today's blue plate special

Portrait of A Lady...

2012-01-19T15:02:00.003-06:00

Sometimes, Thursdays were my Sundays.

I saw her every Thursday that she felt like it, unless I was sick or out of town. Sometimes, we saw each other on Sundays. But mostly, Thursdays were our day.

We had the same routine every week. I was always about ten minutes late. Her dog always barked at me, like I was after the good silver and all his doggie treats. Sometimes, she would show me pictures of ridiculous shoes in the Neiman Marcus Catalogue, and we would laugh wondering how anyone could ever walk in shoes like that, much less afford them. She would tell me about recipes she had tried, or ones she wanted to try. We talked about her kids and her beloved husband, Lloyd. She always asked about my family, any guys I might be dating, and would sometimes tease me that I had better not wait too long to start having babies, if I was going to have them. I would ask her about how she was feeling, and she was usually pretty honest, which means I didn't always hear happy answers. But this is what we did, week in and week out, whether we were at the top of our game or at the bottom of the hill.

Her living room was a holy place. The carpet, the pictures, the knick-knacks, the granny square throw on the arm of the couch, her chair, her mail table, the clock with shells that her daughter-in-law sent her from Florida, and the way she almost always had the card I sent her the week before poised on the coffee table that sat between us—this was our sanctuary. This is where we met, prayed, talked, laughed, cried, shared, and fed each other. This was our pantry, where we went to get our bread and drink. And this is what we did, week in and week out, whether we were at the top of our game or at the bottom of the hill.

Communion was a holy moment for us. Me in one chair, her in the other, the little dog perched on an ottoman between us…”This is the Body of Christ, the Bread of Heaven”. I would say to her, and I would put the Host in her hand, and I would hold it there for a minute, mostly just to hold her hand in those moments. To remind her that even though she couldn't come to the building, that this was church, that this was just as real, that she was and is just as important as anyone else, that she was and is a part of who I am as a person of faith.. She always met my eye. We had an understanding. We knew.

I hated leaving her house, every single time I did it. Saying goodbye to the safe, warm place we made, seeing her George Burns' rosebush fade into the distance... I hated leaving her house. The dog would get after me again, always while I was giving her a hug goodbye. She knew I would call her next week, but I would tell her that, anyway. She would always tell me “Thank you”, even though I knew she was thankful and she would always tell me she loved me, even though I knew that, too. She would lock the door behind me, and I would wait until I heard the bolt turn, before I made my way across the lawn, back to my little car, on to the next place.

Sometimes, Thursdays were my Sundays.

For my darling friend Arlene, this Thursday is a forever Sunday. And she's probably already in the kitchen, dancing and laughing, and waiting for the rest of us to show up and eat.

Such grace, such incredible strength, such a woman...

mil besos,

rmg

2011: The Year that Ate My Lunch...and Punched Me in the Face...and Then Pushed Me Down a Flight of Stairs Into The Best Place, Yet.

2012-01-04T14:05:00.002-06:00

I remember a night last January, early in the month, when I still had Christmas lights up on the porch. Just about five minutes before I fell asleep, one of those lightening bolt thoughts shot across the landscape of my mind, and I knew that by the time the next January rolled around, Things Would Be Different. Despite the drop in my stomach and surge in blood pressure, I fell right to sleep.

You guys...2011 kicked my ass. Hard. Unmercifully. Explicitly. Remorselessly. Gratuitously, even. But here I sit, in the waxing days of 2012, with all my limbs and family and sanity (mostly) in tact. One of my favorite writers has a line that says, "Ka is a wheel". So it is with time. We are seasonal creatures. And the seasons move in circles, too. And sychronicity is everywhere. Once I started sifting through the pieces of this year, I realized that I had never been surprised by any of the drama and weirdness that's been thrown at me over the last twelve months. I knew, down in my bones, that God had asked me to be looking for a window, and that I would know it when I saw it. I know that sounds weird. It looks weird to type it out. But I knew it, in my bones. And I knew I had just better pay full and focused attention to pretty much everything, all the time. This was what we like to call "daunting".

By March, I'd promised myself and God that even if I had to drag myself screaming and crying through the rest of the year, or however long it took for things to not suck so badly, I would not just lay down and quit. That was a hard promise to keep.

By the middle of September, things had gone from weird to downright surreal, and I was mostly just hanging on for dear life. And then, I saw the window. No, seriously. There really was a window, and it was broken into a thousand pieces. Seriously. And it was my car window. I walked into the car port, and for a minute, didn't really register what I was looking at. Some precious child of God had smashed my window in with a tree limb--for an ipod and communion kit that I'm sure they though was a purse. Looking at the glass and seeing the mess, this cold shiver of understanding ran up and down my back, and lodged itself in my belly. I knew everything I needed to know about the whole back quarter of 2011 just by looking at that window.

In short order, over the next two months, I was informed that I would no longer be employed at my former parish after December 31st, because of monetary issues. One other staff person was also effected by the economy. Frankly, I was relieved. But I was also terrified to be functionally out of work, in the middle of such a risky time for employment in pretty much every sector. I looked and fished and hunted and pecked and prayed and worried and threw up a couple of times. I switched out cars. I found a realtor. I tried not to panic. Grammy almost died, again. My sister in law had major back surgery. Granny had major headaches and vertigo. My therapist had a major stroke (no seriously, I'm not making this up).

And...you'll love this...because this is what put shit over the top...this dude, with whom I'd had a 15 year long friendship and who I quite simply adored, decided that the new theme song to our relationship was going to be "I Can't Fight This Feeling Anymore", and made out with me fiercely after buying me a birthday dinner, and wants to see what would happen if we, you know...had a relationship for the real. Like real people do. And then...after two whole dates...THE DUDE DIS-A-FREAKING-PPEARED. No, seriously.

And when I called, to offer an olive branch (after not hearing from him for two days, and wondering if he might be...dead...) and asked him to call me, just to talk and clarify, not to yell or scream or try to fix--nothing. NOTHING.

Keep in mind, this whole shenanigan goes down the SAME WEEK, SAME TWO DAY PERIOD, that I was made an unofficial job offer that was for a really exciting job and had that offer unofficially retracted in less than 36 hours. For the record, I've still not been formally informed that the conversation I thought was official was unofficial, nor have I been informed that I am no longer in the running for the job. HOLY SMOKES. Yeah, so dream job and hot boyfriend were literally vaporized at almost the exact same time.

Clearly, there was nothing to do but drive to the beach for less than 24 hours, and rinse myself off in the Gulf of Mexico.

I cried a lot, this year. I cried more than I've cried since my dad died. I cried in front of people. I cried on my steering wheel. I cried at my desk. I cried on the phone. I cried in the shower. I cried while the cat stared blankly at me, wondering what in the deuce had happened to his person. I cried waiting in lines. I cried after dates. I cried before dates. I cried a lot.

And then, in the middle of November, my fairy godmother called to invite me to come work with her. In College Station. And all I could do was very tearfully say "Yes, and thank you." And I've been trying to figure out the rest of it, along the way.

I've moved all the stuff I own to a town I never thought in ten million years I'd ever live in. I moved out of the condo that I bought in 2006, five years to the day after I signed the closing papers. Driving out of town, and trying to avoid snarling traffic, I ended up taking the back way, which was the way we'd driven into town the day I started looking for houses.

Syncing up...life has a funny way of doing it. God has such a weird sense of humour.

I'm right where I'm supposed to be. I'm so happy to be here.

mil besos,

rmg

sweet spot

2011-12-12T12:33:00.005-06:00

it was a shot i could hit over and over, for hours.

one, two, square up, swish...running steps, snag the ball...one, two, square up, swish...running steps, snag the ball...for hours. it was my shot, and even after i couldn't play ball anymore, i would find myself out on the court my grandfather put in, shooting for hours, until the security light came on, and it was too much of a hassle to chase the ball down the alley.

one, two, square up, swish...

i can still hit that shot, eight times out of ten, for hours...one, two, square up, swish...i think about teaching my hypothetical children that shot, watching them learn how to follow through, to shoot from the bottoms of their feet, to make a shot with their whole body, to hear the sound a brand- new net makes when a perfectly inflated ball drops right through...to wait breathlessly (if your shot was a little off...) as physics decides whether the rim pitches the ball in, or spits it back out...to chase your own shot and to keep shooting...one, two, square up, swish...to watch them get to that spot where making that shot, refining the mechanics of it, how the slap and shuffle become the only sounds in the whole universe, and the troubles of the day are worked and worried over and made right inside those sounds--there is something holy about the sweet spot.

the shot was something i could always do, like diagramming sentences or memorizing dates for a test. i just could/can do it. you'd think that finding the sweet spot would be more of an intentional endeavor...but the absolute surprise of virtuosity is what what makes that spot so sweet. when no other shots would fall, it's the one i would always go back to, and start reworking the floor from that best of all spots. nothing felt as good as hitting that shot time after time after time, even when no one was watching but me. hitting that shot became like saying a rosary, keeping my prayers, making my mitzvoh...like i was made to hit that shot...

all i need is a wooden floor, a hoop with a backboard, a basketball, and time. i can hit that spot for hours...hours...and nothing but the slap, slap, slap, the swishes, the way you start to rhythmically time your breaths to the shot...with no one watching but the darkened game clock, no one to hear me swear when i miss, or squeal when i barely make one in...

soon, i'll have a ball in my hands, again. and i'll find that spot, and i'll shoot until i can't get my arms over my head, anymore.

one, two, square up, swish...

mil besos,
rmg

catching up

2011-10-24T12:58:00.002-05:00

by the time i was finally pulling my hair up into the black elastic hair-tie i wear around my left wrist, i felt like every string in my body was tuned up to a pitch that would shatter glass. standing at the edge of the water, all i could think of was that this was absolutely worth the tank of gas i used. i didn't run, like i thought i would. i never stopped walking, either. honestly, i felt like i could have walked to europe, and never had to break stride. soon, i was junior-high shrieking at the chilly water temperature, even as i was thirty-year old woman observing the clarity of the water that was creeping slowly slowly slowly up my legs. by the time i was up to my neck, that awful taste of tears had been washed out of the back of my throat, and i found myself laughing out loud, staring up at the late afternoon sun, as the latest edition of sunset water colors began to wash over all that unbelievably soft-enough-to-touch robin's egg blue.

i drove home with salt and sand in my hair, my lips chapped, and my eyes dry.

i have always known how to do this. and i have never been afraid to do it. taking life by the horns, and turning it around right sometimes takes years, or weeks, or months. sometimes it takes a bath of fire or ice to jar loose what is stuck....conversely, what is sometimes stuck will not be moved. and what cannot be moved must either be enshrined or left behind. the difference between an altar and a stumbling block is greater than or equal to the difference between a raven and a writing desk. sometimes, the salt wears away the blemishes, and the magnifying effect of the constantly moving water makes the rest of everything else look tame and rather ordinary, by comparison. baptism looks like about a million different things, and i have been baptized into a thousand different iterations, all along the way, and they all remind me of the one big time i was baptized...in a little white robe over my fancy purple little kid bathing suit, in a concrete baptistry that was painted as blue as the sky i swam under saturday afternoon.

the raindrops, the rivers, the swimming pools, the ponds, the gulfs, the oceans...all the water in the world has one memory. and that memory is about birth and being clean. the wisdom of the water, the sanctity of the sacrament, the banality of broken hearts and lazy afternoons--who would be foolish enough to stay in her room and weep over ANYTHING AT ALL, when such riches lay literally at her feet?

there were waves and laughter. that is worth at least a tank of gas.

waste is the cardinal sin.

mil besos,
rmg

PS...TANGENT...POST-MODERN RANT TO FOLLOW: ts eliot maintains that everything tends toward reconciliation. there is no good friday without easter sunday. crazy horse screams down from his wounded mountain, from a thousand-odd miles away, that silence is a message. G-d does not play at dice... how will you live your one wild and precious life...be a bride married to amazement? did you proclaim that it would not always be night, knowing you are right? how many bumpersticker slogans can dance on the head of a pin? and doesn't integrity do a fabulous job of keeping it's side of the bed warm, at night? wrecking balls come in all shapes and sizes, and you'd better be ready to watch them do their job...and those sacred cows you've tended so sweetly...hope you like hamburgers. do you want fries with that? buy the ticket and ride the ride. or buy the ticket, and chicken out at the last minute, and watch people step around and over you to take the ride. thought you were the only one in line? oh...sorry...this is a pretty popular ride...and it's awesome. you go on This One, and things will never look the same, again. not your idea of a good time? that's fine...just...you know...be on your way, stand not amazed, etc.

we have work to do. and we don't have time to deal with amateurs, because after twelve years in the minors, i don't try out.

an odd turn of events

2011-10-20T01:55:00.002-05:00

all the major meteor showers conspired to occur all at once. rather than streaming down like normal, in the correct order, they simply agreed to go, as though they were all of a piece. of course, they seemed like a rather ancient and spectacular species of leonid, springing from the mouth of the lion. they fell so hard and so fast, this reporter was unable to keep track of the wishes, much to her consternation. it was possible, even for a moment, to believe that at the very least, a few that landed in her pocket might yet come true. but as with most things, we must all agree with tom petty...the waiting IS the hardest part.

strange astronomical weather notwithstanding, change seems to be abroad in the land. colors are rising, rain may indeed fall, ebenezers seem to spring up everywhere, and it would seem that the headlines ought to be eight feet tall and proclaiming that bidden or not, G-d is present. and that ought to mean something, ought to occupy us...on all the streets we travel. in the end, the things that bring us together are more powerful and transcendent that the things that separate us. this reporter is not the first person to say that, and is by far not the most eloquent. but the fact remains...some things, some people, some experiences must be. just be.

this reporter must add that while einstein's figure for the speed of light is just as true now as when light was switched on, to begin with, the old man left out the figure for the speed of thought. science currently operates under the premise that nothing may exceed the speed of light, as to do so would likely (...) result in the total annihilation of any substance, were it achieve said speed. would that such were the case with circular thoughts that have no real chance at reasonable or satisfying answers. would that the thoughts would speed up to such a pitch that they would burst into...stillness.

eye witness accounts report of a strange event, happening in what may best be described as "the long ago", and concerns a rag-tag bunch of exiles on their way to a home that none of them had ever, ever seen before. the rag-tag bunch was led by a run-away with a stutter. they found themselves wondering, and wandering, and being pursued by fearsome foes. they wondered if it would just be better to bag the whole shooting match, and go back to making bricks out of dirt and sweat, and pieces of their fingers and souls. they wondered why they were fingered to die in the desert, why they didn't just stay where they were. there were already plenty of graves to be had back the other way. they were panicked. up against the wall. freaking the deuce out. wondering what, if anything, they could do to at least make an effort to defend themselves, demoralized as they were. from somewhere down the line, word was passed, or rather A Word was passed. the only thing to be done, the most best right correct and absolute thing to be done, was to be still. the fight was on, but it was not their fight, although the fight was most definitely about them. and at the end of the day, there were no graves dug in the desert, only the sound of the wind on the water, and the counter-harmony of the mystic music inside the pillar of fire.

this reporter must own up to the fact that her account of this story is second hand, at best. she must also concede a rather large bias toward the rag-tags, and the stuttering run-away. there are other accounts of further escapades in the desert, however, this reporter finds this particular item rather notable.

one is not often presented with easy answers, surface or otherwise. to this reporter, the staggering and audacious simplicity of the order to simply be still, is humbling. we feel this requires further study, as this reporter is quite sure that understanding this very simple idea is Quite Important, on a wide variety of levels. she thanks you for your consideration of this matter. additional reports to follow as information allows.

all is well.

mil besos,
rmg

free form

2011-09-18T20:13:00.004-05:00

low bellies of clouds hover. is this the end of the drought? is this the end of the beginning, or the beginning of the end? does that even matter? it's raining in the now, and that's the only certainty any of us ever possess. right now, it is raining. full stop. i keep thinking this thought, the thought i think for all of us, "we are not made for this shit." we're not. we don't belong here. this place is killing us. but we got ourselves kicked out of the garden, and there's no one to blame but ourselves, because we had fair warning, informed consent, and caveats. and we keep getting ourselves kicked out of gardens, because we just can't help but break that shiny new toy. because you won't really be happy until you chew out all the flavor and stick the leftovers in your hair. and it's true--i've seen it--it's all fun and games until someone loses and eye, or a heart, or sanity. and then, katy bar the fucking door. because it's like what dr gonzo says, "when the going gets weird, the weird go pro." the secret is, the garden we got kicked out of is hiding in plain sight...it's between us when we love, when we live real lives, and i believe Jesus says that over and over and over because it's so important. the kingdom of God is now, is here, is real, is between us and expressed best when we get our bullshit out of the way, when we stop faking happiness and relationships, and just be, in the now.

but i digress...it's raining. it's raining right now. and in two minutes or two days or two weeks it might not be. i keep thinking this thought, this thought i think for all of us, "we don't have to live like this." we don't have to be mean and nasty when we say no. or disagree. we have just absolutely got to stop thinking of things in terms of "us" and "them". we are them. them are us. if we only treat the people we love well, the people who look or think or vote or marry or die or live or church like we do, it's really not much of a stretch. and frankly, it's just not enough. it's not enough to be personally responsible. it's not enough to just take care of yourself. i mean, it's getting the job done, you continue to respire and participate in the human experience...but you have got to learn to share. there is ENOUGH, and somewhere, someone has got a need that someone somewhere can fill. and then, there's Jesus, who tells us that our neighbor is whoever is near us, where ever we may be, and that loving our neighbor is only second to loving God. and then, you have to stop and realize that Jesus really, really, really meant what He said, because he went around DOING that very thing. it's not a hard job, but it's a job that requires your very life. no, really. but this is entirely doable. and it must be done. it's a mandate. and we have to get serious about it, and make it look real and meaningful in our own lives.

the now...so holy, so fluid, so mysterious...like silence, the minute you start talking about it, it's gone.

it's raining, now.

mil besos,
rmg

For what it's worth...

2011-09-11T20:40:00.001-05:00

This one is about Tish B’Av, in a manner of speaking.

In my mind’s eye, the picture is so clear, except for what I’m wearing, which is strange, because I remember pretty much everything else about that day, including what I put on after I walked out of Caroline’s bedroom, across the hall to my room, and dressed in a pair of jeans, a red checked blouse, and a pair of running shoes. What I remember first about that day was that when the alarm went off, the guys on the radio sounded all wrong, but it was the height of ragweed season, and I’d just spent the whole day before out in the country with a busload full of teenagers, playing meet and greet for my fancy new job, so I hit snooze, and rolled back over to catch forty more winks before I had to get up and be a real grown up. And then the phone started ringing…right in the middle of one of those half-waking dreams that seem real enough to reach out and touch. And since the phone was right outside my room, and no one else was up, I abandoned the dream, and jumped up to grab the handset.

Celeste was on the other line, and she was talking so fast, and not making any sense, at all, and I was still half-to-three-quarters-asleep…all I really processed was that I needed to go turn on the television, LIKE RIGHT NOW, RACHEL. Caroline had a tv in her room, and I could hear her moving around, because the phone had roused her, as well. I stuck my head in, and told her that Celeste had called, and just said we had to turn on the tv, LIKE RIGHT NOW, CAROLINE. And so we did.

If I live a thousand years, I don’t know that I will ever see anything like what we saw. We turned the tv on just in time to see the first tower come down, and shroud Manhattan in debris and fear. What a strange thing to witness. I remember thinking that I totally understood the phrase “I didn’t believe my own eyes.” What in the holy hell had just happened?

I remember feeling like I couldn’t breathe, like I could hear every blood cell in my whole body rushing through my ears, and that my head was definitely about to explode. I remember being afraid that if I ever did get that full breath into my lungs, I would scream a scream that I would never be able to stop screaming, unless Caroline slapped me. I remember standing at the foot of her bed, covered with her green quilt (that Mrs. Marcel made for her, and quilted with bunny shapes), the two of us there in our pajamas, clasping hands like two little girls lost in the woods. I remember thinking that whatever happened, it must have been bad and was probably on purpose, and that things would never, ever, ever be the same. I remember thinking that this didn’t look like an accident, and that the other tower didn’t look so steady, and before we could get ourselves sorted out, and decide what to do next, we watched the second tower fall. I remember thinking a thousand thoughts a second, but the only one that could get enough traction was the one that screamed “OH MY GOD!” at top volume.

I went downstairs, called my office, and was told I needed to make haste in getting into the office. I grabbed my cell phone (the one I had just purchased the day before, two days after I opened up my very first bank account ALL BY MYSELF) and drove away from the apartment I shared with Caroline, and our other roommate, wondering the whole time if more planes were going to crash into more buildings before I made it to work. I think we all sat in front of the tv, all day long. I was so absorbed, I almost forgot I had a staff meeting. Wall to wall news, no commercials, nothing on the radio but news, no one on the phone but people making sure I wasn’t still working in DC, anymore…it was the strangest day of my life…stranger than any day I’ve had since, as well.

I was 22, almost 23. I was the age my mother was when she met my father. I was almost as old as my father was when I was born. Yet, I was, in so many instances, still very much a child on September 11, 2001. I am not the first person to say that day changed my life, irrevocably. The world was changed, and that much is for certain. The changes wrought inside of me would most likely have been wrought regardless of terrorist attacks or the PATRIOT Act, or anything else to do with those days and weeks immediately following that day. I know only what I know in hindsight, and that sometimes is not even as clear as we would all like to say it is. I can tell you that at almost-33, the last decade makes much more sense to me (personally, politically, theologically, globally, etc. ad nauseam) in reverse. Funny how that works, sometimes.

I know that for me, in some very real and concrete ways, September 11^th was the end of my childhood, I watched something I perceived to be invincible fall before my very disbelieving eyes—in concrete and steel, in flesh and blood, through the magic of television, in screaming technicolor. Once a person has seen that happen (over, and over and over…), she can no longer really be called a child, or at least can no longer be called an innocent. That event is the beginning of what I understood to be my very own, and very personal Babylonian Captivity. And yes, I mean that…on lots of levels.

Babylon is a real place, as real as it ever was, but it’s not confined to a particular geographical region or political stripe or socio-economic status. Babylon is the broken, barren, scary, hard place we all end up, whether we want to or not. Babylon is the desert of the real, in Matrix-speak…to live there is to understand the CS Lewis analogy of always Winter and Never Christmas. To learn to live in Babylon, without a Temple, without a home, as an alien, and as chattel is to make peace with the constant war between our desires for ourselves and God’s intention for us…but not just to make peace. That’s not enough.

Surviving Babylon is about utter and complete, total and unconditional surrender. For me, coming to terms with Babylon means physically and spiritually laying down on the floor of the deepest darkest part of myself, and admitting to God that I make a real pig’s ear out of my life, that I cannot create and sustain joy out of my own devices, that I am unable to fix all the broken and jagged edges of who I am, in this life. It’s a hard road, in either direction, whether we are staggering and stumbling into Babylon, or at a dead run, sprinting toward Zion.

Any way you slice it, regardless of what terms you come to, in Babylon there are days when joy seems so far off the path, it must surely live in a different country. There are days when the only music playing is a dirge or something loud, jangly, and obnoxious. But some days, when the wind blows just right, and a sudden stillness descends, the sounds of the story of God—songs of creation, praise, thanks, blessings, and love come wafting through, and nothing seems irreconcilable…like a mix tape from God, to speed us on our journey back to The Land of Milk and Honey.

One of my favorite things to do in high school was to make mixtapes. I would spend hours creating the perfect tape for a roadtrip, a party, a boyfriend, a friend who needed a pick-me up. I loved sitting for hours on my bed with a yellow legal pad and all my tapes, cds, and albums on the bed around me, figuring out just what to all to put together to say something good, hopeful, full of love. I-tunes has undeniably made this a dying art form, and no one has tape players, anymore. But I still find myself making cds and mailing them to people, and I still refer to them as mix tapes, just like how one of my professors in school always referred to Istanbul as Constantinople. Mix tapes are my love letter of choice.

This is a love letter, so you know that you are not alone, and that you can do this. It’s tough out there, and we’ve got to stick together. We have to remind each other that Jesus is real, and really loves us. We have to remind each other to be nice, and to share. We have to remember that the monsters under our bed, in our closets, in the middle of the living room can’t have the last word. So, this is my mix tape for all the people who live and work in Babylon, along-side me, for the people who remind me that I am a real person, that God has a plan, that nothing but the steadfast love of Jesus can fix a broken and dying world.

Turn it up, loud.

mil besos,

rmg

absolutely, yes...this is the exact right song...

2011-09-06T19:42:00.000-05:00

Heartless Bastards // Into the Open by adhappy

...like magic...

2011-08-21T20:56:00.002-05:00

I have never liked my hands. I have been trying to make peace with them since I was a little girl. The longer I’m in Babylon, the more I realize my hands are probably the best tool I have for living here. I look at my hands and I think about the generations of grandmothers behind me, and I imagine the millions of chores they did by hand, how work-worn they must have looked, as they were brushing hair back from fevered foreheads, replacing buttons, darning socks, picking cotton, swatting flies and small children, clasping hands with their husbands around dinner tables or fires, managing horses and wagons, weeding kitchen gardens… lighting Sabbath candles, or sage bundles, or funeral pyres.

Those women understood that their hands meant something powerful, and that wasn’t just about cracking pecans or wringing chicken’s necks. They understood that hands can sink or save you in Babylon. They understood that we can either use our hands to build more walls around this place, or we can glove up and start tearing the old walls down, and go back to where we belong.

I know that's an especially silly thing for a woman to say that she doesn’t like her hands: it’s so painfully and indulgently self-aware, a typical whine of an early 21st century Western female. I mean, Nora Ephron (who I happen to think is a fantastic writer, and who has won many of my hard earned greenbacks in exchange for her work) wrote a book called I Feel Bad About My Neck. She’s the lady that wrote the films “Sleepless in Seattle”, “When Harry Met Sally”, and “Julie and Julia”, which are three of my all-time favorite go-to PMS emergency movies. I like her, I am not angry with her. I’m just saying, I understand the whine, and I am whining, too.

I mostly hate how my hands look. Sometimes, I can’t even stand to look at the speedometer when I’m driving, because all I see are these huge hams, with the long fingers, looking like they ought to be peeling mountains of potatoes in some industrial kitchen, socked way way way way in the back of where the people with the pretty hands hang out, trying on rings and smoking cigarettes and getting manicures with the polish that won’t chip for two weeks GUARANTEED. There are days when I look at my hands, and try to be uncritical, but all I can see are the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and I am afraid that I will be put there to do the weeding, and I’ll never get my feet on the ground, ever again.

My mothers, my grandmothers, my aunts, my god-mothers, my friends...all of them have beautiful hands. Even the men in my life have lovely hands, down to a person. They are the first thing I notice about a person, even before I look at his or her face. For the longest time, every time I looked at my hands, I was disappointed in them, disappointed in myself. My hands were a reflection of what I felt about my whole self...so close to being good, but not actually good, at all. I looked at them and all I could see were the improvements that needed to be made, the things that had slipped through them, the things they had broken that could not be mended, or lost and couldn't be found. My pinkies will always look like they were both slammed in a car door, even though I was born with them that way. My palms will always be ten degrees hotter than the rest of my body, and most likely will always be a tiny bit damp. There is no amount of weight I can lose, water or otherwise that will ever make my knuckles smaller. There’s just not a lot I can do about my hands.

But I am not my hands, anymore than I am my hair or my teeth or my kidneys. My hands are just a part of who I am, and no one besides me really gives a shit about them. Unless of course, I’m trying to deliver a baby or check a prostate, neither of which I have tried to do, nor would try to do, as I am not a medical professional. But I bet if I did do either of those things, the person to whom I was doing them would notice and probably bitch about how huge my mitts really are.

I used to get in so much trouble when I was little for being messy, for losing things, for not keeping track of things, for going too fast and messing things up, for not putting things away. I track it all back to my hands, which always seemed bigger than the entire whole rest of my body, in sum total. I have made every effort to put away that messy child, to get all the Barbie wash-off nail polish off her ragged cuticles, to keep her from biting her nails, from flicking her hair over her shoulder compulsively. She still peeks out from time to time, and rolls her eyes when I make my bed in the mornings. She also has a real problem with the weekly dusting, almost ritualized in its pattern every Saturday. I sometimes give her the finger, just to watch her look insulted, and then I go scrub the toilet…without gloves.

I am not one of those people who can just have fun...it makes me feel guilty, and nervous that the bottom is about to fall out. That is part and parcel of living here, but not being from here, in the Babylonian sense. I know, I know, I’m supposed to trust God, my fellow humans, etc. Who doesn't have fun, right? Here's another thing: I can only let myself have fun and enjoy something if I feel like I’m learning something, making sense of questions in my head and heart, doing something that is Important and Impactful, because there is a part of me that has a hard time having fun for the sake of having fun. No, seriously. I know, it's fucking sick to do that to myself, and it’s even less fun to watch, as a by-stander. This is why (ok, it's one of the reasons why) I see a therapist regularly.

Anyway, I usually extend the "there is nothing more fun than learning" principle into my work life, as well. And that is how I ended up with my hands (the hands I cannot make myself learn to like or love) full of mysterious red dirt inside a very small church in an even smaller town in a remote part of New Mexico.

I am fascinated by miracles...not just healings, although they are the show-stoppers. I love the stories that go with miracles. Like my friend Dreyton says, “Miracles are like magic, but they aren’t magic.” Stories about mundane things, ordinary people, everyday heartbreak that seems to collide with extraordinary grace, mercy, angels, and (like Aeschylus said to Agamemnon) the awful grace of God. I had been fascinated by miracle shrines like Lourdes, Fatima, and Chimayo for years before I ever thought about visiting one of the sites. But I found myself organizing a trip for some of Church Children centered around Chimayo…and the Santa Fe ski area. There is nothing like a road-trip around Babylon to provide one with all sorts of teachable moments with the Church Children. I planned a fun trip, but we were also BY GOD GOING TO LEARN SOMETHING VALUABLE AND ADD TO OUR CHRISTIAN FORMATION. Lest we all forget, there is nothing more fun than learning.

So I took the children skiing. And I took them to the Loreto Chapel in downtown Santa Fe. We lit prayer votives, we read the story of the miracle of the carpenter who showed up to help the nuns at that church. I threatened the boys with their very lives for trying to sneak under the velvet rope and climb the stairs. We prayed. We shopped. We ate obscene amounts of food, junk and otherwise. We haggled with street vendors and had late night ice cream on the plaza. We went on a ghost tour.

The kids liked the skiing. They tolerated the ghost tour. They begged to sleep in and rent movies on the hotel tv’s. They made me wonder if I really wanted children of my own, one day. They fought learning tooth and nail, and they let me know that I was a Mean Lady for not just letting them have their ski trip, just a plain old ordinary ski trip, just like all the Methodists, and Baptists, and Presbyterians got to take, every Spring Break. They moaned and groaned the day I told them we weren't going up the mountain, we were going around it. They were not happy. At all.

We talked about miracles the day we went to Chimayo, for a long time. I told them the story of Chimayo, which you can read someplace else, if you like, and you should because it’s worth reading. They seemed sort of underwhelmed, but were willing to go along with me, because all the snacks were in my hotel room, and they hated to be hungry worse than they hated my little classroom moments. We talked about whether we believed in miracles, what constituted a miracle, why miracles do or don't happen depending on the situation, etc. They were smart kids, and had really amazing and incredible thoughts on miracles, grace, mercy, and what kind of people of faith they wanted to be.

Getting them to engage was really difficult, mostly because I was speaking what amounted to a foreign language to them, and we traveling at a snail’s pace, miraculously speaking. Once we got to the church, we debussed and stretched our legs, and tentatively explored this new place. The children began to grow quiet, preparing themselves to be still and do some thinking and praying (I hoped). I was very proud of them. It was funny to watch how we meandered all over the property, circling in closer and closer until we were all ready to go in, together. God, I get all mushy just thinking about it, right now.

We ended up inside this impossibly little worship-space (a building that seemed much too tiny to have had such power and force emanate from its walls) wandering through the maze of liturgical furniture, saying our prayers, thinking our thoughts, not really whispering or talking or anything, but being quiet and thoughtful. And all of a sudden, we were in a different room, filing in front of this little hole in the ground, full of the most beautiful red dirt I had ever seen. Redder than the dirt in the back yard where my father grew up, redder than any dirt I had ever imagined could exist. It looked like some color mediums my grandmother used to mix her china paints, when I was little. It looked like magic.

I realized that people around me were reaching for little boxes or baggies they had brought, to take some of the dirt home with them. I hadn’t even thought about that, nor had I included that in the Church Children’s list of Things To Pack, and for a split second, I felt really bad about that, and then I just stopped thinking, altogether.

The dirt is supposedly the vehicle of miraculous healings that have taken place at Chimayo...healings, pregnancies, relief from chronic pain--every possible bad thing I could imagine wanting to pray away was written in letters or photographed in pictures that were taped in layer after layer on the wall. The walls of the little room with the little hole were also decorated with crutches, wheelchair parts, pictures of babies: symbols and signs that Something had happened, and that was Something unexplainable, and un-doable, on our own. Something like magic happened to all those people. And they were never, ever the same, ever again.

I remember feeling this overwhelming compulsion to put my hands in the dirt and rub it across my palms, through my fingers, up to my wrists, like I was washing my hands. So that's what I did, running a double hand full over my hands like it was water from the rock, and in a way, I suppose it was. I was in the desert, real and other wise. Babylon has always been a study in extremes and opposites, and so this made sense to me, in a side-ways kind of way. I knew that I had to hurry, because there were other people being herded through the sanctuary and into the room with the dirt well in the floor.

I stood, hovering above that well, all of 25 years old, feeling the weight of Babylon without the words to know that’s what it was, with two handfuls of red dirt, staring blankly at a pair of hands that really no longer looked like mine, and frankly no longer looked detestable to me. Time seemed to stand still. The room seemed to go quiet and dimmer, somehow. Something had happened, and it wasn’t magic, but it was like magic. I can’t sit here and tell you that I’m entirely sure what happened, exactly, because I don’t have those kinds of words. I can tell you that I felt like the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree had been turned on inside of me, and I was reasonably sure for a split second that I was going to explode, but in the holiest and most excellent way imaginable (yes, even better than that other Very Special Feeling we sometimes have that usually involves being naked with another person and also feels like ALL the lights have been turned on inside of us). And I can tell you that nothing--not a pen, glass, phone, i-pod, battery, fork, coffee cup, Book of Common Prayer, dirty diaper, washcloth, sewing needle, lighter, nothing-- has felt the same in my hands, since that day.

I’m sure in real time, I “washed my hands”’, and then brushed the excess dirt off them in a few seconds. In my memory, it seems like it took hours. I remember putting my palms up to my face, and breathing in the earthy aroma of that glorious red dirt, and smelling the ten thousand smells that make up what something really smells like, and they were all perfect.

I was honestly tempted to lick my hands, but since I was in the presence of impressionable Church Children, and a member of the clergy (who would not have minded in the least if I had, in fact, licked my hands), I restrained myself, but only barely. We promptly and politely exited the little room with the little hole, and allowed the next herd of pilgrims to take our place. I kept looking at my palms, and they were glittering...there was quartz in the dirt...it looked like God’s version of craft glitter, and was going to be even harder to get off, and those flecks honestly never came out of the jeans I’d wiped my hands on that day…not even three years after I had wiped them. It was like magic.

Nothing has been the same since. NOTHING.

In Babylon, I try to be about the business of tearing down the walls, knowing full well that I will never be finished. (And sometimes, on days when I manage to bring down a course or two of bricks, it feels like I’m helping to do something that is like magic, but is really a miracle.) Tearing down those walls is the only way I’ll ever be able to see which direction home lays, the colors of the sunrises or sunsets, who is coming or leaving, where in the sky the moon rises. Tearing down those walls is the only way I can find a way to hold the people I love. It’s hard work, it is manual labor. It’s work for big hands. And even on days when I can’t find a way to look at these hands of mine with any real love, I remember the color of the dirt and the way it slid through my fingers, and I know that all things serve the purpose they were meant for... even my hands.

mil besos,

rmg

Babylonian Theory of Evolution

2011-08-18T14:18:00.002-05:00

This one is about my theory of evolution.

(expletives have not been redacted...smooch!)

I have no idea when it happened, but I can tell you the moment I realized it. I was standing in the toilet aisle of a big box home improvement store, trying really hard to decide whether or not to buy the American Standard model, with the 5 year warranty, antibacterial glaze, and the ability to flush a record 154 sheets of toilet paper at one time, or the Kholer Well-Worth model, which, while not as flashy as the American Standard, brought with it the esteem of the Kohler name, and looked like it would match my bathtub and sink fairly well. I was standing in the aisle, kind of biting my lip, shifting from foot to foot, trying like hell to pick out a toilet, and I was hit with the freight train of a thought that went something like, "holy crap, THIS is what it feels like to be a grown-up."

Keep in mind that the trip to the big box home improvement store was just the last portion of a string of events over a 36-hour time frame that made my head spin. On Friday of this particular weekend, I woke up ready to do some business on my day off, and so I went to the bank, and rolled over my 401k into an IRA. I went to see Mom and Grammy for lunch, since I had the day off, and I got my teeth cleaned. Later that day, I made a mortgage payment. It was not a Chico’s kind of day—I still haven’t had one of those, yet, but it was pretty freaking grown up.

That night, I went out with my friend Jax, and had 1.5 adult drinks—1.5…meaning I left half a drink still in my glass. Can you say “self-control”? Granted, we were at Pat O’Brien’s, by the Alamo, and they have HUGE glasses, but seriously...1.5 drinks. Then we went to some townie bar on the north side of town, to see some people Jax went to high school with, which we shut down, and where I didn’t actually drink anything but water. I was home and in bed by 2:30 am...on a Friday night, like a reasonable single girl in her late twenties. (I knew this was how they did things, because I had been watching all the right t.v. shows.) No big deal, right? I was in bed at a reasonable Friday night bed time. I had hydrated after drinking, and had been super adult and productive all day, and can I just say that the dentist told me I had no cavities? I should have been totally fine, the next morning.

Wrong. I woke up Saturday morning with a hangover that was secretly really A HANGOVER—light sensitive headache, scratchy eyes, general instability in the gastrointestinal region, and I was pretty sure my cat had forgotten to use his box, and used my mouth, instead. If my friend Ryan had called me that morning, and asked me to tell him what the reading was on my Wrath of God Index, I probably would have told him it was somewhere in the 22.5-25.0 range, on a10 point scale. I wanted to die, just so I could not feel hung-over, anymore. I cursed the name of Pat O’Brien, and wished terrible things to happen to whoever invented and perpetuated the Hurricane as a cocktail to be served in HUGE FUCKING PORTIONS. I wanted a shower and a big cup of coffee. I wanted to feel like a grown-up, again. After all, I had spent the whole last day acting like one. And then I realized how many grown-ups DO wake up all hung-over and ill-feeling, and that is a normal day for them. I was immediately sad and weepy about this, which was also a symptom of the hangover.

This hangover was vengeful—granted I have a somewhat limited experience with them...no, seriously. There was no cause for the violence of it. None at all. And it was during that limnal moment between being hung-over and finally feeling slightly ok, while I was standing in the toilet aisle at home depot that I realized that there was no going back. Not ever.

There had been a Change. And even if I sold my house, gave away my cat, killed off my plants, and ran off to some do a silent retreat and contemplated to whom I would give all my worldly possessions, the real change, the change that was in my head and my heart was there to stay.

I don’t think it’s any big coincidence that Jesus didn’t start His ministry until He was thirty. For me, I didn’t start putting all the pieces of who I was together until right around my thirtieth birthday, give or take a few months on either side. Here’s why I think this is true.

And let me say here, much of this is VERY general. I was parented very well,and very intentionally. I was not a perfect kid. We did not have a perfect family, but we had a good life together, and still do...but still, here's the other hand...

For a huge portion of my life, I was lead to believe that I was preparing myself for The Future, rather than living a fully integrated life and being alive. I went to public school for thirteen years (counting kindergarten), and then went to college for that all-important Bachelor’s Degree. During my growing up years, I also attended Sunday School, summer camp, vacation Bible school, mission trips, seminars on why nice girls don’t have sex until they are married, weekend workshops for super smart kids who would all end up in law school or MBA programs, and all the other shit people my parents’ age thought they needed to do for their kids to grow up and have a chance at a vibrant and vital life. I knew I was alive, but I don’t think I understood anything about what that really meant. I mean, I had homework that was due, tomorrow…and that dude in my health class made me feel all lit up on the inside…and sometimes, I didn’t know why I felt all alone in the middle of a room full of people, and thought that must mean there was SOMETHING WRONG WITH ME. And then, there was God, all around me, but I had no idea how to get to the middle of where or what God was.

You know what all I learned? Not too fucking much, but some of it had value. For instance, I learned that it’s better to sit at the table with the quiet kids, because the loud kids will eventually start throwing dinner rolls, and then everyone at that table gets into trouble. I learned that if I sat in the back, left-corner of the room, and took notes, I could be almost invisible, and no teachers would habitually call on me, and I wouldn’t be made fun of all the time for being smart. I learned to plan four or five moves ahead, so I could become invisible, if I needed or wanted to.

I think the worst thing I learned was that Life is Something that Starts Happening on the day you have all your shit together, but not until. I learned that Life was Something you prepared for, and executed, like a dive or a driving test. At no point do I remember anyone really telling me, in no uncertain terms, with their own actions and words that Life was Something that was Happening NOW. The only model I had for that kind of edginess was Jesus. When I found myself in Babylon, and realized that, I was thankful for Jesus and mad as hell at pretty much the whole rest of everyone that I knew. Nobody told me that this final was going to be cumulative. This shit was not in the syllabus. This was not fucking fun. At all. And it was going to be like this until I died. And of course, that kind of made me want to go stick my head in the oven, and do some deep breathing.

In my family, because my father was chronically ill from the time I was 10 until he died when I was 18, we lived from doctor’s visit to doctor’s visit, and how things were going at home was directly tied to his health, most of the time. I knew that things were good because someone told me they were. I knew that things were bad because people stopped talking, and their faces got hard, and a blanket of disease would settle over the house. I didn’t know that everyone, everywhere, in every family has something like this. I didn’t learn that, certainly at least wasn’t able to process that until I got to Babylon, and started hearing pieces of what I thought was a story that only belonged to me come tumbling out of other people’s mouths.

Standing in the big box store that day, when I was 28 years old, buying my first-ever toilet to go in my first-ever house, I started to realize what would crystallize inside of me over the next three years…I was a grown up, not because of all the things that I was doing, because I’d been doing grown up things, had had to do them, since I was 17. No one needed to tell me this, and I didn’t need to go down to the license bureau and have a new i.d. made. As I was looking at the toilets, thinking about how spending more than $150 at any one time felt like a major purchase, and how I wished I had paid more attention to toilet installation on mission trips so I wouldn’t have to pay for someone to come install mine for me, I understood that picking up the mantle of who I was, of who I believed God made me to be was about just that…ME picking up the mantle, not having it handed to me when the time was just right by my fairy godparents or an angel or someone else who really loved me and thought that I was ready. I knew I was ready, or at least as ready as I was going to be, and then…shock of all shocks, I realized, like a little kid learning to ride a bike, who realizes she is RIDING HER BIKE ALL BY HERSELF BECAUSE DADDY LET GO!! YAY!! And HOLY SHIT!!, that I had been doing this for a long time, ready or not.

Predictably, I fell right of the bike, at that most excellent and good moment, and scraped myself up pretty good. Babylon giveth, and Babylon sure the hell taketh away. But I knew, undeniably that I had crossed the Rubicon, at some point, and I was here, actively engaged in my life, and aware of that in a strange and different way than I had understood that, before. I remember standing there, having this thought blaze through my bewildered consumer responses, “So this is what being a grown-up feels like…” It felt like realizing I’d been wearing some strange new piece of clothing for months, and had just figured out that the thing I had tied around my waist was actually supposed to be wound around my head.

It would take me the better part of three years to figure out how to get the thing moved around, and situated correctly. And there are still days when I’m not sure how the fuck I’m supposed to wear it, or even if I should put it on before I leave the house. On days like that, I pray a lot. And sometimes, I stay home with the cat, and we watch “The Last Waltz” with the second commentary on (because Levon Helm is amazing and his voice reminds me of the collected wisdom of parts of my Southern childhood), and as soon as I hear Neil Young start the harmonica solo just before beginning “Helpless”, I know that tomorrow will be a better day. Learning to live in Babylon, to be a grown-up here, to try and walk beside Jesus…it’s a day by day reconciliation of the little girl in the drive way and the grown woman in the toilet aisle. It’s evolution on the most basic spiritual level, and just like my vestigial tail took hundreds of thousands of years to lose, learning how to walk upright into the Kingdom will take a long, long time.

scatter brain...

2011-08-16T13:55:00.003-05:00

i think i'm going to have to start writing everything down...and keeping a notebook tied around my neck, so i don't lose my notes. i seriously underestimated the back-to-school madness. i'm pretty excited about being back with seventh graders, and teaching them theology, episcopal-style. i'm more than pretty excited...i've been waiting all summer to get back in the classroom. nothing feels better than being with them, and talking about how big God is. it's the best part of my whole job, right now...the part, besides taking communion to my old ladies, that feels like it's real, and holy, and active, and IMPORTANT.

one of my little old guy's cheese is totally slipping off the cracker. schizophrenia apparently gets worse as you age, and my little friend is really struggling to maintain his grip on what's real and what's not. there's a whole long sad story about this little old guy. his family is pretty well checked out, so the church (and by the church, somehow, that ends up meaning me...woo hoo...) ends up having to do a lot of heavy lifting for this little guy. i'm afraid some of the heavy lifting to be done soon is going to look like transitioning him out of his home, and into a group home or facility. and holy crap...that hurts my heart to think about. but i don't know that there's a lot that can be done to avoid it. i'd rather have him mad at me than to have to deal with him being dead, in his house, because of something that could have been prevented. shit, you guys...sometimes, i just wish for easy answers.

the oldest nephew started "kinneygardens" yesterday, at saint gwegorwy the gweat. how is he almost six?? geeze oh man...time does march on.

camp was amazing. camp is always amazing, and it's the place i always think of whenever anyone says the word, "home".

ken burns' civil war documentary was even better than i remembered it being as a kid, watching it with my dad. shelby foote's voice reminds me of my pops, and i loved that. the wwII documentary should start arriving in a couple of days. that guy makes some great films. i think i've got "baseball" and "the brooklyn bridge" slated for viewing in november. YAY. also, mad props to cory will, who sent me "no direction home"...which i can't stop watching. i still want to marry levon helm, circa 1974.

mil besos,
rmg

summermusic 2011

2011-08-03T11:27:00.002-05:00

here's the music i've been listening to since june 21st... if you want a cd, i'll even mail you one. be advised, as per usual, the list is in alphabetical order. i think it makes a really good mix.

happy listening

ashokan farewell--nashville chamber orchestra, featuring paul gambill
at my most beautiful--rem
barton hollow--civil wars
chief--patti griffin
damn, sam--ryan adams
free fallin--tom petty
gimme shelter--the rolling stones
gin and juice--the gourds (if you've never heard this cover, you are MISSING OUT. additionally, this will be the song that plays during the credits portion of any movie about my life that is ever made. )
God willing and the creek don't rise--ray lamontagne and the pariah dogs
great high mountain--ralph stanley
helpless--neil young, the band, joni mitchell
hurricane--the band of heathens (cover of an old john anderson single...SO GOOD)
i'm sensitive--jewel (yeah, yeah, i know...i don't want to hear your whining...)
if i had wings--matraca berg
it'll all work out--tom petty
jonas and ezekial--indigo girls
levon--elton john
little green--alicia wiley (cover of a joni mitchell classic)
live forever--billy joe shaver
looking for a good time--david nail
mona lisas and mad hatters--indigo girls (live track, SO GOOD)
mr. bake-0--adam sandler (sometimes, revisiting joke songs from
mr. whoever you are-- tim mcgraw (i know...i know...i secretly love tim mcgraw...)
my father's gun--elton john (on my list of top twenty favorite songs, ever ever ever)
orange juice blues--the band
slow motion--third eye blind
wild world --marc cohn (cover of cat steven's classic)
your song-- elton john (there's a lot of the reg on this mix list...go figure)

mil besos,
rmg

On How Things Are: Babylonian Monday

2011-08-01T11:11:00.003-05:00

I have become painfully aware in the last few years of how hard it is to be a grown up. Additionally, I understand that about seventy-five percent of the people I know and love are grown ups, in the realest and truest sense. They take care of their business, they think about what comes out of their mouths before they speak, they care for each other (and for me) when things get hard or crazy, they show up, they help out, they get it. The other twenty-five percent are either actual children (and therefore are not obligated to act like grown ups...even though some of them do...) or people who act like children.

I understand that being a real grown up is not always fun or easy. In fact, there are days when it really sucks to be a real grown up. However, the alternative is...well, it's not pretty.

This what I mean when I say "be a real grown up"... and I admit that I fail daily at one or several of these...but I try...

1) Be appropriate. If you're about to say something you think would embarrass your grandmother or someone else's grandmother, DON'T SAY IT. This also applies to Facebook. if you aren't sure what embarrasses someone's grandmother theses days, i can give you phone numbers for several grandmothers, including my own. please call them and screen yourself ASAP. Also, don't air dirty laundry, family feuds, divorce proceedings, or other melt-downs...you know that saying about turds in the punchbowl? Yeah, it's SOCIAL MEDIA, not your best friend's kitchen, your therapist's couch, or the confessional at church. THINK BEFORE YOU POST.

2) Pay attention and know your depth. If you have no idea about debt-limit, carbon footprints, the legal length for a keeper redfish, the migratory patterns of the swallows of Capistrano, etc., do not go read the wikipedia page on said topic and try and launch yourself as an authority on said topic. it's ok. not everyone can know everything. Be proud of your specialty. If you don't have one, be ok with that, or try to formulate one. Just be advised: reading the entire John Grisham canon does not give you license to practice law, or even to know what the hell is actually going on in a court case. This is the same situation as a cat having kittens in an oven...those kitties are not ( and never will be) muffins. Also, you can get a world class education with a library card. Just saying...

3) Say thank you as much as possible, to people, to plants, to pets, to God, to the universe. Even the smallest amount of gratitude, over the simplest of things goes A LONG WAY. Also, when someone says "thank you" to you, have the good grace to say "you're welcome", and not some dumb remark like "no problem" or "no worries". Acknowledge that the person is thanking you, whether you feel you went out of your way or not to help them out, do for them, refill their tea glass, etc. Same goes for smiling. Smile a lot. Return smiles.

4) If you say you're a Christian, or proclaim to be a person of any faith, have the good sense to act like it. Read your Bible (or whatever holy book applies to you and your method of knowing God) , and get in touch with Jesus (or appropriate incarnation of the Infinite) . Turn off your tv, and radio, and put down the newspaper. Go outside and see the creation God put in motion, and for the love of little green apples STOP BEING MEAN. You know that whole part about giving someone your coat if they ask for your shirt, or walking two miles instead of just one? I'm pretty sure Jesus REALLY SUPER EXTRA MEANT THAT. And all that stuff about poor people and orphans and strangers in strange lands? Yeah, he meant that part, too. It's super easy to talk about ideas and theories and dogma and doctrine from our clean houses and quiet lives. It's easy to forget that even the people (especially the people) who don't look, think, vote, act, pray or believe like we do are, in fact, still God's precious and incredible children. Stop smacking people around with your version of the Bible, and start asking God to help you love them like Jesus does. This is not easy. you will cry and be uncomfortable, a lot. Keep breathing. Keep praying. the Kingdom of God is between us. All of us.

5) However it works for you, be physically present. This may mean that you have to buy a plane ticket you can't afford, or sleep on a sofa bed that makes you understand what purgatory REALLY is, or go for thirty six hours without any sleep, at all. You will attend weddings, funerals, baptisms, graduations, etc. You will give presents that you won't receive thank you notes for (and yes, that's bad...), relations will exhibit terrible manners, some of the people you go to see will not behave well while you're there, and you will probably end up spending more money/getting less sleep than you bargained for. SHOW UP ANYWAY. There is no substitute, digitally or otherwise, that is better than YOU. If you can't show up, offer lots of encouragement via other outlets. but still...nothing is better than YOU in the flesh. And you'll be glad you went. Scrolling through your text message log is nothing compared to sharing a good/bad/funny/hilarious/ridiculous/shenanigans.

6) Work like hell to make things different than they are, better than they are, even though you know that you're just a cog in the wheel. Throwing up your hands and quitting because things are hopeless, feel bad, look ugly, or make you want to throw up...little kids do that...two year-olds do it really, really well. We are not two. WE ARE NOT TWO. We do what God, or the Universe asks us to do, answer the call that resonates in the deepest parts of ourselves, and give up the whine of "this shit is not fair", because as real grown ups, we've come to understand that "fair" is only something that happens in the city park, and has a lot to do with cotton candy and pony poo. Still, we work. We live in hope. When you see a wall go up, tear it down, even if you have to use your bare hands, and even if you see the work crew coming behind you to repair what you've just torn down. if you want things in life/world/etc to be different, stop expecting anyone else to make it different/right. The universe owes you nothing. God gave you breath, bone, and blood. That's enough for a major arts and crafts project. Do something major and magnificent, even if it's a little thing.

7) Don't ever believe, not for a single minute, that you are ever really alone, even when you feel like you are. God is there...even if you don't believe...God comes peeking into our lives in the most wonderful and joyfully sneaky ways. The loneliness we feel at the bottom of ourselves is part of the human condition, and a result of the fall. Deal with it. It's a universal. And it won't be right until we get to whatever happens after this life is over. No marriage, no babies, no lovers, no medicine, no retreat will fix that. Keep saying your prayers, loving your people, planting gardens, anyway. The loneliness is as heavy as you let it be, is as light as the burden you allow God or your peeps to help you carry. Deal with it. Get right with it. Know that it's not an eternal situation, and stop expecting it to be different.

8) Do not take yourself too seriously, but don't take yourself too lightly, either. Do the work it takes to arrive at a balance. It's hard. you'll readjust a lot. Sometimes, you will be very uncomfortable. Deal. It's good for you.

9) Pray when you wake up. Pray when you go to sleep. Pray during your day. Prayer looks like a lot of things to a lot of people. Find what your way looks like, and be fearless about the practice. Even if you aren't a church person, or don't know if you believe in God, or just what, it's good to pray...it gets you out of your head and encourages you to be engaged in the world in a different way. I think praying is a hallmark of adulthood.

10) Know your own story. Own your own story. Tell your story when it's time to share it. Know when not to tell your story. Your story is a holy thing. Treat it that way.

i think i have some work to do...

mil besos,
rmg

a confession from the midst of Babylon...

2011-07-18T13:43:00.003-05:00

here's some stuff you might not know...

i love to talk on the phone...for hours...usually about nothing of great import. i have talked a full phone battery all the way down on one conversation, at least.

i sing, at the top of my lungs, in the shower. and i do smash-ups of my favorite songs, and there are occasionally dance moves involved.

i talk to my cat. i know he understands me. the only form of communication i've figured out from his end that is no-hair balls means "yes", and an abundance of hair balls means "NO".

the bulk of my netflix que are documentaries.

i really prefer the british-english spelling of most words.

i hate it when people call me "rach". i also hate how "rach" looks. seriously. hate it. but it's been going on for almost 33 years, so i've made a decision to just pretend it doesn't make me want to scream and throw things when people address me as such.

i compulsively sing harmonies in the car. i can't stop, and lately, don't even realize i'm doing it. this may or may not be a cool thing, depending on if you are in the car with me.

when i'm upset or irritated, and able to finally vent about it, i usually take ten to fifteen minutes to actually get to the part about what's upsetting me. there's a warm up lap, and then some sideways stuff, and then the real issue presents. it's weird. but it's how i do shit. knowing is half the battle, right?

i refuse to buy DVD's that do not include at least one commentary track.

the mix i made for winter 2010-2011 is one of the best music mixes i've ever made.

i will turn 33 on a business trip to new york. i hope like hell the meeting goes well, and i can convince someone in the publishing world to buy my idea, and help me be a real writer.

i will probably always vote democrat. people who know me know this...some of them agree, some of them disagree, and we all just kind of keep our mouths shut, and try to love each other, in spite of, and sometimes because of, our voting records.

i hate the fact that i'm installing cable this week...i've lived without it for ten years, but don't feel like it's reasonable to ask the renter to deal with my particular hang up...so...cable...eww. i'd like to tell you i don't plan on watching it...but i hate lying.

i can't walk into walgreens or half-price books without dropping forty dollars. i should just hand it to them at the door.

i really hate my new shampoo. but i bought it, and i'm going to use it until it's all gone. this is much like the time i though lemon flavored toothpaste was a good idea. i gagged my way through that tube, and i will wash/condition my way through these bottles. i never should have caved to the price point comparison, and totally cheaped out on my hair product...which is just something i need to get right with...because it's just hair. except that it's MY HAIR, and i like it to smell like flowers and feel soft and pretty. BUT IT'S JUST HAIR. i know, i know, i know. i still hate this shampoo, you guys.

i get to see bob dylan in six days. i will probably cry. i will probably dance like a fool. i will laugh, and close my eyes, and i won't care if it rains, because i've already planned out three outfits for weather contingencies.

i've been mentally reciting psalm 121 for the last three days.

i've realized that the cavalry is not coming. i am the cavalry. now, where in the eff is my horse?

i've played guitar almost every night for a month, just for myself. i love playing, again. i also drag out the autoharp, on occasion. i think i might even be ready to try and write a new song. two a year seems a little like a dry spell...surely, there is something else that needs to be sung...it's been nice to toughen my fingers up, to play, to sing, to feel like i'm making something that is unique in time and space, even if God and the cat are the only things that hear me.

all things shall be well. all things shall be well. all things shall be well. and all manner of things shall be well.

mil besos,
rmg

dry spell

2011-07-14T11:55:00.002-05:00

You guys...it's so hot, here. But I'm so grateful to be here, grateful to be able to set the same number of plates at the dinner table as last week, I don't care that all the beautiful thunderheads that build every afternoon are a bunch of liars. Grammy had a major health scare last week, and we spent almost a week holding our collective breaths until Nurse Stacey figured the whole mess out, and things began to resolve. The doctor was so excited, he gave my mother a bear-hug.

Here's the real thing I learned, though. Even if this blog post were about telling you that Grammy had died, I'd still be grateful. God shows up, always. Even when you're not sure you want God to show up, and especially when you don't know what you want God to look like. We rise up singing. We are just visiting this life. We are pilgrims on a journey, and this life is part of the journey, but to imagine that this life is the totality...well, that just feels plain silly. At least today, that feels plain silly.

I think it's time to get out the poster paints, shuck the clothes, turn up Ritchie Havens covering The Beatles, and dance like a lunatic in my backyard...because I can't help it. I was praying a couple of months ago...really more just being quiet, and trying to listen. I remembered reading over and over "when you seek me with all your heart, you will find me..." and thinking that there came a profound point after my unconditional surrender when I realized I literally COULD NOT STOP seeing God's hand prints all over pretty much everything, and how that changed pretty much everything. So, in this dry dry dry summer, I find myself being grateful, all over again, and praying for rain, knowing that God is growing something gorgeous and delightful, in the mean time, just out of my sight. I'll know it when I see it. And when I see it, I'll know it.

mil besos,
rmg

coming up for air

2011-05-03T12:23:00.002-05:00

it's been a weird couple of weeks.

for those of you keeping score at home, and who've been reading with any regularity, i can tell you the following information...

*nothing is ever as simple as you think it should be.

*it sucks to hear "i don't like you like that" at the ripe and wise age of 32 as much as it did to hear it at 12 or 20. but, we are intrepid...we carry on. and all things are just as they should be.

*arthritis is no joke. and it will show up in your knees when you least expect it.

*high fiber changes lives, not like how Jesus changes lives, but still...it's a big change. look into it.

*sometimes, you just have to have cnn.

*when boogey men are killed or done away with, people do strange and weird things.

*all things shall be well. all things shall be well. all things shall be well. and all manner of things shall be well.

*"fresh cut flowers" is the new candle scent from bath and body works. it's incredible. go buy one. hell! you can even buy two, and send me one in the mail.

*never put off that phone call, or that email, or that text message. ever.

*there is no medicine better than the love and laughter of my baby brother, except for Jesus...duh.

that's all.

mil besos,
rmg

the heart of the matter

2011-04-25T13:13:00.005-05:00

you guys...you know those days when you wake up, and you know exactly where you are? yeah, this is not that day, at all. and i don't mean i woke up in some strange bed, or anything. i mean metaphorically, i don't know exactly where i am, in this one little facet of my life. shit, you guys...i can't believe i'm even saying this out loud, again...i'm reasonably sure i'm in the friendzone with this dude who i really don't want to be in the friendzone with.

i seriously do not want to be in the friendzone with this guy. we'll call him "the turk", as in the "young turk", but we'll omit the young part, because it makes me feel less old. i have to tell you, he came from out of nowhere, from left field, from the furthest part of my periphery, like a bolt of strange lightening. and i have no idea what to do about any of that. i like talking to him, and i seem to talk to him a lot, pretty much every day. i catch myself wondering what he would think about things, what he would see if he looked at the same thing i was looking at. i haven't wondered that about a guy in a long time. and that makes me excited, nervous, giggly, and nauseated...all at the same time.

i feel like this situation is reaching critical mass, you guys. like i'm going to have to say something, or things are going to slide into the friendzone, permanently. i always end up there...because i am so effing friendly. but i can't go there with him. i don't want to be his friend, although i think we are good friends. sometimes, i hate this part of being a grown up, of living here, of refusing to deal with extraneous bullshit, because, Lord knows, we have a gracious plenty to deal with in just regular life. and yes, there are a thousand reasons to just walk by this, to avoid the conversation, to go gently into the good night of platonic male-female friendship. but i have enough male friends. i have my dudes, my brothers, genetic and otherwise. and i have enough other shit going on in my real life...i could slide right by this little blip on the radar screen, and avoid it, all together. there is enough going on that no one, least of all myself, would blame me for not having the conversation, not saying the words, not telling the whole truth, as i know it.

and then, there's the fact that it would be long distance, for a while. complication after complication after complication...a laundry list of caveats...a litany of risks...and those stupid, nagging little snatches of dreams that wake me up in the morning, leaving my head full of cobwebs and bunny trails for the whole rest of the day.

it's a huge risk to tell your secrets to other people. sometimes, the payoff is an emotional glass of champagne, and other times, it's a bottle of bourbon in a weeping bath. at the end of the day, i suppose i have to go back to the mantra of Lenten discipline: confession is good for the soul. and i know that even though there is a Good Friday for every single little life inside all the lives we live, there is always Always ALWAYS an Easter Sunday. and that makes this, at least a little bit, kind of joyful.

and so, if you're reading this, whoever you are...people i love, people i know, people who i have never heard of and will likely never meet, strange interweb people out for a virtual stroll...light me a candle, say me a prayer. i say thankee, big-big.

mil besos,
rmg

so much to say, but not really...

2011-04-14T15:12:00.002-05:00

i feel like i could write a blog post the length of "war and peace". but...every time i sit down to actually write, i can't figure out how to say a single thing.

my brain is very full, at the moment. not all in a bad way, just very full. very.full.

mil besos,
rmg

...in the strangest of places...

2011-04-07T14:23:00.011-05:00

i don't have cable. shocker, right? the choice isn't really about being socially aware, etc. it's mostly about being cheap. cable/interweb is about $80 a month, and frankly, when you live in a one-income household, $80 can be a lot of money. consequently, when i do watch tv, it's usually pbs. i also have a terrible habit of watching movies over and over again. the other night, this actually paid off.

i was sitting in the middle of my bedroom floor, in some strange yoga pose, stretching my way through the end credits of "drop dead gorgeous" when this catchy little tune started playing. i must have rewound the dvd thirty times in a row, just to hear this song...not even the whole song, but the line that said, "why does this love always have to come to words?"

i mean, that's probably one of the most profound questions/statements i've ever heard, about anything. think about it...how many times do you find yourself motivated to speech or action out of love? i think we'd all be suprised to find out that we are motivated, activated, and empowered by love more often than any of us would like to admit. granted, that love can often be colored by less-than-honorable intentions...but when love is the primary motivator, incredible things can happen.

i've been re-reading "a brief history of time" by stephen hawking. aside from making me feel slightly learning impaired, this book makes me believe in a G-d that is so big, i almost lose my breath thinking about it. i don't think there's any way to view the space/time continuum, general reltivity, the awesome structure and fuction of dark matter, and the idea of the universe in constant motion without being open to the idea of a higher intelligence behind it.

i'm talking about a G-d that is bigger than any book, idea, word, savior, dogma, battle, war, manifesto, etc. i'm talking about a big G-d...REAL BIG. i'm talking about a G-d who loves out loud, who never lets the love be silent. i'm talking about a G-d so moved by love that the very sound of that love, the exhalation of that word/thought/state/feeling/emotion/action can still be heard from the deepest, furthest, darkest, and most mysterious places in the universe.

i'm talking about a macro love that designs the universe and organizes it in such incredibly small and minute detail that even super-computers can't count all the decimal places. i'm talking about a micro-love that changes our little lives, our businesses, our homes, our families, and our broken and wasted hearts. (and yes, that's a love i understand in the incarnation of G-d in Jesus)...i'm talking about a love that cannot be silent, that screams and hollers and sings at the top of it's lungs for right relationship.

i'm talking about a love that lays down beside us, in the quiet and dark of night, and brushes the hair back from our face, flips the pillow to the cool side, and holds us until we can sleep, again. i'm talking about a love that is compelled to be spoken, whether it's a whisper or a shriek.

"why does this love always have to come to words?"

if it's not out loud, how to do we know what love sounds like?

mil besos,

rmg

flashcards

2011-04-05T13:23:00.003-05:00

i gave a talk this weekend, at a retreat. i talked about how G-d talks to me, about how it's almost always in flashcard form, a word or two starkly inked into the material of my heart and my head in something far more indelible, but as recognizeable as sharpie marker. i love sharpie markers, you guys. seriously. i always have one in my purse, and one on my desk. always black. there is nothing more satisfying than writing with a sharpie marker...it's permanent, it's big, it's bold, it means business, even if it's a love letter or a smiley face. sharpie markers are ON PURPOSE. you never accidentally write with a sharpie. so it is with my flashcards from G-d. the flashcards in the deck i've been made privy to say some of these words: *faithful*obedient*encourage*intentional*fully present*window*...and a weird one that's a phrase...*you'll know it when you see it*. and you guys...i have been seeing some things...good things...hopeful things...hard things...and every where, every place i rest my eyes, or my head, or my heart, it's all so full of love and grace and mercy, i can't believe i was ever blind to this. it's never going to be easy, living into this broken and dying world. it will always be a struggle to make peace with the breach between the already and the not-yet of the kingdom of G-d. nothing in this life will be easy, even the things that look or feel easy aren't really...and that's just the beauty and the blessing of it. i think i understand a part of what all those ridiculous bumper stickers and posters from college said about the journey being the destination. and i want to sharpie that all over everything. mil besos, rmg

mix tapes from babylon

2011-03-28T16:11:00.003-05:00

i find myself spending more and more time just being grateful, and not for anything specific, these days. i mean, there is specificity to my gratitude, but it's also just an overwhelming feeling i carry with the through my days, not unlike the anxiety and angst that i carried through my late twenties and into being thirty. the difference is that the gratitude is a pleasure to bear. and i find that as i get deeper and deeper into my gratitude, what comes out of that is encouragement. even on days when i cry all the way home (and yes, there are still those days), or days when i am utterly convinced that this is all there is, and it's never going to be enough (and yes, there are still those days), i've started forcing myself to examine all the bits of the day, and find that there is ALWAYS something to be thankful for, ALWAYS someone to encourage ( not berate, or coach, but just love on and tell them how fabulous they are), ALWAYS a Good Friday, followed by an Easter morning. i am amazed at the bounty i find when i am willing to open my eyes. and you know, the more i get in tune with gratitude, encouragement, believing in the truth of the triumph of love, i am reminded that not everyone lives like this. some of the people closest to me seem to be succumbing more and more to negativity, victimhood, believing that we are each on our own in this world. it's hard to be around those people, hard to know how to talk to them, how to hold them, how to share with them. there comes a point at which, after being scolded for my percieved naivete and reminded over and over again that optimists are insane and frankly kind of silly, i just shut up and make the faces people want me to make, responding mostly with non-committal verbalizations. i am the horse that refuses to drink at the rank well, no matter how hard i'm beaten. i'd rather take a thousand lashes than cave in and lose the ability to find G-d in all the strange and hard places, to find gratitude in the tears, and be able to shout encouragement through a mouth full of blood. i'm done with pointing fingers. i'd rather just hold someone's hand, and listen to their story. i'm over correcting people when they get facts wrong, or tell outright lies. i'd rather just listen to why they are angry, and tell them how much i love them, and remind them of all the wonderful, true things about themselves. i'd rather light a candle than lay in my bed, terrified of what might be under my bed. and i'd rather run through the gates of the kingdom of G-d, with my head on fire and my mouth full of praise than go limping through life with nothing but complaints about what i don't have. that dosen't make me better than anyone, or worse than anyone. that just makes me...me. this is what works for me. it's about radical acceptance, careful engagement, and resting in the confidence that there is a G-d who loves all of us more than we can ask or imagine. i refuse to sit in babylon and complain that my songs have been taken from me, my praise can't be heard in this foreign place. i am singing at the top of my lungs. mil besos, rmg

...you guys, i wish i had learned this sh*t along the way...

2011-03-08T14:36:00.005-06:00

...how to deal with the loss of about two extra hours of sleep, last night, because i insisted on staying up and watching a movie i had already seen like 40,000 times.

...how to find a really good, really reliable, really affordable person to cut my hair. i seriously have not had a hair cut in a whole calendar year. yikes. AND i'm going gray...which is not all bad, because it kind of feels legit. also, i'm hoping i can go gray like emmylou harris in "the last waltz", and not end up with a streak here and a streak there. if it comes to that, i will definitely stop the attempt to age gracefully, and start being a bottle brunette.

...how to be a bitchy junior high girl. i was fortunate enough to spend the better part of last weekend with a whole herd of the sweet ones, with a few of the sour ones thrown in for good measure. i kept my hands off their throats, and my thumbs out of their eyesockets. and when i met the sour girls' mothers, i understood everything. G-d bless and keep the sweet ones...and G-d bless the sour ones, too.

...how to be in two places at once. that one would be amazing, on several levels, and for several reasons.

...how to not sweat the small stuff. i mean, who really knows how to do this one? maybe tyler durden...

...how to avoid ever going to university hospital for anything, ever ever ever effing ever, again. ever. for any reason. unless it's to pick up my prize money, which will have to be at least two comma's worth of money (that's over a million) to make it worth the sheer hell and torment of being at that facility.

...how to not feel like a terrible person for reinforcing good and normal boundaries at work and at home.

...how to explain to people i love and adore that it's not always about them, that sometimes, in fact, it is about me.

...how to do grown-up relationships when all the feelings i am feeling make me feel like i am fifteen. and how did i miss the part where i was supposed to learn to do this in high school and college? was graduating in three years REALLY that important?

...how to have balls in all the areas of my life, and not just the areas that are easy for me to express myself assertively.

sounds like a reasonable list to ponder for Lent, while i'm giving up sodas, eating out, and doing at least one hour of yoga a day. right? right.

also, i'd like to make an order for rain, and less oak pollen. thanks.

mil besos,
rmg

if i were a betting woman...

2011-02-01T12:21:00.004-06:00

...i'd have probably lost a lot of money, by this point in the game.

you know, people kind of amaze me, sometimes, and not always in the best ways. i think there are moments when it's hard for me to cut people slack. it's not that i mind cutting people slack, it's that i mind cutting them slack over things that are their own faults. i don't like paying for other people's mistakes, or greed, or lack of foresight, or lack of respect for themselves. it pisses me off. it's hard to give slack with a full and loving heart, when you are confronted with poor behaviour, bad instructions, etc. but i know that i need grace and mercy because of my own blindness, my own bad behaviour, my mumbled and garbled instructions, my stuff, my head, my heart, blah blah blah. and so i cut slack, and sometimes i have to ask for some to be cut for me. and i have hard conversations. i do this because i need for it to be done for me, from time to time. this is what it means to live in community. this is what Jesus asks us to do, and what He does for us every. single. day. it also means that i have the right to say no, to walk away, to love unhealthy people from a healthy distance. i'm done living in the mess and the drama and the angst, at least as much as i can distance myself from those things. there is an element of mess, drama, and angst that is just part and parcel of living in a broken and dying world...but we can determine, most of the time, the levels at which mess, drama, and angst get to swing us around by the tail...thank G-d...

some of the things i find myself repeating over and over again in my head are the following mantras: big picture; i live here; don't just live intentionally--live deeply; own your own life; it's happening around you, not to you--big difference; i live in this body, but i am not this body; G-d is not fickle; i am on a need-to-know basis with G-d...and there is apparently a whole laundry list of shit i am not supposed to know, right now...

when the mantras don't work, i usually cry and turn the radio up louder and sign along until i can't sing anymore, or i arrive at my back door. and last night, when none of those things worked, i sketched with my charcoal pencils from san francisco for two solid hours. i felt better. i have felt better. i will feel better. this is not a phase. this is just a readjustment.

i live HERE, in my real life, and sometimes that means that i am lonlier than i would like to be. i don't have all the answers...not because i don't want to know them, but because there is no way i can ever think of all the right questions to ask. i do know some things, and i know a lot about the things that i do know. and i know i don't want to go back to being afraid that i was crazy; to believing that i am a bumbler; to believe that my selfworth is in anyway related to the fan- or hate-mail i'm getting; that who i am, at the very center of myself is not in any way related to buzz about me, in any sphere of operations. i came to play, and i brought my best game. and in all honesty, i've worked really hard to get this good, and i know that i am still an amateur, at best. but i'm effing here...i live HERE, into all the corners and weird parts of my life. it's not really mine, anyway. i gave it to Jesus a long time ago. and every day, i just want to have the integrity to live it that way, not in a way that's about me or my ego or what i think i need to be happy in this life. i'm not even guaranteed my next breath. i am totally and completely replaceable. what i have to give is what has been given to me...it's not of my own doing or my own making. i don't know how to say that any differently, and it just sounds so trite and bumper-stickery that i kind of want to barf, just looking at it...

it's funny...the last nine months have been so full and lifechanging, but nothing really has happened. i just woke up one day, and everything was the same, but it was all different, too. and the last two days have been very difficult, out of the blue, in very suprising ways. i've found myself just feeling very irritated and have had to remind myself not to be reactive. you know those moments when the words bubble just behind your lips, and you remember to clip them off before they come flying out? ...thank G-d for those moments. and then there are those moments when you say something, and you try to say it in the best way possible, and it comes out sounding like shit anyway? i mean, those are G-d's moments, too...but they are difficult and heavy.

i just want to be responsible for my own self. i want to own all the things about me, even the things that i actively try to change and do different every single day. in the end, they are mine to own, to own up to, to live up to or try and live down. it's not a shocker to me to look out on my classroom and have to fully acknowledge that i am the only adult in the room. it's another kind of feeling altogether to look out on the room of my life and realize that there are some people who will never act their age, never wield the wisdom they have accrued, never think of other people first, never put on someone else's shoes or see things from another person's point of view...and that feeling is mostly one of sadness. because we are all missing out, when that happens. all of us. and that is worth being a little bothered about.

additionally, it's cold as balls. it's been a weird start to 2011, and i'm hoping that february can convince me not to run for the hills, and hunker down until the weird passes. i can't really do that, anyway. i live here.

if i were going to have a crush, i'd have the perfect playlist for creating sheepish smiles and thoughtful car rides...and today, that needs to feel like an accomplishment, on multiple levels.

mil besos,
rmg

mil besos,
rmg

wintermusic 2011

2011-01-10T16:09:00.002-06:00

so, every season, i make a new playlist. i date it, sort it, file it alphabetically, and listen to it over and over. sometimes, i send people i know and love cd's with the seasonal mixes burned onto them...let me know if you want one.

here's the latest one for winter 2011. these are songs that speak to me, that salve my soul...or save it. these are songs that i laugh and cry to, that i meditate to, that i hear G-d singing along with me in the car. there are explosive harmonies, explicit feelings, and some deep and profound thoughts. there also might be some fart jokes, too. there are covers, and covers of covers; there are brand new songs and songs that were written before my grandparents were born.

you'll know it when you hear it...

happy listening.

across the universe--the beatles
all that i want--the weepies
all the old showstoppers--the new pornographers
am i born to die--tim eriksen
angel of the morning--the pretenders
bird on a wire--johnny cash
birds without wings--david gray
cast no shadow--oasis
diamonds on the soles of her shoes (remastered)--paul simon
a dream is a wish your heart makes--michelle shocked
f**k you--cee lo green
falling slowly (live)--the swell season
forever is tomorrow is today--david gray
gimme shelter--the rolling stones
hard times--eastmountainsouth
heart of gold--korby lenker
helpless--neil young with the band/joni mitchell (last waltz)
hold on--sarah mclachlan
into the mystic--van morrison
jesus was a crossmaker--the hollies
long black veil--the band
long time traveller--the wailin jennies
lover's cross--jake newton
maybe i'm amazed--mark cohn
my father's gun--elton john
one man guy--rufus wainwright
only living boy in new york--mark cohn
racing in the street--bruce sprinsteen and the e street band
revolution--the beatles
sam in any language-- i nine
smokey mountain taxi--adam carroll
something in the air--thunderclap newman
stay with me--the faces
we can work it out--the beatles
the weight--the band (music from big pink)

mil besos,
rmg

...well...that was...different...

2011-01-06T11:03:00.002-06:00

sometimes, the strangest events all converge in life, and create these moments that sort of conspire to make me laugh and cry and marvel at the life G-d gives me. friends and neighbours...this year is setting up to be one for the record books, if for no other reason than totally bizarre beginnings.

tuesday morning arrived the way most mornings during cedar season do...sticky eyes, lots of throat clearning, some light coughing, making the bed over the lazy cat that gives me daggers when i get up before a time he considers reasonable, crushing the snooze button as many times as possible before going out into the day, and doing my work. but this tuesday was different. see, when i woke up, there was already a text message on my phone from this guy, who we will refer to as "mr. wow". instead of that drop in the stomach that pressages all good crushes (and some of the bad ones), or that giggly giddy girly feeling i've recently gotten back in touch with, when i saw that i had the message on my phone, i just wanted to throw the phone across the room and have it shatter into a thousand pieces. kind of an extreme reation, right? that's what i thought, too.

so i went on a date with mr. wow on sunday night. we'd known each other for a while, but hadn't seen each other in five years, or so. (**as an aside...the devil incarnate must run the codes at eharmony, because this is the second ghost of crushes past that this stupid website has set me up with, and the second time it was so wrong that i almost called dr. neil clark warren and told him exactly what i thought about his twenty-nine dimentions of compatibility. my ass, sir. MY ASS.**) i think we all know my proclivity for giving people one extra chance to act right. i mean, it's the kind of grace and mercy i know i have to have in my day to day...why not extend it, too...right? except this time, it was just a perfect storm.

i'm not hateful and catty enough to write down all the things that made me want to throw my phone across the room, or tell you about all the red flags and WARNING signals that started wailing at top volume. i'm just going to tell you that i spent an hour with therapy mary, sometimes crying so hard that i couldn't talk, trying to explain that the only things i could feel after less than 48 hours of hanging out twice with mr. wow were anxious and overwhelmed. i literally felt like someone had taken a sharpie and written those words on my body, over and over. the upshot is that the last two years of working my nuts off in therapy are paying huge dividends. instead of spending the day sobbing at my desk (ok, so i cried...like twice, but got my shit together, and for the record, one of my favorite old ladies died tuesday morning, too), having explosive stomach issues, or vomiting like a total nutbar, i did a lot of actual work and was able to find words to use to talk about what i was feeling.

**insert cameron crowe movie reference here*
now, i know we all have to get right with our own awesomeness. i also know we all have to get right with people loving us, even when they love us in ways that are hard to look at, accept, understand, or appreciate. we don't get to dictate what that looks like. i get that. i understand that. this is not that, at all. mr. wow is going to make someone a fantastic lloyd dobbler-esque boyfriend, one day. but i am not diane court. and i don't want to date lloyd dobbler. it's not that i don't think mr. wow is a nice guy, or sweet, or any of those other things. but i was real clear...at about hour five...that things were moving in a very different direction for me. and rather than string someone along, or convince myself that i was wrong, i cut my losses and did what i felt like was the kindest thing to do, and just made it clear that i had gone as far as i was willing to go.
**end of cameron crowe movie reference**

see, i have really spent the last six months doing a lot of talking to G-d. and i've tried to listen a lot, too. i have been going out on (for me) lots of dates. not a single dude has gotten past date number two, and some of the dudes haven't even made it to date one. not all of that has been left up to me...just so you don't think i'm eating men instead of breakfast tacos, these days. i was all frustrated and sitting in the floor, trying to do yoga poses, a couple of weeks before christmas. and in the midst of stretching and thinking and praying and listening, this still, small, gentle voice whispered in my heart, "little girl...you will know it when you see it." and my eyes have been wide open, ever since. and i have been utterly unafraid to act, because i know i am where i am supposed to be, doing what i am supposed to be doing. and this feels awesome.

mil besos,
rmg

retrospective

2010-11-10T15:31:00.002-06:00

i was one of those people who went to so see "eat, pray, love" in the theatres, and cried through the whole thing. no, i didn't read the book. but, i probably will...it's on the list of books to buy during my next buying spree at half-price books. ryan and i talked about the movie, as did jackie and i, before i saw it. i knew parts of it were going to be smug. i knew parts of it were going to be trite. i knew parts of it were going to be sweet enough to give me a cavity. but i pluncked down my shekels, and watched it.

i watched it after i woke up from that weird dream i told you about, the one with the guy in the hare krisna robes. i'm serious when i tell you that i started crying during the credits. i am embarassed to admit that. i think the whole world is comfortable with me being a crier, except for me. i hate crying. HATE IT. i don't care that it's a normal response, or that crying actually releases endorphins and chemicals that make you feel better. i don't care that my eyes turn a totally different and kind of awesome color after i've cried. i don't even care that i usually feel better after a good cry. i also feel better after i throw up, when i'm sick. and i hate to throw up worse than i hate to cry. also, i almost always cry when i throw up. double hate.

so, there i was, sitting in a theatre, surrounded by other crying assholes, there with boyfriends (most of whom were probably there under protest, hoping that by going to such a femme movie, they would get a little something-something in return), husbands, sisters, mothers, significant others, etc. the overwhelming majority of the audience were female. and the sniffing noises started about five minutes into the picture.

let me be honest...this movie was pretty smug, on lots of levels. if i were being paid to write a book on self-discovery, i'd probably be pretty pleased with myself, as well. but you guys, there was something so familiar about the story, so reassuring about the questions this woman was asking herself and the universe, so encouraging to see her pray, even though she wasn't sure what to pray for, or to.

tangent:

i read a ton of my old blog posts last week. what a head trip...and some of the comments were hilarious. some of them really irritated me, too. i came across this one comment, on a post i wrote in 2005, from an anonymous poster. they asked me how it felt to be a martyr turned philosopher. that seriously pissed me off. and i'm not sure why. part of it felt true, at the time. part of it still feels true, today. but it hurt my feelings, too. a martyr is not something i've ever wanted or aspired to be, not for anything. and i was seriously offended that someone would imagine that what i was writing was anywhere on par with philosophy. this is just some dumb blog, written by a girl trying to figure out what this life looks like, how it feels, all the way out to the edges. and it's an honest expression of my angst, my excitement, my worldview, my theology and cosmology, my memories, my justifications, my experience. it seemed like a cheap shot. it still seems like a cheap shot. i don't like what that person said. and i certainly don't like how what they said effected me. in the final analysis, i don't consider myself a martyr, and i certainly don't pretend to be a philosopher. i'm a student of this life, nothing more.

back on track:
after the movie was over (talk about a totally predictable ending...wtf?), i cried some more in the car. there was a point in the movie, where the main character talks about words, what words describe things, people, etc. this discussion occurs around a dinner table, with beautiful people eating beautiful food, talking about which word most accurately describes themselves, the cities they know and love, etc. i thought and thought and thought about that. i love words. i love what you can do with words. i love the right words at the right times about the right things. there is nothing better than saying exactly what you want to say about something. nothing.

i spent the rest of the night trying to figure out what word describes me best. we each have a collection of words that would describe us down to the molecules in our bodies. some of the words are nice. no doubt, a few of them aren't too nice, though. but what word describes you, encapsulates the essence of who you are? can you really boil it down to one thing? i turned that over and over and over in my head. for days. weeks. months. last week, my word hit me.

distiller. i distill. that's what i do. all i had to do to find it was go back through and read my blogs, my journals, old letters, notes i make in the margins of books, reflect on conversations, write a couple of new songs, retune all the instruments in the house, clean out the cat-box, and get the hell over my own martyrdom/philosophic b.s. to do it. once i gave myself the right word, so many things made so much more sense. distilling takes a long time. distilling is about extracting the most potent and essential parts of something, so that the resulting substance can be shared and distributed and consumed. distilling is an art and a science. it can be deadly, too. it's a big responsibility, and you have to be fully invested in every step along the way, otherwise everything can be ruined, and no product is produced. there are no insignificant steps. nothing is wasted. i love that.

distiller.

mil besos,
rmg

just hear those sleigh bells...

2010-11-05T10:18:00.003-05:00

Well, as the words to my favorite secular holiday song go, "And so this is Christmas…and what have you done?"

Are you ready? Are you freaking out? Are you whining?

When I go visit my brother and his family, the older nephew and I get to go out on our own, and do our thing. Our thing consists of going to the "train store", which to normal people is just a regular big-box toy store, with a scary giraffe as the mascot. I'm sure you know the one I'm talking about. Anyway, the five year old nephew could care less about the other toys in the store…he only has eyes for trains, especially blue ones that are named after certain doubting Disciples. He is obsessed. He's had to be escorted out of the store, several times, by his parents…literally kicking and screaming. This kid LOVES, LURVES, LUUUUHUUUUHUVES, trains. He is, hands down, the easiest person in my family for whom to buy gifts.

I remember the first time we went to the train store, on our own, to pick out a new train. My brother pulled me aside and told me to call him if things got ugly. I looked at him like he'd gone crazy…and just nodded my head, remembering that small children are highly volatile and toys to kids are like chum in the water to sharks. I started to feel like I might not want to do this thing, after all. But I had promised. And I refuse to break promises, especially not to small children who look like me.

The nephew actually gave me directions to the store, from his backseat. As I pulled in, parked, and turned off the car, I turned around to look at the blue-eyed cherub. "Bilbo, we are going to go shop for a new train, buddy. I want you to remember something. We are going to share at the play table. And when it's time to leave, we are not going to whine or freak out. Ok? Now, what are we going to remember? " "We are gonna sare at the pway table. And we ah NOT going to whine or fweak out." And so, we got out of the car, and ventured into the gaping maw of the toy store. I felt like I might throw up.

Thirty minutes later, we came out of the store, all smiles, with our new "twain", and no tears. I was amazed. I felt like I must be the kid-whisperer, or something. As the nephew exclaimed over his present in the back seat, telling the new twain about all the other twain fwiends back da the house, I realized something. I was not magic. No, the success of the trip had to do with factors that were beyond my child-charming (bribery). We prepared ourselves for the trip. We knew what we were going to get. We were realistic about what the trip might look like. We hoped for the best, and were willing to be surprised by success.

That's nothing like what Christmas and present buying is like for most of us. At all. We do a lot of freaking out. We do a lot of whining. We forget to be realistic about our expectations for giving and receiving. And sometimes, on our not-so-great days, we have to be lead kicking and screaming away from the experience that should be nothing short of awesome. We are not willing to be surprised, and failure is an excuse for another glass of egg-nog or a bloody Mary.

The nephew and I have made several subsequent visits back to the twain store. There have been no fweak outs, no whining, no kicking and scweaming. There have been good conversations in the car, many questions asked and answered, and the bond between us grows stronger and stronger. I wonder what it would look like if you and I applied the principles of the twain store to Christmas, to time with our families, to giving and receiving gifts? I bet Christmas would be less whiny and freaky for all of us.

My prayer is that you and your families and your friends share a marvelous Advent and Christmas season, without whining or freak –outs, without fights over the train table, and with the full and incredible knowledge that a very small person, born very long ago, loves you, saves you, is coming back for you, and thinks you are the most wonderful gift in the world.

Mistletoe Kisses, and Candy Cane Wishes...

mil besos,

rmg

eureka...

2010-10-27T12:52:00.004-05:00

i was driving to the old lady high rise, like i do every other wednesday, to take them the HoCo, thinking about the rant i posted this morning, and convincing myself not to pull it down. i self-edit a lot, publically and privately. the things i don't say about how i'm feeling or what i'm thinking might suprise you, sometimes. then again, when i think about the handful of people who actually read this mess, i realize that none of this really ever suprises you. in fact, there are one or two of you who probably know what i'm going to write about before i actually write it. scary, but true.

anyway, on my way to the HoCo, i realized that the antsy feeling, this feeling of not knowing what the deuce is happening, all the angst and the "what does it all mean" boils down to one thing. i've never been anywhere for this long, in my entire adult life. and it scares the shit out of me. four years...a whole presidential term...four years is substantive. four years is not accidental or incidental. four years is a chunk of serious time. i've never done this before. and while it's nice to feel settled...it's also scary to feel this way. there are so many things i still want to do and see and experience. there are days when i worry that being in one place too long will numb me, will lull me into submission and complacency, will quiet the fire inside my head and heart. and the biggest question of all...when will the bottom fall out, the wheels come off, the shit hit the fan? i'm not saying that the worst always happens, i'm just saying that the pattern in my life is such that i have a hard time with relaxing into the salad days, the days of grace...and i know that is something i will struggle with, trusting G-d in the midst of the good days, not holding so tightly to the good of the now that i squeeze the life right out of it.

it was hard to maintain composure in the car today, on my way to see the old gals. i really just wanted to go back to my office, shut the door, and cry. seriously you guys, i know some of this is stage of life stuff, but the other part of it is hormones. pure and simple. i used to think i was going crazy, and then i started charting my moods, crying jags, etc. it all equated to...you guessed it...the flight of the cardinal. it's hard to argue with the red ink on the calendar. and it's hard to deal with between ten and seven days a month of being pretty sure that the whole world hates you and is conspiring to undo everything in your entire life. and that's why i went on anti-depressants for six months two years ago. the meds did the trick. the sharp edges were gone, i didn't cry on the way home from work, or on the way to work, or at my desk, or in the shower, or at stupid commercials, or at cheesey movies, or over really cute little fat kids in chapel. but i didn't really laugh out loud at silly things, either. after about four months, the absence of the sharp edges started to bother me. so, with the agreement of my therapist, i stopped taking them. i knew that i would have to be careful about that segment of the month when things shift, for me. but the sharp edges were important for me to feel. and they feel pretty sharp, right now. i know this will pass, and in four or five days, i'll feel markedly better. i just hate when life things collide with body things, because sometimes, it's hard to know what's incidental and what needs to be addressed.

there are days when i feel like 32 is much older than i would like to be, right now. there are also days when 32 feels very young and inexperienced. there are days when it feels really heavy to be this age, and not have a family established. i can practically hear my eggs getting older. and it's all well and good for people to tell you not to worry, that G-d has a plan, that the more you think about something, the less you trust G-d to do the work, etc. and that's fine. but this is my life. this is my day to day. and sometimes, that sound of those eggs aging is the loudest sound in the universe. now, go ahead and judge me inside your head. i know, i know, i know. this is something i am dealing with in my prayer life and in my time with my therapist. and now, the whole world knows, or at least the interwebs do.

i was in love with a self-confessed trainwreck of a guy for five years. that's a long time, too. and no matter what i tried to be, or do, or sing, or say, i would never add up to what he wanted. and so, on a no-name day in the middle of the summer, i stopped trying. i stopped dead in my tracks, dug my heels in, and willed myself to just lay down on the floor of my deepest self, and just stopped. i realized, a month ago, when i was driving through falfurrias, on my 32nd birthday, that i didn't love him any more, at least not like i had done. i was finished with that part. i couldn't tell you, in the corresponding tears that fell for about twenty minutes, whether i was crying from relief or sadness. i supposed in the final analysis why we cry isn't nearly as important as what we cry over. it all amounts to the same thing, i suppose.

remember when you were losing your baby teeth, how you would feel around with your tongue to see if the new tooth was growing in yet, or how close it was to being at gum level? i keep doing that emotionally, checking that spot where he used to live, to see if anything is new there.i think i finally learned that you can't out-tomato ketchup. i thought getting out from under that feeling would be freeing, and it has been. but G-d, sometimes life comes knocking, and the absolute wrong song comes on, and i have to look into the void, and scream out that i'm not afraid of it.

mil besos,
rmg

have mercy...

2010-10-27T10:00:00.002-05:00

ragweed is making me a lunatic. between the ragweed and the hormone swing that comes once a month, this week is about to kill me. seriously. i've cried four times this week, twice over the same scene in a movie. and yesterday, i came home from work early to dose myself with benedryl and tried to sleep off this allergy attack. i think i was about 45% effective.

i feel like someone transfused a bag of molasses into my bloodstream...all slow and draggy. it's miserable. i know i need to be eating better and working out like i did over the summer. i gained back ten of the thirty five i had dropped...not happy, not happy about that at all. i feel stuck, guys. i mean, i hope that i'm not. but i feel that way. like i'm at a dead-end, and can't for the life of me figure out how to turn around, or back out, or climb over the wall. if i felt better, i'd probably make up some bullshit about how i really feel like this is a great moment in my life, in my development as a grown up, blah blah blah. really, what i really want, is just to be bailed out, swooped up, and rescued. i hate how absolutely true and naked that last statement feels and looks.

it's a really super whiney kind of wednesday. and i am wallowing in the whine, ya'll.

did you know that the average person needs between 10 and 12 personal interactions a day to feel connected to the world around them? it's true. now go give someone a hug.

mil besos,
rmg

several small items...

2010-09-22T10:34:00.004-05:00

i was form-tackled by a chubby four-year old, intent on giving me a bear-hug, yesterday. it was awesome. however, my glasses were broken harry potter-style, and i can't find my wand to save my life. i do have to say that being bear-hugged by a chubby four-year old is probably one of the top five ways one can break one's glasses.

i broke my right baby toe, yesterday. i caught it on the edge of a file cabinet, as i was leaving the office for the day. it was this blinding white light of pain that ran up my leg, and back down, and settled in my metatarsals. y'all...it hurt to have a sheet on my foot. of course, this is around the 950th time i've broken this baby toe, so i'm sure this is normal.

i'm turning 32 in four days. i'm excited. and maybe 2% scared. i'm not sure of what i'm scared, but i am, just a little bit. i think being 31 has been so pivotal, that i've done so much work and learned so much this year...i just don't want to lose any ground. i want to do this life well, and to keep feeling the good feelings i've felt about myself in the last year.

i watched a movie about dylan thomas this weekend, once straight through, and once with the commentary track and subtitles on. if i could send him a lettter, back in time, i would tell him that every woman wants to believe that every poem is about her, and some women will be utterly convinced that all the poems are about her, even if none of them are. such is the nature of women. there is a set of fine lines between the maiden, the mother, and the crone...magical and sacramental, and if the poet looks and listens carefully, the poet will know when he has crossed any of those lines. poets love dichotomy...the lines between the whore and the madonna, the kite and the rock, the mountains and the sea. the lines are crooked, switchbacked, as long as the nile, and as volitile as the rubicon, and to the untrained eye, the poet will seem to be a shambling and drunken bufoon as he wends his way along the winding lines of his muses. because there is always more than one muse. or, if one believes bob dylan, there's only one muse, with a thousand faces.

how the poet walks those lines speaks volumes, and often writes them, as well. and sometimes, the walking ceases altogether, and the poet comes crawling on hands and knees, looking to the untrained eye like a mendicant with an empty bowl. the poet knows that whether he seeks suckle at the breast of his mother or his lover, a woman will always be the one to feed him, kindle a fire, wrap him up safe, and fill him with something good. at least, such is the case with the poets i know.

mil besos,
rmg

lay off me, you guys...i was starving...

2010-08-25T12:38:00.003-05:00

i had an epic nap on saturday, and i'm not overstating the point to refer to this nap as a game-changer. in fact, i'd be hard pressed to simply refer to this particular incident of day-time sleep as simply a nap. this little three hour jaunt was somewhere between a coma and a revelatory experience. waking up felt like i'd been hit inthe back of the head with a baseball bat by the sandman, who may or may not have been taking the same kind of performance enhancing drugs favored by the likes of barry bonds or mark maguire. all of which is to say that i woke up drenched in sweat, with my comforter in tangled disarray around my legs and feet, sprawled on my back with my mouth wide open, and trying like hell to figure out what was real and what was dream.

i had to lay there for a little while after i woke up, because what i dreamed was so bizarre and strange that i felt compelled to try and pick out what meaning might have been there. i know that sounds weird, because when i tell you what the contents of the dream were, you're really going to think i've finally just gone totally crackers. but something serious and big and looming and lovely and difficult seemed to be buried inside the folds of this dream. i sent a text out to some friends, playing the dream off like a joke. but it was real, it was serious. it was a gamechanger. and sure, it was also just a dream: one of those subconscious brain dumps that happen when the recycle bin in your brain gets too full to see one more four a.m. infomercial for a steamer/rotisserie/fat-reducing/spacesaving piece of shit you just can't live without.

so, here's the dream...

i go to have a mani/pedi, which is something i do in real life about once a quarter. the place i go is really nice, and has kind of an easter feel to it--lots of bamboo, little teak-wood figures, low tables, no chairs, and all the treatment rooms have wall-length transoms over the doors. lots of detail, right? i was blown away at how well decorated this joint was, considering that i also recognized it as a chinese food place i used to frequent in austin. in my dreamy way, i was all excited..."ooo, they turned "snow pea" into a nail place! i wonder if i can still get an egg roll?"... i meet with a receptionist, who looked shockingly like ben stiller's real-life mom, who informed me that the place had gone up on their prices, and i probably would want to look at their menu of services. so, i look at the menu, select my treatments, and am shown to a room.

in the room sits this little skinny dude, who i know as the older brother of kenny powers, from the hbo series "eastbound and down". as an aside: that show is freaking hilarious. i can't stop watching it, and it's only six episodes long. however, i don't immediately recognize that he's that dude. i was mostly just suprised that a skinny white guy was about to do my nails, and the skinny guys that usually do my nails are most frequently vietnamese, or aren't guys, at all. so, he leaves the room to change clothes, which doesn't strike me as odd, at all. and then, i realize that earl and the crab-man from "my name is earl" are in the corner of the room, on a tatami mat, with clip-boards in their hands.

now, i never really watched a whole lot of "my name is earl", but when i did, i thought the show was pretty funny. i think jason lee is hilarious, and have liked him since "mallrats". they come over and start asking me all these questions about my medical history, where i live, etc. i start spilling my information with no problem, at all. i remember thinking, "should i really be telling earl and the crabman all this information? isn't this how your identity gets stolen?" which was followed quickly by the thought that they seemed like nice guys, and i felt very very very safe, for some odd reason. i finished up with earl and the crabman, and they seemed very satisfied with whatever answers i gave them, and they retired back onto their mat, which they had pulled to within about two feet of where i'd been told to sit on the floor.

about this time, the skinny guy who is going to be doing my nails comes back into the room...dressed as a hare krishna. i'm just taking this in stride, y'all. it never even phased me. and he's telling me that we're going to do some yoga poses before he starts working on my feet and hands. so we do some yoga, and earl and the crabman are just hanging out, making notes on their clip-boards, and occasionally giving me corrections on poses. and then, something totally strange and mystical happens.

this skinny guy in his saffron colored robes scootches all the way across the floor, almost into my lap, and i start backing up because i came here to get my toes done, not to be molested by a monk in full drag. all of a sudden, this guy grabs my head very gently, and kisses me behind my right ear...for like fifteen minutes. not making out, not anything overtly sexy or anything. just lays this lovely, warm, intense smooch behind my ear, right on the bony protrustion that i rub when i am anxious or upset. and then, i got the biggest hug i've ever had in my life. i felt like i was being embraced from the top of my head to the bottoms of my feet by this strange man, while earl and the crab man continued their notetaking. periodically, i would struggle or shift and think that we were done with this pose, because seriously...how long can you sit hugging some odd little man in saffron robes while he's kissing you behind your ear, and all you came in for was a mani-pedi and an egg roll? and every time i go to pull away, inside my head i can hear this voice just saying, "rachel...breathe...relax...be here." and i did. and i did. and i was there. it was real, and for the first time in ages, i didn't feel alone or lonely.

at some point, and i'm not sure when, i went from the hug with the monk to my car, which wasn't my real car, and i'm trying to figure out how to read the monk's business card, and trying to figure out if i paid my check, and if really had to pay for the services rendered because i realized that i still didn't have painted nails. and right about the time i was coming back to my house, which wasn't my house, and my dog, who isn't really a dog, and was trying to figure out how to send the monk a text message saying "thank you", i woke myself up.

i honestly didn't know whether to laugh or cry upon waking, and i still don't. all i know is that i had a very strange dream. i think i learned a couple of things, though. give everyone you can a hug, even if you have to ask for permission. we forget the power and profundity of the human touch, and in our loneliest places, those little hugs, pats, kisses, whatever make those moments bearable. and i also learned that G-d comes to you in the strangest of ways, at the strangest of times, in the oddest of garbs to grab you and tell you that you are loved and loved and loved and loved, and it never runs out.

mil besos,
rmg

an open letter to monday

2010-07-19T22:26:00.002-05:00

dear monday,

some times, you suck, dude. i mean, seriously. you are sometimes a real buzzkill. especially when the weather is not what i want it to be like, or my hair flips out weird on one side and i don't have time to flat iron it because i hit the snooze bar two extra times, or when regis and kelly have a rerun, or i didn't get all the way to sleep good and proper until like three because it's so effing hot and my room is on the second story and has a wall full of west-facing sliding glass door that i'm too lazy to make drapes for, or because i know i have to eat my oatmeal because chikfila will make me a fatass and the oatmeal is already paid for, or because i think txdot has it in for everyone in my neighborhood because the road construction is ruining my morning commute and i think i'll never have a real exit unless i move, and npr is sometimes depressing as shit on mondays, and the top forty music station doesn't play music that i feel is relevant to my life and sometimes i think that's a good thing and sometimes i think it's totally terrible, and the fried avocado with shrimp was a real disappointment for lunch today, and i probably gave communion to a little old lady for the last time (again, shit man...i know, it's part of the job...but still, i mean, really...it shouldn't ever get easy), and got all hot and sweaty on my way to therapy. sometimes i think you exist on the calendar just to break me.

and sometimes, monday, you know, sometimes, you're also kind of great. because i had a great session, today and talked about all sorts of stuff i've seen and done and felt and thought over the last six weeks, and even though i didn't talk about everything i could have i still feel like i made progress and managed not to go crazy, and i ate fruit for dinner after i did yoga for two hours and held this really challenging pose for three minutes and i felt like a freaking rock star, and the whole time i was doing the second set of poses i was praying praying praying and just being thankful to this amazing G-d for creation and my place in it, and pretty soon i'm taking a long hot bath and reading my favorite book and going to bed. monday, i gotta say, you came through. sometimes i think you exist on the calendar just to break me...into something that can hold more than it did before it was broken.

mil besos,
rmg

goodnight, moon

2010-06-30T23:51:00.003-05:00

to take a quote from the apostle paul totally out of context, reverse the intent, and paraphrase, i will simply say that it is a holy experience to fall into the hands of a living G-d.

three hours ago, i was in a nicu room baptizing a baby born at 24 weeks, four days. her name is hope rose. three years ago, her mother had attended church in my parish, and i had given her a ride home one afternoon, after church. after she delivered her daughter at home, around 7am, and was taken to the hospital, stabilized, seen to, etc., she told the chaplain to call us. i got the call RIGHT, and i mean RIGHT as i was exiting onto my street, to come home and pack for my trip to alabama. i was within spitting distance of taking my shoes off, washing my face, doing some yoga, and packing. i had ten thousand things on my mental to do list. i'd had a very productive day at work, but nothing nuts. this, oh boy, man...this was NUTS.

i won't go into detail about specifics, because they aren't really important, and they aren't mine to share. but i can tell you that this little girl and her mother have a long road in front of them, seperately and together.

i'd never seen any person that small, in my life. my nephew addison is growing inside my sister-in-law right this second, and he's a whole week older than this little girl. she weighs 650 grams. my hand looked so giant on her chest. not even my hand, just my finger, inside a blue surgical glove, dripping sterile water on her chest, trying not to shake and making every effor to touch her as lightly as i could, so her skin wouldn't tear. she looked so small. so fragile. i don't even know what the whole top of her face looks like. G-d does. and G-d knows all the things about her that are important and worth knowing. i know tonight, i got to be the one, on behalf all G-d's children, to invite her into a new kind of life. i know G-d had already invited her, and i was just the one saying the words. but it was an experience, a pause, an already-not-yet, and holy moment. i seriously get a little wobbly just thinking about it, now.

i know that she, like all of the rest of us, will live just as long as she is supposed to, and not one minute longer. i keep wishing for this perfect life for her...something out of a novel or a lifetime, television for women drama, because this is TOTALLY THEIR STORY LINE, DUDE. and i'm writing it in my head...no long term health problems, no developmental delays, obscenely high i.q., well adjusted, prom queen, ivy league, faboulous at whatever she decides to do with her life, wife, mother, vestry member, grandmother, tomato grower... mostly, i think, at the bottom of it, i hope she gets to grow up and have a satisfying life, to meet the people of G-d, to see the world around her, to smell the rain, and skin her knees, to make friends, to have koolaide mustaches, to eat an oreo, to learn how to sing "Jesus Loves Me", to do all the things i think little kids and grown up should learn to do. she rests in the mercy of G-d, who knew and her and made her and has a plan for her that is more than even i could ask or imagine.

in your quiet time, whether it's in prayer or yoga or traffic, please remember hope rose, and ask G-d to bless her. mil gras.

mil besos,
rmg

yeah, so...

2010-06-21T14:01:00.002-05:00

writing about my dad feels like a lot of different things, some of them are good, some of them are bad, and some of them are really hard. one thing i don't want, from anyone, any time i write about him, is sympathy. i hate that. never feel sorry for us, for me, for him, for the family. everyone gets dealt a rough hand in life, at some juncture, and no one gets to choose what their rough hand is. you just play your cards with grace and dignity. but no pity, please.

i missed him yesterday. i missed him all day long. i can hear him so clearly, on most days. sometimes, i can smell him. sometimes, he is so close, i feel like if i turned around fast enough, i could catch a glimpse of him. there is a part of me, a little girl part of me, that is sure he lives in the moon, and can hear me when i talk out loud to him. i know that's bizarre and ritualistic, and i should know better, blah blah blah, but i do it anyway. he wasn't a perfecet father. but he was mine. i have this list of questions i would just love to have answers to, but, as with so many questions i have for my father, for G-d, for the universe, those are not for this life.

i am proud to be his child, every single day. i hope i make him proud. i could care less about the big questions, any more. i really just crave the comfort, the little piddly things like "goodnight" and "good morning" and " call us when you get there". it's silly, and it's so self-indulgent to weep over them. but it happens, nonetheless.

mil besos,
rmg

song for sarah nan

2010-06-17T17:26:00.002-05:00

she was my great-grandmother's last child, and the only one of those eight children to have been born in a hospital. she died yesterday. her name was sarah nan, but when i was little, i thought it was "sarah and anne". of course, i misheard a lot of things when i was little, and was usually too shy to ask for clarification, so i didn't realize her middle name was actually "nan" until i was in my late teens, and looking through photos. i ran across one with "nan" writeen across the back, but it looked just like aunt sarah. i was so confused that i took the photo to my grandmother, who said it was, in fact, aunt sarah, but they'd just written "nan" on the back, since it was her middle name. suddenly, "sarah and anne" made a lot more sense to me. crazy, right?

i wasn't particularly close to my great-aunt sarah, but not especially distant, either. she was a wife, a mother, a grandmother, a sister, an aunt, a daughter, and a friend. she saw elvis presley and jerry lee lewis in a louisiana hayride show at cherry springs dance hall, one night. when she was a teenager, she would ride my uncle's horse, old girl, between the house and the garage at breakneck speeds that apparently would scare the pants off my great-grandmother. by the time i knew her, my aunt sarah was much tamer. in fact, when i first heard that story, about five years ago, i remember looking at my aunt sue (her older sister), and saying "aunt sarah?? sarah sessom did that?" aunt sue got a kick of how suprised i was. time tamed sarah nan in several ways, and none of them were particularly kind, i don't think.

she married the boy that took her to see elvis and jerry lee. and he died in a car wreck not too long after that. she almost died in the same wreck. they didn't have any children. some years later, she married my uncle clayton, who was from a little town, too. they lived in texarkana for all of my life, and raised two girls. we saw them a couple of times a year, mostly at holidays. aunt sarah's birthday was july 4th, and that was one of the holidays we'd usually see them.

when i look at her through my child's eyes, i remember her laughing, or telling stories. i remember that she always had the most fantastically puffy hair. i didn't realize until i was much older that the puffy hair served to cover up scars from the carwreck. i remember the way her eyes would twinkle when she would tease, or tell a joke that was a little bit naughty. i remember the way she would make smoking a cigarette look like the most glamourous and fun thing you could ever do. i remember her hands, and the way that she favored the small, slim watches that my grandmother wore, too. she looked so much like my great-grandmother the last time i saw her. i can't remember a single conversation that we ever had just between the two of us, and i can't tell you what i thought we would have talked about, ever. but she was part of the fabric of my family, and her face is indeliblely marked on the history of who we all are, together.

when i look at sarah through my adult eyes, i see so many things that i wish could have been different for her, for all of us, really. but none of that matters, now. because yesterday, everything became different. sarah now knows as she is fully known, and the fears and percieved failures, the pain and the unanswerable questions were all lifted in a moment of grace that for her, will stretch out into eternity. and one day, we will all be together again, perfected and known and whole in houses made just for us by God and Jesus. that's amazing to me, and such a comfort to know. God bless Sarah Nan. God bless us all.

mil besos,
rmg

perspective

2010-06-02T12:30:00.002-05:00

this time last year, i was pretty strung out. i would wake up crying, i would go to sleep crying. dreams were all cobwebby and surreal, and i felt so trapped in my life, and so very alone. this june feels so very starkly different. i wake up ready for the day. i go to sleep tired, but fulfilled. my dreams...well, they seem to be variations on a theme, but they don't scare me, and usually don't make me cry. i feel like this life is something to be celebrated and fully lived, even on days when i don't quite know what that means. and while i am alone much of the time, the weight of the aloneness feels substantive, but not weighty.

i was doing yoga the other day, with my eyes closed, being aware of my breath, focusing my intentions, being present, and in my mind's eye, i could just see Jesus on a yoga mat, right across from me, in full lotus, with a wide grin on His face, telling me that this was the absolute right thing for me at that moment. last week, one of my little old ladies told me "honey, you are in your prime." i woke up in north carolina on monday morning, to the six-toothed grin of a gorgeous eight month old, with her arms held out to me, and in the picture that her momma snapped of us, i saw the woman i want to be, and am in the process of becoming. yes, i'll admit that i loved seeing a picture of myself with a baby in my arms. but in that shot, i looked just how i felt in that moment...enough, maybe even beautiful, happy and contented. it's a strange thing to wake up to the person you are, to stretch out into that, and feel where the corners and edges are, and to feel like it's a wonderful, familiar, and new place to be. i had no idea this is what this would feel like, and i want it to last. so i'm trying to approach it with open hands, and not hold it so tight i squeeze the life out of it. and at the bottom of all of this, i have this intense feeling of gratitude. "thank you" seems like it's too small to express my emotion. and so, i find myself praying at the oddest of times, just letting G-d know how this feels, how happy i am, how aware i've become, and that i am willing to do and go and be and see whatever is next, because that's what it's about.

to realize the unconditionality of love, and of Love is huge. it's so big that sometimes, i just have to weep. to lay down any and all hope, and to walk away from hope, and just love is huge. love without expectation or reservation or reciprocity, but love because you can't help but feel it, from head to toe, inside and outside, that's where i am, that's where i live. to create real and lasting relationships, to continue to carve family out of friends, and to make friends with my family, to open my arms and eyes and heart to the full expression of G-d's love and intent for me and the universe is no small thing. it's sometimes a little scary, but so are rollercoasters, and they almost always are thrilling and wonderful, and on this ride, i'm never worried about the operator falling asleep at the switch. it doesn't have to make sense to me, because it was never about me, anyway. i think that's pretty great.

mil besos,
rmg

wild kingdom

2010-05-27T12:55:00.002-05:00

there's a mockingbird that lives in one of the date palms in the front of my condo. i've watched this bird for weeks, and really fell in love the day it impersonated a frog, trying to throw one of the neighborhood cats off it's scent. smart bird, that one. i think about her, nested in the palm, and think about myself, and how it feels to be nested in the palm of someone's hand. i am profoundly grateful for that thought.

may is almost over. thanks be to God.

mil besos,
rmg

ordinary time

2010-05-11T12:57:00.004-05:00

the church nerds out there will point out that the season of ordinary time doesn't start until may 23rd. to the church nerds out there, i offer my deepest, most sincere apologies, and best wishes for you to get the hell over it.

ordinary...that word conjures up a lot of feelings inside of me, lately. it's a dangerous kind of word, a middle word, like "better" or phrases like "on the other hand". you have to be careful with words like "ordinary". we are all painfully ordinary in our extrordinary ways. each of us is a bright and shining thing, andare dulled by the lustre of the other. and while what i bring to the relationship table may seem like something rare and unexpected, i can assure you that it feels painfully normal and utterly ordinary to me.

case in point: i am never suprised. i am unflappable. it's damn near impossible to shock me. seriously, i'm not making this up. i say this without a single trace of pride. because, seriously, once people know that about you, it's kind of like open season. and that's ok, and i'm happy to turn this bizarre talent into something that's helpful to people. i mean, it's not like it's some parlor trick i've worked to perfection over the last decade. it's just how things are. i mean, the shocks i incurred as a teenager and young adult, the things i heard and saw, have made it virtually impossible to knock me off my stride. redemptive experiences find us in the oddest of moments. it's just this really totally ordinary thing in my life, not altogether different from the trick i can do where i fit 38 whole grapes in my mouth, at one time.

i've heard and seen some things. the echos and prints of terminal illness and drug addiction, of watching my family spin and struggle, and find it's footing, again...those echos make it almost easy to hear everything that has come after it. and those echos make it easier to carry the things people leave with me, when they tell me their stories. in this life, my lesson is to carry stories, to hold them, to remember them, to protect the sanctity of the stories i get to hear. i didn't understand that about myself until i was 27 or 28...but i understand it, now. and even though some of those stories find their way to me in the most unusual of ways, they are, at the bottom, ordinary stories of ordinary lives. people are just people, and shit happens.

i love stories, even the sad and hard ones. once i've heard someone's story, or part of it (because who ever really knows the whole story of someone, other than G-d?) my perceptions of them rarely change. people are who they are, the details notwithstanding. G-d put something special, unique, beautiful, magic, and world-changing in each and every single one of us, and that can never be taken away, reassigned, or given up. we are born so extraordinarily ordinary. and all the ancilliary things that happen to us along the way shape us, for sure, but for most of us (clearly exempting shit i don't understand at all, like serial killers...or televangelists...), the changes and chances and little lives and deaths inside our big life, they can't touch the absolute beauty that G-d puts inside each of us, nourishes with the milk of human kindness, and the strange and awesome forces of grace and mercy.

the native americans (total badasses...navajo rugs are my new favorite analogy...) used spirals in their sacred art. the entoptic shapes you see behind your eyes, when you close them, or press them tightly, are sometimes spirals, too (and hatchmarks, etc). this life, this ordinary life, sits on a spiral. we will learn the same lesson, over and over, because that's the lesson we have to learn, the lesson G-d asked us to learn as we were put together inside of our mothers' bodies, a lesson about our brokenness, our wholeness, how to tell stories, how to hear them, when to love more deeply, and when to walk away. it looks different for everyone, but it's all the same ordinary lesson. and that's pretty wonderful, i think.

mil besos,
rmg

throw down your arms

2010-04-22T12:36:00.002-05:00

so this seems to be a season of acceptance. the time in my life where i literally and figuratively issue my unconditional and absolute surrender to a Power larger than myself. for someone who has spent the bulk of her life fighting like the dickens for the next thing, capitulation is a hard concept to grasp. it's incredible to realize that i don't have to fight, all the time. in fact, sometimes fighting is the exact opposite of what i should be doing, because in the midst of the fighting, you sometimes miss the little pieces of wonderful that can come along and suprise you.

case in point: if i play my cards right, and don't get busted for soliticing or anything really scandalous, and don't screw up my model lesson, i'll be teaching three classes at the day school connected to my church. HOLY CRAP. that's right...someone is letting me mold and shape young and impressionable minds. theology (DOUBLE HOLY CRAP!), journalism, and public speaking. and my boss is totally fine with it, thinks it's a super idea, and isn't going to cut my salary. TRIPLE HOLY CRAP, Y'ALL. and all of this comes on the heels of me literally laying in the middle of my bedroom, crying and asking G-d to just DO SOMETHING, because the last six months have been pretty miserable, work-wise. and i have been fighting, fighting, fighting. and all i had to do was lay down, and be willing to be still. funny how G-d always manages to do just the right thing when i get the hell out of the way.

but it's not just work that needs me to lay down and take instruction, to be humbled, and to be disciplined in a real and profound way. i talk big. i think bigger. and my dreams are beyond belief, somedays. and fighting with God about what i should/shouldn't have, and when and how i should have it isn't really helpful, or fun. and i'm over crying in the car, and in the bathroom, and on the phone. and you've all been reading about that, too. and there's really nothing new to say about that. so i'll just leave your imaginations running wild. but not too wild, i mean, this is ME we're talking about. and trust that if there were/are any hot dates, i'd be sharing them with all the interwebs, in pg-13 detail. no, it's more like i'm just laying down on the floor of my heart, accepting that i still have a lot of feelings and thoughts to work through, some old scars to heal over, and i know that when it's time, it'll be time. and it'll be for all the marbles, and i won't even have to wonder what the hell is happening, because it'll be happening. and that's enough to get me to the end of the day, today.

ramble much?

mil besos,
rmg

how this be

2010-04-08T14:03:00.003-05:00

i imagine that if we all compared our inner-monologues, we would all be at least half-crazy. for instance, while i was waiting in the drive-thru at subway, i went from shaving my legs, to buying new shoes, to aristotle and current american politics in about 15 seconds. seriously.

for the last year, much of my prayer life has been focused around a prayer i read several years ago, by a man named mychal judge, who was the chaplain to the nyfd, and was the first registered casualty of 9/11. father mychal's prayer, the way i say it, goes like this:

"lord Jesus, help me to see what you want me to see. help me to hear what you want me to hear. help me to meet who you want me to meet, and help me to stay out of your way."

it's the first thing i pray in the mornings. it's the last thing i pray at night. i know that to learn what God wants me to learn, i have got to practice radical and absolute surrender, and to be radically compassionate to everyone i encounter. and that scares the absolute crap out of me. to know the power behind what i am saying, to understand the underneath meaning of absolute and unconditional surrender to the God who made me. i mean, it's not like you can really fight city hall, anyway. but being willing to go along for the ride, to abdicate my silly right to kick and scream and protest seems to be the key, lately.

all of which is to say, i really want to get married and have kids. and it's profoundly difficult to understand and appreciate that even though i may want that, it may not be what's in store. and i have to decide, every single day, if i'm going to be sad about what i think i want, or be expectant and excited about what God is doing, at this present moment. some days, it's chicken salad. some days, it's chicken shit. the jury is still out on today.

mil besos,
rmg

spring...lightly

2010-03-30T12:14:00.004-05:00

it's been a long time since i've gone two months without a post. it's not for lack of trying, either. i think about posting something to the blog almost every day. but the fact of the matter is that i've been dealing with a monumental case of writer's block, and i've actually been kind of busy. writing about my life has taken a back seat to living it, and i think that's probably how it should be. however, living an unexamined life has never been one of my goals, and being self-aware is something i work on daily.

i keep reminding myself to look at the big picture. in fact, the phrase "big picture" has become my new mantra, the way "it is what it is" was the mantra a couple of years ago. sometimes, just saying "big picture" to myself is enough to stave off a crying fit, or make me laugh, or feel incredibly grateful. sometimes, "big picture" actually makes me want to barf. nevertheless, it's the mantra, for the moment, for better or worse.

this life is in a state of constant change and readjustment...people being born, people dying, people marrying, people divorcing, people moving closer or farther away. relationships are profoundly important, but the context in which we have them is important as well. sometimes, we all seem to be in the midst of readjustments, and it's hard to know where the hand-holds are. at least, that's how it's felt for me in the last month. change, like the tides, seems to rush in and rush back out, and i'm left picking through the debris on the shoreline, reminding myself that this little life and the little place i have in the universe is still here, even if the geography looks different than it did at Christmas, or my birthday. and it will look different all over again, in a few short weeks or months. that is life. this is my life. it's not meant to be static. that's why people painted epic moments on cave walls, on canvases, and take pictures now with digital cameras. because the movement is constant, and you don't need stephen hawking to tell you that to go back in time, you have to go back in space, too. and that, friends and neighbors, is pretty well impossible at this juncture.

i was driving home a couple of days ago, and looking at the wildflowers on the side of the road. i love wildflowers, and they are one of the reasons i moved back to texas almost ten years ago. one spring away from them was almost more than my sanity could bear. springtime is my favorite season...but i say that about all the seasons. this year, though, the colors seem to be shouting...the greens are greener, the blues are bluer, and the colors of the cows and sheep seem to sing a beautiful harmony that's unlike anything i've seen before. it's almost like seeing something for the first time.

i wonder if the ground hurts when the flowers begin to burst forth, the way a mother hurts when she brings a baby into the world? a precious and needful ache, an ache of completion and surrender and acceptance...a growing ache that has nothing and everything to do with loss and gain, of zero balance? in this life, birth is always a part of brokeness, and coming to terms with our pain, radically surrendering to it, breathing with it, and out of it is the only way we can really gain the big picture, i think.

maybe it's the spectre of holy week that has put me in the mind of loss being gain, in the shadow of the cross, and the long walk up the last hill. we live in a world of powerful opposites, of attractions and repulsions. and the more things change, the more they stay the same. God is good, all the time. God's ways are not my ways. God has nothing to do with fairness, only mercy and grace and love. for that, i am profoundly grateful.

mil besos,
rmg

naked singularity

2010-02-04T22:06:00.006-06:00

from wikipedia.org:

In general relativity, a naked singularity is a gravitational singularity without an event horizon. The singularities inside black holes are always surrounded by an area which does not allow light to escape, and therefore cannot be directly observed. A naked singularity, by contrast, is observable from the outside.

i went to see one of my old people today. i see him every thursday, usually in the afternoon. but i had some extra time this morning, and i was already out on visits, anyway, so i went. it was not a good time. but, i did find out later that he was having some trouble with his blood sugar, and nothing seriously bad wrong was happening. he's fine.

what i saw in his room, or more accurately, what i heard, threw me for a loop of epic proportions. he was having a hard time breathing, and because of (unknown to me) the drop in bloodsugar, was kind of loopy and confused. he sounded like he was breathing through a hundred pounds of wet sand, and struggling to get the job done. the last breaths i heard come out of my father sounded just like that. i gave him communion, prayed with him, and left as quickly as i could. i called the office, and relayed the info that john was having a tough morning, and that it might be nice if a clergy person ran by to check on him later.

mostly, i think i just needed to hear a familiar voice and know that the person on the other end of the line was hearing what i was saying. luckily, my favorite co-worker took the call, and said the right things. and then asked if i was ok. and then i started getting teary. before, i was just freaking out quietly in my head, willing myself to calm the eff down, and not spiral. after i hung up the phone, i pulled into a parking lot, parked the car, put my head down, and promptly and efficiently lost my shit. for fifteen minutes. and then, i put on my big sunglasses, blew my nose, and went back to my office.

there are days when the weight of losing a father is especially hard to carry, and there are days when you can almost forget that the load is there. loss is an innate part of this life. it is inevitable. and sometimes, it's impossible to ignore. and sometimes, the sounds are deafening, and come at you in full decibels, demanding that you remember and feel all those sharp edges, again. it's like dropping a straight pin into a bag, and forgetting about it, until the day you go rooting in the bottom of the bag, and get the bastard lodged right in your cuticle. at least, that's how i try to make sense of the fact that even after thirteen years, death can still seem so fresh and terrible, all over again. it's frustrating. it was kind of scary, too. it's been a long time since i cried that hard over all of that. a very long time, indeed...years, maybe. but in a matter of 15 minutes on this rainy morning, i was 18 again, and in a parking lot, in another white car, sobbing into the steering wheel because my father was dead.

i'm ok. just needed to get it out.

mil besos,

rmg

sounds like home

2010-02-01T16:38:00.003-06:00

i'm consistantly amazed at the wisdom i ignored as a teenager. occasionally, that old wisdom comes screaming back into my ears, and oddly enough, is carried in my own voice.

i remember laying across my brass bed, all of fifteen years old, wondering what it all meant. and i remember hearing neil young in my stereo speakers. the fact that his voice is not the best, that his lyrics sometimes are cryptic and bizarre, that no one i knew was listening to him, that made neil young that much cooler to me. i can see myself sprawled against my pink-striped sheets, agonizing over my journal, and feeling the "hurt-so-good"-ness of "harvest", and knowing that it didn't matter that i didn't have words to put with any of my feelings. it was enough to just feel them.

there was a time in my life when i pretended that i didn't have crushes, or unrequited loves, or ridiculous "cinderella"-esque fantasies. for most of high school, i pretended to be above that kind of thing, at least in my head. and for most of my 20's, i just worked myself into such a frenzy about...work, that it didn't seem like i would ever settle down, and figure out what my heart really, really wanted.

and so, here i sit, at 31, feeling all these gross and disjointed and angsty feelings that i should have felt fifteen years ago. you can only hit the snooze bar on parts of your life so many times, before they crawl into your bed and demand that you deal with them like a sane and rational adult. it's a hard reality to finally see. i always took getting married and having kids for granted, like i wouldn't have to try and be present for those things to happen. i'm realizing more and more that the more cerebral i made my ideas of love and loving, the less and less real those ideas became.

i know a few things, on this cold and rainy day. i want to marry a nice man who loves Jesus. i want to have lots and lots of babies, and live in a house full of music and good smells. what i have right now, is a head and heart full of a 15 year old who wants to listen to her records and figure out what all this means. even thought the pink striped sheets are long gone, and all that impossible hair is being shot through with gray, i think i'm going to let the 15 year old drive the heart bus for a while, because the 31 year old driving the head bus is making a pig's ear out of this whole "adult relationship" thing.

mil besos,
rmg

...and i feel fine...

2010-01-21T13:39:00.003-06:00

so in the span of less than two hours, two people i adore and who are totally unrelated to each other, asked me about 2012 and what i thought about it. crazy, huh? if i'm honest with myself, i really don't think it's crazy, at all, and is probably one of those little synchronicities that need to be dealt with, in some form or fashion.

it's no secret that the last year has been a real struggle for me, both personally and professionally. it's no secret that the world is changing, is getting exponentially smaller and larger at the same time. there are no secrets. and i don't think there are accidents, either. sure, there are things that defy explanation or reason, but that dosen't mean they don't have some greater good/deeper meaning attached to them. of all the things i've ever quit believing, waste has been the easiest one to cast aside. i don't believe in waste, and the belief in accidents allows for that. but i digress...

2012...possibly one of john cusak's worst movie choices...that hurt to type. i think that's the worst thing i can say about 2012, with any veracity. i mean, talking about what might or might happen when the Long Calendar runs out makes about as much sense as talking about what might or might not happen tomorrow. it's another day. and all the prognostication about the end of the world, cataclysms of epic proportions, and the ultimate doom of humanity seems a little ridiculous, if you ask me. it's not for me to know. and even if i did know it, what's to be done about it?

in the final analysis (and after all, isn't that what all the fuss with 2012 is focused on), everyone's world ends, sooner or later. for some people, it will be today, or was last week, or will be a hundred years from now. how we tell our stories, how we tell the Story of G-d, what words we use, how we find a way to hold Jesus's hand...those are the details that should interest us, should drive us forward, should compell us to love each other and our little lives a little bit more, every day. when we get bogged down in when the end of the world really happens, who gets rewarded or punished, we lose sight of the life we have to live TODAY, in the most ordinary and trascendent of ways.

i thought about what i would do differently if i knew i only had 24 months left on the game clock. things i've never seen, or done, or experienced that i thought were important went flashing through my head first. and then i thought about things i've done that i'd like to do, again. and then i realized that if i knew i only had 24 months left on the clock, i wouldn't do anything differently, not really. there is a lot left to learn in my little life, in my insane job, with my amazing family, and from my incredible hedge of friends. why would i leave that for a minute to go running off someplace else? so maybe i'd listen harder, ask better questions, be nicer than i absolutely had to be. i'd paint once a week. i'd write more letters. but that's about all. and those are things i've been working on doing, anyway.

the end of the world is not my perview. it's not something i think i should think about, or dwell on. my job is to live into the Gospel, and to sometimes use words; to praise God, love people, and use things well. i'm content to let G-d, who is doing far more than we could ask or imagine, handle the rest.

mil besos,
rmg

prime

2009-12-17T14:14:00.004-06:00

31...wow. i'm here, and i must say...i love it. i really do. it's an incredible blessing to wake up in the mornings, and not roll over and start crying, or be immediately and devastatingly disappointed in who you see in the mirror. for the first time, i feel entirely myself. and i realize that sounds like such a strange thing to say...i mean, it's not like i've undertaken some bizarre change. i think i've just come to an understanding with G-d, the universe, and myself.

to be able to see myself as G-d's creature, something beloved, that is apart from who i am in my family, to my friends, at my work...to realize that i am wholly pleasing, just on my own, because Jesus loves me into that, is fantastic. and it makes the fact that i cried my way through this summer, spent a lot of time being quiet, and have radically adjusted my expectations on every single level in my life worth everthing. to feel safe, saved, and free is a wonderful thing. it even makes the gray hairs that seem to show up with more and more regularity beautiful to me.

i've been reading a lot, as always. and i've been reading a pretty wide range of material...fiction, biography, science, wikipedia, etc. i recently finished "a brief history of time", by stephen hawking. it's supposed to be a book on quantum physics for the layperson. i read the whole thing, cover to cover. i understood every word on the page, but i'm still not entirely sure what i read, or anything at all about quantum mechanics. but i have to tell you that what i did come away with was a profound and deep appreciation for this amazing Creation, and am in awe of the Creator.

some people read physics, study science, and believe that they have nothing to do with G-d. i suppose that's true if one's perspective of G-d is limited to devine parental figure. i don't want a G-d that small...and fail to see the point in having one that small. G-d is big. and in a real sense, i connected the idea of G-d and the universe in some new ways. for instance, did you know that the universe has no edge, and no center? the universe is expanding at the exact right speed to not collapse in on itself. time and space move constantly, so you'd never really be able to travel back in time, unless you could also travel back in space. that can't be accidental. you really and truly never cross the same river twice...not the guadalupe or the rubicon. and i think that's kind of incredible.

i've thought for a long, long time that my greatest strength was my endurance. maybe that's not true. maybe it's not enough to be able to bite your lip and get through whatever life is handing to you. i've been trying more and more not to just bite my lip, but to have the grace to look around, and realize that life is happening all around me, beauty is waiting to be seen, comfort is waiting around ever corner (to recieve, as much as to give), and i will never pass this way, again.

to be fully present, and fully invested in being fully present is hard to do. we live in a world of bells and whistles and shiny things. we live in a world focused on the future...whether that's the next political cycle, the next pay check, the end of the mayan sun clock, etc. what we forget is that if you aren't living this moment, right to the brim, you're missing out on something that you can't ever get back, that you can't even imagine. and i don't want to do that anymore. i want to live out loud, in every possible color and flavor, while all the speakers and colors and flavors are available. i don't want to waste time wishing for things, or hoping for things. i'd rather spend the time being grateful for what's in front of me, around me, beside me, and know that all of those things and people and experiences are a gracious plenty.

the land of prime...where a number is divisible by itself and one, and nothing else...i like this place. i like how it feels to be here, even the sharp edges. i'm profoundly grateful that it's cold, that it's Christmas, that my family and friends are happy and healthy. i'm thrilled by engagement announcements, shower plans, holding babies, opening cards, and sending emails. every day is such a blessing to me. to be divisible by nothing by G-d, nothing but love, nothing but hope, and peace, and joy...prime is good place to be.

mil besos,
rmg

variations on a theme

2009-11-09T15:49:00.009-06:00

so much of what i remember about my childhood can be distilled down to things that happened in just a few rooms. my bedroom (of course, hosed down in pink toile and covered with clothes i never quite managed to put up) in our old house, which i feel like i lived in for a thousand years, but really only lived in for just over eight, was the center of my universe. my mother's kitchen, blue and always full, was the place i picked up and dropped off information. our little breakfast nook, where i took nourishment, where we talked about current events, where we fought, where we ate every day, with windows on two sides, seemed like one of the safest places on earth. my father's study was much like my mother's kitchen, in my mind, except it wasn't blue at all, and always smelled like "chaps" cologne and pipe tobacco...i picked up and dropped off information there, as well as being called to the carpet for having a smart mouth, etc. the room i remember today was the family room...

i can still feel the heat of the day coming off the glass blocks, and i can feel the nap of the rug under my legs, which were almost always crossed indian-style, sitting slightly to the left and in front of my father's brown upholstered recliner. behind me, my brother sits in the wing chair, or just behind me on the rug, playing with leggos or micro-machines, or something that screams "hi, i'm seven, and i'm here to make your life a living hell." my mother sits on the couch, at the back of the room, working on a butterfly-themed afghan for my bed. and we're all watching the news, which is weird, because it's the middle of the evening, and shouldn't we all be watching something inane like "Growing Pains"? but we're not. we are definately watching the news. (actually, it's more like The News, because Peter Jennings is Reporting, like God intended. ) and my parents look very nostaligic.

i can see the men climbing on top of the wall, just in front of the brandenberg gate, the checkpoint i heard them call "charlie" in the weeks leading up this night. they have crowbars and hammers and sparklers. the noise coming through the screen is amazing...horns honking, people shouting and singing and crying and calling out the names of loved ones. there are fireworks. there are pictures of presidents, and soundbites, and i hear the one about "mr. gorbechev, tear down this wall" and i remembered watching that bit of news in our old house. Peter Jennings keeps talking about how historic this is. my parents remind me about the olympics, and how now there will only be one germany, and we won't have to feel sorry for the poor east german athletes, anymore, because they don't have to be communists and live away from their families, anymore. and sit there, in our house in brady, about ten million light years away from berlin, and i watch history. i remember sitting there, and reminding myself to remember this. remember that this happened. remember that you had a lump in your eleven year old throat, but couldn't really figure out why. remember.

i remember another day, about ten million light years away from brady, and berlin, and remembering things. i can see myself walking into another museum couryard, just about like every museum courtyard i've walked into since i moved to this city of marble and exhaust fumes. and i see slabs of concrete, replete with graffiti, with stubs of rebar showing, screaming in the silence of masonry that Things Happened. and i put my hands on the mute concrete and i remember the night i saw this wall come down. i remember all the things i learned about it. i remember telling myself to remember that night. and i put my hands out, to touch the silent stones, and i weep with the weight of remembering, and the joy of it, too.

today, i sat down to remember, again. i'm not weeping, today. but i am profoundly joyful, profoundly grateful, profoundly hopeful that the human experience can include the redemptive work of tearing down unjust and ungodly and unneeded walls. i remember that love is a powerful force, but a power that is never bent to dominate. i remember that love wins. love is what tears down walls, not crowbars or dynamite. and that's pretty news-worthy, i think.

mil besos,

rmg

post it notes i wish i'd left for myself to find on the bathroom mirror at two am on days when i can't seem to sleep

2009-10-05T10:25:00.005-05:00

dance naked in the rain every single chance you get.
one of the perks of having a privacy fence is just that: privacy.
in the small scope of this life, you will be born a thousand times, but you only have to die once.

letting the rain wash you into the next iteration is important, as important as the waters that washed over you as you were born fresh into the world, mother-naked and blinded by the light, squalling and covered in remnants of a life you will never remember. this dance is important. the steps don't make any difference, nor does the color of paint, or the words and worlds you paint with them. but the dancing is important-vitally so.

you will dance, just like rumi said, in your blood and your bandages. you will be reborn and learn that God forgives you completely, just like Jesus said. you will look at the world in wide-eyed wonder, like you've never seen it before, smelling polyphenols and ozone, and hoping to God that the neighbors aren't up late and looking out their top story windows. but there's a part of you that could care less if they do see you. this is your experience. this is your dance, and there's never been one like it, and there will never be anything close to it, ever again. self-consciousness is a burden too heavy to bear when you're in that alone and not-alone place with God. you will shed old skin, and understand snakes in a way you thought impossible.

when you find yourself dancing, you will realize that you don't believe in words like "impossible", or "war". the only things you think of, the only mantra you can find, the only words that will escape your lips will be all about love, mercy, peace, and hope. the rest of the words don't mean anything, in that context. when you dance, you will know that simple and complicated fact down to the bottoms of your bare feet, caressed by the darkening mulch, making those red toenails you sport 365 days out of the year jump out darker in the contrast. you'll dance to the music you love, whether it's coming from your stereo, or rumbling out of the sky.

this is your communion. this is your holy moment. these are the words of institution. this is your wailing wall, your holy of holies, your tabernacle, your mt. horeb, your singing praises on trail out of babylon. and it won't matter that some people will think you are a heretic, an exhibitionist, a crazy. because when you dance naked in the rain, it all makes sense. all the colors bleed to green and gray, to black and silver, and darkest blue, and the color of water that holds them all together, and even at night, you can imagine the rainbow of promise that is lingering and wooing the world back to wholeness, somewhere. when you dance, you put to sleep all the nay-sayers, the down-keepers, the ancient and unrequited love, and the longing for small children of your own. when you dance, you know that you are what God made you to be--unique, free, happy, grateful, redeemed, adorded, forgiven, loved, and at peace. the rest of what you might or might not ever be doesn't even start to matter while your feet are moving and your body is swaying. this a good thing to know.

rain is forcasted all week. blessed be.

mil besos,
rmg

episode 300, in which rachiepoo tells you a story of two deserts.

2009-08-28T10:03:00.004-05:00

this is my 300th post. for some reason, that seems like a really big deal to me, and at the same time, seems kind of ridiculous. i seem to be of two minds about a lot of things lately. duality, causality, context, and synchronicity seem to be the themes running in my life, through my brain, and in the world that i know, right now. and to tell the truth, i've never been more ready to see what comes next.

The first time I got lost in the desert, I was with two of my girlfriends from college. We went to the desert to camp, to see new things, swim in new pools, climb new mountains. We went to the desert to shed old skin, to tell each other sad things, to tell each other hopeful things, to laugh, to cry, and to stare up at the stars, with the asphalt hot against the skin of our backs, on the high-line drive, where no cars were allowed after dark, to pass cigarettes and wine glasses back and forth, to sleep harder than we had slept in months. That we got lost wasn’t so scary, because we were together, and we were experienced campers. What was scary was that we were so close to not being lost, at all, but just couldn’t seem to quite get to where we needed to be. I think the edge of missing the mark, just missing by a hair, is so much harder than being absolutely annihilated. So I felt about being lost. I knew we would eventually end up where we needed to be. I just didn’t know how long we would have to wander.

June in those desert mountains was a beauty to behold. Everything was still flush from the spring, ripening to summer, like a pretty girl after a nice kiss. All the shades of green, hit randomly with pinks, yellows, occasional brilliant orange, and the whiteblack blur of quail startled out of their hiding places said that the desert is far from a dead place. Coming through Wild Rose Pass, with San Solomon Springs behind us, I knew that we had come to a place where we could find what we needed, and leave behind what needed to be left.

Sometimes, I think what you leave in a place is as important as what you take away. I mean that literally, as well as figuratively. We tried never to leave physical evidence that we had been someplace when we were camping, aside from the park-installed fire ring. But we did leave a lot behind, in the ashes inside that fire ring. We each left something we needed to get rid of. For me, it was realizing that a guy I had only gone on a couple of dates with was really bad news, and even though he was the best kisser I’d ever met, I knew that nothing about where we were going was good. God, it was hard to say that…was harder still to hear it said back to me by my sister-friends. But I needed to say it, and I needed people who loved me enough to hold me accountable to hear it.

For fifty-odd days this summer, the temperature has been over 100 degrees. It’s starting to mess with my head. I feel like I’m dealing with the worse case of pms in my whole life, and the period to beat all periods is hours from beginning, wreaking an almighty havoc upon my life the likes of which I have never imagined, much less experienced. Aggression seems to simmer just below the surface, like I could go out and pick a fight with Gandhi or push down a blind kid. I feel aggressive, paranoid, anxious, and maybe a little bit strung out. All the brown lawns and the blinding light of the sun are buzzing in some bizarre bass line that makes my eyes tear up. I don’t even want to drive around my favorite neighborhoods and look at houses…it just makes me want to cry.

I wake up and pray for rain. I go to sleep, and I pray for rain. I wake up and go to the bathroom, and I pray for rain. I toyed with the idea of putting my underpants in a ziplock bag in the freezer, like Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch. I didn’t do it. And then the other day, I was really in a bad way, and found myself thinking about that trip to the mountains with Kristen and Laura. I thought about the clarity of thought I had on that trip, I thought of what I left behind, what I took away, how I feel right now.

And I realize that what I’m feeling now is a lot like what I felt four summers ago, when we went the long way around the mountain. The difference is that I’m not on vacation, and the bulk of this little sojourn has been on my own, in a manner of speaking. Being in the desert of this summer has been profoundly difficult. It’s also been incredibly beautiful.

Last night, for no good reason other than God's own great mercy (and isn't that the best reason of all), it rained in this desert of a city, parched and languishing in the last month of the longest summer of my life, and the only one I'll live as a 30 year old. As I drove down 281, back to my little house, and my fat cat, I was running the windshield wipers at full speed. And when I got home, and walked through my back door, I could smell my rosemary and lavendar giving up their sweet fragrance, I could smell the ozone in the air from the light show in the clouds, and I was so very happy. I pulled the clip out of my hair (which I can't wait to cut...ten inches for little bald kids is a LOT of hair, and I'm almostbutnotquite there yet), shook the day's tension out of my shoulders, and danced. Rumi, one of my favorite poets, said this: "Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance, when you're perfectly free."

I imagined that this year of my life would bring change, mostly internal. I planned it that way. I promised myself that by the time I turned 31, things that I struggled with in my life, for huge parts of my life, would be confronted and dealt with in healthy ways. The list isn't complete, not by a long shot, but I've made a dent. I've allowed myself to start thinking about going back to school, about believing in the strength of my own convictions, of the sanctity of real and profound surrender. I am still who I was on the last day of my 29th year, who I have always been, down to my toes. But I have shed some skin, drug the dead parts over and over the rocks in my path, and left the bits that didn't belong to me anymore for someone else to wonder about. The marvel of all of this to me is that so much of this has taken place inside myself, inside my head, and heart, and soul. Most of the conversations I've had have been just between me and God. To say that I am grateful for this experience, even the things I've said goodbye to in my heart of hearts, would be a gross understatement. There's not a word I know to make it big enough.

I remember when Laura and Kristen and I figured out that we were right where we needed to be to pick up a trail back to our tent. The relief I felt was almost overwhelming. I teared up a little bit. I am tearing up a little thinking about it right now, four years after the fact. We shambled down the switchbacks, trying not to run, trying to conserve our energy, and I was trying not to show how really scared I had been. I drank three 32 ounce bottles of water until I finally had to go to the bathroom. We had to hang our clothes out on the campsite clothesline to dry them, and I was suprised they didn't have salt flakes on them once they were finally dry. But that night, by the fire, and later that night up on the highline drive, we laughed and laughed and told story after story, just happy to be safe, and not lost, and still on our adventure.

I feel like that now. I feel like I have been in the desert. Like I took the long way around the mountain. Like I am most definately not lost, anymore. And I am still on my adventure.

mil besos,
rmg

most favorite thing

2009-08-21T00:17:00.002-05:00

mom and grammy bought me an adirondack chair as an early birthday gift. i put it together as soon as i got it, and literally sit in it every night. best present, maybe ever.

it's a lovely night.

mil besos,
rmg

the not-oprah list of my favorite things of summer

2009-08-10T11:12:00.002-05:00

in no particular order...

*thighmaster-- i bought one for $5 on amazon.com, and paid $15 to have shipped. i have used this thing RELIGIOUSLY, and am totally amazed. seriously.

*psalm 91.-- i read it at least once a day. this is my security blanket, at the moment. and i revel in it.

*long hot baths with epsom salts

*the dark tower books-- which i read from beginning to end in five weeks, because i love love love that story.

*fiesta dress that i wear to the pool. maybe my favorite piece of clothing, because it's green and has a peacock on it. close second is the wonderful and beautiful gauze shirt mom bought for me last month. it's in heavy rotation, at the moment.

* watermelon-- i can't remember the last time i craved a food, and this summer, i just can't seem to eat enough of this lucious treat. i honestly think that watermelon and the steadfast love of the baby Jesus have kept me sane this summer.

*old movies-- the ones that seem to explain how life is, right at this moment, and the people in my life who know just what those movies are, and just which line to say at the perfect moment. "melrose place is a really good show..."

*my cell phone and text messages-- i know, i know, i know. but my life would be so much more complicated without them. i love my cell phone. it's outdated, doesn't do anything fun, and is probably due for an oil change soon, but i just don't care. i love my phone.

*music-- like a super lot. all day long. all the time. and if i'm not listening to music, i'm thinking about listening to music. this summer's stand outs have been paul simon, emmy lou harris, bob marley (always a summer classic), lady gaga (that hurt to type), the jayhawks, led zepplin, the new pornographers, and (as always) a lot lot lot of bob dylan.

*kiss my face peaceful patchouli lotion and soap--even though one of my besties says that patchouli smells like a dirty hippy's armpit, i just don't care. i love how it smells, and i love these products. it's the simple things that get you through the most mundane days. also, an honorable mention goes out to ZUM bar soap, also in patchouli. i love this stuff.

*jinx the cat--he is the face i come home to at the end of the day, and even on days when i am not my best, jinx is always happy to see me, happy to love me, happy to share my space. he is a huge blessing in my life. i have learned more about unconditional love this summer than i ever imagined was possible, and a great majority of that learning has come while spending time with my cat. G-d knew what needed to happen when jinx came to live with me...

*movie popcorn--i learned that if i'm not hungry for watermelon, and just can't get a handle on what i want, it's probably movie popcorn. weird, right?

*this blog--this has been my mental refuge during this long, hot, incredibly weird summer. it's sometimes hard to remember that this summer has had some very happy and unexpected miracles all over it, because what screams loudest this summer is that a lot of things and people (not just famous ones) have died...i mean, just look at the lawns in my neighborhood. but i know that when i sit down to write, something fresh always comes to take the dry taste away, even if what i'm saying is hard. the reality of writing down how i feel, what i think, what's happening, even if it's veiled or abstract or in third person is just so good to feel, even when the feelings are intense and sometimes painful. thank you for reading.

mil besos,
rmg

3am, again.

2009-08-03T17:51:00.000-05:00

"It is looking at things for a long time that ripens you and gives you a deeper understanding."--vincent van gogh

i find myself thinking about romance in a totally different way than i did when i was 20. i'm glad the changeover has happened, to be quite honest. i don't think what i thought i knew about romance was even remotely correct, or that having someone jump through those hoops would have really made me happy. that's not to say that i don't think there's room enough in my life for romance. i think i just mean that romance means different things to me at 30 than it did at twenty...and i'm so glad i know that about myself.

i think if i'd had someone cater to my romantic whims at 20, i would have become pretty petulant and selfish. i mean, does anyone really need to go to four restaurants in one night...appetizers in one, entrees in another, dessert in yet another, and topped off by fancy grown-up drinks at the last? i know at 30, i'd be much happier with a good, non-tedious, honest and energetic conversation over a piece of pie in one of my favorite all-night diners.

at 20, romance would have looked like my favorite flowers on my birthday. at 30, i think romance might look like new light blubs in my vanity sockets, maybe a an extra half-gallon of milk grabbed on the way home, just in case we were running low, or having those horrible new license plates magically appear on my car. at 20, a romantic get-away would have been way over-planned, and under-enjoyed...too much money, too many things to see, too much drama to get there, etc. at 30, i think it looks like a couple of backpacks, a map, a lot of music, and a little money.

at 20, having someone read my mind and and intuit all my needs before i even articulated them would have seemed like a reasonable relationship goal. now...not so much. at 30, i think i have begun to understand that if we can find someone in this life who just really gets who we are, down at the bottom of all our bullshit, and decides to stick around anyway, is something pretty special. all the rose petals and high dollar champagne in the world can't compete with that. that's not something that sells books, or makes it to reality tv. that's not something you can ever cash in and use as a bail out. that's an intangible, a for better or worse kind of deal. that's a bigger deal that a remembered birthday, trite poetry, fancy dinners out, or knowing the day you had your first kiss. i feel good about knowing that, at least for myself. and on days when i wake up at 3am, wondering what it's all about, sometimes knowing that helps me get back to sleep.

mil besos,
rmg

fable

2009-07-22T19:48:00.002-05:00

Once upon a time, there lived a very curious little girl with brown hair and blue-gray eyes. She often found herself tiptoeing toward places she might not should go. When she was eight, her parents moved (with her and her small brother, of course) into a big red brick house on a tree-lined street, in the middle of town. This was a magic house.

The magic house seemed to go on forever, and the little girl found herself wandering around the house and the yard with big eyes, and open ears, imagining that the next little half-door in the wall would take her to Narnia or Middle Earth or someplace she’d never heard of. She was fascinated. Her grandfather, the kind of older man who seemed to have special magic or medicine (or maybe both) with small children, helped out a lot with the move. He also managed to keep the little girl and her little brother out of trouble…most of the time…with very inventive stories.

The previous owner of the magic red brick house, an older man (much like the little girl’s grandfather…he had magic and medicine, too), had dug out an old cellar, to the right of the back door, next to the fence line. Years and years had gone by since anyone had used the cellar, and the ground had shifted and water had filled the hidey-hole. The little girl and her even littler brother were mesmerized by the cellar. You can imagine that had the little girl or her little brother ever actually made it to the cellar, this story would be very different. You may also be asking yourself how two intrepid adventurers ever managed to find the self-control to avoid such a place. In a word…the answer is the mystical, mythical, magical bullagator. Of course, the bullagator in the cellar was repatriated when the little girl’s grandfather knocked the cellar in with his forklift and beaucoup fill dirt later that summer. Little was heard from or about the bullagator until the little girl with brown hair and blue-gray eyes became a big girl with brown hair (and some grey creeping in) and blue-gray eyes and a job at summer camp.

The Good Lord knows that nothing says fun quite like like a tetanus shot or a near drowning….hence, in God’s great wisdom (and the wonderful mind of Poppy’s with good medicine and magic), the bullagator was born. Bullagators are half bulldog, half alligator. And if a child should find herself someplace she ought not to be, a bullagator might magically appear to bite her little nose off. Bullagators are fearsome creatures. Not much was known about the bullagator until 2006, other than their magical business as the guardians of flooded cellars. It seems that bullagators are not only the guardians of flooded cellars, but also stretches of the Guadalupe River and partially collapsed barns that seem to scream “HEY KIDS!! COME PLAY OVER HERE!”

Extensive research has been done on bullagators in the last three years, and that research has borne much fruit. For instance, we now know that in addition to biting off the faces of naughty children who stray into restricted areas, they can lob acidified spit wads at least four feet. The spit wads can cause nasty flash burns, as well as causing rocks (lobbed by naughty children, to check to see if bullagators REALLY are REAL, no doubt) to burst into flame. Bullagators are about the size of Labrador Retrievers. They can be tamed, but only if you can whistle “A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes” backwards, with no mistakes. They also really like black jelly beans and Hank Williams on vinyl.

And in case you were wondering, the little girl is still living happily ever after. At least, that's the way I heard it.

mil besos,
rmg

a true story that never really happened...

2009-07-14T12:35:00.003-05:00

she's a pretty smart cookie, that one. not much happens that suprises her. oh sure, every once in a while, she has an off-day, but usually, that kid's head is on a swivel. she's the clutch player. she's the go-to. she's competent. and she is deadly efficient. the only caveat to that little rule...this kid only works alone. that makes the job harder, but with the ripping and tearing that she sometimes has to do, it also makes the job quicker.

she hides all the soft places she can think of...hides them very well, most people don't even know where to start looking, anymore. she's approaching solitude, and that both frightens her and kind of excites her. it's like one day, a switch was flipped, and she realized that if solitude was what life was going to throw at her, she would catch it and wear it like a crown. nothing marks her but her, like using a low grade diamond to cut one of a higher grade. she isn't particularly happy about how this feels, but life is too short to complain. sometimes she feels like she's watching it all happen outside of herself, and sometimes that's because even she can't believe what's happening, how it's happening, or even why. but it is. her life is happening. and it's not bad. not at all. not even a little bit.

she didn't mean to lie to him. really, she didn't. he's one of those people who knows the soft places, one of the ones she's invited. she knew better. he's such an old soul. she tells herself that she knows he's not perfect, but she really thinks he kind of is. and is he a trainwreck...God, yes. such a mess and jumblefuck of emotions and manifestos and guitar strings and beer bottles and cigarettes and ghosts of girlfriends past, and she loves him extra because of the mess. but she lies to him regularly. she has no desire to be what she is to him. but it's all she can be, and she'd rather be that than nothing. but she reserves the right to not have her face rubbed in it, which is why she lied and missed hearing her favorite song, and pretty much cried the whole way home.

the weight of that lie gets to her, but she chokes it down with a burning shot of pride, flicks her hair back, and keeps walking. she is pulling away from him. it's never going to be what she wants, and she's to a point that rather than have left overs, she'd really rather have nothing, but thanks for offering. it's past time. about three years past time, truth be told. almost exactly.

she remembers snips and phrases from her geometry class in high school. lines are infinite. parallel lines will always run parallel to each other. they never intersect. she thinks this is a lot like where she is with him. they see each other just fine. but they will never be on the same track. ever. this is physics. this is universal truth at it's very deepest, at least as far as their story is concerned. it doesn't matter what makes the tracks parallel...weight, distance, fright, uncertaintly, wrong hair or eye color, because it all amounts to the same thing...parallel tracks will never be more than parallel tracks. they don't bend, or move, or intersect. they are as close as they will ever be, and nothing can change that. all that fancy talk about it almost being like incest notwithstanding...and it was all just bullshit to make her feel better, anyway, things are the way they are, and ever shall be. it's time to just cut the cord and be done with it, just the same.

she is almost who she wants to be. but the weight of this pulls her back to places she never wanted to see again. cutting ties...tying up loose ends...parallel lines and universes...crosby stills nash and young...buying vinyls...doing yoga...losing fifteen pounds...stopping the clock...she is very tired, but she's getting her life right.

weird story, right...came to me in a dream...

mil besos,
rmg

from the southside, vol. 1

2009-07-09T11:51:00.011-05:00

"only love

can bring the rain

that makes you yearn to the sky.

only love

can bring the rain

that falls like tears from on high"

--pete townsend

so i'm sitting at my desk, wrapping up a short day in the office. there is plenty to do to fill this whole day, but i have other things to do. i'm waiting on an email to tell me that caro and alex's little girl made it into the world safely. today is cate's birthday. today is a pretty sweet day. later today, i'll drive across a stretch of texas, so i can attend the funeral of a great lady, with whom i shared my birthday. in a few days, i'll celebrate the birthday of one of "my babies" first baby. next weekend, i'll go spend some time with my brother and sister-in-law, who just lost a dear friend. and in a few short months, two new babies will make their presence known in the world, and just knowing that is coming down the pike is pretty incredible.

life and death are so very intertwined. i say that, i write it, and i think that it's too simple to just say it like that. but maybe it IS that simple. maybe solving the mystery, whistling in the dark, trying to make sense out of something that is so far beyond what we can even start to comprehend is just an exercise in futility. i wish i knew why and how babies really were made. i mean, i get the mechanics, that's not the issue. i wonder why some people can have them, why some people can't, why some people choose to raise other people's babies. at the same time, i wonder why some people get sick, why some people get well, why some people die with a whole life behind them, and why some people die with a whole life unlived in front of them. i don't understand it at all. and i don't want to want to understand it, anymore. i want to just accept the mystery and the ultimate gift that each life and death offers to us. even if i had the answers, who's to say that i would even understand them. they would probably make about as much sense as the quadratic equation, which is none. so, i imagine that's just as well.

God's ways are so much higher than my own. and i suppose that knowing that makes all the difference in how i feel today, a day of very mixed and very different emotions.

a friend sent me a message last week about rain falling from the southside of heaven. i like that thought. it means we aren't so divorced from heaven, after all, and i think that's a good thing. in church, i spend a lot of time wrestling with the idea of the already and the not yet, the Kingdom of God between us, and the Kingdom that is coming. so to think of myself as just on the outskirts, the almost/the not-quite, of heaven, seeing things through a veil, that makes me feel like all the emotional whiplash of the last few days is much less severe.

the births, the deaths, the miracles, the meanings in the tea leaves, and all the different journeys down all the different roads... i am learning to lean into them. and thanks be to God for favors large and small.

mil besos,

rmg

snakes on a fence

2009-06-29T15:25:00.004-05:00

Ezekiel 16:6-8 (Young's Literal Translation)

6 And I do pass over by thee, And I see thee trodden down in thy blood, And I say to thee in thy blood, Live, And I say to thee in thy blood, Live.

7 A myriad -- as the shoot of the field I have made thee, And thou art multiplied, and art great, And comest in with an excellent adornment, Breasts have been formed, and thy hair hath grown -- And thou, naked and bare!

8 And I pass over by thee, and I see thee, And lo, thy time [is] a time of loves, And I spread My skirt over thee, And I cover thy nakedness, And I swear to thee, and come in to a covenant with thee, An affirmation of the Lord Jehovah, And thou dost become Mine.

I would do almost anything to see rain. A three-day soaker over a three-day weekend, the kind where you stay in bed and watch movies and eat popcorn and only stop to make more tea, go to the bathroom, or make out…that’s the kind of rain I mean. I’m to the point of painting my mother-naked body with poster paint, run out in the backyard and dance around for a couple of minutes. It’s dryer here than it’s been since the Nineteen Twenties. The river I watched climb out of her banks in front of my twenty-year-old eyes now lays sluggish and shriveled well beneath the stairs I once used with such ease on hot springtime and long summertime days a decade ago.

Everything inside of me seems to be crying for rain, echoing the wilting green screams of the lawns and gardens all around town, county, region, state. I see the popup thunderheads, so proud in the afternoons, irony gray and tinged with blue against the movie screen of memory. But what I really see is heat mirages billowing up on the asphalt that lines 410, the way the sky looks so hot and high that it’s just all white, no blue, nothing remotely like a cloud to even tease you with the promise of a little shade.

I remember the time my little brother saw rain for the first time. He was almost two. We were at my grandmother’s house, being hooligans. Clouds gathered, thunder began to rumble, and those precious drops began to color up the sidewalk. I started stripping off my clothes, running for my bathing suit, and threw open the door the minute I was decent, making a bee-line to the browning lawn to dance like a very small savage doing a spastic almost-six-year-old interpretation of a rain dance. My little brother walked onto the porch, holding my mother’s hand, looked up with his impossibly blue eyes and dirty blonde hair, and wanted to know what was falling from the sky.

It’s so dry…people who are caught using sprinkler systems more than once every two weeks are getting huge tickets. Only hand-watering is allowed every day. People are even doing laundry at Laundromats to save on their water bills, and to reduce water waste. My toilet won’t stop leaking, and that makes me feel like a horrible person, so I’m replacing the guts tomorrow. Should be an interesting trip to Home Depot…I’m a little nervous, truth be told.
But what I really want is rain…the kind that comes on slow and steady, making the dirt smell green, rinsing the dust and grit away. I really should wash my car, but I can’t bear to think about using all that water. But the car really does look kind of nasty.

I’m sitting here listening to bluegrass music, turned up loud. Bluegrass sounds so cool, clinging, refreshing to me, even the sad songs. It reminds me of the smell of rain in the woods…the way it smells like resin, and how you can almost hear the leaves getting fat and sated with the moisture. I remember swimming neck-deep in the Little Blanco River during a rainstorm in October...it was still warm enough to swim. I love swimming in the rain…not in lightening, but in the rain. It’s such an incredible sensation. I remember being neck-deep, big fat drops making splashes on the water and throwing up a fine mist, almost like it was raining up, and seeing the leaves in the hills just starting to get yellow and orange, and in the back of my head hearing “Yonder Stands Little Maggie”, with Ralph Stanley belting his guts out.

I want it to rain. I want to sit in my kitchen and eat a bowl of grits and drink a pot of coffee and listen to the rain smack against the metal roof of the carport. I want to run out the backdoor, thank God for privacy fences, shuck my clothes and take an outside shower, rinse my hair in the rain, and laugh like a small child, smelling my rosemary and lavender giving off their perfume in their own thanksgiving to God. There will be water if God wills it…I read that somewhere, once in a great story about knights and towers and a quest. I know there will be water if God wills it…I hope God wills it.

Shit has been weird for the last couple of weeks. The heat is getting to people, and it’s hanging a kind of lethargy over everyone, or it seems to have done so with me, at least. All I can think of is how hot it is outside. Seriously. Weird things have been afoot lately, they just seem to be made even more weird and sort of extra shitty because it’s so effing hot. I’m not kidding. The news did a whole play-ground experiment and tested the equipment with an infrared thermometer during one hot afternoon. The effing pavement was 140 degrees…that’s the temperature at which you poach an egg. It’s got to rain, or people are going to start going a little nutty, I think. It’s like some kind of seasonal disaffective disorder. I feel like I'm having to actively restrain myself from punching people in the face, just on general principle because it's just too damn hot. I wish I were kidding. I'm so not.

I keep looking for rings around the moon, to see if the sage bushes on the esplanade down my street are starting to pink up, to see if people in slightly shady neighborhoods are hanging dead snakes on their back fences, yet. I seriously have been waking up and going to sleep praying for rain.

Mercy…

Also, please pray for Jane.

mil besos,

rmg

the more they stay the same...

2009-06-23T14:19:00.003-05:00

it's one of those images that's etched on to my brain. it's never far from my memory, which probably means something weird. i can still see him in my mind, tall, dark hair, pants about a size too big, with a white button down shirt who's sleeves were rolled to the elbow, a paper bag in one hand, and his jacket slung over the other. he's waving his hands and screaming, daring the tank in front of him to mow him down. every time i see footage of that young man, all i can think is what i thought the day i saw that happen on cnn..."gosh, i hope they win".

i find myself now, in front of the television, watching something so oddly similar happen in iran. and i see them veiled, terrified, screaming green down the streets in tehran. gosh, i hope they win.

mil besos,
rmg

apples and pears

2009-05-27T20:22:00.005-05:00

Did you ever see something that you knew totally made sense to someone else, but looked like total gibberish to you? You feel like you can kind of make sense out of the edges, but the total message misses you by miles. That’s what this picture makes me think of, how it makes me feel. I guess the responsible way to phrase that would be that I respond with a sense of anxiety and inadequacy when I view this photo. I suppose it’s kind of pointless to give this picture credit for influencing my emotions…can you tell I’ve been working with a shrink?

I guess because I have been in therapy for a while now, I am thinking of things like my reactions, my plans, my desires and my requirements, my prayers, my ambitions and expectations, and a lot about my failings. I have done a lot of letting go, a lot of forgiving, a lot of crying, and a lot of hoping. At then end of the day, I am grateful for every step that has brought me to this point, even the steps taken that lead directly to stumbles and falls from grace, the steps that ended in crying heaps on my kitchen floor, or finding my adult self crying in the shower, begging for some new measure of understanding about what this life means in this present moment.

I wrote an entry in my journal on New Year’s Day 2009. I wrote about shooting stars, wishes, prayers, the weight of how we feel when we really want something with our whole selves, or at least how I feel. I could picture my young self, so fresh, so sure of herself on the outside and so terrified of never measuring up to some line she wasn’t even sure really existed. I remembered laying my long chunky body down on the sidewalk outside our red brick house on College Street, half on the pavement, feeling the heat of the day seeping into my legs and the fabric of my shorts, with the other half on the shaded patch of grass, peeping between pecan branches and making shapes out of white puffy clouds.

I can see it now through the eyes of a thirty year old woman, not a nine year old girl. I know words like cumulus, dopler effect, radiant heat, transcendentalism, and I can play the word association game like nobody’s business. When I was nine, I don’t think I knew a whole lot about much. I never would have imagined words like dichotomy, paradigm shift, orthopraxis, or quarter-life crisis.

At that point, I still was sure I would be a doctor, and that by the time I was 12, I wouldn’t be such a fatty. Those were things I was sure of. I was also sure that my room would never be clean enough. I was sure that if I studied and made 100’s, the kids in class would tease me about being too smart, even more than they already did. I mean, I didn’t really even understand why a kid accusing me of reading the dictionary in my spare time was a bad thing. Because of that, I was also sure that by not studying, and being lazy, and still making 96’s and 98’s, and sometimes a lower 90 or high 80 would infuriate my parents at home. Even at the tender age of nine, I realized the need to pick my battles. I also understood that sometimes, you have to sacrifice a battle to win the war. But I wouldn’t learn that phrase until late high school. Once I did learn it, so many things made sense.

I think about that little girl in her front yard. I can see her. I can hear her breathing. I can remember how she felt..so calm and so frantic, at the same time. She already seems to know that life is most firmly and fully lived right on the edge of things. She doesn’t know it, but hormones are beginning to charge into her blood stream by the bucket full. In just a few short months, she’ll start her first period. She will be amazed at the power of her own body, but she won’t have words to put with that feeling for at least ten more years, and even then, she’ll only think them very quietly, because she won’t understand that it’s ok to be a girl and like that about yourself until she’s at least 25. Then, when she turns 28, she will realize that she’s becoming the woman she always wanted to be, saying the words she’s learned and now knows what they mean, and why they mean what they do. I wonder if whispering any of these things in her ear would make her feel any better, or if she would even remotely understand what I was trying to tell her. I’d like to think I was a pretty smart little kid, but I don’t think I was quite that smart.

I don’t know if telling her anything would be a good idea. I mean, if you could soothe some of the anxiety of growing up, even if it was just to tell yourself that things will get better, would you do it? If you knew it wouldn’t tear the space time continuum, or create a black hole, or alter the course of human history, would you tell yourself that it was all going to work out? Would you trust the fates enough to tell yourself that as a nine year old? Would you be worried that you might be speaking too soon, that the bottom would surely drop out in the present, and that you’d be telling a lie to your nine year old self about things being alright, eventually? In the final analysis, it’s probably a good thing we don’t have that choice. We are most likely best served to believe that the past is always prologue.

But I wonder about that little girl, with hopeless hair, blue grey eyes, and the vague sense that she is on some kind of track toward something. She knows exactly what she needs to get by—she knows she is loved and Loved by something bigger than she can really imagine. She knows she likes to pray, and she wants to know God. She believes in miracles and knows that at some point, because she lives in a universe that is still so very black and white, fairy tales really are real. She even still half-heartedly believes in Santa Claus, because she likes the idea of believing in a nice idea, even though she won’t know that’s what that feeling is for another 15 years.

I think about her, and I look at her in my memory. I want to tell her that we eventually get a handle on all that hair, but that we have some unfortunate mishaps and fall into some tragic fads along the way. It won’t be cheap, but it will be interesting and colorful on the way.

I want to tell her that when she is an adult, those eyes that seem to never be the same color two days in a row will be her best friend. She will learn to use them to look past the surface. She will learn that people trust her eyes, and she will use that influence for good, because she will learn that betrayal is the cardinal sin, and even though she won’t read Dante’s Inferno until she’s 28, she will understand the feeling much earlier. She will be grateful when people compliment her eyes. That will be something that makes her feel set apart and special and she will have to try not to be vain about them. She will also have to learn to deal with the fact that she has a horrible poker face. This will mean that she’s going to have to learn to tell the truth, but to be careful with her words. She will know the flavor of “first, do no harm” long before she learns about the Hippocratic Oath.

She never quite loses the knowledge of the love she has or the Love she receives. There are a few moments that are awfully low, and for that I do wish I could give her a happy thought to store away for tearful mornings, letters she will wish she had locked in a drawer but sent because it was the right thing to do at the time, and letters that arrived at just the right moment. She won’t learn the true meaning of the phrase “situational ethics” until she is almost 30, but all of those letters and their aftermath and afterglow, they all prepared her to savor the meaning and the occasional mercy of the same.

I want to tell her to be careful with her love, but at the same time, I want her to love with her whole heart, every single time. I want to reassure her that seven years from where she sprawls out on that patch of concrete and grass, she will fall in love for the very first time. And it will feel better than anything else in her whole entire life will feel. And it will hurt worse than anything else in her whole entire life will, in ways she can’t imagine. She will learn to be thankful for that first love, because that’s the feeling she will always try to match, because it was so amazing and vivid. She will be grateful for that first heartache, because she will know that she will always come out stronger on the flip side, because nothing is as hard as the first time. She will learn that regret is a necessary component for nostalgia, and nostalgia is what reminds you of why you are happy to not live in the past.

She will learn things about God that she can’t imagine now. God will be huge and infinite, and sometimes even at nine, she can see the edge of what that means just at the moment she stops saying her prayers and slips off to sleep. But she will also learn about God as a God of small things, too, impossibly small in the face of infinite depth and breadth. She will learn about all sorts of paradoxes. She will find herself in the Bible, see stories from angles that would seem so foreign and alien to her nine year old mind. She will be enthralled by Elijah. She will befriend Peter. She will come to know Jesus as her brother, her friend, and her savior in a thousand new ways.

She will wish there were times when she could walk away from the knowledge that God’s will is where she wants to be, because sometimes that means being uncomfortable and angsty. But she will know a deep and profound center of things, she will learn to live away from the mountain-top experiences, and find deep peace in the middle places. I wish I could tell her that the peaks and valleys are going to be intense, but that the middle places are where she will catch her breath and see some amazing things. I want to tell her that she will dream dreams one day that will remind her of God’s promises.

I want to tell her to that the story of Gideon will be something she needs to find and own. I want to tell her that Bob Marley is going to be important. I want to tell her that one day, she will learn about synchronicity and non-violence, liberation theology, and experience the steadfast love of Jesus in the most ordinary and mundane ways.

I want to tell her not to worry about her nervous stomach, or her big feet, or the fact that she hasn’t learned to use her humor to full effect. I want to assure her that she will get a first kiss, she will learn how to dance. I want to tell her that it’s ok to want things to be fair, to be better than they are. I want to tell her that while her idealism will be tempered, she will always, even in the darkest of places, not ever really be able to suppress the hope and conviction that things are going to get better.

I want to tell her these things. Not give her specifics, no cheat sheets about the math portion of her college boards, or boys she should never kiss, or girls she should never be friends with, or the colors of her dreams or the flavors of her birthday cakes, just give her a little bit of hope. Give her a little bit of sunshine to keep in her pocket. I wouldn’t dream of telling her of the heartaches, or the train wrecks, or the small and large deaths she will witness and feel. I won’t tell her about the horrible haircuts, the blown test grades, the hangovers, the way that some mean kids grown up to be mean adults. That would take out some of the flavor of the gumbo life will offer her.

I imagine that when I am sixty, twice as full of years and experience as I am today, I will imagine my 30 year old self as I am now. I’m on my regular side of the bed, farthest away from the door. I have on a pair of boxer shorts I stole from my grandfather when I was in high school or junior high and a pink shirt I spilled bleach on while I was cleaning my bathroom the week after I bought it. The cat is grooming himself at my feet, and I’m in the first house I ever owned. Everything I own is in this house, its all in one place, for the first time since I was 18.

I am afraid most of the time that I will end up single, childless, and alone with several more cats, and that people will think I wasted my life. At this point, I kind of have a hard time disagreeing with them. I can’t come to terms with the fact that all or some of those things may end up being true at some point. I don’t think they will end up being true, and that’s mostly because I can’t manage to beat the hope out of the nine year old sprawled on the pavement in front of the house that my brain immediately flashes whenever I think of “my house”, even though I haven’t lived there in over ten years.

I hope when I’m sixty, I’ll want to come back and tell myself mostly the kind of thing I’d like to tell my nine year old self.

Don’t worry so much. You’re going to be fine. You are going to see some amazing things, and some things you’d rather not see. You’re going to laugh and cry a lot. You will doubt yourself some of the time. You will sometimes believe in things that aren’t all the way true, but you’ll eventually figure things out, and fix what you can.

You will need to read the letters in your bottom drawer periodically, to remind you of things you have forgotten, and places you still have left to go. You will still revel in the simple things, like hot cement and cool grass and big white clouds. You will fall in love, as many times as you need to, and one day, it’ll be for all the marbles. You will have amazing friends who will hold your hope on dark days, and you will do the same for them.

People will die, in big and small ways. You will keep picking up rocks, be enchanted by mysteries and mystics, and want to be at the beach every Summer Solstice. You will sing the song you were meant to sing, say the words that are written in your heart, and have more than you can ask or imagine. You will be loved and Loved.

I know I wouldn’t understand my sixty year old self anymore than my nine year old self would understand me, right now. But I’m sure, if we squinted just right, at the edges, where things either come together or blur, we would know what we meant.

mil besos,

rmg

ok, seriously...

2009-05-26T14:23:00.003-05:00

so i ended my fast way before i wanted to do so. let's just say that events conspired against me, and although i am pretty tough, a five-day-long headache was really about all i could reasonably stand. i'll try it again, and this time will not be silent...not matter how gross it gets.

i just got back from having lunch with my friend doris, who is 83. for the first time, doris looked and acted really old today. she had trouble keeping up with the conversation, repeated a couple of things. she's never done that, before. and she wanted to talk about her funeral. needless to say, i came back to the office kind of sad. it's not that i mind talking to doris about her funeral...she's 83, and it's my job to plan funerals with people, or at least part of my job.

the thing is that, no matter how much i try and give up my ego in the middle of all of this, i mind thinking about how i'm going to feel without my twice-a-month visit to her. it's how i'm going to feel when i don't hear her tell me, "stay off the street, kid!" everytime i leave her house. it's how i'm going to feel when i know there will be no more random coffee mug gifts, given by her with such glee at the little dining table under the skylight. knowing that things could be getting close makes me nervous, makes it difficult for me to stay fully present with her, because what i want to do is start to get clinical, get focused on the details, put my heart away, and really get out my brain. but that would be the wrong thing.

that being said, this is incredibly hard. doris has been one of my buddies since the very beginning. even though i know that all things pass away, just as all things are being made new, my heart still kind of hurts a little bit.

mil besos,
rmg

you may be right, i may be crazy...

2009-05-14T11:18:00.003-05:00

so today is my prep day before launching into a full on detox cleanse. i'm currently having a mug of hot chocolate and trying to decide what i want for lunch. this time tomorrow, i will be drinking super-special lemonade and water, a cup of mint tea each afternoon, a salt-water flush when i come home from work, and if i'm feeling extra adventurous, a nice hot cup of laxitive tea. stop freaking out. i will be getting all the calories i reasonably need, as well as plenty of vitamins and nutrients from the actual lemon juice and all the goodness God puts into grade b maple syrup and cayenne pepper. don't believe me? do some reading yourself, my dearies. it's good stuff.

you may be asking yourself at this point, a) why in the hell is she telling us all of this, and b) why in the hell would anyone do this to themselves? it sure can't be good.

the answer is that a) this is my blog. i've never really been one to keep things i think are weird, or fun, or interesting under wraps. also, i think doing something out of the ordinary, even if it is dietarily out of the ordinary, is worth sharing with people. it could also encourage people to do some of their own adventuring, and that's kind of cool. b) i don't so much look at it as doing it to myself, as i am doing it for myself. that sounds kind of dirty, but whatever...

the detox i'm doing is called "the master cleanse", and you can download the pdf on line, if you choose. it's very well documented and researched, and i beta tested it on myself before easter, to make sure it would work for me. i've made some modifications to fit my life, and i'm ready to do it for the real. during the beta test, there were some amazing moments of clarity, unlike any i have felt before, and i want to spend some more time in that head/heart space. i feel like it's pretty necessary for me at this point in the ball game. while things are going pretty well, at the moment, there are some thoughts i'd like to spend some concentrated time on, and since i'm not going to be able to vacation any time soon, this seems like the next best option.

also, and as much as i hate to admit it, but know i need to say it out loud, and please to God don't say anything about this part if you leave a comment because i just CAN'T bear to hear it...i am so sick of being the chubby girl with the great personality and giant brain who isn't getting asked out on dates. detox seems like a good way, the right way to start a real live major life-change. and if life really does begin at 30, i don't want to waste another minute.

mil besos,
rmg

clock watching

2009-05-12T17:16:00.002-05:00

in three hours, i will be almost on my way home. by that time, i will have been at work for 13-almost 14 hours. the next two weeks are going to be insane...just really, really, really full. and there is really nothing i can do about it. you know, sometimes life is like the rinse cycle, and you just have to hold your breath until all the water stops rushing in, and you finally hit the spin cycle.

i think fixing up the back yard two weekends ago must have really shaken something loose. and it's been good to sit with all of that, and think about what it all means. i'm still trying to figure out some of it, but i think i'm coming to a point where i'm almost ready to talk about it out loud with you, internets.

and starting on thursday night, i'll be doing the Master Cleanse for the really real, and i'll be blogging about it over the course of my cleanse. i did a trail run last month, and feel like i'm really ready and maybe even called to do this for the really real. so, beware. the Master Cleanse is pretty intense, and i'll be giving you a very real, pretty uncensored look at what it means to me and my body. i won't be sending out daily reminders about the post on yahoo, so if you want to be reminded to read daily, update your rss feeds, or make a note.

i'm hoping the cleanse/fast will knock loose whatever the gardening missed. God is good, all the time.

mil besos,
rmg

how do she garden grow?

2009-05-04T14:32:00.030-05:00

so this weekend, i spent several hours working on the back patio, which has been the most neglected part of my house since i bought it. this is what happened...

the more i do with the space i live in, the more it feels like some place i'd like to call home.

mil besos,

rmg

opposite day

2009-04-23T15:01:00.004-05:00

when i worked at summer camp, our cook, Pappa Bear, decided i needed a nickname. unimpressed with the list of names i have been given by my friends and family (and it's a long, occasionally funny list), Pappa Bear insisted on coming up with his own, something uniquely descriptive, something all my own, something that everyone would know belonged only to me.

you know you have a special nickname at camp when Pappa Bear puts a name tag on your cup. i shouldn't have been suprised at breakfast during that second week when "Rachel" was replaced by "SNAFU" in all capital letters.

SNAFU is one of those charming phrases we've inheirited from the Marine Corps. since my poppy was a marine, i'd heard that phrase all my life. i was in college before i think i really knew what all the letters meant. i mean, i'd gotten the flavor of it even as a small child. SNAFU was something i lived. having that lovely phrase as my nickname only added another layer of irony to the cake.

SNAFU means that i have no idea what it's really like to be bored. i mean, i understand boredom on an emotional level...like last night, i couldn't find anything to do, my brain was so full that i was afraid blood was going to start running from my ears, but i couldn't bring myself to actually take a shower, dress, and go someplace. so, i sat on my bed and reworked part of a rug i've been making for the last five years. and i also watched "Celebrity Apprentice". this is shaming to me, because i really really really like this show. and i hate everything about this show. it's just so...messy and catty and horrible and so different from my little life that i literally will only pee during commercials, and i won't take phone calls. it's worse than watching "Days of Our Lives", which also embarassess me to admit to watching. i don't even want to think about how grammatically incorrect that last sentence was...

in dealing with things that aren't boring, i have to say that i really do have the market cornered. at least in my corner of the universe, i do. i'm sure i have nothing on the social workers who hang out downtown, or the er docs who pull lord-knows-what out of people's hoo-hoo's all day long, or mommies who get handfuls of frogs and rolly-polly's in their hands while cleaning out little pockets. but the freakshows i get to watch (and i say that with a lot of love in my ity-bity-tiny-coal-black-hard-heart) are pretty incredible. it's not what i imagined my life would look like at 30, but it is MY life, and even on days when it's hard, it's beautiful and i wouldn't trade it with anyone, for anything.

there are so many things going on in my head these days. it's hard to pin down which ones i want to talk about, which ones i want to ponder, which ones need to be wrapped in newsprint and packed away for a while, and which ones are just too far out of reach/sight to be reasonable. it's not that my brain is any more or less full than normal, i think it's just that i'm taking better stock of what's going on, what stuff means, why things move in cycles and waves, and how i'm doing at managing all of those things.

i've been with therapy mary for a year, now. i feel clearer than i've felt in a long time. it's not that a lot has changed since last year, because it hasn't, at least not on a macro level. but at the bottom of things, the volume seems to be turned down a little bit. instead of feeling like a substitute teacher walking into an algebra class full of hateful children who are all bent on breaking me, when i sit down to think about things, or when they creep into my head, i feel much more like a sweet, but semi-stern librarian, asking rowdy children to quiet down, so she can answer their questions about the card catalogue one at a time. maybe that's an odd analogy, but it works for me.

life is good.

mil besos,
rmg

all things considered

2009-04-21T14:36:00.002-05:00

there's usually a lot going on in my head that i never say anything to anyone about. that's pretty true at the moment, as well. granted, if you added up the sum total of what each person in my life knows about me/what's going on, you'd have a pretty spot on idea of the whole picture.

what's going on in my head today is somewhere between white noise and primal scream. and i just can't make friends with it.

meh. the trash heap has spoken. expect a decent post later in the week.

mil besos,
rmg

rambling...

2009-04-01T15:57:00.002-05:00

there's no picture for this post. i know, that's a departure from recent habit. i'm sure you will be just fine.

somehow, writing things here feels more purgative than writing in my journal. like it's not real unless i write it down for other people to see. i don't write the hard things as much as i should. i make it a habit to keep the deepest things away from other people, sometimes even from myself. but i'll tell you this...

i walk by it every day, at least twice a day, but more like six or seven times. i can't even bring myself to look at it, head on. the damn thing is so familar, even if i just catch it out of the corner of my eye, i can see every feature clearly. it mocks me with silence and emptiness. i know a thing is only a thing. and i know that this thing belongs to me, again for several very good reasons, not the least of which is that it is, in fact, mine. those facts notwithstanding, i am on the verge of outright hatred for this object. it mocks me with clean lines, hand rubbed spindles, sense-memories of long-forgotten meals.

i look at it and i force myself not to tear up. all the other stuff just like it, i have managed to wedge into a closet upstairs, in a room other than my own. i can avoid that stuff for months on end. i only kind of barely remember the stuff is there. but this thing won't fit into the space i've carved out for the rest of the artifacts. i can steel myself to have to grab something from that closet, or open it to put something into it. i can't seem to steel myself to walk through my kitchen every day, though. it's such a regular activity...you'd never imagine what a test of the will it can be to use the back door, and not run out the front door, just to avoid seeing my high chair.

that's right. MY high chair. i used it. there are photos of me sound asleep slumped over it's tray. my brother used it. my nephew even sat in it, once or twice. but every time i see that thing, all i can see are the faces of the children i see only in my sleep.

mil besos,
rmg

hands

2009-04-01T11:41:00.003-05:00

i have never liked my hands. i have been trying to make peace with that since i was a little girl.

i know that's an especially silly thing for a woman to say, so typical of early 21st century female insecurities. there's a book called "i feel bad about my neck", so i guess it's chic and accepatable for me to feel bad about my hands.

my mother, my grandmothers, my aunt, my fairy god-mothers, my friends...all of them have beautiful hands. even the men in my life have lovely hands. for the longest time, everytime i looked at my hands, i was disappointed in them, disappointed in myself. my hands were a reflection of what i felt about my whole self...so close to being good, but not actually good, at all. i looked at them and all i could see were the improvements that needed to be made, the things that had slipped through them, the things they had broken that could not be mended, or lost and couldn't be found.

i used to get in so much trouble when i was little for being messy, for losing things, for not keeping track of things, for going too fast and messing things up, for not putting things away. i track it all back to my hands. i have made every effort to put away that messy child, to get all the barbie wash-off nail polish washed off her ragged cuticles. she still peeks out from time to time, and rolls her eyes when i make my bed in the mornings. she also has a real problem with the weekly dusting, almost ritualized in it's pattern every saturday. i suppose there was a time when she was sure that all that activity, all the mess would cover up how she really felt about herself, and her hands. now, i try to clean up all the mess, keep it neat and tidy, so maybe no one will notice that my hands are too big, too hot, too efficient.

i am not one of those people who can just have fun...it makes me feel guilty, and nervous that the bottom is about to fall out. i know, i know, i'm supposed to trust God, my fellow humans, etc. who doesn't have fun, right? here's the thing...i can only let myself have fun and enjoy something if i feel like i'm contributing to society, being taught a lesson, or teaching a lesson. i know, it's sick. this is why (ok, it's one of the reasons why) i see a therapist regularly. anyway, i usually extend the "it's not just a fun ride" principle into my work life, as well. and that is how i ended up with my hands (the hands i cannot make myself learn to like or love) full of mysterious red dirt inside a very small church in an even smaller town in a remote part of new mexico.

i am fascinated by miracles...not just the healings, although they are paramount. i love the stories that go with the miracles. stories about mundane things, ordinary people, every day heartbreak seem to collide with grace, mercy, angels, and (like aeschylus said to agammemnon) the awful grace of God. i had been fascinated by miracle shrines like lourdes, fatima, and chimayo for years before i ever thought about visiting one of the sites. but i found myself organzing a trip for some of the kids i used to work with around chimayo and the santa fe ski area. see...fun and work.

so i took the children skiing. and i took them to the loretto chapel in santa fe. we prayed. we shopped. we ate alot. the kids liked the skiing. they moaned and groaned the day i told them we weren't going up the mountain, we were going around it.

we talked about miracles that day, for a long time. i told them the story of chimayo, which you can read here: http://chimayo.org/history.html they seemed sort of underwhelmed, but were willing to go along with me, because i knew where all the snacks were. we talked about whether we believed in miracles, what constituted a miracle, why miracles do or don't happen depending on the situation, etc. they were smart kids. once we got to the church, the kids were getting quiet, doing their own thinking, preparing themselves to be still and do some thinking. i was very proud of them.

and so, we ended up inside this lovely little church, wandering through, saying our prayers, thinking thoughts to ourself, not really whispering or anything. and all of a sudden, we were in front of this little hole in the ground, full of the most beautiful red dirt i had ever seen. i remember feeling this overwhelming compulsion to put my hands in the dirt and rub it across my palms, through my fingers, up to my wrists, like i was washing my hands. so that's what i did. other pilgrims had brought little baggies or boxes to take home dirt from this little hole. the dirt is supposedly the vehicle of miraculous healings that have taken place at chimayo...healings, pregnancies, relief from pain, etc. the walls of the little room with the little hole are decorated with old crutches, wheels from wheelchairs, pictures of babies. and so there i stood, all of 25 years old, still with so much to learn and see and do, with two handfuls of red dirt, staring blankly at a pair of hands that really no longer looked like mine, no longer looked detestable to me.

i brushed the excess dirt off my hands, put them to my face, and breathed in the earthy aroma of that glorious red dirt. i exited the little room with the little hole, i looked at my palms, and they were glittering...quartz in the dirt...diamond dust...miracles happen every day.

nothing has been the same since. i look at my hands, at what they are doing, and i try to make it good, make it an offering. we have so much to do, and such a little time to do it, and i don't want to be careless with a single minute, don't want to pass up a minute of joy or learning, don't want to miss a sunrise or a sunset because i'm off doing something piddly and small. i don't want to miss doing something incredible because i'm worried about how my hands will look, or what kind of mess might get made.

i look at my hands now, knowing full well there is not a shred of dirt left on them from that early spring day. i think about how the red dirt filled in the lines and rings on my palm and finger tips, and how that moment, staring at my hands, felt like a thousand years, how i could feel the life in the dirt flowing into my hands, getting me ready for something new. if i close my eyes and think of early spring in the mountains, that is what i remember. i know i picked up something important that day. i am still trying to find out how to put it to use.

thanks be to God.

mil besos,

rmg

don't...

2009-03-03T17:22:00.000-06:00

don't panic. i am just taking a little break to stir up some new stories for you guys. if anyone is still even reading this...

mil besos,
rmg

blessed among women

2009-01-26T17:10:00.007-06:00

Ode to Veiled Women

Oh! My Sisters…so many of you faceless, wordless, nameless, blessed, and veiled.
As you see the world around you through the blue haze of the veil,
do you ever wonder what you are missing?
Do you ever stop to think that the world is missing you?

You, my sister, who sees only that which is in front of her, never to the sides, and never behind…
do you stop to mourn what you are missing,
do you know that you’re only getting one third of the picture?

Does it make you angry that God made you a girl?
Does it make you angry that even though God made you a girl,
Man made you a veiled woman?

Do you wonder what the wind would feel like on your whole face,
raising your dampened hair and wilted spirit?
When was the last time you raised your whole face,
your whole head, your whole self,
naked and unashamed into the bright Sun of the afternoon,
glowing like the mother of all creation?
Are you even allowed to think of that?

Oh! My Sisters…so many of you faceless, wordless, nameless, blessed, and veiled.
Your eyes were opened a long time ago.
You know that you are missing nothing.
Child of the West: this world misses nothing you cast forth.

You, my sister, who sees everything in a three-hundred-sixty degree scope of present, past, and future…
You only mourn what you can’t imagine.
You never stop to think about what could be hiding under the rocks, waiting for you to slow down.

It never occurred to you to blame God for making you a girl.
It never occurred to you to blame God for making you a girl, because your fathers and your brothers agreed you could be anything you wanted to be.

Do you wonder what mountains there are left to climb?
Have you had enough of shaving your legs, painting your eyes black,
cutting your hair just so, smoking because you can?
Do you see yourself mother-naked in the mirror, or do you only see
What you have hidden in all of this creation?
Do you allow yourself to think of that?

I think about you, Fatima:
Daughter of the Prophet.
Mother of God.
Small child of Piedras, with her brown face upturned in my hands.
You have so many faces.
So many faces.
And they are all beautiful, behind all of the veils that we wear, for all of the reasons we wear them.

Yes, the faces are beautiful.
Even mine.

mil besos,

rmg

and now, for something completely different...

2009-01-21T17:44:00.005-06:00

The rest of this piece said something about “at the front of your jeans”. I’m not sure I want to know what that means. Regardless, it’s an interesting question. “How big is the gap?” Which gap—gender, wage, generation, intelligence, socio-economic? There are gaps everywhere: small and large, profound and mundane, the truest definitions of the agony and the ecstasy.

There are gaps we don’t even see but that make themselves known in our daily lives. When I talk to an older person—either of my grandmothers, my grandfather, the old couples at my church, etc. , the gap I notice the most is between what I say and what they hear. I find myself having to modulate the pitch for my voice, the correct volume of speech, weeding out colloquialisms that they will not understand, being plain in my expressions. I wonder what the gap looks like from their end… how frustrating it must be to talk to me if I am over-excited, or get confused about which ear their hearing aid is in, or use the slang I pick up from my crazy friends. That must be hard for them.

I think about the gap between what happens and what might have happened, sometimes. The further you get away from a pivot point, the harder it becomes to really imagine how things might have been if that one pivotal point had occurred at a different place or in a different way. For the first few months after my dad died, I would imagine how things would have been if he had lived…trips home, holidays, conversations. But the further I get away from being 18, sense of relief or comfort I get from pretending or imagining that things were different becomes smaller and smaller. There is no point in trying to script out a conversation between my father and I as adults, about anything. It’s to the point now that it’s not even fun to think about, because it’s so far-fetched. Giving that up, walking past that gap, and not filling it with conversations that won’t happen, has been good, I think…profoundly hard, but good.

I think there is a gap between parents and children that is particularly important. There comes a time in early adulthood when I think you realize that there is a difference, no matter how small, between who you are as your parents’ child, and who you are in the world. My friends and I talk about this a lot. Sometimes, there’s this huge sense of betrayal in the children. Who am I to be anything other than what my parents have been telling me I am? Who am I to tell my parents “No”? Even my toddler-aged nephew knows not to tell his mother and father “no”. I imagine it’s hard for a parent to come to the realization that you will never fully know your child, not any more than you child will every fully know you. And I think that’s true, regardless of how close the parent/child relationship is. Coming to grips with that is vital. Ignoring that gap in knowledge, intimacy, authenticity just creates an atmosphere of thievery…parents robbing children of the right to grow up, children robbing their parents of the right to see the fruits of their labor.

I just got back from a weekend with two of my dearest friends. We try to spend at least one weekend together every year. Time has been our gap…the time between DC, Austin, St. Louis, New Orleans, New Braunfels, Durham, San Antonio. We have filled up the time between when we all lived together and last weekend with all sorts of experiences, other people, other houses, other friends. But, as in all transcendental friendships, the gap narrows to nothing when we are back in the presence of each other, the entity we call “us”. We lapse easily back into our rhythms of speech, our friendship roles, the way we all sit squished together on the couch to watch a movie, when we would probably be just as comfortable in other chairs or on the floor. You can believe that the gap is almost gone…just a hint of air in the middle of things.

Caroline’s poor husband always takes the invasion of his space with such grace. I promised I would try to find him a boyfriend to play with. Then, I realized that a boyfriend wouldn’t be enough to bring with me, next time. Adding partners into the equation of friendship is pretty easy to do, assuming you like the partner. Melissa and I love Caro’s husband, Alex. He’s a prince among men. He makes Caro sparkle. He has also made Caro a mother. And that, friends and neighbors, is something holy. There is nothing better than your friend telling you, after years of worry and not knowing and doubting and praying, that she is having a baby. I cried with happiness. But a little part of me was sad, too. A little tiny, awful, horrible, nasty, mean, selfish part of me cried because this changes everything, and not like getting married changed everything.

Partners can be left at home for long weekends. Partners can leave the house for a run, or errands, or to go beer-drinking with their own good friends. Partners can go to bed and read while you stay up and talk into the wee hours. Babies can do none of those things. Babies go with you everywhere. Babies are with you all the time. Babies are magnificent. Babies are breathtakingly gorgeous. Babies make me insanely jealous. There…I said it.

That being said, I can’t wait until the day that child makes her entrance into the world. I would be happy to never spend another weekend with my girls if it meant that the new little girl could have five more minutes learning about the exceptional creature that is her mother, and the repository of patience that belongs behind her father’s eyes.

The gap is necessary…the gap is the lost tooth of our 20’s, to be filled in with the tiny pearls of child-rearing wisdom. The gap is knowing that my couch-surfing days, cris-crossing the country on frequent flyer miles, going on adventures during school holidays and long weekends is rapidly coming to a close. Life moves on. 11pm becomes staying up late. Work can consume. Gym dues beckon you to stay one more hour.

The gap is that space between being asleep and awake, where you can see the face of the ones you love, and hear their voices, and know that eventually, all the gaps close. And you always end up right where you were meant to be.

mil besos,

rmg

word about the scenery...

2008-12-29T11:43:00.002-06:00

the christmas blog is coming, for sure. remember, i officially have 12 days to get it done, and i'm pacing well. in between trying to remember what all has happened over the last 12 months (and good Lord, has it been full!) i've been to the rio grande valley, done all my shopping and wrapping in less than 8 hours, planned a visit to the zoo, eaten some sub-par chinese food, bought milk at the grocery store, planned a small (but VERY fun) pajama party for NYE, cleaned the house, done laundry, and sort of showed up to work. one day, i will learn to rest on my time off. this is not that day, my peeps...this is not that day.

i have a picture of michelangelo's lybian sybil on the top of this blog. it's not just some arbitrary piece of classic art, although it is a classic. no, the lybian sybil is my absolute favorite painting of all time. suprising, huh? bet you thought it would be van gogh's "iris" or "starry night", or the chagall piece with the bride and the goat...maybe even da vinci's "madonna of the rocks"...or something by kandinsky, like the color study with the squares and the circles, which i do love, because somehow all my water colors end up looking like a cheap knock-off of that one painting. but no...it's the lady in the toga, high up on the ceiling of the sistine chapel that is my favorite of favorites. she is a master painting...but that's not why i love her.

i love that painting. i love that painting because i want to be that lady, minus the over-developed calves and weird hair-do. she looks so strong and confindent. ultimately capable, utterly composed, still and yet in motion, the epitome of multi-tasking, the definition of grace under pressure. i keep her on the screen saver of my computer, so that when i begin my work day, i am thinking about projecting that kind of calm and action. the lybian sybil and the baby jesus keep me focused and grounded during the day...they remind me of who i want to be, and what i need to do to get there.

mil besos,
rmg

oh geeze...

2008-12-16T14:49:00.003-06:00

oh internets...it's been a bumpy couple of weeks inside my head.

long story short-- i am fine. the universe gave me a huge pass, all things considered, and for that, i am one very grateful, adamantly NOT dating a total butthole (two words: press shots...), cookie-avoiding, Christmas-shopping-procrastinating, ironed and starched, thirty year old on her way to a greater understanding of a lot of things.

i can't believe it's the third week in advent. holy smokes...

mil besos,
rmg

cold weather...free association...stream of thought...speed of light

2008-11-30T22:57:00.005-06:00

it's just cold enough...you can smell the winter on the wind, if it blows just right. makes me think about going hunting with my poppy. i know hunting with me wasn't nearly as much fun as with my brother or my dad or his friends, but i was always excited to go with him. looking was so much fun when i knew what i was looking for...turkey, deer, whatever. i wish i knew what i was looking for or looking at right now. the sides of the picture are clear, but the foreground and the middle is blurry and so out of focus, i can hardly stand to look right at it.

we used to ride out to deer camp in the old blue bronco. that car was magic and smelled like adventure. all i can smell right now is adrinaline, and i have to will myself not to get into the car and just start driving, with the top down and the heater blasting, trying to find the right perspective from which to view what's going on in a real way. it's totally different, and totally the same. i'd read tea leaves, but i'm too tired to go make the tea. water seems like it takes hours to boil, and i swear i have a million thoughts a minute, so maybe it's not hours, after all. maybe the blur isn't really all that bad, and i'm just being a drama queen about it.

i vacillate between total certainty that i am right and the knowledge that i am absolutely wrong. if i thought it would do any good, i would bang my head against the brick wall downstairs, just to knock something or anything loose. and then i remind myself that i am a grownup. this is what i bargained for. yes, this is what i bargained for, running myself ragged, dragging myself along on the ground, knees bloodied and eyes red, all these years...

things, whether they change now, or change later, or are even in the process of changing, are going to have to change, at some point. all this independence i've been socking away, being so proud of, all the time by myself with nothing to be louder than my thoughts and the purring of the cat, all the things i demanded i could and would do by myself...all of it...i am willing and ready to open it up and share it, and along some lines, even radically change it. and that is scary. the scariest part is that it doesn't bother me in the least. i'm even ready for it, at least in theory. giving up all nighters to ironing, or cooking bizarre dinners, doing laundry whenever i choose to do it, grocery shopping twice a month, spending hours on the phone, going when and where i please when and where i please, watching the same movie three times in a row, or leaving a whole album on repeat for a solid week...the little things that remind me that i live alone and am single...i am slowly packing them up into boxes, and putting them into a closet. slowly.

lord, have mercy.

mil besos,
rmg

what dreams may come

2008-11-25T10:44:00.004-06:00

"the only difference between empty hands and open hands is attitude"

--paraphrased from G-d Calling

do you ever have those dreams where someone asks you the hardest, most bizarre question you've ever been asked, and the minute you try to blurt out the answer, it gets caught in your throat, and even though you are screaming at the top of your lungs, you just kind of make this really pathetic "mmmmmphhhhhblarglemmmmmph" sound? just me... whatever, you people are full of it...you've totally had that dream, and you know it. and if not, i hope you have it tonight, so you can sympathize.

i haven't had that dream in months. no, lately, that's what waking life has felt like. and not in a bad way...really, not at all. actually, things are going quite well. i feel like i am using my real voice, saying true things, making good on my answers. my yes means yes, and my no means no. this is a good place to be. and looking back on it, i have been here a lot longer than i thought. i spent hours the other night going over old journals, seeing the progress, the regressions, the slow climb out of austin, and everything after. i am profoundly grateful...for all of it. it's like the song "no ceiling" is playing on a continuous loop in my head. eddie vedder said it best, "this love has no ceiling". and despite my penchant for waiting on shoes to drop, i am findng myself relaxing back into this...and i am utterly unafraid.

that's the thougth i keep coming back around to...this profound gratitude. i feel like an exclamation point, all the way down to my toes, which today are firmly housed in my favorite steve madden high heels. i know that's what you're supposed to do before thanksgiving...make your list, focus your intentions, put gas in the car, etc. but i found myself feeling all these feelings weeks ago, totally unbidden. like i woke up one day, and this veil had been lifted from my eyes...nothing had changed, but everything was different. no new people...no new routine...nothing out of the ordinary had spurred this. it simply was, or is, i suppose. and again, i am just profoundly grateful for everything, everyone, all of it, even if tomorrow, everything is different. these moments, this time and space, have been immense and amazing, like my own little central park in the middle of the madness of the manhattan that is my brain.

mil besos,

rmg

nostaligia: she's a beast.

2008-11-14T23:42:00.003-06:00

i remember standing there, in the coldest rain i can remember, singing with pete seeger at the top of my lungs. my roommate mike had come home three days before, and with not too much arm-twisting, convinced me to take a bus ride to someplace in georgia i'd never even heard of. considering that i worked for a bunch of hippie liberals, getting friday and monday off was a snap. explaining to my family that i was leaving dc for the weekend, in the company of total strangers, except for mike, who was a stranger to them, was kind of hard sell. telling your conservative momma and grandparents that you are going to attend a protest at a high profile military installation is a ticklish kind of thing to do. i suppose they just shook their heads, said a prayer, and figured it was something i needed to get out of my system.

what i didn't know about geopolitics, even after graduating from college with a minor in political science, could have filled the grand canyon. i spent my time in college reading about the rise of empire, the devine right of kings, and aristotelian political theory. i spent very little time in the modern era...and the time i did spend there, i spent reading about the palestinian/israeli conflict. i was guilty, according ts eliot, of neglecting and belittling the desert that lay in my own back yard. and i was coming into my adulthood at a time when that desert was filled with voices crying in the wilderness, begging for someone to listen. i was 21 when the big protests at the imf and world bank happened, happily ensconced in my little life in san marcos, trying to finish my degree, and swealtering through another texas summer. i remember seeing the protests on tv, and changing the channel to "behind the music"...sometimes you just can't stand to see the reality that is staring you back in the face.

by the time i got to dc, in the summer of 2000, 12 days after i graduated from college, the tenor of the conversation, the realization that things were happening that i had no idea about, knocked me for a loop. as a person, i was just really coming into my own...moving away from home was just the tip of the ice berg. i think most people come to a point in their young adult lives when they realize that they are no longer simply their parents' child, they have become something beyond that. i was, and still am, profoundly proud to be my parents' child. but my identity isn't nearly as wrapped up in that persona as it was when i was 21. things have happened, i have seen things, done things, been a part of things that have happened far from the reach of their hands, physical and metaphorical. those things have shaped me as much as the time i spent in their house. and i am equally grateful for both. that being said, i think most people go through a time in their lives when they stand everything they thought they knew and believed on its head...and you see what sticks.

what stuck for me was remembering that i grew up in a house that believed in God. i grew up in a house that believed in the goodness of people, that believe how you treated people mattered, that even nasty people deserved to be treated well. i never believed that the world was a fair place, but i learned that i could deal fairly with people, and that made all the difference. i learned that standing up for the right, true, and good things is hard, but necessary, and that the licks you take for doing that are always worth it, no matter the cost. i learned that the measure of a person isn't about what's in your bank account, but what's in your heart and what comes out of your mouth. and so, as i felt myself thinking all these big thoughts, wrestling with issues i'd never contemplated, i had a good foundation to build upon.

and so i went to georgia...to find out what i did not know. i wasn't silly enough to believe that the story i heard in georgia was the gospel truth about what was happening in latin america. history is rarely unbiased, regardless of whether it is written by the victors or the victims. but i knew i wanted to know a different part of the story. to be honest, i felt like a charlatan, a voyeur, an interloper. here i was, a middle class kid with a middle class education, who didn't even know if she was a republican or a democrat, who didn't know anything about the sandinistas, or the contras, or nicaragua, or archbishop romero, and i was smack in the middle of a discussion of all those things. i remember being silent for so much of the time i was there...just taking it all in, reading pamphlet after pamphlet, trying to make sense of what i was reading. and i felt like so...unfaithful. both my grandfathers and one of my grandmothers had been in the military. my uncle was in the navy. my greatgrandfather fought in wwi, and i had been taught my whole life to be patriotic, to support the troops, to be reverent almost. and here i was, standing in the middle of a cold fall rain, in protest at a military base. to say that i was conflicted would be an understatement of gigantic proportions. and i still feel conflicted.

what i do know is this...i have a profound and deep sense of respect and admiration and gratitude for the men and women in the armed forces. they keep us safe. they are volunteers. they leave me breathless with their selflessness in the face of incredibly difficult circumstances. they don't get to vote about where they go or what they do. they are so incredibly brave. and they deserve to have policies that reflect that bravery and honor. and i believe to this day that the policy i was protesting deserved that protest, on their behalf, because they could not do it themselves.

i'm not going to write a diatribe about how awful the school of the americas is. i'm not going to go off on some rant about how crappy governmental subterfuge is, or why i think the geneva accords are subverted in the name of national security or global stabilization. those things are a matter of public record, and the proof of the pudding is written in miles of newsprint. and i'm sure the school of the americas has graduated some upstanding and decent people, and that the instructors there are not all cyborgs with lumps of coal where their hearts should be. what i am going to say is that america deserves better. our men and women in the field, sleeping cold and hungry in the name of freedom and peace, deserve better. i pray that we are coming to a time when we can say that, demand that, and achieve that.

as i stood in the rain, chain smoking camel cigarettes and listening to speaker after speaker talking about mid-night raids in el salvador, nuns and priests murdered for standing up to political juntas, men and women who had been kidnapped and tortured for disagreeing with their own governments, i found myself marveling at the wonder of my own government. we have come so far...we still have so far to go.

so, as i sit on my little balcony, on a mild november night, i remember. and i hope.

mil besos,
rmg

a real barn-burner...

2008-11-10T17:38:00.003-06:00

What you are, the world is.

And without your transformation,

there can be no transformation of the world.

--j. krishnamurti

you know, turning 30 was pretty major, grey hair aside. the weight of the experience isn't lost on me. i hate to say it, but part of me really, really, really embraces this new era in my life. and i say that without a trace of irony. and another part of me just hopes i am up to the challenge.

i guess i imagined that turning 30 would provide me with some automatic wisdom that i wouldn't have to try so hard to attain, or that things that bothered me would suddenly seem so trivial that i would never think about them, ever again. that's not the case at all. things have been so bizarre in my head lately, i'm feeling kinship with my 15 year old self again, and that is more disconcerting than i'm willing to admit at the moment.

i realize i'm sounding cryptic. and i don't intend to sound that way. i'm just finding myself incredibly frustrated lately. the real kicker is that i'm actually NOT the problem. and i am dealing with my absolute powerlessness in the face of a lot of things, at the moment. YAY. i love those lessons.

shit. someone pass me the asprin. and that bottle of vodka from the freezer.

mil besos,

rmg

godless heathen...table for one?

2008-10-28T09:59:00.006-05:00

this is me. this is me trying to explain that i'm just one girl, with one vote. this is me trying to break out of molds, have discourse, and be an active participant in conversations with people i love. this is me being catergorized, polled, ingested, and spit out into raw data, polished numbers, and focus groups. this is me being told what i think, what i don't think, what i like, what i don't like by millions of people every day. this is me.

i have to be honest with you. i am, for all intents and purposes, a liberal. it took me years to own that. i still say it with fear and trembling, because i know the judgement that title brings with it. i know what people say about liberals. and i'll tell you, for me, almost none of it is true. but people, even people close to me, insist on sending me emails, news articles, clips, etc. that tell me what and how i am, as a liberal. i hate that. i really, really hate it. i hate it so much that i've spent the last thirty minutes trying not to cry over an article that ended up in my inbox less than two hours ago. i feel a constant need to explain and explain and explain that while i do support liberal causes, and tend to vote in a liberal fashion, i am my own person. and i feel like i have been mostly very circumspect and quiet about my feelings in this last election, to the point that i am in all out avoidance of all things political with about half the people i know. this isn't because i don't want to have the conversations. it's because every time the conversation is broached, i end up feeling like i'm not only defending my political convictions, i'm defending my right to have any feelings and convictions at all, because, as a liberal, i'm not supposed to have any thoughts or feelings of my own outside the party line, right?

wrong.

let me be clear about this...i am tired...sick, tired, and really overwhelmed with being told "what i am" because of the way i choose to vote. that is not the measure of me as a person. that is not what i think G-d sees when G-d looks at me. i know it's certainly not what i see. not by a long shot.

i am not a godless heathen. i actually really love Jesus...to the point that i work for Him, as my primary job. i don't think that all republicans hate poor people, or believe that GWB is the root of all evil, or in every conspiracy theory that comes down the pipe. i don't think that you have to live in new york or los angeles or washington, dc to have a decent idea. i don't buy into the liberal elite idea that if you didn't go to college, you aren't worth talking to. i don't want to keep the poor uneducated, and stupid, and strung out on welfare.

i don't want a huge government. i do want more personal responsibility. i do think that truth and values are important--i think that truth and values are so important that i wish we had a constitutional ammendment allowing for a vote of no confidence, because we deserve the right to call "no joy" in the middle of the game, just as much as any european country does. i think that it's ridiculous to talk about a culture of life and still support the death penalty, meanwhile ignoring the health crisis that looms for american children, who bear no responsibility for the financial or political choices of their parents. i support faith-based initiatives to act on behalf of communities, rather than creating governmental agencies to do the same jobs. i think that a fair day's work deserves a fair day's wage, and that the market determines what is fair. i think that we have to be innovative, creative, and reconciling in our attempts to make new discoveries and continue to explore technologies we already have in hand. i think that most people agree on most things, they just can't shut up long enough to come to that point.

in this last week of campaigning, before this historic election, please remember to vote! please remember to say thank you to our men and women in uniform who make it possible for us to live in a country where we have the right to vote. and be nice to the g-dless heathens...we sometimes are halfway decent people, who aren't bent on total world domination.

mil besos,

rmg