Jasper found this soldier on a fence yesterday while on a long walk. He brought him home and said, “He needs you to rescue him.”
The figurine is now sitting on my Anker Bluetooth speaker. Jasper cleverly remarked, “Ah, you’re his anchor.”
I think frequently about a line from the Gloria Anzaldua poem, “Letting Go,” in which she writes, “Nobody’s going to save you.”
I think about other writers who suggest that many of us save just as many others every day through subtle acts, sometimes great ones.
In spite of my profound sense of messiness, of near-drowning in the day-to-day, my son has a sense that I am capable of being an anchor for another.
Probably I have been his anchor these last decades. This gives meaning to days, weeks, even years during which I haven’t been able to understand the “why” of life.
Even wrecked, we matter.

It is important to hold the understanding that you are going through something. What feels like the end, what feels like forever, is not. It is a stone on the path.

There is a stone circle on Tohono O’odham land, in front of the Catholic mission, with all directions marked, but the paths from each are non-linear, almost meandering, dropping off into spaciousness – one cannot see a tangible meeting of the paths. There are no neat quadrants, no straight lines.

It feels like the open sky or the deep ocean.
If feels like everything exists there. As if in the dust of that implied center is vaguely visible the story of the universe.
And when the wind comes up, the story plays there, in the cyclone.

I last wrote, “becoming nobody.” (If words are spells, I am a wizard.) What comes after becoming nobody? What arises from what feels like nothing? How do the forces of the universe conspire to create connection? If there is a destiny, a reason, for each life, what choices belong to each of us? And what of time and timing? Perhaps what feels like waiting or stillness is allowing for movement elsewhere.

It dawned on me that if I wanted to change my life, I would, or would have by now, if I were deeply dissatisfied with it.

I must not be.
I have nothing to run from. I AM the power of “staying with.” Even as the wind comes up.
My family is here. Three generations. We are healthy in our own right, and with each other.
I have work. I contribute to my community.
I have a home of eighteen years.
I walk every morning in the open spaces with my dogs.
I witness my son’s life daily.
 
Are there longings? Absolutely.
But, also, this is beauty.
 
This moment of being.
Of stopping.
Of no conflict.
Of dog toes and human toes in their right places.
Resting.
Breathing.
At peace.
 
For those who ask what my path has been with rites of passage, this is it:
A whole human being.
It is not a job. It is not for profit. It is not even a calling.
It is only and ever about becoming fully human.
And once that is known, it is lived. Differently for each.
Simple.
Not simple.
 
This isn’t to say that I have arrived.
Or that anyone does, ever, permanently.
(Ask me about partnership and intimacy. Ask me about self-love and forgiveness. Ask me about fear.)
The wheel keeps on turning, season upon season, as one is ready
or not.
 
Love you!
 

​It’s like I can touch her and then she’s gone. There is interference. Static. Someone else’s needs arise, whether at work or at home, a student or child. Even the dogs have needs, the cat, too (don’t be fooled by the nonchalance).

But she is there, intermittently embodied. I want her for more than a moment, more than a fragmented thought. How am I to reach her given the demands of the external and the limits of her functionality?
​
This is how. You must find her in language. If she asks to write to you, if she writes to you, take it as a gift. You are getting the most of her. More than a conversation, more than her body. Let her write to you.

Excerpt:

If everything in the land body has a purpose, like the wolf or the juniper, then what is ours — our human purpose — collectively, as a species? Leopold dichotomizes between the land body and the human body, yet he also speaks of ecology and the relationships of all things in the context of a system.

For instance, of what use is it that humans go into nature to excavate our own psyches? We do it. We are unique in our ability to do it. How does that contribute to the ecological whole?
​
Published in the Silver City Anthology, summer 2023.
​

greet the desert after a long absence
give thanks for rain

​find a place in the wide open
​
slip off shoes
​dance barefoot in a slow circle
sing
touch the ground with bare hands
ask the unanswerable questions
love the journey
say dreams out loud
​commit self in service, again
​whisper the names of beloveds
pray, thank you
watch the lightning
feel the gentle rain
listen to crickets
open heart even wider

​greet the desert after a long absence
​give thanks for rain

I listened to one of Thich Nhat Hahn’s talks and chants today in the kitchen – Day of Mindfulness at Blue Cliff Monastery. I’ve used his talks at various difficult times in my life, like a virtual sangha. I wept. I felt so angry yesterday. I heard myself say aloud that I wanted others to feel as badly as I did. Then I felt worse for that wish. This morning I understand that I was saying I needed others to help me hold the pain, because it felt like too much for me alone. I feel better now, somehow.
This made me think of a certain toddler I love, and her anger and her needing someone else to help hold the pain. Oh, child.
I know that we all suffer - every single one of us. Yet, when my pain is high, that awareness doesn’t help, it feels minimizing. The suggestion that someone else’s pain is worse also feels minimizing. We each have our own hardest thing.
When my own pain has passed, I am able again to take my place in the collective sangha and help to hold the pain of others. Each of us needs moments of feeling held, I think. What that looks like varies.
My pain has passed for now. And I take my place in the collective, holding, feeling gratitude.
Happy new year, day, morning.​