"Keep me, I pray thee, whole. Not as the dust."

It took feeling wonderfully happy to realize I have been sad for a very long time.

This is not to say (see here for a lovely short essay titled thus) that I have not felt any happy in between or amongst sad. Or that sad will not continue to appear in my life. In fact, my heart has become quite serious about feeling all kinds of things lately (are you getting this sense too, or is it an inside-looking out sort of thing?), which is indicator number one that sad, as a way of life, is on it's way out. Sad does not like to be interrupted.

So long sad.

The cause of wonderfully happy? Only the rain at three in the morning or a dinner table of family and friends or a nice poem. Which is to say nothing is the cause that hasn't always been the cause, but something has been working inside my heart, healing healing healing. Putting things back together, but slowly.

More on the rain.

I have a very good life. A very good life. I feel lucky to be alive, to be human, to be part of this blur and thrash of mortality.

Someone died during the Ragnar Relay, got hit by a drunk driver, someone with a family and a future. I don't want to be dramatic because that cheapens things, but I do want to grieve out loud.

Someone died this weekend. Someone dies every weekend. Someone died five minutes ago and someone is dying right now. I don't mean to sound morbid or calloused or depressed: to live is to die. No way around it. But we try so hard to prevent dying (what other inevitable process do we resist and resent as much, drain money into, obsess over?--besides aging, which is just the body's warning that the end is not far off.) We fight so hard to stay here and for what? The people? The beauty? The fear of the darkness ahead? We cannot learn how to die, really; we'll never know how it feels, really; until it is our turn. And for some people, they are gone before they know it, transformed into an incomprehensible state of being before saying goodbye.

How do you properly say goodbye to this life?

"Where else could I dwell," Scott Russell Sanders asks, "except in this familiar flesh?"

Today I walked in the rain. My pants were soaked and my feet were soaked and my sweater was splotchy and soaked. My hair, weighted with water, fell over and into my eyes. And all I saw was colors. Everything was dripping, slipping down; the colors were leaving blank bodies behind and crowding the ground with a puddley rainbow mess. That's how sadness feels sometimes. That's how thinking about people dying feels too.

"And as I watch the drops of rain weave their weary paths and die, I know that I am like the rain: there but for the grace of you go I."

I am amazed by the duality of things: the mystery of life and death descending upon us hand in hand, the kinship of joy and sorrow. The line intersecting the circle at a point called now.

Here's a photo of me feeling lucky to be alive.

Ragnar

Running.
Running.
Running (that strongly resembles limping. Which is fair, after 9 miles of hills.)
Pretending that running is fun. Liars.When not running, peeing. And admiring local flora and fauna. If you are scared of the burros during your run, race rules allow you to get in your van. We all know burros can be dangerous.

to women with thoughts in their heads

what follows takes a little braveness on my part, perhaps more than i've had on this blog to this point. so stop reading or be kind (but never, ever coddling.)

i have a lot on my mind in a heart sort of way. by which i mean i really care about the things on my mind so my distraction is compounded. the whole me is out for lunch. pondering. pondering. feeling. pondering. note: i will never apologize for feeling. i will also never apologize for expecting other people to feel too, even if they are men. (in case this sounds very stereotypical, this is a reaction to several recent conversations and, actually, a whole heap of foundational experiences.) the notion that feelings are the province of women--i refuse.

with my girlfriends, or perhaps inspired by my girlfriends, i have been asking, why is it so hard to love ourselves?

i see myself in the mirror; i see my face critiquing my face, my shape, my size, and the spirit beneath it all, and i know i am participating in a ritual. i am not alone, fighting against the darkening sky of social pressure and medical manipulation, redefining beauty as how i look instead of how others look, how i treat my body instead of how much i weigh, how i feel about myself instead of how others feel about me.

i love this woman. for her, about her, i feel deeply.

i cannot separate my identity from her, nor do i want to. she is strong. gracious. intelligent. committed. beautiful in my eyes. she loved her body till the end; loves it still, i imagine, from a distance. and yet, i learned the ritual from her, inherited a simultaneous gratitude and disgust. i saw her dissatisfaction in retail fitting rooms and the safety of her bedroom. looking at photographs. i remember sitting with her on the couch, flipping through newly developed pictures of a trip to the desert and hearing her bemoan the size of her stomach. she didn't know then, wouldn't know for months, that it was the cancer creeping into her space, taking territory by sleuth. so maybe this one time, she was right to cast a disapproving eye. i don't know. i know that i feel very sad when i think of her seeing her body as though she had let herself down, done something wrong, failed in some way, when in reality, it was never her fault.

unlike most rituals, this one in front of the mirror is isolating. we only see the faults in ourselves. my mom thought imperfection was her curse, not mine too. i was perfect in her eyes; my body was perfect. i felt the same way about her. i feel the same way about my friends. i appreciate the diversity around me. i do not appreciate the diversity of me. i cannot hear a response to my appearance without cringing, whether it is a compliment or a critique. this is the place i have come to. i do not want to hear that i am beautiful because i don't trust the words and i don't trust the people saying them.

maybe men feel this way too. maybe a lot of women don't feel this way. i don't know. while i don't think this is specifically a gender issue, i care about being a woman and i speak as a woman. i believe i have an important voice that should not be silenced, even by my own fears, especially by others' fears. my beauty is my power, my voice, the thoughts in my head, and my feelings. i read a blog yesterday about a girl with an eating disorder. as i read, i thought This is the power of blogs. this is what they are for, voices reaching other voices, individuals sending up whispers that find their way into shouts of collective humanity. the stories that aren't told are forgotten. the stories that aren't told are forgotten.

sometimes people ask questions, the answers to which mean life or death, faith or flounder. (church, in its perfect state (for me), would be full of people asking these questions.) this is my question. why is it so hard to love ourselves?

i'm having such a very hard time doing my work

which leads me here, old blog.

i had the most splendiforous weekend. the things that happened outside of me were only slightly better than the things that happened inside of me (this is a strange sentence because it could imply swallowing a penny or conceiving a child or kidney stones or something, where all i really mean is that i felt and thought a lot of nice things; also a strange sentence because how often do nice things happen outside me without corresponding to nice things inside me or vice versa--probably fairly often actually.... i'm confused.)

anyway, i'll post more pics, but i wanted to start with this hilarious video. hilarious for several reasons.
1. yodeling is always funny.
2. yodeling on horses is even funnier.
3. yodeling on horses while trying to get them to run is funny too.
4. look at marie's face when laine kicks starfire into gear. very funny.
5. notice my determination to keep yodeling and filming despite running, being left in the dust, etc. kind of funny.

p.s. you can't hear that well, but dave, marie, and laine were all yodeling too.