French Christmas

Reverb Reboot

#Reverb11 starts tomorrow!

For those of you who are unfamiliar with #Reverb, it's an annual writing initiative that consists of one post per day, one chance to reflect on what happened in the last 365, one chance to write the story of the next 365.

This year's initiative had a bit of bumpy start, with a change in leadership and the community as a whole (there were more than 5,000 participants last year) shuffling to see how it would all take shape. But that's neither here nor there now, what is here is a shovel for digging around your rough edges, a chance to shake up your own internal snow globe, and a way to hitch your hopes and New Year's wishes to the hopes and wishes of others as they tumble forward into the great unknown. We all write about different things during #Reverb, but I like to think that by writing together, all at once, all of us in rhythm, we lift those wishes right up to the heavens like a feather or a leaf or a speck of dust riding high on a current of warm air.

I'll be following these two sites for prompts, inspiration, and camarderie: KaileenElise.com and  Geekin' Hard. I hope you'll join us and share your own prompts as well! (If you do, don't forget to send them into the Twitterverse with #reverb11 as the hashstag so we can find you.)

Happy Reverbing! :)

An Open Letter to the University of Michigan Football Team

Thank you. All of the struggles of 2012 seem well worth it after this:

Body in Motion

In the city it is hard to get your hands dirty. We work with our minds all day while our bodies sit idle, waiting like dogs in a cage for someone to let them out.

When I come home to see my family my body moves. It does the work of the changing seasons. It rakes up the leaves, fills with their musty scent, the smell of disintegration. It unwinds the strings of lights that we’ll cast like fishing lines over the front yard. It breaks down the front porch pumpkin that stood sentinel all Autumn and sacrifices it to the garden.

My Mom asks if I want to save the seeds and toast them, but I saw no, this one I want to give entirely back to the earth.

Past and Present: Thankful

I have a feeling this year will be one of those that needs slow unpacking long after it ends, when its challenges can be categorized and reassembled and made sense of. I know they have all been one blessing in disguise or another, things to be grateful for when I have the wisdom and perspective to see them.

So today I’m thinking about all the gifts of past I’m thankful for (that I didn’t recognize in the moment they were bestowed upon me):

• I’m thankful for how my Mom took the time to slice pickles for my lunchtime turkey sandwich every day and put the slices in a separate ziploc bag so the bread wouldn’t get soggy.
• I’m thankful for the women of our family, who spent many minutes and hours and days in the kitchen, mashing potatoes and beating eggs and spinning sugar so that all of us cousins and nieces and nephews could gorge ourselves into a holiday stupor.
• I’m thankful for my Dad taking me to the river and showing me the ducks and the deer in the fall. I am thankful that when the air starts to smell of cold I always think of these hikes.
• I’m thankful for my Stepmom teaching me that English Breakfast tea with milk is the perfect antidote to treacherous winter afternoons.
• I’m thankful for the day I was 10 and terrified to meet the newborn baby who grew up to be my not-so-little little brother.  
• I’m thankful for the wild pack of girlfriends I ran with in high school and college, who taught me to do nothing less than open a restaurant for the 7:00 a.m. shift, pay the rent on time, fix a killer margarita, ignore an ex-boyfriend’s phone calls, finish term papers on non-stop international flights, find new hairstyles that hold your head up higher, and who also gave me some of the best pictures in my photo albums.
• I’m thankful for 140 characters from an amazing tribe of writers that make me giggle, agree, think, dream.
• I’m thankful for the family of friends in this city, our home-away-from-home, who fill me up with dinner parties and coffee dates and big city lights. 
• I’m thankful for the teachers, mentors, professors and bosses who took time out of their days to teach me things I use now every day to put a few dollars in my pocket, to feed myself, to take a deep breath, to survive.

 

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

 

Shape Shifting

It makes sense to me now, that it would take thousands of minutes, days, weeks, subtle shifts, the shedding of fur and feather, the realigning of genes, the folding of gill into lung, to achieve an evolutionary masterpiece capable of setting a food onto shore.

The circumstances of this year have not been this way, meandering like sands in an hour glass or waves in a lazy river. There has been no time to dawdle, to wait for perfection, to take the test drive. This evolution was urgent, an alarm bell, a midnight flight with wings still wet.

I’m still not sure if this evolution is complete. I have these new limbs I don’t know how to use. I’m not the colt born knowing how to gallop.

Their strangeness is both terrifying and beautiful to me.

In the Monkey Cage

They call it the monkey mind, those Buddhists. It sounds sorta cute, right? Like you could almost imagine a bunch of adorable little chimpanzees running around up there in your skull, swinging from vine to vine, eating bananas? And maybe with some coaxing and light meditation you could convince them all to stop their cute chimpanzee chattering for just a moment or two, so you could get some rest, for goodness sake?

Not me. I’ve got some big old howler monkeys living up there. They are loud and surly and they start their screaming when the nightly picture show comes on. You know the one – that movie that plays on repeat every night on the backs of your eyelids. The more that movie plays, the more those dramatic scenes of loss and heartbreak and misery come on, the louder those damn monkeys get. It’s enough to drive a girl crazy.

That’s why I’ve been secretly trying to film a new movie, way down in the cellars of my heart, where the monkeys are none the wiser. It’s hard, this project of breaking one cycle of storytelling, this task of finding a new narrative. But I’m trying. And I like to think when it premieres, it might shut those monkeys up. At least for a little while.

Tuesday Morning Music

Jazz first thing in the morning. No words, just notes. And I don’t know much about music, but I know I can get lost here. I know I can’t find a chorus or a bridge or a favorite verse to expect or anticipate. I can’t always hear the beginning of one song or the end of another. And that’s good, because I don’t want to. I am tired of the words and the arguments, of trying to figure out what is ending and what is starting and what is lurking around the corner. I am tired of trying to make sense of things.

There is too much noise in my own head. That’s why right now I need no words. Just notes.

Falling Back

It has only been a week, but the darkness has slipped down over us so swift and silent, as though she was waiting patiently all this time, all the long months of summer, hovering like a hawk in the sky, and before we could blink we were under the blanket of her dusky feathers.

 

I have to remind myself that this is the time of year when we plant the daffodils.

Yoga Poses

Lately I’m balancing in half moon, one hand on the ground and one hand stretched towards the sky, one foot rooted and one foot reaching. I am leaning, testing for my center of gravity, which seems to have shifted, to where I’m still not sure. I feel like a scarecrow braced against an Autumn wind.

Minutes slip by and I’m not sure how long I’ve been here, I just know I’m more aware of the alignment of my body. I am aware of instinctual adjustments it makes, the snapping of sinew and the tightening of each little cell, to compensate for when the center dropped down and out, to compensate for where it was, to compensate for what is taking its place. 

!!!

The most perfect road map of my heart.