they are somehow weak-willed. To get frustrated with them for their “choice” to be sick, and be annoyed, impatient, and even skeptical when they get sick... again. Maybe we want so much to think that we are in charge of what happens to us, that we prefer to think others are causing their own misfortune. That blame—spoken or unspoken—is the worst part.

~

There was a small boy I’ll call Joe who I taught for several years in San Francisco. In his infancy, Joe had refused to take any food into his body. He didn't have digestive problems, but like some other "failure to thrive" babies, seemed to lack a will to eat. His parents had to feed him through a tube until he was five years old. Even after he started eating, he often “gave up” on it, and refused to take nourishment for periods of time, like at some fundamental level, he just didn’t want to be here. Joe was a great student. Wide eyed and creative and joyful and gentle. One afternoon when he was in first grade, after an Improv class his classmates rushed outside at the bell, excited to play touch football in PE, and Joe stayed behind sitting with his head resting on his hands, and his elbows on his knees. I sat down next to him and asked how things were, and noticed that tears were dripping off his face. I leaned back and invited him to sit in my lap, and he climbed on and cried. After a long time of sobbing with my arms around him, he simmered down a little bit and I said to him, “Tell me, Joe.” He spoke softly, with more tears between words. “I don’t want to play football… because it hurts. It hurts my body. And I don’t, really like that. And I don't... get why that doesn’t bother anyone else. I don’t know why I am the only person who doesn’t like this.” “Like what?” I asked him. “This,” he said, opening his hands wide, and then patting his arms and legs. “I don’t like being in this. Being in a body is really scary! And it hurts sometimes.” He wept some more, and I told him that I understood how he felt. He leaned back and looked at me with wet eyelashes, and I said that I felt scared being in a body sometimes too. He sniffed and dried up a little, and I said that maybe more people than us even felt that way too, but they weren’t as good at describing it as he was. Because it is a hard thing to describe. It seemed to lighten him a little, to think that he wasn’t alone.

I think of Joe at times like this. About his quiet confession. And how it was the only time I’d ever heard anyone say words close to how I feel sometimes. How it made me wonder too if anyone else ever felt like us. For me, the feeling of not liking being in a body comes when I’m sick. When my body feels well, I love being here. The few years of good health have been the most productive, daring, joyful times of my life. When I’m sick over a long time, my body starts to feel less like Me, and more like a Place I don't belong. And all through my life, rather than reach out during those times, I have tended to isolate myself. Precisely because I've gotten sick in repeated and varied ways, I am afraid my loved ones (who tend to all be outlandishly healthy and strong) will think I am weak-willed, flawed, fragile, or like I am making things up, seeking attention, or possessing some sort of moral inferiority. Which is even worse than being sick, to have people look at me with those eyes. So I have kept quiet in those times, and been ashamed.  

Which, I'm really thinking lately, is the worst part. Feeling ashamed and being alone in the midst of what's already difficult isn't the best idea. I am thinking that, just like with everything else, it is better to accept this part of myself and even to be open about it. I have been sick a lot in my life. And rather than feel like that's my fault, or something to hide and keep secret and worry that I'll be judged for (and I may well yet be judged for it), I can at least accept it. Not expect more of it. But accept it as part of my history. Because maybe too that's been where some of my best traits come from... patience, confidence in my resources to heal, awareness of forces that do, appreciation of subtlety, empathy, articulation, intuition, humor. Sometimes I’ve been super heroic and strong and miraculous in response to being sick, and sometimes I’ve felt totally hopeless and overwhelmed and really scared. But all of it has given me things that I have given you, and has made me myself. 

~

Today I miss the park in Chicago that leads from Berwyn to the lake. I miss the willow trees and community garden there. I miss bumping into friends and colleagues and students and fellow artists on the streets in Andersonville and Old Town and Logan and everywhere else. I miss a place that I helped to contribute to and make during my time there. I miss so many things that we do. I miss performing and I miss teaching. I miss the buildings filled with joy. I miss the weirdos who set out on bikes with me, looking for the lake or for the sky. I miss the stories and the rooftops that we used to grace, long before I left. I miss things I wasn’t even doing there. I want to go dancing when I get back. I want to lift my face up to watch the snow fall. I want the moon over Lake Michigan.

Here is a piece to close that may be unrelated to all of this, or that may be totally related in some way that I don’t see yet. I’ve mentioned the moon here a couple of times, and so maybe that’s what conjured it. Or maybe it is talking about dark sides of things. Or what comes after acceptance. Anyway, here it is for me and you. It came a year after the piece I included at the beginning—the one about “Having”. This is from after I’d moved to Chicago was struggling to find work and stay here.

I lay on the grass near the beach tonight, like I’ve lay myself down there many times this month. I am frustrated that I can’t feel the beauty that’s around me. After all this work to get to Chicago and stay, I feel guarded, cagey, and numb. A glorious city on the edge of an inland sea on a gentle summer night, and I won't allow myself to have any of it. I can't even really tell what this moment feels like because there is so much unsettled! No job, no savings, no safety net, no food at home, nothing... I could lose being here at any moment, and have to leave and go stay with family in Arizona, and I don't even know how I'd afford to get there. So I can't let myself have this. I can’t be sure it’s mine.

I get up after a while. Feeling angry about being numb... I wish I could feel something. I stand looking at downtown’s reflection in the glassy water, wanting everything that's right in front of me. Frustrated with myself for withholding like this when I know better.... and then... I just forgive myself for it. Because, whatever. I can forgive myself for being guarded and a little numb. It's understandable during a stressful time. I accept my guard, and decide to walk along the beach. 

I've been good about walking, even when I don’t feel like it. And I have not felt like it. Moving my body lately hurts so much it makes me want to cry, and I would rather hold still and stare at a computer screen all day. But I do it anyway. It's keeping me healthy, and crying is good for me. So I walk. Tonight I walk along the beach. I look down, and concentrate on the fact that walking in deep sand is good exercise. 

But then I wonder why the moon’s not out yet, and what time it is… figure there’s some organizational, strategic income-finding effort I should return too, so I turn around start trudging back. Then... I feel some tiny wish from somewhere wordless in me, to just stay on the beach in the night, and the words “Let it be happy without knowing why”. 

This stops me in my tracks. I remember the words from the time when I when I was healing from the brain tumor. “Let it be happy without knowing why," is a lesson old and quiet, and important. It means to let whatever animal or spiritual nature there is of me experience joy and pleasure, even if I have “no logical reason” to be happy. 

So I walk out farther on to the quiet beach. I find a soft pile of sand, ask for a moment what my body might want, and then I do it. I sink to my knees. It is dark now so I’m hoping none of the summer people running or biking on the path up the beach behind me can see me come to my knees on the sand. I don't know why I'm doing this, other than that something in me wants to. 

The sand is cool. I start to feel some faint, upside down trickle of exhilaration, like ribbons of water flowing up from the sand through my knees… I remember a quote from someone, Mary Oliver maybe, “Let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” Without reason or understanding, I stop thinking for a little while, and let my body have what it wants. I just want to stay here. 

So I stay. I breathe deeply. Stars are coming out, but it is black out over the water. I remember the moon, but she's still nowhere to be seen. The air is soft. I sit leaning against a volleyball pole near the water. My eyes soften and look around like I am letting them look for the first time since I moved here. They are hungry and shy: afraid to see this place and want it. But then I remember that even if it all goes away… even I don't find a job and have to go home, even if I can't lay claim to anything... I have it all right now. I really do have it all now, because I am here. 

I breathe out and give myself back to the world. I give over to the smooth sand, the cool breeze, the sparkly buildings, the warm night and the stars, and I let myself have everything. I feel it all. I love it. I smile without knowing why. And then I see it. 

Red like a dark cherry. Or fire on water. Deep, rosy, smoky crimson red. And enormous. Rising over the black lake like a gigantic balloon. I don’t even know what it is. I sit up straight and whisper “What is it?” A gigantic red, glowing, hovering thing, just above the edge of the deep, black horizon. And then I know it is the moon. Her arrival over a body of water. And I see it now like I am seeing the moon for the first time in my life. Open, and unguarded, I am astonished by the rising of this thing. Blood red and enormous over the ink black of the lake. It moves up behind what must be a body of low wispy clouds, because the face is warped, distorted, ballooned for a moment… but she rises through every layer, until she is free and clear above it all. 

I sit quiet, watching the actual movement of the moon with my eyes, which I’ve never seen before. I sit with my spine and my hands rooted in the cool of the soft sand. I am stunned, awed, slow enough to see. 

“Ask me a question,” she says. "Here I am." 

I feel entrained. In time with the turning of this blooming sphere. Here I am, too. 

“Who are you?” I ask her. “I am the witness,” she says. 

“Why have you stayed?” I ask. "Because I love what I see," she says. 

“Teach me about love,” I say. “It is gravity,” she says. “It is helplessness.” 

I don't like this answer. 

“But you are beautiful. You are everything!” I say, “How can you be helpless?” “You have to know that you are everything in order to be helpless,” she says, “or beautiful.” 

A flock of geese fly fast over my head, flying east over the dark water into the dark night, toward nothing but the bright red moon. Then another flock comes, and then another; flying fast. I can’t imagine where they are going, flying out to sea. There is no land out there… no eastern summer destination. But there is the enormous moon. And an open infinity of space and speed and reflection on the way to her; just clear open night between the water and the sky, in which to fly. To just fly and fly and fly. The air is cool and it is warm; a perfect night for flying. I imagine what it would be like to fly collectively, to have some flock of feathered friends and family to strike out into the far, wide black of a night over endless water, into that silent, vast place… with nothing but time, and speed, and infinite room, and the love of a full red moon.