Thoughts

1. To the neighbor who left your dog's poop in my yard, and let's just say it's not that of a chihuahua, shame on you. That is straight-up rude.

2. What have I been missing by not watching C-SPAN live? I was riveted today by the couple hours (and I NEVER watch TV) of the Comey hearing I caught. The Trump admin is as dirty as they come. They have their filthy tentacles in everything. We, most ALL of us, have let this happen, and it's up to us to #resist. Have you called your reps today? I have. Please do.

3. This is a really powerful essay. Published a week ago on Ms. magazine's blog, Body Politic makes my short-list of must-reads this week. As does this essay on the meaning of The Handmaid's Tale in the time of Trump by Margaret Atwood in yesterday's (Sunday) New York Times Book Review. 
Also, I highly recommend you read In the Darkroom by Susan Faludi (brilliant discussion of identity, many forms of) as well as Evicted (tremendous study and discussion of poverty and exploitation of the poor) by Matthew Desmond.
Lastly, it seems the Oxford comma debate may finally be settled. Grammar nerds, this one's for you.

4. Tom started his new job today. It has, in many ways, been wonderful having him home for the past three weeks, but it is also nice to reorient ourselves into a more normal-for-our-age life.

5. On Friday, I am taking the boys to Louisiana for spring break. Having not left DC since before the election, I am exceedingly keen on getting out of town. I cannot wait for a break, cannot wait to sit in a white wooden rocking chair on a generous porch as a warm breeze blows across my bare legs. Cannot wait to watch the bayou glide by and the Spanish moss wave from oak boughs. Cannot wait to watch my boys run and get dirty and leave the tub ringed with scum each night. Cannot wait to sit with my parents and just be.

6. I have, lately, felt myself somewhat stifled by shoulds and perceived expectations. No more. I am who I am, folks, and I'll write and be what and who I want. Shoulds are a bully, as are living for other's needs, expectations, or hopes. Compromise is grand. Muzzling yourself and others is not. 

7. Two photos that make me happy:

What takes the cake

Sometimes, in the blurry dervishing darkness of too much noise and too many demands, I think about cake and how much I’d like a slice. One generous slice of moist devil’s food with a perfect crumb and just enough frosting –do you call it icing?- to make the confection sleek rather than shrugging.

A cake like this withstands the gentle pressure of a fork’s slender tines only just before succumbing. For a moment the shape rendered by cake and indent made by the utensil’s push resembles one of those simple down-and-up lines young children draw to resemble birds in flight. Then the bird is gone and I’m left with a bite of cake to savor and the time to do so.

Truth be told, this cake is most sublime when I can sit in silence with it, a cold glass of milk just beyond the upper right rim of my plate. In this setting, nothing vies for attention: the cake gets it all. More accurately, my enjoyment of it does. I needn’t rush my bites or my chewing. I won’t worry about choking when someone asks a question and wants the answer now. No greedy eyes will covet my cake, no one will ask me to share. I can close my eyes and experience the cake in my mouth, from first touch on my tongue to bittersweet farewell as my swallow whisks it south.

And then I can do the same thing again and again until my plate is but a crumb-dotted palate of what was.

*a freewrite from today's class

On vulnerability and gray space and wisdom

I'd be hard-pressed to remember a time in which this blank screen felt so intimidatingly empty. Usually this white expanse is an immediate thrill, an opportunity, a sure change of committing to memory something funny or meaningful, of processing and coming to better understand something, of making you laugh, of inspiring you to cook.

But since January 20, the ease of writing has felt more elusive, this space more challenging, our easy friendship not as effortless. Oh yes, there have been moments, stretches in which the cursor can hardly keep up with the letters as I lay them down. But in some ways, writing has felt like a sort of work it hasn't before.

Because writing is so often a great source of peace for me, and frankly a peace I have desperately needed since the election and especially since the inauguration, my lack of facility with it as of late has sewn me up and through with a sad sort of tension. It is as if I am without my trusty outlet and so the ugliness of the bigotry and lying and hate and ineptitude spewing from the White House like the most toxic slime settles in but then struggles to escape. 

I am not remotely alone in feeling awash in this stress. DC is like an underdressed person on a frigid day, hunched over, eyes down, shoulders pressed towards each other and forward against a biting wind. My city is agitated, strung out, and pissed off. Even our winter hasn't been normal. We've had only a dusting of snow, and none of it stuck. The cherry blossoms are blooming, weeks ahead of schedule, the tulips are halfway up, the ants have returned to our door jambs. Last week, the kids wore shorts to school one day.

Although February is never my favorite month, it's hardly been much of a February, and I can't attribute much malaise to wearing shorts a few times weeks ahead of schedule. So what gives? And what can I do?

Wise friends in my writing group beseeched me to sit with it all. The grayness and the attendant frustration when I can't understand, in that moment, when I am unable to paint the gray a brighter hue.

"Just keep going. No feeling is final." said J via Rilke.

"...why or what is it that causes you to 'dislike, immensely, this utter discomfort and threading sadness'.......looking for an answer to that, maybe writing about that, could help break up this 'flummoxed all around'" sensation, wrote D.

J offered this poem from Rumi but noted that he sometimes "find[s] it helpful to pause before answering the door."

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

And so I have tried to stew acceptingly, to laugh at unexpected visitors, to sometimes pretend not to be home when they knock. I have tried to limit my stays in the house of horrors downtown, to ignore what might be appalling but not consequential but continue to push back on what is dangerous and offensive and unjust. And I have tried to treat myself with the kindness I would bestow on others, a task that is always more difficult for me than I feel it should be. 

This afternoon, the massage I hoped would help relieve my unyieldingly taut piriformis disappointed in almost every way. And the documentary I'd hoped to see afterwards was foiled by rain and a temperature drop and assorted nonsense. But I took a hot bath, and asked Tom to go to the market, and went to a book club at school where we discussed privilege and justice and race and the sorts of kids we want to raise and how best to be models for them (I do recommend the book we read: We Gon' Be Alright by Jeff Chang). 

Though the rain kept coming, the skies parted, and the gray slunk away, and I thought about how Rilke is right, that no feeling is final.

I thought about the risk but immense reward in being vulnerable, with self and others. That there is great connectivity and healing in exposing myself, yourself, ourselves, even when at first it might seem there's anything but.