Til Kingdom Come

When I was a little girl, I went to church with my Mom and my sister most Sundays. My Dad stayed home -- he was (and is) a non-believer. I was all over the map -- sometimes I thought I was really feeling it, really getting something out of sitting in that big, beautiful Episcopalian church with the funny smell of incense and old people all mixed together, and other times I felt I was standing in a room with a bunch of people who'd lost the ability to think or speak for themselves and could only recite the words they were told to recite. One of the phrases I remember saying but not understanding was "Til Kingdom Come" -- it sounded really ominous, but I didn't know what it meant.

This morning my ipod played this song, which sounds a bit to me like Chris Martin and the gang pondering some religious issues and maybe even, as I have, coming to understand faith by falling in love:

Still my heart and hold my tongue

I feel my time

My time has come

Let me in

Unlock the door

I never felt this way before

And the wheel just keeps on turning

The drummer begins to drum

I don’t know which way I’m going

I don’t know which way I’ve come

Hold my head inside your hands

I need someone who understands

I need someone, someone who hears

For you I’ve waited all these years

For you I’d wait 'til kingdom come

Until my day, my day is done

And say you'll come and set me free

Just say you'll wait, you'll wait for me

I know a little something about the waiting of which they sing -- this whole long distance thing can get a little tough sometimes. It isn't something I planned on, or would have thought possible, but isn't that what faith is all about?

I'll Stand By You

One of the hardest things about being a Mom is having to watch your child in pain:

Oh, why you look so sad?

Tears are in your eyes

Come on and come to me now

Don't be ashamed to cry

Let me see you through

'Cause I've seen the dark side too

When the night falls on you

You don't know what to do

Nothin' you confess, could make me love you less

I'll stand by you, I'll stand by you...

That's all 100 percent true, and I'm going to try to get myself to believe that's enough, because as much as I'd like to, I only get to deliver on the second half of this next lyric:

Won't let nobody hurt you

I'll stand by you

I think the next time one of my kids feels sad that I'll play this song for them. Maybe it won't help, but along with talking it through with my man, I feel a ton better. There's a lot of wisdom and comfort to be found in these words:

So, if you're mad, get mad

Don't hold it all inside

Come on and talk to me now

Hey, what you got to hide?

I get angry too

Well I'm a lot like you

When you're standing at the crossroads

And don't know which path to choose

Let me come along

'Cause even if you're wrong

I'll stand by you...

The Way I Am

Heard this sweet song today and found it descriptive of many of my Saturday's feelings. I was chatting with a friend this morning about the push and pull of intimacy -- the urge to mother (and maybe sometimes smother) which then gives way to the urge to withdraw. To some degree the mothering is a natural, and even sweet part of love:

If you are chilly, here take my sweater.

Your head is aching, I'll make it better.

And it's likely no coincidence that baby is a term of endearment for lovers, and one I'm particularly fond of hearing come out of my lover's mouth (I also love it when he calls me kid):

Cause I love the way you call me baby.

And you take me the way I am.

This urge to mother is largely biological, I reckon, but the line needs to be drawn somewhere -- ideally just shy of the point where it takes more from me than I really have to give. Because that's what leads to the urge to withdraw -- not the mothering itself but doing it when I don't really have that energy to spare. Hopefully I'll just keep getting better at recognizing, and then lovingly communicating, where that line is.

In the meantime, I have to take issue with a couple of Ingrid's lyrics:

I'd buy you Rogaine when you start losing all your hair.

Sew on patches to all you tear.

No Rogaine required when your man is capable of embodying bald hotness (as mine is); and sewing? No. Take it to the tailor, honey.

But I love her take on the "words cannot express how forever this feels" phenomenon:

Cause I love you more than I could ever promise.

And, it bears repeating, there ain't nothing better than being loved like this:

And you take me the way I am.

You take me the way I am.

You take me the way I am.

Corduroy

It has come to my attention that I'm doing it again: taking care of other people in an effort to meet my own desire/need to be cared for. I'm pretty sure this is a holdover from my childhood. When I was a little girl and I needed to be taken care of, my Dad was often at work and my Mom was too sick to take care of me. As I got a little older, it was more common that my Mom was at work and my Dad was too sick to take care of me. In both cases, taking care of them was all I could do, but it didn't help me get my needs met!

Everything has changed

Absolutely nothing's changed

Now that I'm all grown up, I really try to sort out what I can do for myself and what I need others to help with. But every time I go through a big life adjustment, such as returning to full-time work, it feels like I'm batting blindfolded for a while again. And that just might be life, but it's also the way I respond to it that is problematic. When I feel my hold on my own life slipping, I turn my attention outward and start to give more to others.

Sure, it helps a little. It takes my attention off my discomfort with the increasing chaos in my own life, and it feels good to give to the people I love. But ultimately, I end up feeling more depleted when I don't get what I need.

The other problem I have is when I zero in on one person as being able to respond to the entirety of my needs. I've done this before in both friendships and romantic relationships, and right now, I'm right smack in the middle of doing it in that latter category. Meeting all of my needs wouldn't be possible if he were physically present, and it sure as hell isn't possible from a 1000 miles away. When we hung up the phone this morning, I cried, recognizing that the pattern I just described was happening again.

A few minutes later my daughter crawled in bed with me, and I tried to snuggle with her -- but she's not really one for a lot of physical closeness. And that felt hard. When I got to school, I saw my friend (who is one for physical closeness), who asked how I was doing. Having learned my lesson this morning, I very clearly stated how I was feeling and what I needed: "Not good. I'm not getting enough TLC." And then he gave me a giant hug and said he was here for me and an endless reservoir. So I lingered a little longer in that embrace, and then I felt a little better. I have to remember to share the wealth of my needs with all my people -- it takes a village for yours truly to get what she needs.

Oh yeah, the reason for picking this song. Make that two reasons:

1) I know no more effective salve for my wounded psyche than Eddie's voice

2) "I don't want to take what you can't give" ran through my head this morning after the phone call. It feels a little ironic that, when I looked up the lyrics, I saw that they were in fact:

I don't want to take what you CAN give

Hmmmm. That feels like a message. About accepting who people are and what they can give in this moment. I think I'll ponder that as I take my corduroy-clad ass off this bed and get to work on bringing the chaos under control...

Love is All Around

Yesterday morning at work, my inner policy wonk was feeling extremely satisfied as she listened to some world-class economists and public policy analysts talk about evidence-based budgeting. I feel so privileged to have landed in a space where it feels like I'm getting to use my big old brain for things that really matter to the people living in the same state as I do. I'm not an NFL fan, so I don't feel the fraternal connection that so many are feeling around the Packer victory, but I feel it on a human level.

These feelings were underscored by -- hold onto your hats here -- the saying written on the inside of a Dove chocolate that was consumed during the talk(s). It said: "open your eyes to the love all around you." And as I sat in a room filled with people who likely disagreed about a lot of things, I really could:

...feel it in my fingers

I feel it in my toes

Love is all around me

And so the feeling grows

It is written on the wind

That's everywhere I go

So if you really love me

Come on and let it show

And I really do believe the more we let it show, as The Troggs advise us, the better off we're all going to be in this world!

Nothing Compares 2U

This powerful song from one of the most phenomenal female vocalists EVER (in my opinion) has been on my mind for the past several weeks, but it just hasn't exactly fit. It's a little too melancholy, a little too waaahhh it's over:

It's been seven hours and fifteen days

Since you took your love away

I go out every night and sleep all day

Since you took your love away

Since you been gone I can do whatever I want

I can see whomever I choose

I can eat my dinner in a fancy restaurant

But nothing

I said nothing can take away these blues

'Cause nothing compares

Nothing compares to you

As opposed to my feeling which is more along the lines of: waaahhh he's not here anymore.

Last night, though, as I sat eating my dinner in my favorite fancy restaurant in town with a friend, it ran through my mind again. The restaurant in question is one I haven't been to in probably about three years -- it was the place my ex-husband and I most often went to celebrate special occasions. The food is sooo good -- why did I stay away so long? I don't know, exactly. I couldn't bring myself to go there on a date (I also didn't really date any dudes who suggested it), and somehow in my mind it was reserved for a romantic dinner.

Not so. I'm here to say that I enjoyed the food, and the ambiance, every bit as much as a divorced woman out with a good friend as I did when I was there with my husband. Her company too, was as engaging as I would've had with my current love. So, Sinead, I guess I would say I hear what you are saying, and I've totally been there, but I'm not there anymore -- thank god!

Of course, when I got home and had only my full belly to keep me company, I was feeling the waaahhh a little more again...

River

Last night I didn't leave the office until about 6pm, but I left in pretty good spirits. I'd had a good, productive day, made a couple of good connections, gotten a little exercise in...

So it felt a little incongruous when my internal jukebox started to spin this song as I walked to the parking garage (one more week of having a free parking spot which, when combined with below zero temps, makes the auto-commute pretty irresistible). This is usually a song I dial up on the ipod when I feel really sad or uncomfortable and want to hear that feeling sung to me in Joni's gentle tones. But I didn't feel particularly sad. And it wasn't Christmas. And it was these lyrics I heard:

Oh I wish I had a river

I could skate away on

Not the ones that make me giggle and get to think about Joni Mitchell as being something other than the maternal energy she is for me:

And he loved me so naughty

Made me weak in the knees

I just couldn't figure it out. As the night wore on, I had a less-than-completely satisfying conversation with the one person who always makes me feel better and when I hung up I did feel a little sad, but I still didn't really know why. Then I drove out to teach my yoga class and nobody came. It didn't feel awesome, but I had known some of my regulars wouldn't be there so I wasn't completely crushed. And then later I talked to my son and mentioned that I was home early because no one came to class. "Oh Mom, I'm sorry," he said. "I thought people liked your class?" And then I just started to cry, maybe partly because of the rejection but mainly because of the sweetness of my child's recognition that that didn't feel good.

And then, as he told me about his day, the mystery of the song choice became crystal clear: he'd been ice skating for pe class that day. He's not a very capable skater, and there's another kid in his class who tends to like to pull immature little pranks on him whenever possible. This other kid can move on skates, and took advantage by skating past my son and pulling his ski mask off and skating away with it. That had to have been a shitty feeling, I told him, and I agreed that it wasn't very mature. What I really wanted to do was take him in my arms and play him this song, but that will have to wait a couple more days:

I wish I had a river so long

I would teach my feet to fly

Oh I wish I had a river

I could skate away on...

You Are the Rake

Perhaps the hardest thing we have to confront in this human form is the experience of having a love grow cold. It's hard to say exactly how it happens and it's comparatively easy, in retrospect, to find the fault lines that we failed to see or acknowledge in the early stages of a relationship. I think maybe the best response we can have to this phenomenon is to grieve the loss as we would a death, because that's exactly what it is in many respects. And when someone dies, we don't go back and find fault with them or with the reasons we chose them; we mourn the lack of what they added to our life.

This sad number from Sufjan Stevens is a dirge that could inspire waterworks in the toughest among us:

I never felt so safe

A line I once told her

Warm, resting place

Her arms on my shoulder

You are the rock

You are the rake

You are the one when I watch myself

We ran into a cave

When the wars came closer

She turned into a cave

Where it turned colder

I'm not sure exactly what it means, but I think it has something to do with the fertile ground that is left behind when a love dies. It's raw and it's uncomfortable but there's also so much opportunity if we are willing to get out the rototiller and prepare the soil for the next seed(s) to be planted. (Speaking of seeds being planted, check out this little beauty!)

I think maybe treating the loss this way leaves more room for both having faith that another love might really last as well as room for a new kind of relationship to form with a past love. Because despite what it may feel like at times, and as monumental a loss as it is, it is only the romantic love that has died, not your capacity to love -- that's still there (once that earth has been churned enough times) to allow you to love someone new and bridge a new relationship with the person with whom you once shared the closeness reserved for lovers.

Give Me Your Eyes

I'd never heard of Brandon Heath, but when I got on youtube today to find a song about seeing the world through another person's eyes, I stumbled on this little hottie and thought I'd found a winner.

Initially, I was going for a song that talked about the phenomenon of seeing the world, including yourself, through the eyes of your lover -- and how the world -- and you -- start to take shape in a different way when you allow that to happen.

The fact that Brandon's lyrics also cover the feeling I have every morning when I walk into work and greet all the homeless people by looking them in the eye and saying "Good morning!" is just an added bonus. I've been so, so, tempted to take them all to Starbucks for coffee, but so far I've managed to resist and instead just give them my eyes:

Give me your eyes for just one second

Give me your eyes so i can see

Everything that i keep missing

Give me your love for humanity

Give me your arms for the broken hearted

The ones that are far beyond my reach?

Give me your heart for the one's forgotten

Give me your eyes so i can see

Kiss

Heard this one coming out of the parking garage the other day after work, and it felt like a balm to my exhausted, stressed out body and spirit. Hearing his sensual voice felt like an escape hatch to a world I both wanted to be and felt a part of:

You don't have to be rich

To be my girl

You don't have to be cool

To rule my world

Ain't no particular sign I'm more compatible with

I just want your extra time and your

Kiss

I didn't feel angry that my man wasn't around to kiss -- I just generally felt happy to be party to what Prince was singing about.

Not so today. Today I felt angry about every bit of sexuality I encountered and couldn't have, from my ex-husband's three-day beard, to the bald dude at the coffee shop who didn't even seem to particularly like the woman he was sitting with, to my lover's voice on the phone. Suddenly, that mature, grown-up, go-with-the-flow woman had become a petulant child. That's a bad metaphor in this case, but you know what I mean. I was mad about what I couldn't have. To what do I owe these uncomfortable feelings? I don't rightly know. End of a stressful week? Handful of not so-well-handled parenting moments and then parting with my kids for a few days? That time of the month? Or maybe just the fact that it's been three weeks since this particular need has been met:

I just need your body baby

From dusk till dawn

Is that so much to ask? Apparently. Is it so much to ask for Prince to allow us to listen to his music on youtube? Apparently. The best I can do is this rather sweet but quite graphic video where Prince is at least singing it in the background...

Maybe tomorrow I'll wake up better able to go with what is again instead of being mad about what isn't?

Every Breath You Take

It was far too cold today to ride my bike to work, and because I had to be in for a training at 9am and I don't drop my kids off until 8:30am, the bus wasn't an option either. My favorite mode of transport is definitely my bike -- built in fresh-air time, exercise, emotional and physical release -- both before and after work. I like the bus too, for other reasons -- I get the New Yorker read, and I feel connected to other people in a way that I don't when I'm alone in my car.

But there's one thing the car is best for -- hearing tunes and singing my little heart out. This morning on my way to work I cranked it up and belted out The Police's classic version of this song. These lyrics felt particularly satisfying in the below zero temps with my man many states away:

Since you've gone I've been lost without a trace

I dream at night

I can only see your face

I look around but it's you I can't replace

I feel so cold and I long for your embrace

I keep crying baby, baby please

And then on the way home from work, I heard the-then-Puff-Daddy's tribute version to his fallen friend(s), and this time, I really heard the title lyric:

Every breath you take...

And I felt gratitude for every breath I still get to take, along with gratitude for the yoga that, by both practicing and teaching it, helps connect me to each breath on a deeper level. Things are heating up at my job, and today was the first yoga class I've made it to (as a student) in two weeks. This wouldn't be such a big deal if I were practicing at home, but that's fallen by the wayside too during the adjustment to my fast-paced full-time work.

Yesterday during a particularly busy day, my cell phone rang, and I looked at it and saw that it was a fellow yoga teacher and decided to answer it. She was calling with a question about a student who had a stiff neck and limited range of motion, and she was wondering how to help her. Get her to breathe, I told her -- exhaling out that tension is the surest way to regain flexibility. Same goes for me -- and that phone call was just the reminder that I needed. To exhale. Fully and completely. With every breath I take...

Hello Goodbye

I've never thought about it before, but some of the lyrics of this Beatles classic could just as easily be between parent and child as between lovers, including these:

You say yes, I say no

You say stop and I say go, go, go

And these:

I say high, you say low

You say why, and I say I don't know

Why did I think of this tonight? Because tonight my own little Beatle (my 10 year old mop-top) had a choir and band concert, and this was the opening number. And starting last night, we spent the 24 hours before the concert arguing back and forth about what he was going to wear and whether he needed to shower.

I lost, he won: he went to the concert in a white T-shirt and too-small sweats with a big ol' rat's nest in his (semi) greasy hair.

At least, I felt like I'd lost before I got to the concert. Once there, I just felt really proud of his courage to join the choir this year, his dedication to the trombone, and maybe most of all, his lack-of-concern for the superficial. He comes by that last one honestly -- when I apologized to his Dad for his unkempt appearance, he wasn't the least bit fazed by it. I would do well to take a page from their book on that one...

By Your Side

These cutie pies came frolicking out of my ipod this morning while I was puttering around getting ready for work, and this song really captures a feeling that I was trying to express to my friend last night on the phone. We were talking about how up and down being in love can feel -- how one moment you feel certain and as if you're on solid ground and the next moment you're wondering if you're crazy and planning your escape route. Part of that is just being human, and it's the up and down you'd feel about yourself and your own life even in the absence of your partner. But it gets projected onto your relationship because you think that being in love should somehow protect you from your own insecurities. But it doesn't.

I think the best relationships actually do the opposite: they reveal our insecurities and give us an opportunity to heal them. But we have to take those opportunities when they come, rather than allowing ourselves to fall into our typical patterns or let past wounds unconsciously control our present. How do we do that? By allowing ourselves to be vulnerable. And yeah, that can be a really frightening feeling.

After my man went home from this past visit and we had a couple of days without much contact, I freaked out a little and sent my friend an email saying "Did I ask for this? I was much more comfortable when I felt like he liked me more than I liked him and I felt like I had control." This is a friend who does not mince words -- she is, in fact, the friend who helped me see that cutting off my relationship because of distance when my heart said to stay in was just plain silly. "Oh yes you asked for this," she replied. "You hang in there. Methinks great things come from vulnerability."

Methinks she was right. I guess it's only been about a week, but I feel like I've entered a new phase that feels pretty damn solid. It isn't that I'm not going to have my ups and downs, or that my love isn't, or that we aren't together. It's just that stronger, louder and more resonant than all of that is the chorus of my mind, body, heart and soul, and they're singing:

I wanna be by your side...

War

Yesterday I finally finished watching The Hurt Locker, a powerfully affecting movie about the war in Iraq. It wasn't easy to watch, but it felt important to me to see it so that I don't manage to distance myself entirely from the experience of our soldiers. I don't have a TV, I don't watch the news, and I tend to limit my newspaper reading to the closer-to-home stories in The New York Times. It sort of needs to be that way for me so that all my energy to affect positive change in this world doesn't get sucked into the vortex of all the bad things that mankind has to endure.

The Hurt Locker was very effective in many ways, but most of all in revealing the humanity on both sides, which only served to underscore the senselessness of all the lives lost.

This song, which I remember hearing as a very little girl, captures that same senselessness:

War, it ain't nothing but a heartbreaker

War, it's got one friend

That's the undertaker

Ooooh, war, has shattered

Many a young man's dreams

Made him disabled, bitter and mean

Life is much too short and precious

To spend fighting wars these days

War can't give life

It can only take it away

Ooooh, war, huh

Good God y'all

What is it good for

Absolutely nothing

Say it again

I couldn't agree more, but I'm a peace-loving intellectual whose need to flirt with danger can be satisfied by doing a headstand in the middle of the room or swimming in an ocean where it is possible to encounter a shark. There are those among us whose need to flirt with danger is in an entirely different category, and the movie leaves us with the somewhat unsettling proposition that war may be good for more people than just undertakers. And I guess that's a good thing, at least as long as we insist on fighting them. Or maybe that's part of the reason we insist on fighting them? I don't know. It just seems like we could be using our valuable resources -- human and monetary -- for more life-affirming purposes. You know, like education.

Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough

Today's a big day for me. More than any other person living or dead, I draw inspiration for my life's work from Martin Luther King Jr. Every year on this day, I watch his incredible speech, and every year I hear something a little different. This year I was particularly struck by the portion where he talks about how, 100 years from the emancipation proclamation, we still had so much farther to go to get to true freedom for blacks:

"100 years later -- the negro is still not free. 100 years later the negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. 100 years later the negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land. So we've come here today to dramatize the shameful conditions. In a sense we've come to our nation's Capitol to cash a check -- when the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the constitution and the declaration of independence they were signing a promissory note... this note was a promise that all men -- yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as its people of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given its people of color a bad check -- a check that has come back marked insufficient funds..."

Though we've made some progress since 1963, we need look no further than Milwaukee Public Schools' dropout factories (large high schools that have failed to prepare thousands of poor black children for anything other than underemployment and prison) to see that we're still writing the same bad checks fifty years later.

Like Martin, I "refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt" -- and I refuse to believe we can't do better for our kids. For decades now, we've allowed teachers whose performance demonstrates that they do not have high expectations for themselves or their students, particularly students of color, and they do not have what it takes to educate these kids and give them an opportunity for something other than joining the generational cycle of poverty. It takes a lot -- most of all -- a belief that giving these kids a great education it is not only possible, but necessary -- our moral obligation. Is it the fault of ineffective teachers that poor blacks remain oppressed, particularly in large, segregated urban areas like Milwaukee? Of course not. Is there something we can do to deliver on America's promise that we're not doing by allowing them to stay in the classroom? Hell yes. Now is the time to change that.

Martin's words almost don't need a song, but the one that popped into my head as I fired up the speech today was MJ's Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough. How much is enough?

Martin says: "We will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream."

With the largest and most persistent achievement gap between blacks and whites in the country, I think it's safe to say that here in Wisconsin, we're falling far short of that mighty stream. I, for one, am going to take Michael's words as a mantra -- won't you join me?

Keep on with the force don't stop

Don't stop 'til you get enough

Can't Take My Eyes Off You

I just plain feel better when I meditate. When I woke up this morning, I'd had some tough dreams about a friend with whom I've fallen out of contact. Fully awake, I recalled a conversation I'd had with another mom during one of the two indoor soccer games I went to yesterday (both kids played) about nutrition. My kids aren't great eaters, and I was talking to her about the importance of teaching your kids the eating habits you want them to have for life. I feel like I'm falling short in this category as a parent and between those guiltys and the icky feeling from the dream, I didn't like the feel of the start to this Sunday.

So I reached over and pulled my laptop onto the bed and fired up Jack Kornfield's Mind Like Sky Meditation. Over the course of the next half hour, I felt peace returning with the recognition that my true self, my essence, is perfect, and yeah -- I can keep tweaking the human form -- but I can let thoughts and feelings about what I've done or haven't done pass through me rather than mistaking them for my being.

The meditation ends with these words:

"As you ready to open your eyes, know that the appearances that reveal themselves as sight in your eyes also are the play of experiences of this vast open mind and the great compassion that it holds. Open your eyes and enter the world now while you rest in the great stillness. Trust this refuge -- it is your own true nature. It is never too late to remember the true nature of your own mind -- in any moment, you can return, open, spacious, compassionate and free -- remember who you really are."

Beautiful. Shortly after the last bell chimed, itunes launched into a rockin' song with "can't take my eyes off you" as its refrain. (It was "Eyes" by the North Mississippi All-Stars -- I hadn't ever heard it and I'm not sure what it is doing in my itunes, but an unsuccessful search for it on youtube led me to this song, of which you can listen to Muse's version, the late Heath Ledger's, or this beautiful rendition by the incomparable Lauryn Hill, or even go all the way back to Frankie Valli's original if you're so inclined.)

This song presents the same juxtaposition as "Eyes"-- the peace that comes with knowing that what we're "seeing" is just a play of experiences and the chaos (in the best possible sense) that comes with the intensity with which we sometimes see (or even fixate on) a lover:

You're just too good to be true.

Can't take my eyes off you.

You'd be like Heaven to touch.

I wanna hold you so much.

At long last love has arrived

And I thank God I'm alive.

You're just too good to be true.

Can't take my eyes off you.

Sometimes it does seem like I can't take my eyes (or my mind) off my love. But I've learned, from Jack Kornfield and others, that it's what I can see and feel when I close my eyes that is most true. And when that inner knowing is in harmony with the eye candy I sometimes get to behold, I daresay it's powerful beyond what any song lyrics can describe...

Good Feeling

This band just really gets me. I remember thinking that the first time I ever heard a Violent Femmes song -- which was probably like 1986?

And when the ipod shuffled onto this tune this morning, I still felt these guys were (pretty much) speaking my truth:

Good feeling

Won't you stay with me just a little longer

It always seems like you're leaving

When I need you here just a little longer

Of course, when I heard this while in high school I was:

1) a lot less happy a human being

2) a lot less schooled in the Buddhist philosophy that it's best not to attach to any feeling, good or bad

But even as a happier woman and an operational Buddhist in many respects, I think it's safe to say I'd pretty much always like the good feelings to stay with me just a little longer...

Just Fine

I love me some Mary J., and when I stumbled on this song while searching for something else on youtube, it was, not surprisingly, apropos of something I've been chewing on: the word fine. Sometimes when it's uttered, it really means something good -- not just tacit approval, but real affirmation. As in: "Damn, you look fine!" I like to think that's the fine that Mary J. is talking about when she says "Just Fine." But what if, for Mary J. or any of the rest of us, a lot of the time when we say "that's fine" or "I'm fine" or even, Mary J. style:

Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, ooooh

Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, ooooh

Just fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, ooooh

You see I wouldn’t change my life, my life’s just fine

What if what we're saying is we're ok with it, but it could be better? What if she wouldn't change her life because it's safe and comfortable, and yes, fine, but maybe it could be superfine if she did change it?

I think she's wrestling, in this song, with being ok by herself -- just fine alone -- even liberated -- and embracing love:

Let it go…

Can’t let this thing called love get away from you

Feel free right now, going do what you want to do

Can’t let nobody take it away, from you, from me, from we

I get that. I'm kind of in the same boat. I'm just fine by myself in many ways. But lucky for me, I've had a chance to experience, during a couple of visits with my man, just how superfine I'm capable of feeling when I'm in love's embrace. And having experienced that, I don't think I'll ever settle for just fine again.

Old Man

When these lyrics started running through my head this morning, I thought it was because the last couple of days have been filled with conversations about being a parent and the choices it requires one to make that would have otherwise been a lot less complex. I had to make a decision this week to go on a trip for work (to a desirable locale where I could've visited friends for free and learned some things that would be useful for my job) or stay home to see my son act in a skit. I solicited advice from a number of people, including my ex-husband and lots of other people with kids of their own. My boss gave me the choice, and when I told him I was going to let the Mom card trump this time around, he was supportive.

But when I found this video of young Neil singing this song in the year I was born, I felt the profundity of this musical selection on a much deeper level. I love Neil Young, but I know him mostly as the "old man" he is now -- not this young man, not yet a father himself (though in the following year he'd have the first of three kids), singing about his own father, who'd had many affairs and eventually left his mother. Reading these lyrics, I hear a young man struggling with a difficult relationship with his father:

Lullabies, look in your eyes,

Run around the same old town.

Doesn't mean that much to me

To mean that much to you.

But I also hear a young man who's begun to see the humanity of his own flawed father:

Old man take a look at my life

I'm a lot like you

I need someone to love me

the whole day through

Ah, one look in my eyes

and you can tell that's true.

And recognize that now that he's grown up, what his father didn't (and maybe couldn't) give him could come from somewhere else. He might even have begun to realize that he could provide the love he didn't get from his Dad to his own children and thus join a cycle of healing that has been going on for centuries. I carried a lot of fear into parenthood that my children might have to endure what I did as a child. At the time, I couldn't recognize that living with that fear was keeping me from giving them the quality of presence that they deserved.

Nowadays, I feel freed by the understanding that it isn't my job to be a perfect parent (we're all flawed -- it's part and parcel of being human), nor is it my job to shelter my children from pain. It's just my job to be there with them while they learn to deal with it and find as much joy in the journey as I can. And there's so much to savor about being a parent: as my daughter crawled in bed next to me to listen to this great song, saying "I like Neil Young," I pulled her in close and said I did too...

Kite

Last night my favorite non-snuggling movie buddy and I went to see Black Swan. Despite the fact that I'd read two reviews of the movie, it wasn't at all what I expected. I'd heard it was campy, and that made me think it would be hard to feel that the characters were real and get pulled into the movie.

Au contraire -- it was super intense -- and I was definitely pulled in -- so much so that I winced and hid my eyes on multiple occasions when the bloody, gruesome aspects of the movie were onscreen. At dinner afterward, my friend described it to our adorable server as a horror movie. It was, in some ways; it was also an exploration of psychosis. It was hard to tell what was actually happening in the movie and what was a psychotic episode -- by design -- until the director clued us in during the next scene.

Some of the psychotic episodes were terrifying and some were just plain hot. As I said to my pal after the movie: "If I go crazy, I want it to involve a beautiful woman going down on me and not watching another woman stab herself in the face repeatedly with a letter opener!" (Yes, both were scenes in the movie, and it was more obvious during the letter opener scene that it wasn't supposed to be real.)

The movie was also about the fact that perfection is not about control, but surrender; passion involves both light and bite; and claiming oneself involves leaving the womb. These same themes are beautifully explored in this song:

Floating and fighting, like a kite on a string

Till you cut through my tether and changed everything

From the sky you looked small, but I loved you the same

So I darted back quickly to spell out your name

And when they say that I'm just a terrible kite

You'll tell them you're proud of my marvelous flight

At the start of the film, the dancer's mother overpowers her and treats her like a little girl, and as a result, she is too good - virginal -- uncorrupted, but also dispassionate.

Don't hide yourself inside till I'm old

O my dear you're a threat to the bad we all see

I'm beside myself for the touch of your lips

Or the grace of your eyes that can see good in me

But without her goodness, she wouldn't have been picked in the first place, and without her mother's support, she might not have been able to sustain the harsh world of high-level dance performance. Even when depicted in such an extreme fashion in a movie like this, nothing is all good or all bad -- it's more a matter of the dancer needing to find all the parts of herself in the midst of it all. And it's when she grows up and claims her sexuality that we can better feel her power...

What's My Name?

You know what one of my favorite things about love is? The universality of it. I don't own any Rihanna CDs. She's not my favorite artist by a long shot, and I don't feel any particular kinship with her -- but she speaks to me sometimes -- usually at Functional Fitness because that's where I most often hear her. Tonight in class, when this song came on, I didn't connect with it at first, but when she sang:

You’re so amazing, you took the time to figure me out

Thats why you take me, way past the point of turning me on

I felt she was speaking my truth. It's pretty fascinating for me, a girl who tried to orchestrate as many of her experiences as she could in an effort to maintain some semblance of control over a world that often didn't deliver on the good stuff, to cede that control, and find myself with someone who took the time to figure me out -- and have it take me places I didn't know were open to me. It can be pretty intense, and there's no guarantee about how it'll turn out, but every time I feel a little twinge of this:

You bout to break me, I swear you got me losing my mind

I take a deep breath, and remind myself how awesome it is to get to bear witness to him, to myself, to us, in this moment -- and that's really all we've got. Or all we need. Or both?

Gimme Shelter

I got home late tonight after going straight to an appointment and errands after work, followed by teaching yoga. I stopped on my way home to pick up some thai food because I knew I wouldn't feel like cooking. I also stopped at my kids' other house to pick something up, and when I arrived home I felt a couple of things: 1) Relieved to be home; 2) Wishing I was coming home to my kids or my man or better yet, both. That's the way it's supposed to work, isn't it? Not necessarily, and today, I got to bear witness to the fact that although it's supposed to work that everyone gets to experience the relief in arriving home, some of us aren't so fortunate.

When I got to work today, I parked right near an entrance to the Capitol, and as I got out of the car, I realized that draped over the giant, convex air vent was a sleeping homeless person. It was one of the saddest sights I've ever had to behold -- the temperature outside was probably about 10 degrees.

I wish there was something I could do about this besides dedicate this classic Stones tune to that poor soul who is likely braving the elements again tonight, but alas, it's the best I can do:

Oh, a storm is threat'ning

My very life today

If I don't get some shelter

Oh yeah, I'm gonna fade away

Strange Fruit

On my way back from visiting my sister this morning, I drove past a billboard alongside the highway bearing the following message:

Supported Obama? Embarrassed Yet?

And if it had just been those words, it would have been very similar to one I saw and blogged about previously (Respect). But there's more. This billboard also had a picture of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush smiling, as if to suggest that the billboard's patron was someone or some group who supported both Clinton and Bush but not Obama. I racked my brain trying to come up with a possibility, and the only thing I (or the three friends I talked to about it) could come up with was racists. Who else would support both Clinton and W. but not Obama? Maybe there's another explanation, but it makes me really sad to think that it just might be someone who believes any white man can do the job but a black man, by virtue of the color of his skin, is somehow embarrassing.

This is one of the most powerful songs ever written about racism -- in it, the Strange Fruit to which Billie Holiday refers are the lynched black people hanging in the trees. The song was written in the 30s, and in some respects, we've come a long way since then. But not as far as we need to come, since I can still apply her lyrics to that billboard and other examples of racism that still go on every day:

Here is a strange and bitter crop

I think it is safe to say that you'd have to be pretty bitter to pay for that billboard. We've gotten past the lynchings, can we get past the bitterness?

Beloved Wife

Riding home on the bike path earlier this week, a huge grin spread across my face as I pondered the fact that even at my age and with one marriage come and gone, I could still be married to someone for 40 or 50 years. Granted, the size of the grin was in direct proportion to how happy it makes me to be with my current love.

But even if I don't end up married to him, it's huge that it makes me happy to contemplate 40 or 50 years with anyone. I didn't feel that way over a decade ago when I met my first husband, and while that may have been influenced by who he is or what he offered in a long-term partnership, I think the bigger factors were my lack of faith in love between a man and a woman and my own lack of desire to contemplate being on this earth for 40 or 50 years, let alone dealing with someone else for that long.

Yes my friends, that's how my life felt a lot of the time before I waded through all the depression and anxiety that I carried out of my childhood. Heavy. Difficult. Lonely. Encumbered. For the most part, life wasn't something I wanted to think about doing for a long period of time.

Then along came my first child, who showed me immediately a part of myself that wanted desperately to be around as long as possible to be his mother. But I still had to reconcile how difficult life felt with how amazing my love for him was. Along came my second child, and the difficulty just got too big to ignore, so I started a long process of treatment for depression and anxiety that involved a handful of years of medication, therapy, yoga, acupuncture, energy healing, chiropractic and massage. Now I feel pretty damn psyched to greet each day, super fortunate to get to be present to my kids as they grow up, and really hopeful about the next time I tie the knot.

But before all that -- before I met my first husband and experienced just how great the love between a man and a woman can feel, and before my children introduced me to the hugeness of love -- I had some really beautiful, intimate friendships with women. Still do, but in those days, the heaviness I sometimes felt about life sometimes affected my friendships too.

This song always makes me think of one friend in particular. We shared a lot together over the years, including, for a while, a home, a bed (with a dog between us), lots of songs (including this one), and some major decisions of the heart that changed the course of a number of lives. I think of her whenever I hear this song, but now, I also think about being someone's beloved wife for 50 years. And it just feels great that it makes me happy instead of overwhelmed to think about that:

You were the love

For certain of my life

You were simply my beloved wife

I don't know for certain

How I'll live my life

Now alone without my beloved wife

My beloved wife

I can't believe

I've lost the very best of me...

If Things Were Perfect

Biking in the winter has its ups and downs, and today, I was lucky enough to experience the full range:

Up(s): The sun came out this morning, and my bike ride to the Capitol was beautiful.

Down(s): I had a little spill this morning doing something that wouldn't have caused a spill on roads that weren't icy; the bike ride home tonight was f*&%ing freezing -- two below with the wind chill, to be exact.

There's a big part of me that likes all that comes with being a biker in the winter -- I feel better when I bike to work, and it's empowering to do it even when the elements test me. Also, lots of people tell me I'm "hard core" -- and for the most part, I like being hard core, especially when that's how I'm feeling. But I'm not going to pretend that I'm not happier biking when it is warm and green and the lakes are shimmering rather than solid.

Hence my Moby selection this evening:

Give me summer

Give me summer

Give me summer

Give me summer

Broken darkness my cold end

I look for places I've never seen

Nothing moves but the quiet on the street

Now I open my eyes to this

Isolated walking long hard hours

Winter cold just brings me winter showers

It's so brutal with the cold sky

Wrapped in cold late at night

Yeah, some of what he said, and the other issue for me in the winter is getting out of bed in the morning. Despite my best efforts during this, my first week back to full-time work, I didn't get out of bed every morning to meditate or do yoga. I didn't even get out of bed early enough to be ready to leave the house when my kids were on the two days that they were here. That's not cool. Whatever the season, that needs to change -- winter just increases the challenge for me. I'm determined, though -- I can meet that challenge, and I will!

Not an Addict

I've been intrigued with addiction for a long time, and although I've had my moments of excess, I've always been able to chill when necessary if a habit gets out of control -- alcohol, cigarettes and caffeine are all substances I've had to walk back over the years.

A couple of years ago I was reading a fascinating article in The New Yorker about addiction, and as I read about the drug addicts and alcoholics in rehab, I was feeling pretty smug about the fact that it hadn't ever come to that for me. I'm not an addict, I thought, just like this sexy Sarah sings:

It's not a habit, it's cool

I feel alive

If you don't have it you're on

the other side

I'm not an addict (maybe that's a lie)

And then I got to the section of the article that broadens "the beast" to include the unavailable man and, just like Sarah Bettens, I realized maybe that's a lie.

A couple of years have passed and lots more healing has occurred since my initial read of the article, and I think I've made considerable progress in this department. The men I choose just keep getting more available. Still, it's the closest I come to being a junkie, and it's a good lesson for me in how booze or smokey treats are for some people. Me, I can enjoy those vices, but I can take them or leave them, and if I decide to leave them, I don't keep focusing lots of my energy on them. Not so with the mens...

Fields of Gold

This song has been running through my mind over the past few days, probably for a couple of reasons. I think it popped back into heavy rotation on the internal jukebox when I was forced to go from happily ensconced to in withdrawal, buoyed by the happy possibility that said ensconcing would happen again at some point in the future:

Will you stay with me, will you be my love

Among the fields of barley

We'll forget the sun in his jealous sky

As we lie in the fields of gold

These fields of gold are a powerful metaphor for me, and sometimes they are necessary just to make it through. I wonder a little bit if they can be dangerous though, too, or at least, from my experience one is wise to leave room for the fields of gold to play out significantly differently in real life than they have in the mind.

One of the ways I learned that lesson is connected to the other reason this song has gotten so much play over the past few days. This is a song that my first love put on a CD that he made me years ago. (The version on that CD was a woman, maybe Eva Cassidy, but I'm not sure.) Having only ever spent one summer together but feeling this strong connection that lasted through the years and suggested the possibility of a great love, I'd listen to these words over and over again:

Many years have passed since those summer days

Among the fields of barley

See the children run as the sun goes down

Among the fields of gold

You'll remember me when the west wind moves

Upon the fields of barley

You can tell the sun in his jealous sky

When we walked in the fields of gold

This summer, we finally had the chance to reunite, and it didn't happen the way it had in my head, or in his. And although we had to deal with some feelings of disappointment and awkwardness, when we let go of that, we did find ourselves walking in fields of gold, just not in the way we'd expected to do it. I haven't heard from him in a little while now, and when that happens, sometimes I just worry a bit. I'm sure he'll resurface again soon. I'm so grateful for all the lessons I've learned along the way through him, and I'm trying to apply them to my present circumstance, knowing that even if my current love won't stay with me and be my love among the fields of Madison, it doesn't mean that we won't walk in fields of gold:

I never made promises lightly

And there have been some that I've broken

But I swear in the days still left

We'll walk in the fields of gold

Stand By Your Man

Tonight I went out for dinner and drinks with two female friends who are choosing to remain in marriages that are less than fulfilling. Before I went through it myself, I would have judged them for this -- but now I am fully aware of what is lost when you give up on a love, not to mention a family, and I'm also really conscious of what it is like not to have the strength or the self-love necessary to demand more for yourself. Particularly in a culture where woman are expected to make sacrifices (and I'd probably be hard pressed to find an example of a culture with different expectations of women, since this expectation is largely driven by biology), it isn't easy to embark on a path of putting your own happiness first. I firmly believe that one of the things we model as parents is tending to our own happiness (or not), and that to do so is a gift to everyone else in the family too. My ex-husband had a tacky plate collection that hung in the kitchen of the first house we lived in together, and one of them read:

When Momma Ain't Happy, Ain't Nobody Happy

And I reckon that's true, to some degree.

I also had tea today with a friend who has decided, after years of being unhappy in her marriage, to leave. She's in a much better place with herself than she has been in years -- living from a space of truth. But she's about to experience the horrifying feeling of waking up in the middle of the night (or the morning if she's lucky) and knowing something is profoundly wrong, and then realizing that your children aren't sleeping in your house, or, in my case, you're not sleeping in theirs. I've never experienced anything more painful than that.

There are no easy answers to this conundrum. And it's not for anyone else to say whether it's the right or wrong thing to stay in an unhappy union. For my part, I feel super lucky to be in a position of having the possibility of a more amazing union than I'd ever dreamt of, and as hard it was to get used to and as difficult as it can still be, I wouldn't trade that possibility for the chance to wake up in the same house as my children every day. I went through wishing it didn't come down to one or the other, and then realizing it did, and knowing that following Tammy's admonition just wasn't right for me, even though I can see that it is right for many people:

Sometimes its hard to be a woman

Giving all your love to just one man

You'll have bad times

And he'll have good times

Doing things that you don't understand

But if you love him you'll forgive him

Even though he's hard to understand

And if you love him

Oh be proud of him

'Cause after all he's just a man

Stand by your man

Give him two arms to cling to

And something warm to come to

When nights are cold and lonely

Stand by your man

And tell the world you love him

Keep giving all the love you can

Stand by your man

Hometown Glory

Round my hometown today, there was a new Governor being sworn into office with much pomp and circumstance, there was a woman excited to start a new job, there was a woman wishing she was still hanging out in coffeeshops, and there was a woman wondering whether her hometown, or at least likely to be her hometown for the next decade, would ever include her mountain-loving man. (Yep, all those women are me.)

Adele to the rescue with her magical voice:

Round my hometown

Memories are fresh

Round my hometown

Ooh the people I’ve met

Are the wonders of my world

Are the wonders of my world

Are the wonders of this world

Are the wonders of my world

Tell Me Something Good

Last night my daughter and I were watching Happy Feet, a movie about singing penguins that includes one scene with a montage of songs from the 70s and 80s. I heard a lot of lines from old faves, but this is the one that's still with me upon waking the next morning. And I think I know exactly why.

I talk a lot about opening your heart to love, but I haven't given a lot of credence to the reasons we so often don't. Here's the reason, in a nutshell: it's scary.

Last night, I had some really uncomfortable feelings come up that were related to the lack of control that necessarily comes to surrendering to something that big. I didn't like it, and a few months or even weeks ago, I might've just started talking my way out of it -- focusing on the things I don't like or that are difficult -- and managing to arrive at the conclusion that takes me right back to the power seat, right back in control -- as if I could say to myself "Good. Yep. That's better. You don't need to feel that way. You can still just walk away." At that point, the first verse described where at least part of me still lived:

You ain't got no kind of feeling inside

I got something that will sure 'nuff set your stuff on fire

You refuse to put anything before your pride

I got something that will knock all your pride aside

But I did let in. Wall after wall came down. And I got to the place where I was open and asking for and receiving all of this:

Tell me something good (tell me, tell me, tell me)

Tell me that you love me

Tell me something good (tell me, tell me, tell me)

Tell me that you like it, yeah

Got no time is what you're known to say

I'll make you wish there were 48 hours to each day

Problem is you ain't been loved like you should

What I got to give will sure 'nuff do you good

And now that I've been in that timeless, dimensionless place, where wishing I had 48 hours in each day only scratches the surface of the strength of my desire, now that I've been loved like I should, now that I've had something that sure 'nuff did me good, I'm finding myself a little lost again now that the physical separation is back.

But it's a different kind of lost than it used to be. I no longer have the desire to find more solid ground if it means moving away from love. How's that for telling you something good?

If You Want to Sing Out

Cat Stevens has been sending me subliminal messages for a while now -- just itching to be the song of the day. New Year's Day: there are sooooo many songs I could post about this day of intention setting and launching a new year filled with limitless possibility. But as I sat in my yoga class this afternoon doing lion's pose -- where you hang your tongue out to your chin -- I realized that Cat's day had finally come:

Well, if you want to sing out, sing out

And if you want to be free, be free

'Cause there's a million things to be

You know that there are

You can do what you want

The opportunity's on

And if you find a new way

You can do it today

You can make it all true

And you can make it undo

you see ah ah ah

its easy ah ah ah

You only need to know

Well if you want to say yes, say yes

And if you want to say no, say no

'Cause there's a million ways to go

You know that there are

This song carries a powerful message -- and one that is easier said than done -- that all you need to do is decide who you are and where you want to go and then set off in that direction. Why is this hard to do? Because sometimes there are things holding us back.

My yoga class was all about the chakras, and it's the same class I've been to for the past three years on new year's day. It's been cool for me to see how I've changed over the course of those three years. For example, last year on New Year's Eve, I had what the yogis might call an imbalance of the second chakra (related to sexuality among other things) -- which manifested itself in me picking up some stranger in a bar and going home with him at about 2am to some seriously unsatisfying sex. What was I looking for in that exchange? A little lovin'. But I was looking for it with my fourth chakra (heart) so tightly sealed away I couldn't possibly have felt love. I felt empowered -- that's all about the third chakra (sense of self, healthy ego) -- but I was closed down to love.

This year I find myself in a completely different place. Second chakra feeling balanced, fourth chakra open for business -- blood flowing between the two -- and a healthy sense of self (third chakra) enhancing the whole experience. But that doesn't mean there isn't work to do. As I talked to my teacher about what my challenges are likely to be in the new year, it kept coming back to first (root) and fifth (voice) chakras. So maybe I'll let this tune be my theme song as this year gets rollin' -- at least until the next set of shifts come:

Well, if you want to sing out, sing out

And if you want to be free, be free

'Cause there's a million things to be

You know that there are...