I lay in bed with Zelda: same. I wondered about her earlier cheerful complaint about the 5:2 ratio that is so damn firm in our society. We are chased, it is true. I feel the slam of the next day coming quickly to catch the tail of this one, to keep the mouse from ever running free. I lament it for myself and more so, but quietly, tightly, regretfully, for them. I seek to name it the season – the lagging end of the coldest curve, short days, so little news from the earth. I look ahead at how long still to the equinox. And them, I feel the possibility of letting the narrative go. My breath eases the release; Z eases along with me. We are changing. Many ways, many days. Many moments, many chances to open.
This weekend was walking on Tabor, wet with Jeff after a surprise snack in the van, chatting. Jazz and wine and snacks with Kris and Aubrey. Collapse with Jeff, sex in the morning with his face in my breasts, jacking himself off into my bright, undone rose, petals spread. A quick and marvelous market. A failed meeting with Margaret, a long, meandering meeting with Wendy, a tea, really – letting it be soft: no one in charge, peers, with different skill sets. Holly. Dora. A little cooking: broth on, tortilla, dinner for Cynthia. Lumpy pool mission of willingness, acquiescence: I never take Zelda and a friend somewhere when they ask anymore. Dinner of white bean, celery, celery root soup, kielbasa. Gratefully to bed with children tucked in theirs. Then morning: bran muffins, peach butter, purple kraut. Cleaning. Chatter, play. A chapter snatched of this or that. Sorting and sifting piles, bleeding the heartache of the world out between my legs. Too many checkings of email and instagram. A shower with Clara, washing and braiding her silky, impossibly bright hair. Off to Wendy’s for the second time, to roll in the ocean with four women on the floor: growing our own forms out of the mystery of sound, impulse, joining, invocation, replication, invagination… primitive streak, nodochord, mesenchyme, ectoderm, endoderm, neural tube, yolk sac. Out the door in a daze with Suniti, talking, sandwiches and drinks, Melange. And all, all through: race. Intimacy, white supremacy, self-awareness, gender, tenderness, boundary, transparency. The vibration between the story the nervous system tells when it finally finds out … and the return to what was true before there was a need for a story – and back again.
I woke in pain from the feeling of missing my children already. I made space for my resistance to the system we play our parts in. I made space for my regret at not knowing how to connect to them in small pieces, or not knowing how to let it be enough, or not knowing how to be present to the enough that there is, instead of being sucked away into phone-land, where the bytes are smaller and more bite-sized. And then I allowed for the feeling itself, of just wanting to touch, to turn toward, to nuzzle and pause.
Today, I worked with Riley, André, Kirsten, Emalee. I talked implicit, explicit, evidence, America, contrast, summary. How do you know? What makes you think that? I talked with Madison: my truth is to seek integration. Admin and teachers don’t get enough opportunities to be real together about shared and contrasting goals. What one small thing can we do, to begin, to create opportunities to vision together?
Practice with Devon 