Vertebrae

In the sand today. Lay three tiny vertebrae. Oxidized aquamarine. Small as pearls. Stacked neatly. Impossibly small. Impossibly large. In the palm of my hand.

I carried them along with me. To string on a necklace. As my relics of this day. This day of deliberation. Intentional presence.

Today, I run. To honor what is to come.

I know tomorrow is going to hurt. It has been howling in me all week. In the house of my haunted mind. Ghost neurons rattling the windowpanes. Bones clanking on rusty doorknobs.

It will be a day where we all remember. Collectively. Alone. Pierced in our own way. Through our own personal wounds. Bound together by memory.

I will be deliberate in my sorrow. Create an altar for my memories. And all the feeling that is flowing through me. Mine. And not mine. Ours.

Individual. And universal.

Just a few strides further, I see another altar to this day. Rounded bricks. Cinder blocks. Rocks. Placed upright in the sand. Tiny headstones. A pop-up cemetery. Composed of objects worn by the sea. Placed there by some sensitive soul. Another vertebrae.

I know where I am headed. To my sacred beach. To my communion. With the sand and the sea. And the birds. Where the whale washed up on shore. Where I learned the smell of death. And felt all that is. And has been. In one flash of forever. And never. And always. Where I saw all. And nothing.

I have known all kinds of loss. Pain. Grief. Sorrow. But, I have never seen, felt, smelled, heard grace so complete. The grace in tragedy. Laid large in undulating flesh like then. Washed by the sea. Moon. Sky. In and outside of time.

Last week, the corpse of a pelican was my altar. She lay strewn in the sand. There against the rocks that mark the northernmost edge of my sacred beach. My destination. Until the tide washed her away. Or below the sand. Today I placed a feather in the sand to mark her spot.

And then I turned to journey to my new altar. There in the hidden cove, on the other end of the beach. A relic so large. And beautiful. A whale bone. Washed ashore. Last week.

I happened upon it at the end of a meandering hike. Like an apparition. And a wish finally granted.

Impossibly large. Butterfly shaped. A round table that seats eight. Teetering on the edge of the sand. On the bank of the river. In the place where mountain meets sea.

It was there again today. I know it will be carried back out to sea soon. And that each day I see it is a day of grace. I lay alms. In my own way.

It’s not that I need a reminder. I. Like many. Already know. Through the journey that has been my life. That every day is a day of grace. That everything can change. That every moment flees. That all can. And will. Eventually. Wash back out to sea. Scrubbed clean. Made small. Held large. In the palm of memory.

I embrace this knowing. That I. Am only one of the vertebrae. One bone. In this massive body of Being. Through which feeling flows. Through me. And all around me. None of it. And all of it. Mine.

So I run back home. To my end of the beach. And I place a couple rocks on the cairns in the sand. Marking my place on this trail we all share. On the intimate journey through this thing called living.

The Cymbal Monkey

Here we are. And here we are not.

And this is how it goes. When you pin your hopes to the unknown. State your intentions. And wait.

It is not natural to look to the future. We know this from a year in Mexico. We know this from just plain living.

The mind wants to stay put.

To be.

In the midst of becoming.

To take in the sensations of the here and now. Unencumbered by the hourglass.

Not to be knocked around by perplexing questions of where and when.

Of what. Next.

And the spirit knows not how to soar when the needle in the compass wobbles. And I know, the compass always wobbles. It’s just I am not always holding it in my hand. Intending on it. Wondering which way is north.

Yesterday I put a bird around my neck. In hope. In trust. And I asked that our future be determined. Not one specific future. Just a sign of what might be. And here I am. At odds with a toy poodle. Randomly intersecting factors affecting my future.

I don’t want to go – is the thing. I want to stay. To create. To improve. To learn sing. To perform. To show. To be. Me.

And I want to go – is the thing. I want to run. To watch the tide. And the birds. To expand. To learn to surf. To nurture. To be. A family.

Mostly, I want to be.

In the moment.

Not projected into the future.

Standing on a small square on my calendar. Or splayed across many small squares on my calendar.

I only have so many limbs for this game of temporal twister. And there is not enough room for all of us to place our hands and feet down at the same time.

Heidegger wrote about this. Or maybe it was Nietzsche. I can’t remember. I just remember that he didn’t think much of throwing oneself into the future. It does something to the time-space mind-body connection.

We are not meant to be projected into another time. Another space.

The brain doesn’t know the difference. And it hurts.

It exhausts the soul. To pluck it out of the everchanging now and project it onto the impossibly unknown.

And it causes neck pain. From a pivoting gaze. Behind. Ahead. Over and over.

It brings on a temporary mid-life crisis, regardless of one’s age. Wondering at what has been. What will be.

Most days I find solace in the idea that what WILL BE already IS.

But other days, the cymbal monkey marches across my temples clanging out the tinny beats of my future.

I want to slow down time.

And.

I want to know.

Which way my future goes.

Even though I know, that even when we know.

We never really know.

Breadcrumbs

There is a very specific kind of loneliness felt when creativity goes unnourished for too long. Part longing. Part disconnection. Part disappointment. It is beautiful. Blessed. A burden carried in earnest. On behalf of the creative soul. Relieved only by creativity itself.

It is an amicable kind of loneliness- willing to coexist with all sorts of positive feelings. Deep happiness. Satisfaction. Abundance.

An activist for the soul, it never tires of speaking its truth. Despite all goodness, it never becomes completely silent until it is served.

It acts on behalf of creativity. Never tiring of pointing out injustice. Narcissistic and stubborn as hell, it loves the sound of its own voice. The repetition of its own words, “Feed me.”

I have a collection of birds that I have been making out of clay since I returned. Boat-tailed grackle. Heads turned upwards. In song. Singing hope.

I love them. They bring me to the tops of palm trees. To the sound of their song – like they are blowing into a wind instrument made of coconut shells.

And they are a start.

But although I am creating them, they don’t serve my creative longing. A longing for substance. Meaning.

Instead, they sing of my longing. For connection through art. They remind me that I am in breach of contract. That I am breaking a promise to my self.  One that I don’t remember ever having made. But one I am deeply aware of.

To create. To embrace the complexity. The depth. The beauty. To make art. With meaning. The kind that quiets the loneliness. And serves the soul.

I know this feeling well. I recognize its utility.

But, still. I would prefer to be rid of the feeling. Lacking the time and the space to give art my all. To serve it a well-rounded meal. I will continue to feed it breadcrumbs. Until the time comes that I can do otherwise.

Copy and Paste

Here I am. In the place I longed for all those months. Back. But not back at all.

The flowers are in bloom. The leaves are on the trees. The robins are singing. All is just as I left it.

It looks eerily familiar. But only two-dimensional. Like I am walking on the surface of a photograph. Me transposed onto memory.

It is day one. Back in Denver. Walking through our neighborhood. We are paper dolls on a watercolor landscape.

Nothing feels right. I can’t feel at all, really. I can only see. The trees, houses and flowers around me.

Where I am feels fake. Like nostalgic simulacra.

Where I have been feels lost to me.

I am grieving.

All of it is a dream from which I have just awoken. Only to find myself plastered onto another dreamscape.

The sun feels good on my face. So I keep lifting my face to it. It is the only thing I can feel. The sun. Like a tattoo. Applied directly to my skin. There are no water particles separating it from me.

The sun reminds me that I am among the living. That my body is, in fact, occupying space. But it is my only evidence. Every other part of my experience is indicating something else. That I exist outside of time and space. Suspended.

Untethered.

Floating.

This is what shock feels like. I know. I have been here before.

I will act deliberately. Ease myself back into it. Allow myself to process. To feel the loss.

Day Two.

I run. On the trail around the lake again. A place once sacred. Where I used to go. To find my way back to me. But I don’t see any evidence of me there.

Still, I will return every day. Because I know it is there that I wait. In silent solace. Holding vigil.

I run around the lake. The dew on the grass. The red-wing blackbirds.

I take myself there with great care. I don’t allow myself to look up much. I just focus on the trail. The dirt at my soles. Small glances toward the water.

My music takes me to the jungle. My breathing calms.

Radiohead. “I don’t want to be your friend. I just want to be your lover.” Up the hill. Along the trail above the ocean. Past the tingling palm fronds.

I know I will be okay. I just have to keep moving through it.

The Heligoats. “Like a barrel of monkeys, you are a fuckload of work.”

Be patient with myself. Take it in. Byte by byte.

Day Three.

Another run. Keeping the promise I made to myself. I allow myself to look up this time. I spot the Canada geese on the water. My mind takes me to the pelicans on the ocean. I think “Ten pelicans soaring over the waves.” So I count. Forty-four Canada geese floating on the lake.

I am okay. I am sure I will be okay.

Cold Play. “Just because I am hurting, doesn’t mean I’m hurt.”

And I watch my brain. Two files open on the screen. One file is a picture of the ocean. The other is of the lake. Click and drag the pelicans off of the ocean. Drag the Canada geese onto the waves.

Breathe.

I am still okay.

I look down again. I see feathers. I hesitate. Then lean down and pick one up. Place it in the knot of my bandana.

Wait.

It doesn’t help me run faster. Not at this altitude. Not like the black vulture feathers do at sea level. But I click and drag anyway. Delete vulture feather. Paste goose feather.

And there it begins. The transformation. The journey back through time. The journey back to me. Here. Now.

I look down now and I remember. It was here that I first collected plastics to take home and cast. To remake in clay. To transform ugly into beauty. To capture lost moments.

I sense the lineage. My own connection to my past self. The work I did in Sayulita had its source here.

By day four, I am ready. I allow myself to run down the road past my house. Turn and look at the irises in my rock garden. At the lavender in the border. The sculpture still standing amongst the thyme. I start to see neighbors. Friends. And I realize.

I have arrived. I am in love with this place again.

I see a goose feather sticking up in the grass around the lake. It takes me to the vulture feathers sticking out of the land crab holes on the ocean’s edge. But it doesn’t hurt anymore. I am filled with joy.

On day five, people I see here start to remind me of people I know there. I can feel the synthesizing take place. The synapses starting to wire together. The memories starting to make their way to a comfortable part of my brain. Where I can remember without pain. Where it is an expansion instead of a terrible loss.

And I realize.

The Canada geese are my pelicans.

The goose feathers, my vulture feathers.

The robins, my orioles.

The grass is my sand.

The lake is my ocean.

The honeysuckle, my azaleas.

Both. And. Both. And.

Both.

And.

I get to have both.

I am blessed.

I am home.

Olfactory Grief

Before it was a smell, it was a feeling. Dark. Sodden. Primordial.

Then, it was awash in color. Red.

My instinct was to flee. To run back into the jungle. Away from the beach.

But something else pushed me toward it. A feeling of alarm. A desire to help. Something terrible had happened on my beach. I had to go make it right.

But there was no actual thought, really. Only feeling.

And then it hit me. A smell. Completely foreign. Deeply intimate. Penetrating. Horrific.

It smelled of deep, wailing grief. Olfactory grief. Grief all around me. Photosynthesizing off the leaves.

I walked over the hill and onto the sand. I could no longer run. It would require far too much intake of air.

I had to force myself forward.

I saw the birds first. Large. Black. Apparitions in the sand.

For a fraction of a second, I forgot the smell. I was simply delighted. They were back. The birds were back. I had hoped for their return.

They were a few of the black vultures I had seen the week before. There had been over a hundred that day. I counted. That day, I had felt graced by their appearance. I had stopped dead in my tracks and stared. Counted until I reached one hundred and then just looked on in awe.

That day, they had been everywhere. On the far deserted end of the beach. In tree limbs. Perched on the cliffs. On driftwood. Backs bent. Mask-faced. Motionless. Massive ornaments of foreboding. Their scale altered by their numbers. There was a sense I had of them that I could not explain at the time. A mixture of anticipation and unease.

In a moment, it would all fall into place.

I walked slowly toward them. Three large black birds. One looked up at me and said, “Oh, it’s just you” and went right back to what he was doing. Pecking and pulling at something on a massive mound in the sand. I walked closer. Birds on a massive brain. Like a sculpture I had once made. Hauntingly familiar.

It was then that the humming started. A swarm of invisible flies. Whispering all around me. I backed away and turned around.

Then I saw them. Vertebrae. Enormous vertebrae. Against a backdrop of crashing waves and horizon. Vertebrae the size of chairs. Four of them. Stacked neatly in the sand. Like the ones I collect on the beach. The ones I hold in the palm of my hand. Only these were.

Impossibly large. And I, impossibly small. Large pieces of God’s furniture. Viewed from above. I was a tiny speck in an immense arc of horizon.

I turned and looked further on. Past the mound, lay an odd piece of driftwood. Ten feet long. Languid in the sand. Another massive bone.

I turned back to see the vertebrae. Intensely aware of the sky. I know it must have been blue, but in my mind’s eye it was sepia. Muted color. Simple line. Simple form. Arc of sky.

The sky expanded and contracted. In order to accommodate the immensity of what I was seeing. As if to say, “Bear witness. Do it well. I am watching you.”

It was then that I understood where I was. I was inside a snow globe. A snow globe filled with sand. And sea. And sky. Held in the outstretched hand of Being.

Remains of a whale had washed up on shore. I was in an ancient graveyard. A time traveler sent back in time. The birds were the gravediggers. I was to give alms.

In the distance, I saw a young man walking a bloodhound. In the water, I saw the body. Rolling back and forth with the tide. Metallic froth. Undulating flesh.

In the counterintuitive way one is humbled by an unexpected outpouring of kindness. And the way that within tragedy there is always such beauty. I felt blessed. Blessed to be in the presence of such a massive creature. Bare. Witness to the immensity of being.

Blessed to be. In a moment. In space. In time.

Run

Along the beach. Through the jungle. Onto the next beach. And back again. I run. Each day the same. And each day never the same.

I run at the mercy of the ocean. And the moon. Humbled in my knowledge that it is they who determine my run. Vast sea. Glorious moon. Tiny inconsequential me.

Each day, as I approach the beach, I wonder what my run will hold for me. My feet reach the shoreline and the sand tells me of the nocturnal dance of sea and moon.  Some days the sand is kind. Sea-packed with a receding tide. A hard steady surface. My strides are long and easy. Thoughts are free to roam. To sort.

Other days the sand is soft. Water-soaked. And I slow down, knowing it will take more energy to get through this one. I take deliberate, short, wide steps. I become attuned to the variations in the terrain. I stay in my body. Forgive myself my weakness.

Life is this way. Some days are saturated and hard to navigate. Other days we glide along with grace and ease. The tide is my daily reminder to hand myself over to the flow. That doesn’t mean I always remember.

I am reminded of this again on another leg of my run. On the longest, steepest hill in the jungle. I run it downhill on my way there, and uphill on my way back.

On my way down, I am light. Full of energy and grace. A bird. Alone and at peace.

But on the way up, after a long stretch of beach, I am often tired. Clumsy. Slow. I prepare myself for it. Check in. Mark my breathing. Grant myself permission to slow down.

Sometimes I pass other runners on that hill. They coming down. I going up. They look strong. I feel weak. And I remind myself that life is that way, too. That sometimes I am the one running down the hill, gently urged on by gravity. And other times I am the one running up it. Some days I am seen in my weakness. Other days I appear strong. I bear witness to the vulnerability of others. Each time one moment. One set of circumstances. No more. No less.

It used to be that I was acutely aware of the wildlife along the trail of my exotic jungle run. Every snap of a branch a jaguar. Each cracking leaf an iguana.  The palm leaf lodged in the tree branches high above my head a creature waiting to pounce.

Last week my fears were much less exotic. Last week I was thinking of the man who was robbing hikers on that trail. Each broken twig a footstep. Each bird cry a warning. I prepared myself with every step for a possible encounter. Willing myself to look directly into the eyes of desperation. To feel compassion instead of anger.

I imagined a man on a long walk on sea-soaked sand. Too long on the uphill portion of his life. I envisioned help for him. The door of a metal cage opening. A spirit released.

Today I was grateful to have my run back. The man arrested, no longer a concern. The sand was solid. The tide low. I forced my mind back to the sacred. Stopped to collect washed-up shoes at the end of the beach. Urged on by my desire to see the beauty in tragedy, I ran back through the jungle. Four shoes in each hand I envisioned the art I would create with them. Grateful for another day of hard-packed sand.

Plastic Mexico

Day two in plastic Mexico. We are at a resort in Puerto Vallarta. The kind of place where vacationers who do not like to travel go. It is perfectly sanitized – scrubbed clean of any sign of Mexico. Food void of flavor. Music void of art. Entertainment void of culture.   Pure bliss. Today.

But yesterday, I was still an artist and traveler. Not yet willing to let go of my need for creativity and inspiration. Yesterday, I lied in a lounge chair and consoled myself with the beautiful turquoise color the pigeons’ underbellies turned every time they flew over the pool. I willed myself to ignore the fact that their flight took them past the swim-up bar. I tried to shut out the bad seventies music blaring over the pool. When the waiter came by to offer me a drink before noon (in English), I laughed and responded, “No, gracias.”

Yesterday, I sent covert derisive glances in the direction of the people all around me. I whispered to myself that they didn’t get it. That they were really missing out. But, even yesterday, I knew that my derision was nothing more than a thinly-veiled mask of envy. I knew that I secretly wished I could be more like them. Or what I sometimes imagine them to be. If only for a day.

I know that I generally wither in places like this. It has always been the normal places where I feel most other. I also know that usually, I am okay with being other. At my best, I know we are all other. But today, I don’t want to be other. Today, I just want to be.  Today, I mostly just want to escape being me. Her. For just a little while.

I am tired of being her. Exhausted, really. I am tired of living in her sensitive body. Tired of her ears that hear everything.  Tired of her synesthetic brain that processes sound as feeling.  Tired of she who sees multiple things in every one thing.  I need a break from her.  She’s exhausting.

And by day two, I have succeeded. I have dedicated twenty-four hours to doing nearly nothing. I have kept my thoughts at the level of the kiddie pool. Started jiggling my foot to Rod Stewart.  I am noticing nothing.  Feeling nothing. I am drinking a mango margarita in the A.M.  And, I have forgotten all about the pigeons.

I needed this.  We all did.  An experience that bears no resemblance to the life we have been living in Sayulita. No house under construction. No metal reverberating against concrete. No hammers. No saws. No drills.

We needed a place where our brains could rest.  Where our nervous systems could recooperate.  A weekend of neural convalescence.

Maybe that is why everyone comes here.  Maybe the perfect line of palapas on a perfectly manicured beach in a perfectly sunny climate with perfectly banal music and perfectly tasteless food is just what all humans need in their randomly noisy lives.  Maybe we have all been driven here by the same thing.   Maybe mine was construction noise and theirs was the noise of 24-hour news and weather.  Maybe I am not other after all.

But, I don’t have this thought on day two.  On day two, I am having no thought at all.  And that’s a good thing.

But by day three, I am ready to go home. I take my morning run on the beach.  Music in my ears set to the sound of crashing waves.  My breathing deepens as my feet sink into the sand.  I feel the joy return as I step over the beach debris.  I allow myself to stop and collect shards of sea glass.

I run as far as Viejo Vallarta.  Past all kinds of imperfection.  I stop to stare in awe at the frigate birds perched on a beautiful poop-covered statue of a woman releasing a dove by the ocean.  And as I stand looking, I feel the another presence enter me.  I become aware of the fact that I am appreciating the beauty of bird poop streaming down oxidized metal. It is then that I know she is back.  She who sees it all.  She who feels it all. And I am happy to be with her.  It is then that I realize that I am ready go home again.

It will feel really good to be home again.