Sometimes

Sometimes

life arrives so subtly you almost don't notice it

like a soft hum or whisper, 

a purr that grows slowly in the dark

But sometimes it hits you 

in broad 

daylight

one day 

life is 

normal, 

or what

has begun to pass 

as normal

and the next you are 

holding and soothing

dreams are like that

too

there are the slow-burn kind

the someday kind

the you can't say when they even began kind

then there are the kind

you want

to give birth to

hold and nurture

grow into being

today

after a lifetime of wanting more

needing more

suddenly all you want is less

less words

less things

less suffering

except you do want more

you long unabashedly for quiet 

more quiet

and for stars

a sky filled with stars

for poetry

for Teresa of Avila

and sheep

yes sheep

and long green grasses

wildflowers

and rambling roses

you have no idea how to write a poem

you don't dream of being a poet

you just write one word

and then

another because

sometimes

you get tired of the long drawn out

sentences

that go on and on 

the paragraphs too

sometimes

every now and then

you just want to say more 

with less

you want to be more

with less

Glimpses of the Sacred

“You know, it is one of the most marvelous things in life to discover something

 unexpectedly, spontaneously, to come upon something without premeditation, 

and instantly to see the beauty, the sacredness, the reality of it.

― Jiddu Krishnamurti

Sacred: from the Latin sacrāre, meaning "to devote"

I'm not sure when exactly the word sacred entered my vocabulary, nor when it became one of my very favorite words, but I do remember sitting in my former garden years ago watching a bird in the birdbath not three feet in front of me; how her little body frolicked so joyously, the sun catching the water droplets that splashed like rain out of the bowl onto the miniature roses and verbena and wooly thyme beneath it. It's not so much that I thought, Oh, this is so sacred ~ that clarity and the word itself would arrive on its own later ~ it was more that something was touched deep within, something that most often remained shrouded was suddenly accessible, and I went still and quiet, that everyday moment burrowing within, everything else disappearing, until it was just that marvelous little creature and I, our spirits rolled somehow into one. 

Most of the definitions for the word sacred have to do with religion or a deity, but the one I really love is about reverence. What a wonderful word that is, how it rolls so softly off the tongue like it does, the way those three syllables conjure its very essence. Reverence: to revere; to adore, exalt, worship; to be in awe. 

Awe is another one of those words. Like the breath itself.

Once, when I was on Molokai, I told a friend one day that I had never seen an owl in the wild. A few days later I rounded a curve on a red-dirt road out on the west end and there, sitting on a rotting fence post was a gorgeous white and tan owl. Just there. As though it had been there always, waiting, against the tropical blue sky, the dead grasses, the rusty ground. The moment we laid eyes on each other, before I could truly get what I was seeing, she took flight, everything else stood completely still while I stared in wonder for the longest time, her round face, her large wings so gracefully unfolding themselves. 

Once out walking, deep in grief as my marriage was ending, I came upon a mourning dove sitting immobile over the body of her dead partner, not even my own presence breaking her vigil. Once, I held my precious granddaughter for the first time, two hours old, as dawn broke on an auspicious Friday the thirteenth. Once, decades before that, in the stillness of night in the stillness of winter, I sat with my mother as her breath, her spirit, slowly left her body. Once, miles from any shore, a dolphin swam beneath me belly to belly, so close I could have reached out and touched her. She swam away, circled and returned, belly to belly, eye to eye. Time and again she circled and returned. Once, shortly after I moved into the home where I am living now, a great horned owl left a pellet on the old, wicker chair I sat on every morning. There it was, a big wad of stuff, with little mouse feet, other little bones, and fur, and I realized, incredulously, that sometime in the night the owl, with a wingspan almost as wide as I am tall, sat perched not ten feet from where I slept.

The sacred, it seems, arrives when it arrives, as though on wings, and like so many things in life, not when it is sought, not even when it is most deeply longed for. Personally, it has arrived when experiencing the simplest things; like every bird that has ever visited one of my birdbaths; the hum of honeybees spilling out of their hive; in bright fishes feeding off the back of an ancient sea turtle. It shows up often in music. And the moon, in her every phase; Venus rising before dawn; our precious Earth. When walking hand in hand with my little granddaughter, listening as she tells me all about her world. Watching as the afternoon sun scatters glitter on the surface of the deep blue sea, to the soundtrack of the waves hitting the shore and then retreating. It is also felt in the difficult times, when I hold my oldest daughter who is struggling with chronic illness; when my favorite oak tree split and fell in a windstorm, its loss felt so acutely; the way my heart has broken over and over again this year. It's in poetry and poets and storytellers, those gifted humans who somehow, inexplicitly, paint beautiful landscapes and seascapes with their words alone. 

Morning after morning I write circles trying to capture it, working to describe the feeling of something that is so intangible it is utterly immune to words. Trying to understand something that is simply not understandable, my attempts to point to it seeming self-involved, narcissistic even; privileged for sure. The more I think I have answers~it's about spirit, no, it's about our hearts... but wait!~the more ridiculous they seem, and the deeper the questions cut, taking me not closer to it, I realize suddenly, but farther away, and a light goes on, and I see so clearly in this moment that it just is what it is, this incredible feeling that sometimes, when we are lucky, when we are not looking for anything, arrives and washes over us, it's nothing we've done or haven't done, and it stirs our hearts in the deepest ways possible, expands us in ways we can never begin to understand~even trying to diminishes it~and wow, what an incredible gift. 

On the Solstice, I took part in a Midwinter Gathering on zoom with Krista Tippett, Lucas Johnson, and Pádraig Ó Tuama from the On Being Project. A sacred gathering on a sacred day, where each moment was so incredibly moving, not only their very beings, their grounded presence and essences, but their vulnerability, their hearts so profoundly on their sleeves, and their passion for bringing sacred community together. Plus their deeply felt words about this year, about our shared humanity, and all that we have endured together yet apart. The multitude of losses and traumas on so many fronts, how much we truly need each other; and the importance of not only naming our experiences, but attending to our wounds and our woundedness, our fathomless grief, in order that we may truly heal, thereby bringing a truly new future into being. I felt the sacred, I felt divinity, I felt reverence, and awe, profoundly in each and every moment. Grateful to be alive in this sorrowful and also amazing time. 

With Love,

Debby 

Click here for the On Being Midwinter Gathering replay

Winter Solstice Blessing

A Solstice Blessing

By Pádraig Ó Tuama

As night stretches here,

day contracts elsewhere.

And in their night, we are

 bathed in light. In all nights 

there is light; in long days

there can be ache too.

For you, we call the sun

to stand still a while, and

the moon too, and stars, and

the waters and the heavens.

Hell as well - just for a 

second: just for a breath.

May that breath rest you,

and may each breath rest you,

as it has until now, and now

and now. This one, after 

that one, after that one after

that 

 

sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive

is too small for you

From "Sweet Darkness"
By David Whyte

With the greatest respect for David Whyte, I'm going to change one small thing about this poem segment that makes me feel even better about it. 

sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive

is not enough for you

💓

A Well Meaning Riff on Platitudes

“If somebody treats you with unkindness... it’s likely they have

 endured similar treatment from others in the past, 

and they are only repeating unconscious patterns in search 

of a love they cannot find.”
― Jeff Foster

It is the space in which we give up trying to fix each other,

 and instead listen with our entire being.

 It is the space in which true relaxation can happen, 

where the frazzled nervous system can breathe a sigh of relief.”
― Matt Licata 

Wouldn't it be great if we could will ourselves and others to change? That by simply telling people how they should be and act and feel, it would magically happen? That it could be as simple as saying Be Kind or Choose Happiness or Cultivate Gratitude and suddenly the world is transformed? Maybe if we just said it enough times, posted enough pretty pictures on social media with the words in bold, trendy fonts, like a good intention, like a mantra, like Dorothy clicking her shining red heals together, wala, finally, it will be accomplished. 

Nowhere do I see the inanity of platitudes like I do when I think about my little three-year-old granddaughter. Like me, she feels her feelings in a very big way. But unlike when dealing with myself and my own feelings, it does not even cross my mind to try to change, either directly or indirectly, what she is experiencing and feeling. When she is sad, I would never tell her to choose happiness. When angry, I would not tell her to be kind. When she is melting down because she doesn't want to have to say goodbye, would I tell her not to be sad it's over, but to be glad that it happened, that we had the time together? Or that good things come to those who wait when she tells me how much she misses me coming over to their house? That everything happens for a reason, that time heals all wounds, that the only way out is through?

Personally, I have never found what I assume to be well-meaning platitudes helpful. For one thing, they bring out the precious little Stubborn One in me, the one that does not at all like to be told what to do. But much more importantly, they do not make me kinder or happier or more grateful, they in fact make me feel ashamed. And invisible. And bad and wrong. And yes, sometimes, angry.

Having emotions is what makes us human, and they don't change as we mature, though the acceptance of them does. As a culture, we don't do feelings well, and everywhere we turn these days we see their shadow side. Also, there is this idea, often especially in spiritual communities, that we should never entertain any of the so-called negative emotions. That somehow it is bad or we are bad if we allow ourselves to experience anger or rage or jealousy or fear or worry or resentment or sadness or grief or loneliness. 

Last week I happened upon a wise psychologist I used to follow on the internet but had lost touch with when I quit facebook. I initially found him years ago through a spiritual teacher that I liked very much, one who did not, like so many other spiritual teachers, suggest that we "bypass" anything that we are feeling, but rather, that we consider treating anything that knocks on our door as a welcome guest. 

Just writing that, suddenly all the tension that I didn't even know was in my body lets go and I breathe deeply. What if I treated everything that arises in my experience as a benevolent visitor? Oh my. What if everything, I mean everything that arises within me, no matter how uncomfortable, no matter how "unacceptable", is made welcome, is offered warmth and understanding, compassion even. Just like I somehow, through some miracle, innately do with my granddaughter.

Here's the difference, and why I was and am so drawn to the spiritual and emotional teachings of these two men: they are wholly in touch with their feminine essences; theirs is always an invitation, never a dictum. An appeal laden with curiosity. A wondering about what our uninvited guests might want to share with us; and an acknowledgment of the richness of the opportunity to enter our own beings, and to truly be with what is real and present in each moment. 

Should we all be kinder? Of course. What a better world we would live in. But the notion that we can simply choose or be prodded there is misguided at its very core. True change comes from within, not by slapping a band-aid on our pain and suffering and calling it a day. Not only is there no compassion, no empathy, and ironically, no kindness in a platitude, but there is a great deal of arrogance. Just like there is arrogance, plus privilege when I suggest that we should all simply swing the door wide and admit one and all that stands, exhausted and forlorn, on our threshold. Welcoming the visitors, opening the door to all that asks to be experienced is not ever easy, nor simple. Not only is there little support for such a thing, but sometimes, oftentimes, our very survival has depended on not opening those doors. Sometimes what the guests offered felt totally overwhelming, was totally overwhelming. Or, we are simply indoctrinated that feeling feelings is bad, unless of course, they are the happy, positive, chipper feelings; not the full spectrum of utterly human emotions. 

This morning I headed out for a walk and at the last minute grabbed my headphones so that I could listen to a podcast. Suddenly I am hearing Dr. Susan David, a Harvard researcher, speaking about emotional agility. In her work, she explained, she explores what it takes for us to be healthy human beings; to be healthy with our thoughts, our emotions, and our stories. As I walked beneath the tall redwoods that line the edge of my complex, I was so moved as she spoke about the power of seeing, both seeing ourselves and others, and about the African greeting, "Sawubona," which means I see you; I bring you into being. She spoke so eloquently about the damage that we do when we think of thoughts and emotions in terms of the polarities of positive and negative, good and bad; that these ideas and practices are actually avoidant and abandoning, both to ourselves and to others. She reiterates that our inner worlds are everything, and, that to deny our "beautiful human capacities," our full humanness in all that entails, actually makes us unhealthy and fragile, and makes us and our society less resilient, not more. 

I am so in awe of the timing. All of these ideas have been swirling inside my head for days on end, this post half written, rewritten, re-visioned again and again and suddenly, there is the thing that brings it all together. Wow. Though still supplies no actual answers, no poetic ending to the story. But then I remembered reading Meagan Markle's powerful NY Times Op-Ed about loss last week, about what a difference the simple words Are You Okay? made in her life at a time that she was struggling. So, what if we begin simply by offering open doors instead of closed ones? What if we stopped telling people, including ourselves, how we should be, act, and feel, and instead we say simply, How Are You? Simple words that can change everything. Questions rather than pushy proclamations; where curiosity and wonder and caring are written in the spaces between the words. What if we understood that the only true kindness or happiness or gratitude or anything is that which arises organically from within? That what blocks that is human pain and sorrow and fear and heartbreak, not intention, that we are all searching for the same thing, not only relief from our suffering, but to truly be seen, and not only seen, but accepted, not only accepted but understood, and ultimately, of course, more than anything, to be loved. 

So I ask, how are you my friends? Really, how are you?

In Love & Peace,

Debby 

 And then the day came

when the risk to remain 

tight in a bud

was more painful 

than the risk

it took

to blossom.

~Anais Nin

 

I lived so long

with a closed heart,

not because

i was afraid to get hurt

but because i was afraid

of the pain

i had hidden away

Yung Pueblo
from Inward

The Sacred Darkness

As I'm guessing can be true for so many of us, this time of year can be hard for me. There are anniversaries of big losses, memories of holidays suddenly without loved ones or with loved ones we knew would no longer be with us by the next year. Birthdays of family members long passed. On top of that is the encroaching darkness, and this year, the pandemic; not only the anxiety and sorrow, the vast human suffering, the uncertainty and unknown, but all that we are called on to live without. Every night as the sun goes down, I am filled with such vulnerability, with so much sadness and sorrow that I just want to curl up in a ball and wish it all away. 

Making art is a big part of what gets me through most days. And the great news there is that I am taking more risks and new things are happening that are very exciting. But I am also in a genuine struggle with what to do creatively as I have become deeply disenchanted with the only social media platform I am active on, where I share my art in a vibrant community of like-minded artists and am so nurtured and inspired by theirs in return.

This morning an unbelievable gift arrived in my inbox. An answer to a "prayer" I was not even aware of having uttered. As I read the invitation to the online retreat, Basking in the Radiant Darkness (The Radiant Darkness!!) from Vera de Chalambert, whose writings and teachings have so nurtured me over the last few years, my whole body went soft and tears came unbidden, moistening the corners of my eyes. Ah, yes. This. This is what I have been longing for. I had initially come across her when I found her powerful writing about the Holy Darkness of Trump being elected in 2016 and instantly knew she was someone whose work I greatly admired. Reading her email, the first I had seen from her in some time, I suddenly remembered during this time last year, as I grappled with the same seasonal sorrows as we got closer to the Solstice, an epiphany had arrived, and from that a commitment to embracing the darkness of this holy time from then on, only to forget while being swallowed up by it again this year. 

Here is some of what she writes in her beautiful invitation to retreat, such eloquent, soul-infused words that bypassed my mind instantly, and settled deep into my being~

Today we all are called to step bravely into the darkness of our times... 

Intuitively humans have always known that there is an aspect of Reality that emerges to mercifully guide and protect us through the Dark Night the moment we consent to our holy ordeal. And in every tradition we look, it is the Eternal Feminine, the Great Mother, the very ground of the Being, Herself Darker than night, that emerges to harness our spiritual crisis, assist our spiritual evolution, initiate and transfigure the soul. 

 

Don't rush in to fix it. Let life have you. Let the Mother have your bones for her holy Stew. She knows how to turn our hungry ghosts into allies. Our psychic lead into gold. Crumble and let Her transfigure. Invite the truth you have been keeping at bay. Feel what you don't want to feel. Hold fast to your tenderness. Let your brokenness shine. How else will you know that Love has already swallowed you, even when you fail, even when you struggle, even as you cry out into the dark. Darkness is Holy. Darkness is medicine. Do not discard this doorway into grace. Our wounds are holy passages. Our darkest, most desperate nights, ways to wholeness.* 

Suddenly I find such clarity, such sense of purpose. I sign up for her online retreat which happens the next three Sundays leading up to the Solstice. And, I get it immediately that it is time to step back, to retreat in general, and to allow life to do its work. To let the Mother have my bones for her holy stew. To do my best to honor this sacred time of year, to try to honor every single divine feeling that wants to be let in and acknowledged. To nurture my soul and my spirit with all things that are warm, comforting, revered.

It's also so clear now that it is a good moment to step back from Instagram. It is so easy to lose myself there, to succumb to the likes and the features, the head-swelling highs, the torturous lows, and how easily the very ground shakes beneath the part of me that is still so vulnerable around my artistry. More and more I have become a very disgruntled user on its platform whose values could not be farther from my own as it becomes more and more commercial, and where the algorithms manipulate to their own purposes, often times, we now know, doing great harm. And even more, to have the intention to trust that at the end of my retreat, I will know what is the best thing going forward, returning to Instagram - whose absence would feel like such a big loss - or going in a new direction. 

This morning it feels as though I have come home. Again. For the millionth time. That I have found again that place in me that knows how to trust not only life but especially the darkness. If being a gardener teaches me anything, it shows me, as the seasons turn year after year after year that there is no life without the dark; that all life begins sequestered in the rich, silent earth; all life needs the precious time and space to stop, to incubate; as people, to go within, to renew, to find the fertile ground of our being, and to rest and be reborn. 

It's not that I expect the anguish to magically disappear, though anything is possible. But that's not even the point. Already I can feel a difference, and that difference is in how I relate with it, that difference is that I can feel the sacredness of this time. With that I can now lean in, even just a bit, and ritualize the coming dark each night. I can go outside and walk as evening arrives, watch the tall redwoods become mere shadows of themselves, then meld effortlessly with the vast night sky. When I come back home I can light a candle or some sage and put on music, classical or holiday or even Taylor Swift, whatever feels like it will sooth the ragged edges. I will, if that's what my body wants, curl up in a ball, though I will hope to do so tenderly, to remember that it is the Great Mother's lap that I lay myself upon, who receives me with the greatest love and compassion, and keen and wail the sorrow of normal life plus the ravages of 2020 if that's what the soul wants. Mostly, I will endeavor to remember that love has already swallowed me, even when I fail, even when I struggle, even when I cry out into the dark.

With great Love & Peace,

Debby  

Click here for Vera's website

Click here for information on "Basking in the Radiant Dark" online retreat

Click here for Vera's powerful article written when Donald Trump won the election in 2016

How the Grinch Keeps Stealing My Joy

It's time... to let go of the things which do not spark joy. 

 ~Susan Hennessey

At 6:15 the morning after the 2016 election, I got up, put on my sweat clothes, and drove forty-five minutes to Berkeley for my weekly dance/meditation practice. Thirteen of us, all women, staggered quietly into the drafty old church building and took our places on chairs, on mats, lying flat on the vintage hardwood floor. It wasn't until we were all settled into place, our breath quieted, the rickety building warming, that I heard the first sob; a single lament rising from a corner on the other side of the room. a tangible thing that erupted so unexpectedly into the serene space. It echoed, filling up the air, and then hung, as though suspended in weightlessness. Another one arrived on its heels, this one from the person next to me, a long, helpless wail. It exploded from of all of us then. One by one. The keening and the sobbing; the utter disbelief. Until the first deep bass notes hit off the walls, and one by one we rose, and the music took us, and together we danced our sorrow and our despair.

Like so many of us I fell down a steep rabbit hole when our current president was elected. I remember vividly the day I realized that I was not, fundamentally, okay. It was April, 2017, and my oldest daughter and I had driven to San Francisco for the Butterflies and Blooms exhibit at the Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park, only to realize when we got there that we were a week early and it was not yet happening. 

We sat in the car, in a lucky parking space directly in front of the beautiful Conservatory, with its gorgeous architectural details, wide expanse of lawn, pretty benches surrounded by flowers. And crows. I remember a lot of crows that day. A life-long lover of butterflies, I was deeply disappointed that after sitting in traffic to get on the bridge, then fighting traffic all the way across town to the park, we had gotten it wrong. The more my daughter tried to talk sensibly to me about our options~including simply going back the following week~the more agitated I became and before either of us knew what was happening I was talking about our new president and how he laughed about kissing and grabbing women, that he might get us into a nuclear war, that he was trying to take our health care away and he was banning innocent people from coming to our country, and on and on until it took on a life of its own, and suddenly we were throwing our high-pitched voices at each other across the small car, back and forth, back and forth, until I heard her say, over and over, Stop mom, I can't take it anymore.  

It is such a painful memory. 

This morning I read a piece about the trauma of these four years. How we have had to hold our collective breath, and what it feels like to be able to breathe again. The relief and joy that we feel, but also, all of the other pent up feelings that we can now begin to release. Because we cannot feel the feelings, psychotherapist Martha Crawford writes, while we are still in the midst of the traumatic episode, in the midst of crisis, in the midst of abuse, in the midst of moral injury. She continues that it is only when we begin to suspect we are safe enough that we can afford to experience the worst of the rage, pain, sorrow.

Somewhere in what became that terrible conversation in the car that day, my wise, thirty-something daughter kept trying to tell me that it was my trauma that was speaking. No it isn't, I insisted, feeling utterly invisible. He really might get us into a nuclear war. He really is a racist. He really did brag about and on and on. These are facts, I kept saying, Not my trauma. It wasn't until the following year, when I reentered therapy, for the first time with a serious trauma expert, that I began to see the truth of what she was speaking. It's not that it wasn't true that a horrendous person was now leading our country and doing horrendous things because it was true. It is true. And it's not that we haven't all been traumatized by these four years, because we have. We absolutely have, individually and collectively as a nation. But, and also, if we are already vulnerable due to the weight of previous trauma, especially feeling powerless and abused at the hands of a man or men plural, or, in many cases, by society itself, then it's just that much more difficult. We already have post traumatic stress. For millions of us in that situation, we are not just experiencing the trauma of having a madman in the White House, we are also re-experiencing every trauma that ever happened to us.

One of the greatest gifts of that morning dance four years ago was that I had the direct experience that I was not alone in my pain. The working definition that my therapist uses for trauma is that it is unbearable pain experienced alone. The healing happens as we have the experience again and again of no longer being alone, of having a loving, compassionate other there to witness, to empathize, to hold us as we remember, as we are thrown off our axis yet again, as we begin to feel again.

When the election was called for Biden on Saturday, when people started honking their horns, when they hit the streets to celebrate, not only here in this country, but around the world, when cathedral bells rang not just in Washington DC, but in Paris, when fireworks lit up London, when Black Lives Matters Plaza filled to overflowing with an historic public celebration, with singing and dancing, and so much joy, like so many others, I sat in my home and wept. Truly I have not been alone. When Kamala took the stage that evening, resplendent in her symbolic white outfit, complete with gorgeous pussy bow tie, her strength, her love and her joy palpable, I wept again, as I did when Joe took the stage and love and empathy flowed from the good and kind and strong and capable man who will be our next president. I was so not alone that day, and the feeling of being an integral part of not only a country, but a world that longs for better, for decency, and human rights, for goodness, for healing, was overwhelming.

I woke up Sunday morning for the first time in I don't know how long bathed in serenity. It was like a miracle, mind free, body relaxed, heart warmed, soft and pliable. But by that night I was deep in it again. Because it's not over yet. There are crises still ongoing, abuses of power right and left, the damage he can still inflict huge, and the Grinch is openly trying to steal Christmas. But there is light at the end of the tunnel. Biden will be, I'm assured by experts out there that I trust, who know a lot about what they are speaking of, the next president. 

So why am I still allowing the Grinch to steal my serenity, to snatch my joy? Though in the Grinch's defense, he did grow a heart by the end, which our president's personality disorders will not allow him to do. I mean I know that trauma teaches you to be always on red alert, always scanning for danger, and that feels like the key to survival. But the truth is, that just steals your life. I can't snap my fingers and heal it, but there are plenty of things I can do to take better care of my nervous system, beginning with turning my face from him and toward things that are good for me. I can stop doom-scrolling on twitter, and start joy-scrolling more artists on Istagram. I can stop listening to inciteful podcasts and write more. I can stop clicking on HuffPost, with their giant, scary headlines and take photographs. I can make art. I can consciously breathe, though yes, this one can be dicey. I can Facetime with my 3-year-old granddaughter. I can read Louise Penny's new book that is waiting at the library. I can listen to music more. I can smell my still-blooming roses. I can sky gaze, one of my favorite pastimes, and I can savor the possibility of rain today, desperately needed rain. I can light a candle, smile for no reason, reach out to a friend, even my therapist if necessary. I can endeavor to feel my feelings. In short, I can practice radical self-care, even in circumstances where that is challenging. And I can dance. All by myself in my living room, alone but not really, grateful that this time it is not in despair, but in relief, and maybe, if I'm lucky, in joy. 

Holy Shit

I've been trying to write about aging. Specifically the way looking older brings not only sadness, shame, and embarrassment, but a profound humiliation, the likes of which I haven't experienced since I had severe acne for years as a young adult, or when many years ago I made a decision to stop the disordered yo-yo dieting that made my life chaotic and my body too thin, and as a result, I became seriously obese.

Oh my~ I need to pause right here. Because I have never put those things together before now, and suddenly I can hardly breathe for the urge to cry. Sometimes writing literally takes my breath away, the way things can be uncovered, discovered, delivered, the way the veil can all of a sudden part, like a curtain in a strong breeze, the puzzle pieces floating perfectly into place. 

I just need a minute to regroup; to bow to the universe; to be with the understanding that is dawning, the deep compassion that has so unexpectedly drifted my way. Seeing these times not just as part of my story, but as painful years of shame, of marginalization, and isolation.

It started over two years ago the morning after I'd had cataract surgery in both eyes. As I removed the post surgery protective goggles and looked at myself in the mirror for the first time, my vision clearer than it had been in a very long time, I was shocked at the face that stared back at me. I leaned in, getting a closer look, then ran my fingertips over the lines and wrinkles and splotches, none of them visible to me before surgery. I broke down and wept uncontrollably.

It is a wall of shame that stops the writing process each time I've tried to write about the full-on aging "crisis" my new vision brought to me. Never mind the incredible upsides; that the world was once again brilliant and colorful, that I could once again drive safely, and I could read maps and my phone and best of all, precious books and, take decent photos again. Not to mention the narcissistic audacity to whine about such trivial things when facing such enormous crises in our country and around the world. When so many people in so many places are suffering, my great fortune was not lost on me even as tears ran in fat rivers down my cheeks. I'm alive! I'm well. I have people I love dearly. I have the freedom and the luxury to write and to make art. I have health insurance, and was able to get surgery for the condition that is the number one cause of blindness in developing nations. The number one cause of blindness~

Shaming myself for feeling ashamed.  

A few days after surgery I was looking for a parking space at the pharmacy and had to stop and wait for a woman who was limping slowly across the road. I park my car and when I walk toward the building, there was the same woman, not far from where I had seen her, leaning against the back of a car. Our eyes meet and I smile and she smiles back at me and it was the most radiant thing. Like the sun suddenly coming from behind a cloud, like my vision after my surgery, her entire being was lit. I could see, as I got closer to her, deep lines and fissures etched into her beautiful face. It wasn't, I realized profoundly, that she was beautiful in spite of the wrinkles, they were truly part of her pure and genuine loveliness; her luminous being.

That meeting shocked and inspired me. I reread parts of Naomi's Wolf's The Beauty Myth, and both embrace and reject her poetic words about aging women's faces: how every detail printed upon them—the precise calligraphy she calls it—are the recordings of her road traveled and of her own unique life and times: this line and that impression a relief of her thoughts, feelings, disappointments, curiosities; her joys and heartbreaks. I log onto Pinterest, search "aging gracefully" (by the way, a term that actually enrages me, as we are even told how we are supposed to age) and to my surprise up pop the most amazing images. Women at all stages of aging, short women, tall women, with gorgeous gray hair and white hair, long hair, and short, colorful clothing, fabulous jewelry and sans jewelry, looking straight into the camera, their amazing faces painted with the stunning detail of their very lives, having the audacity to show up in the world in all of their mind-blowing glory. 

Holy shit. 

Suddenly as I write epiphanies arrive like winged angels. Hit after hit, insights, truths, knowings, bombard me, more puzzle pieces snapping miraculously into place. I've long known the connection between our culture and the difficulty of women's lives, but I see now, with brilliant clear seeing, the bigger association: the results of how women are treated that are directly, profoundly related to the crises we are experiencing in our world and on our planet.

Holy shit. Again.

The room is now flooded with light. These two seemingly unrelated things are so connected, so unbelievably intertwined, so enmeshed, I don't know how it is I have not seen it. I also don't know where to even begin; it's huge and complex and utterly vital.  It's also simple. Women are born into and then live in a man's world; a world created by and for men. Their leaders are men, their deity is a man, their "savior" a man, as are most all people in power; those in power make the rules, and they enforce the rules. He/him/his are the universal (exclusionary) pronouns. Even if we are not religious, the "sin" of Eve, and how she caused the fall from grace, is in our marrow, in the air we breathe; we know well that it was Pandora who opened the proverbial box causing all hell to break loose. 

The beautiful heart and body and earth-centered yin energy of the feminine has been plundered. Its essential life-giving relational, restorative, collaborative, peacemaking, and compassionate soul forced underground. Women's stories have been muted, their beings, especially as they move past their reproductive stage, rendered useless, then invisible. How do you steal a woman's inborn power? You teach her from the cradle on, sometimes subtly, other times overtly, to hate herself, to hate her innate ways of being. You teach her that her emotional life is wrong and bad, her body inferior, but also an object, as long as it looks just so, her mind, how she communicates, subordinate. Her vision of power, which is power used collaboratively for change, for good, rather than power over, is not only flawed, but ridiculous. Her wisdom nonexistent. 

Aging is cultural as well as biological. There are cultures around the world, particularly in the east but also among native earth-based cultures, where people are honored and revered as they age. Their knowledge is esteemed, and they are seen to have much of value to contribute. Women are the wise teachers, the revered crones, silver hair a sign of their wisdom, and wrinkles, like an intricately beaded necklace, the beautiful artwork of their lives. 

One day out of the blue, I lean in. On Pinterest I pin photo after photo on a board I title The Beauty of Aging. It becomes my own testament, my own creed, filled with raw, wild, sedate, gorgeous, proud, wrinkled women, plus quotes like Note to Self: You are not too old and it is not too late, and my personal favorite, A wise woman once said "fuck this shit" and she lived happily ever after. The women, their words light the inner fire that stokes my life. I stop coloring my hair, a personal choice that is not an editorial on what any other woman should do, ever, this dicey aging thing being a very personal journey. Now, with the pandemic I am also growing the length of my hair, something I would never have had the courage to do though I have longed to be one of those women who wear their salt and pepper mane irreverently thrown into some undefinable messy up-do. Who says aging women cannot have long hair? On the other hand, I drag out the makeup I haven't used in years. I buy mascara and relearn how to apply it. I consider ordering designer glasses even though the only correction I now need, thanks to my surgery, is for reading; because it's true that glasses hide a lot more than just the dreaded bags under my eyes. I now fully understand why women get plastic surgery and I'm unbelievably relieved that I don't have the money to even consider that. Though I do try out a little microdermabrasion, and order a host of anti-aging products. 

The inner me, the one that never ages, the one that truly does not feel a day over thirty-five, just doesn't get it. She is dumbfounded every time we stand in front of a mirror, or we happen to catch a glimpse walking by one. Though in society I am disappearing more and more with every gray hair and each new wrinkle, never have I had more to say, or more of an urgency to say it. There is wisdom in me. I know it, but have a great deal of tremulousness embracing it; though I do see now that a quiet transformation has been taking place since that tear-filled morning. Courage, I can see, is suddenly overlying fear. Worthiness is replacing shame, and compassion is beginning to grow, if even just a little bit, in those beautiful fleeting moments, displacing the toxicity of self loathing. Clearly, I am not too old, and clearly it is never too late. 

With Love,

Debby 

French Braid

Quan Yin

Last week I was listening to a tv actor talk on his podcast about falling off the wagon after sixteen years of sobriety. His deep pain, his disappointment, his humility, his sense of responsibility to his twelve step community and the sober community that has grown in the years he has been podcasting were astonishing and so inspiring. But then I listened as he began to talk about his shame, and that's when my heart just truly broke.

I cannot begin to know what it is like to relapse in that way nor to do so publicly. When the gods were handing out addictions, I was apportioned sugar and butter and eating for comfort. Not benign by any stretch, but not mind/personality altering in the way that drugs and alcohol are, and not potentially catastrophic in the short run. Still, from it, I do know what it's like to leave my body and mindlessly reach for a substance, even after long periods of abstinence. Even though I grew up with an alcoholic father, still, I don't know personally what it's like to live with that kind of monkey on my own back. I do know, because of my father, the way that kind of substance abuse destroys people. And by extension, entire families and lives.

So much is known about addiction today. We know its intimate link to pain and suffering, be it physical, emotional, or spiritual, and in a plurality of cases, to trauma and PTSD. My dad was a veteran of both an alcoholic father who beat him and hand-to-hand combat in World War II, in which he was injured. Dr. Gabor Mate, who has worked with drug addicts on the streets of Vancouver for decades, has brought such compassionate understanding to addiction, believing that there is no way that we can begin to understand addiction~any addiction~without asking what it is that the addict is desperate for relief from.

There is an old, wrinkled black and white photo of me taken on Thanksgiving Day when I was eighteen months old. I am in my pretty holiday dress and I have climbed onto a chair and then up onto the dining table, with it's pretty china and tall tapered candles, and I am eating butter with my fingers. It seems far fetched to think I was already anesthetizing myself, and it's possible that I simply loved the taste of butter. But years after that, when I learned that I could push a chair to the counter and reach the peanut butter in the cupboard and eat spoon after spoon of it standing alone in the kitchen, having told my best friend that I needed to go to the bathroom, leaving her alone outside in the playhouse, I'm not so sure.  

Once years ago, on what was an already hard morning, I was stuck in traffic on the Bay Bridge on the way to visit my youngest daughter in the city. Crawling not even at a snail's pace, I could feel myself getting more upset by the minute, feeling the urge alternately to kick and scream, and to break down and sob. I was not even yet to Treasure Island when it hit me that once off the bridge, however long that would be, I would find a place to buy chocolate, even though I had not had sugar in months. That's all I could think about, chocolate, and where in the world I would stop to get it on the way to my daughter's apartment, a route I knew by heart in the congested and confusing big city streets. I still remember spotting the Peet's, where they just happened to carry my favorite chocolate bars back then, finding my way in circles on one-way streets looking for a place to park, standing in line, walking out with two large candy bars in my hand (plus a sugary coffee), then ripping into them once I was back in the car, those first bites soothing all the raw and jagged edges just like I knew they would, until I could breathe again, then hiding the wrappers and picking up my daughter for an early lunch. 

What I didn't know then is that being stuck in traffic, especially on a bridge where there is no escape at all is a big post trauma stress trigger for me; I was a wild animal caught in a trap. That morning was not unique but it stands out in my memory because it was the first time that it was ever so conscious, that I was actually aware that I was in a place of deep pain and at the same time aware that eating a particular kind of food would literally make me feel better; that once I had had the thought, nothing could have deterred me, not getting lost in the city, not being late to pick up my daughter, because there has been, since childhood, a well worn pathway, a deep and abiding groove in my brain connecting pain and food and soothing. 

Embedded in addiction and trauma is shame. There is both intergenerational trauma and intergenerational shame. Like their trauma, I breathed my parent's shame into my body like I did the air around me~just as my beloved daughters breathed in my own. In their ways, both of my parents shamed me but it was my dad, his breath smelling of whiskey and cigarettes, who would get into my face, jabbing his finger so close to my nose I was cross-eyed, and say, in his most disgusted voice, repeating my full name after each incantation, Shame on you, Debby Suoja, shame on you; my poor little 5, 7, 9-year-old frozen in place, utterly alone, annihilated, spirit felled by the monstrous toxicity that is shame; that I am shame. Though that is only one, and definitely not the most powerful of the host of reasons that I know shame and its effects on me, on my relationships, on my ability to thrive, like I know the back of my own hand, though some of those do also involve my father.

When my girls were kids I used to French braid their hair. I would pick up hair from the top of their heads, separate it into three pieces, braid those together and then with my baby finger, pick up more hair and weave it in, first one side, and then the other, weaving and braiding until at the very end, when I put the rubber band in it, and there, in the little tail, it was all one again. That is what trauma, addiction, and shame are like for me. All braided together in a way that I have no idea where one begins and the other ends. 

But I do know this. It is not my fault. It is not my fault anymore than it was my father's fault, or my grandfather's, or my mother's, or the tv actor's, or Hunter Biden's, whose struggle has so pathologically become part of our national narrative, whose losses and traumas are staggering, whose pain is unfathomable. It is not shameful to have found a way when so isolated and in such anguish to soothe one's pain. It is a natural impulse, and kudos to the spirit for doing the best it could. And now, with all of the contemporary knowledge about trauma and about addiction, after so many years and decades of struggle, the door opens not to more shame, but to understanding. And understanding paves the way to love, and love brings us face to face with the Buddhist's Goddess of Compassion, Quan Yin, She Who Hears our Cries, She Who Feels our Wounds. And these three, understanding, love, and compassion become the new strands in the braid, one small plait at a time, weaving the way to wholeness, and to healing. 

Fresh Air Musings

Last night I opened my window for only the second time in a month, since lightning strikes started dozens of fires around the Bay Area and our skies filled with thick smoke. The last time I could open a window was for a solid day and a half two weeks ago, even though it is the height of our summer season when fresh breezes always flow daily through windows, ruffling curtains in a way that makes me suddenly want to sing. Then prevailing winds changed, and the apocalypse arrived again only this time in the form of a low, eerie ceiling of dark orange that blanketed the entire area for a full day, prompting end-of-days headlines, until we settled back in to just the general smoke-filled sky and the alarming readings on the PurpleAir air monitoring site; the crushing of yet another normal. 

        It is staggering what we~what I~take for granted. The privileges that I live with each and every day that are not even a thought; that are so routine they have never even made it onto the periodic gratitude lists that I try~and fail~to maintain with any kind of regularity; my gratitude "practice" much more haphazard and casual, try as I may to be that person who nightly pulls out her pretty journal and lists in beautiful cursive all of those things that she is eternally grateful for. 

        I am nebulous at best on the word WOKE but if nothing else, these last years since the 2016 election have been a minefield of opportunity, a serious chance day in and day out to wake up and realize my absolute fortune in life. And not just that, but to open not only my eyes but my heart to the vast amount of suffering in our country and around the world. Then, these last six months of COVID have upped the ante remarkably, like a PhD program: Piled Higher and Deeper. 

        It's not that I have whined per se so much as grieved, especially the losses that have come since the virus. Yet even these, like going months without seeing my precious little granddaughter, are seriously benign when I look around; except when my arms themselves ache to hold her soft, sweet body in them, except when she says, in her two-year-old innocence, Grammy, when can you come here again? the way her voice raises slightly at the end of the string of words belying her confusion, her uncertainty, her own heart's longing. Those days, even though I know, trust me, I know how fortunate I have been, I do, for a short time anyway, plummet. 

        COVID has given me one thing. It has given me, for the first time in ten years, a garden. When there was nowhere to go and nothing to do, I figured out a way to have a very small garden in my very small patio and when nurseries opened for curbside pickup I was there, mask on, again and again picking up pots and dirt and flowers, and now, just out my window, there are pink roses and lavender and coneflowers and pincushion flowers and yarrow and begonias and more all crammed together in the small space of dirt and in surrounding pots. 

        But the fires have taken even that, taken my serene mornings out there, where for a little while I could practice yes, gratitude, but also, amnesia. Could commune with the plants, the water in the fountain, the birds and bees, forgetting for whole chunks of time the horrendousness of life out there, the terror of where this country is heading; the deep shit we are in on this, our beloved planet. And more, they've taken my sense of being safe in my own home and community, something that for so many of my years was not the case, but has been the case now for the last decades of my adulthood.

        I have known my own share of suffering. I have complex post traumatic stress, the complex part meaning repeated and multiple incidences of trauma. From that came a brutal form of OCD called Pure O OCD that terrifies me with worst-case scenarios in both thoughts and living color images re myself and my loved ones. But I have never, even in a challenging childhood, had to worry about the basics. Though it is true that I was not always safe, there was clean air and water and most of the time food and always a roof over my head, healthcare, education, and an environment free from rockets and bombs and snipers. I have never had to make the agonizing decision to leave my home for an overcrowded boat or a deplorable refugee camp. I have never had to watch my children starve. Had to make a choice between an insidious virus and my family's security. I never had to worry about being killed for walking down the street simply because of the color of my skin. Though as a woman, my body was ripe for exploitation, and I am part of the huge #MeToo collective, several times over. I can glimpse now, thanks to our president, a bit of what it must be like to live in a would-be totalitarian regime, to watch with growing anxiety one by one, some days subtly, other days not so much, the tick tock of freedom and rights and civil liberties and truth and the rule of law being abandoned, then full-on buried; along with untold and unnecessary cruelty, suffering, and death.

        So here I sit, in the middle of the oft experienced tension of the validity of my own pain versus the pain of others. The truth is, we can always find someone whose circumstances are far worse, whose real suffering is seriously more monumental. Still, that does not negate our own pain, our own losses, our own grief, our own experiences, not for a moment. All loss is loss. And our own pain is our own pain.

        Nor is it even the point, though my mind loves to distract me in that way. The point is that I now know, apropos of nothing~or everything~that opening a window, that feeling the fresh air on my skin, that watching the curtains dance, is a luxury. That hanging out with my flowers is a luxury. That watching the hummingbird at the feeder is a luxury. That having a feeder to bring them to, and clean water and sugar to put in it is a luxury. That sleeping at night in a peaceful place is a luxury. And on and on.   

        Sometimes I wonder if the reason that I can't keep a regular gratitude practice is because there are so many things to be grateful for, I mean so many things, an endless list of things, notebook after notebook full of them really, and including the fact that I actually have a beautiful, amazing granddaughter to miss during shelter in place. Or, maybe it's because there is just so staggeringly much suffering in the world, everywhere I turn is anguish, my own and the world's, the future so unbearably uncertain it is heartbreaking. Just to have a notebook is a luxury, a privilege. Not just one pen but a host of colorful pens to choose from. The ability and the time and the place to write. And on and on. 

        So here I sit, precious fresh air hitting my cheek, wondering how really we live in such a broken world, how we navigate a landscape so filled with opposites, with beauty and despair, privilege and poverty, so much to be grateful for, so much that breaks our hearts into such tiny little pieces. 

With Love,

Debby 

From Exile

Each that we lose takes part of us;
A crescent still abides,
Which like the moon, some turbid night,
Is summoned by the tides.

~Emily Dickinson

I remember once years ago driving by San Francisco's Ocean Beach, looking for places to take pictures. I was past the deepest part of the depression and dark night that had come over me after my marriage ended but I was still depressed. And I was tired of feeling that way, but even more, I was tired of bemoaning it, and I was especially tired of the fear of it. As we turned toward Golden Gate Park, out of nowhere a thought arrived: what if you feel this way for the rest of your life? Wouldn't you want to make the best of it? 

You can't photograph an epiphany but that moment is etched in my memory. Everything was gray: the Pacific, the sky, the smudgy line of horizon; the entire landscape except the long, thick bank of windswept Monterey Cypress trees, with their deep green foliage, and the weathered brown wood of the great Dutch windmills that lined the west end of the park. 

Yes~

Yes, I would want that. 

Lately I've been visited a lot by my young adult self, and want so much to write about her, but I'm not quite sure how without seeming trite, without reducing her or her experience to cliché. Or being overly sentimental, because the truth is I am feeling so sentimental toward her. She was so up for life, in spite of a hard childhood, in spite of being so alone during those years. She was creative, passionate, and adventurous, she and her little blue car constantly on the move. What she adored, she adored with gusto: music, books, movies, her cat; her first 35mm camera that took surprisingly good photos, and guitar, with its warped neck but surprisingly good sound. That strawberry scented lotion she would drive all the way to Berkeley for, already open and spread on her hands and arms so that the car was filled with its heady scent on the long drive home. How she loved to create her space, making the most of what there was, with plants and posters and sun pouring in through opened curtains.

It's no coincidence that in therapy my therapist and I have begun to explore "parts," those aspects of ourselves that for so many reasons had to split off, who exist side by side with the Self, the innate, authentic being within each of us. Through loss and pain and trauma and abandonment and neglect and isolation, we unconsciously exile those parts that make life too difficult, in order to do the very best that we can to survive.

The out-of-focus flowers in a still life painting.

At twenty-two, she fell in love with someone completely unexpected, who pursued her in spite of her inexperience and perceived imperfections~which were many. Those months were like a miracle, and those mornings, when she would wake up next to him, golden light filtering in through the window, were like a dream. So much so that when he ended it on a gray day not long before Christmas, before it could even fully blossom, it was almost like it had never been. Except that it had. Except that she had trusted. Except that she had been so vulnerable in spite of everything; had opened in a whole new way, and she had blossomed, or had begun to anyway. And unable to grieve, she began to change in ways that were too subtle to see at first, growing over the months into an inability to take care of herself, her cat, her space, some days, even to breathe. 

For so long this story and the depression that followed it have been seen as defining moments that changed everything. And it's true. For something did change on a fundamental level, and though the depression eventually lifted, some big parts had gone missing, joining other parts already exiled from early in childhood. But I see now that those parts are not gone forever. And even more, that the precious core, the innate Self, the light that we are had not gone out at all; the age-old concept replaced by direct experience and clearer seeing. It was there whispering to me as I drove into Golden Gate Park that day, and there when I answered. It's there when I feel her in me, her aliveness, her big adventurous heart. It's there each time she shows up, baring it all, the pain and the joy, seeking to not be so unbearably alone, asking for respect and understanding and space; for tenderness, but not too much, and for love, but definitely not too much, and definitely not too quickly. 

You, Venus

Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus"

Bright Venus, in your

reflection I know myself

naked heart, bold rose

Morning Star Venus is back. I'm not sure how long she's been there, but I spied her yesterday morning when I peeked through the curtains as I got up before dawn to feed my sweet kitty.

Brightest heavenly body after the Sun and the Moon, Venus lives half of her life as Morning Star and half as Evening Star. I am most familiar with her as Morning Star, and for a good deal of last year she rose in the eastern sky out my bedroom window in the dark predawn each day and it became a ritual when I got up to look for her. When it was clear, which was most often, it was not only reassuring to find her there but uplifting, inspiring even, a feeling coming over me not only of being connected with something greater, but something holy, something eternal. When she disappeared, when I peeked through the curtains and the unblemished sky was a blank note, it surprised me the loss that I felt.

But now she's back, bold goddess of love and beauty~and so much more~you whom I fell hopelessly in love with when I first laid eyes on you in a picture of Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus.” Utterly captivating. And unlike any other painting ever~other than Starry Night of course~I dreamt of seeing you in person. A pipedream, really, like one day I’ll fly to the moon, one day I will live solely from a heart blazing with love, one day he will call again.

But then, there I was, a perfect spring day in the vibrant Firenze, home of the David and the Renaissance itself. My youngest daughter and I had walked along the Arno River and stood in line at the Uffizi where we were entertained by a comical street Cupid. In the door, up the stairs, and before I knew it we were standing before it, before you. Larger than any painting I had ever seen, over five feet tall and nine feet wide, its beauty though expected, was staggering. The rich colors and textures, the movement and detail, the vivid imagination. That was the day I lost myself to you for good. With your tender innocence, your wholly unexpected vulnerability; the way your whole body tilted slightly as if blown by the breeze itself; how tentatively you held your feet~thick like an infant’s~on the half shell. And how the wind tossed your strawberry hair into those swirling ripples. Then pink roses, pink roses! that floated as if by magic all around you.

Sometimes, like yesterday morning, you are accompanied by the delicate crescent moon, also rising. Those mornings I stand agape at your brilliance. You and the moon together like that, our two most powerful symbols of the feminine. Not as in femininity, but as in The Feminine, the profound yin principle, the necessary~though completely lacking in our world~balance to the masculine's out of control yang dominance. The Divine Feminine, without which we will not survive; our precious Earth, which holds me as I gaze, in such heartbreaking peril.  

(Your birth story says it all. Born fully grown of the foam of your father's severed genitals, if there is not a symbol there, then there are no symbols anywhere ever.)

To think of Venus simply as the goddess of romantic love as we do is not only to diminish her, like we do all women, but to diminish our very experience of her. As though she, as though we, as though love or passion or intimacy or affection or sweetness or grace or pleasure or beauty or cherishing~all her gifts to humanity~could ever be so one dimensional. Though she is that, too, vexing goddess of romantic love, and I have known her intimately in that guise, including her darker side, experienced with the loss of love.

In The Goddess, Christine Downing calls Aphrodite~Venus' Greek counterpart and basically her identical twin~creatrix, a life force, and the "giver of life." Born of the sea, water being the element of emotion and feeling, she is, at her foundation, the goddess of feeling. Still, I am surprised that as I write about her, I find myself not merely thinking about her, but feeling her. Feeling her always in relation with something other, her divine gift to us, intimacy, be it with her essence, with a lover, a rose in the garden, a beautiful painting or poem, my daughters and granddaughter; love, loss, life itself. As you flood my entire being I am seeing just how long you have been my companion, how since childhood and young adulthood you have not only enlivened me, but given me such thirst for life. 

They say planets don't twinkle, and maybe that's true. But except for those few days every nine months when Venus travels behind the moon to switch it up between morning and evening and back again, she is so bright she is practically effervescent. Day in and day out she shines, since the beginning of time, and for billions of years into the future, until the universe collapses into itself, or explodes, however it will come to an end, whether we are still here or not. I see you, sweet Venus, only goddess to ever be portrayed naked and so wholly vulnerable. But even more, I feel you, and I take seriously your invitation to move from head to heart, to walk and live and love exposed and vulnerable, holding nothing back, however long it may take, however long I shall live.