People used to tell me ”that’s not realistic” or “get real!” when I told them the places I imagined I could go. It confused me, since those same people had told me to follow my dreams and reach for the stars. One by one, the stars went out, but humans were not meant to stomach dying dreams. They sickly soured stones inside my guts, strung bitterness along my veins instead of hope like Christmas lights that are missing all the bulbs.

I have not yet found an explanation for why we insist on turning ourselves into numbered boxes. Even when we die, we’re made to lie in a box with nothing but a name and number denoting we were ever here. But life is not a series of compartments, or corporate jobs and insincere replies. They say a fish can only grow to fit the size of its container. If you keep your heart contained, how will you ever know how big it could have grown? Or how great your capacity for innate bravery? Let it go. Let your heart expand, even in the contractions. Dreams never truly die until you do, and reawaken with just a little bit of hope. There is always hope. There is always love. There is always another chance to live the imagination you were once known to possess. Don’t ever give up on the life you were born to live.

These days when people tell me to be realistic, I often don’t hear them. If I do, I simply say, “I am. There is no such thing as impossible.”

I know I am not the only one.

scottiehughes:

if I am a bird, I am a city-dwelling
meadowlark that wing-scrapes down
scaffolding and carves X’s into
church windows worthlessly,
I’ve only been making lost calls
of all the empty eggs shattered
in the nests that no one kept
warm, nests that no one left
to live so if I am a bird I am dis-
assembled disambiguated
discouraged and if you

are a bird you
are a peacock if

you are a bird. you are roasted
pheasant on someone else’s
thanksgiving table and your
wings have long since been
plucked out, once you and I
made twig-houses from plastic
bags like everyone else; now you
only have past tense and today I
don’t move much but up top in
lofts I perch and xylophone-peck

light into holes from spring buds,
tapping on the essence and I bring
forth slick blooms from wet paper ink
if I am a bird I summon wind and life
into the ears of little ones crawling
teething and I am actually saying
“this hurts so much why can’t I
have legs like you all” and all they
hear is music; if you were a bird
you were only a bird when you

were six, and you were in a car
crash or your brother tried to burn
down the school or your mother
threw glass across the kitchen floor
that so cracked your future like eggs
faltering under a thick tourist’s foot see

if you are a bird you aren’t
much of a bird anymore,

and your beaded eyes slither
around when someone puts
a bullet through your breast,

but if I am a bird I still
have a chance of flying

Everything I am, I gleaned from the lyrics of poems and songs written by people more talented than I am. I am the character in a story written 100 years before my grandmother was born. I am a familiar face and a vague inclination. The ghost girl. I wrote once 

I wish to God you knew
What love can do to hearts like mine
That aren’t name tags
Or hand-stitched patches on worn out sleeves
October hearts that burn in silent solitude
Rolling over rivers in the barren trees
Down empty streets after fallen leaves
Autumn hearts
With smoke in our blood and fire in our veins

and it holds true. If I could tell you one thing about me, it’s that I have no explanation and I don’t want one. I’m not a role model and I won’t fit in boxes.

I am the girl with the feather in her hair, the poem in her hand, the fire in her head, the fight in her blood, and the diamonds in her bones running barefoot through the deafening heat at 3 a.m. with the full-bellied moon pulling at her heart until she finally finds the courage to look you in the eye and say, “I just wanted to be part of your story, and not out of convention. I stand here spirit to spirit, as we are. So if you ever want to come inside, just knock on the spot where I finally pressed STOP… playing musical chairs with your exit signs.”

I felt your honesty trickle down my throat, shooting warmth into my guts. We were made for more than this. Not to be hidden under floorboards where our hearts tell a tale to the unlistening. That aggregate of the inconsistent. The only constant is your own persistence in making me know we were born for perfection. Homemade beauty in dust jackets called selves, meant to be opened and perused, absorbed in a glory far greater than our own by any who are unafraid to pull us off the crowded shelves and look.

Just promise me you won’t be caught in the webs of silk contagion spun by the petulant. You are golden sparks of lightning arching through the vastness of blackest storms, out-running the thunder by a long shot. A dose of sublime in the midst of the raucous and the unrelenting, you point to the magnificence past the cacophony and injustice. Keep your head up always, and I will always find my way back home.

Clyde the polar bear was a unique creature in that he was utterly and completely boring. He hated being boring, but no matter what he did, or how long he sat in thought, he could never manage a single interesting thing. He blamed it on his mother naming him Clyde.  She had also been a very boring bear, but she so thoroughly enjoyed it that you would never have suspected she had no personality at all. She even managed to die of natural causes, much to Clyde’s dismay.

One day, Clyde was chasing down an excessively fat walrus for a meal. In fact, it was the largest walrus he had ever seen! Being so hefty and so unused to exerting itself, the walrus didn’t stand a chance of making it back to the water before being caught and mauled to death. Instead, he quit his gelatinous flopping and turned to face the bear. Clyde slowed his pace and then stopped. Walruses sometimes turn on their attackers and the last thing he wanted was a tusk in the jugular.

The massive walrus suddenly yelled “Help me, and I will grant you a wish!” in an oddly high-pitched and squeaky voice. Clyde was so confused by the odd mix of voice and creature that he stared blankly for a full minute before the beast’s request even sank in, and then he was even more confused. He didn’t believe in magic or wishes, but it couldn’t hurt to listen for a moment, could it? He could always pounce on it afterwards…

“Okay…” Clyde said, hesitantly, “What do you want help with?”

“I’m a wizard,” the walrus squeaked, “I was turned into a walrus by an angry Eskimo. The only way to release me from the spell is to unscrew my left tusk. I can’t do it with these flippers, but you probably could. If you help return me to my human form, I will grant you a wish. Anything you want!”

Clyde thought for a moment. It couldn’t hurt to try. If the walrus was lying, he’d still be close enough to swipe its head off. Besides, this surely counted as interesting, and that itself was a wish come true.

“Deal!” He said and lumbered forward, but he halted again when he realized the walrus’s tusks disproportionately small, miniscule in fact. The walrus saw his apparent confusion and rolled his eyes in annoyance. “Yeah, I know, that pixiedust-huffing son of a sea dragon has a real sense of humor. Just give it a shot anyway, will you? You’re probably my only chance.”

Clyde reached forward, grabbed the tusk as tightly as he could, and gave it a heavy twist (which is saying something, coming from a polar bear). A shrill whistle erupted from the walrus like an entire section of badly tuned violins and boiling tea kettles. Clyde dove sideways and attempted to bury his head in the ice.

“MY left! MY LEFT, YOU MOLDY SNOWBALL! Was your mother a puff pastry and your father have custard for brains?! You nearly ripped my tooth out!” The shrill whistles continued, but at a less ear piercing level. After Clyde had apologized enough for the wizard-walrus to cease skirling, he tried again and successfully unscrewed the correct tusk. The effect was less than exciting. There was a small “pop” and instead of a bizarrely fat walrus, there stood diminutive old man whose largest feature was his elaborately braided beard.

“Well! I’m glad to see I’ve still got that intact.” He said petting his numerous braids affectionately, “Great Odin’s beard, walruses are miserable creatures! I don’t know how the whole lot of them don’t throw themselves to the whales. To show my gratitude, I will grant a wish, as promised. What is your wish, bear? Think about it. I’m only giving you one.”

But Clyde didn’t hesitate, “I wish to be interesting! I’ve been boring my whole life, and I hate it.”

The wizard cocked an eyebrow and chuckled, but said nothing. Suddenly, he leapt forward, let out a rebel yell, and slapped Clyde on the nose with his braided beard, which, as you might imagine, hurt like hell. Clyde shrank back whimpering, and the wizard sprinted off cackling and whooping, his beard whipping the wind behind him. When Clyde finally got the nerve to drop his paws from his face, he nearly jumped out of his hide in shock. His white fur had turned to brightly colored tie-dye.

“Well, that is interesting.” He muttered to himself. The more he stared at himself, the more he liked it (it was likely the hypnotic power of swirling colors, but you can’t expect a polar bear to know that). Finally, he got so excited that he took off, bounding towards home.

As you may have guessed, Clyde stood out like a canary in a cat house. Before the week was out, a poacher spotted him and decided the multicolored fur would be the perfect way to win back his girlfriend who had left him to go be a hippie down in Oregon. In no time at all, the former poacher was coming home daily to his girlfriend rolling around on a tie-dye bear rug occasionally stuffing cheese fries in its open mouth, giggling, and singing, “Hungry bear! Hungry bear! Pretty bear is hungry bear!” which amused them both greatly.

The wizard, bent on revenge, sought out his nemesis who promptly turned him back into a walrus. He was soon caught by marine biologists who felt sorry for his weight problems and took him to a zoo to rehabilitate him, but he spent so much time screaming about a bucket and having violent fits that they quickly gave up hope of ever releasing him. He is there to this day, if you care to go see him.

If you’re thinking the moral of this story is to be careful what you wish for, you’re wrong. The moral of this story is to never trust a talking walrus, just ask the carpenter and the oysters.

     It’s a life-changing slap in perspective when someone asks the rhetorical ”What kind of person does that?” and your silent answer is, “Me…”

     I was the person who used to ask, “How does somebody let themselves end up in that situation?” Now I know the answer is that it’s a lot easier than you’d think. I have ended up places in my life that I never thought I would be, situations I never would have chosen for myself. But I did choose them. We all have, to one extent or another. I’d like to say that I’m not the kind of person who makes these kinds of choices, that there is a lifetime of extenuating circumstances behind each choice that somehow make them less bad, but the truth is that it’s the same for all of us. Everyone I’ve ever had a judgemental thought of also had a lifetime of circumstances and choices they may or may not have had much control over. They ended up at that point in their life just as easily as I did. Different roads to the same destination.

     A lot people like to talk about the grace of God, but what about grace from you? Maybe your life choices “aren’t as bad” as most of us, but everyone has times in life where we are desperately hoping for a little kindness and grace when we know we’ve messed up. I can tell you from personal experience the people you might consider to be the biggest screw-ups are usually the first in line to tell you they’ve got your back and love you no matter what. It’s a good thing to keep in mind.

     I don’t like a lot of the places my life has gone or how I got there, but I’m at least grateful for the learning experience. I know that sounds cliche, but I’ve found an unexpected peace in being able to look at people and see them for who they really are and not what they’ve done. We’re all in this together. Stop telling people “it gets better” if you aren’t willing to step up for them and make it better. Choose to love regardless, it’s all you need…

Being back here has reminded me that there were things I loved about this place. Things I won’t get anywhere else. Desert things. There’s a certain scent that hangs in the air when the traffic is still. Dusty and warm, even when it’s so cold that breathing burns your nostrils. I hear Buddy Wakefield in my head telling me our shoes were stitched from songs about highways and how great it felt the days you were happy to see me. There’s a comfort in this crowded desert knowing that in a town so lonely, you’re never far from someone who’s probably as lonely as you. I can feel them sometimes, like I held their heartbeats in my hand for just a moment. My palms ache to hold on until they feel me there, too, and know love is never far away.

I hated this place because I was one of them once. I had no answer for the loneliness, no cure for my own hurt much less anyone else’s. I hated the warmth that couldn’t reach my heart. I hated the wind that could escape where I could not. I hated the people who crowded into my loneliness without a second glance to see if I was even a person. But I was one of them, and I hated myself more than the rest of it.

Still, after I ran away, I missed the way the empty streets glow amber at night. I missed being alone with the moon and the smell of desert dust. I caught hints of it from time to time, and I sucked it up like a dying breath. I missed wrestling the violent wind and winning, and I could never stop myself from smiling like I needed a cigarette. There’s a magic here, too. It isn’t pretty, but it’s alive, pulsating under the Joshua trees and the dirt. I see myself in it, in the life that’s hidden beneath a cracked and fractured surface. You can learn to love anything if you can learn to see its beauty. I’m learning I can love here the same as anywhere. Maybe more because it needs it more here.

“To be quite honest, I don’t have this all figured out…” but I’m learning.

“We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that, in the end, we become disguised to ourselves.” - Francois de la Rochefoucauld

“Public opinion is the worst of all opinions.”- Sebastien Chamfort

You can call me a hippie, or whatever else you want, but these are a couple truths I have learned (the hard way) are irrefutable and absolute. First, the greatest and most important thing you can ever give another person is love. Second, you can’t truly love another person if you don’t truly believe yourself to be loved. You can’t accomplish the first without the second.

I’ve come to realize that most people don’t have the slightest clue what it means to accept being loved. It starts as children when we all try to fit in, to be socially acceptable. We start disguising ourselves to look like our peers or a parent’s ideal, and it grows from there.
I know several people will say they have a great family and close friends who love them dearly. But ask yourself this: Which you do they love? 
We all have at least one disguise, and most of us have a dozen or so. It’s tragic. We get so caught up hiding ourselves that we end up hiding from ourselves anytime it gets a little ugly or uncomfortable. The truth is that there is no disguise you can create that is more beautiful than the person you really are. We are all born uniquely gifted and uniquely beautiful. Choosing not to accept it or live it does not make it untrue. If that were the case, then choosing not to accept it wouldn’t feel so miserable.

“You are human and fallible.” A quote that struck me from the first and always stuck with me. It reminds me that we are all human, and being human means making mistakes. It means making bad choices sometimes. Not one of us escapes it. Yet, for some reason, we judge ourselves and others by these things. As if it’s our mistakes who make us who we are. So, terrified of what people will think of us, we hide and call it putting your best foot forward, without realizing that hiding guilt doesn’t make it go away, but it does bury your heart.

We are not our mistakes. Our bad choices do not define who we are, unless we allow them to. People judging you for something you have done does not make you less of a person or mean you have less to offer, nor does it make the person judging you any less. We all make the same mistakes in different ways. 

It all comes down to seeing other people for what they really are, to seeing yourself for what you really are. We are all human, and we are all beautiful. 
It’s time to stop assuming that homeless man is just a drunk too lazy to get a job, or that there’s no point in helping a junkie because they’ll hock anything you give them for drug money, or that the guy who just cut you off in traffic must be a selfish jerk. Maybe the waitress who messed up your order was having a bad day. You never know how people end up the way they do. That junkie, or single mother on welfare with six kids, or the undocumented field worker could just as easily been you.
Love is an action, yes, but all actions begin as thoughts. It’s time we stop basing our thoughts of people on the opinion of the masses. It’s time we see people for who they really are, not what they’ve done. It’s time we start being who we really are, and not who we think we are supposed to be.
There is no such thing as a worthless person. You have a beauty all your own just for being who you are right now. Share it.

I didn’t intend to use this as a venue for what I do, but I was encouraged to post this. And since I’m trying to be more open, and most people don’t have a clue that I do this, I figured I might as well.
It’s meant to be spoken aloud.

-Not the Best Policy-

I gave you my truth
So you’d respond in an honest breath
But it doesn’t seem to work that way
Because I told you about my heart
And how all the missing pieces
Skittered over space and time
Like dropped leaves
Off cosmic trees
Straight into your soul
And blossomed whole
Whole like the day you walked out with it
Remember that?
It was the day after you told me you loved me
You said you wrote a dissertation
On how all the black holes and galaxies
Were birthed from a pinpoint of energy
That popped like a switch
Where your lips touched my kiss
And drip
Drip
Dripped
From a kiss to a river
Where you held me like forever
Was just the bed we dream on

Remember that?
You said you wrote a dissertation
But you must have meant desertion
And left for a land
Where honesty is optional
Where vanity is valuable
Where love is a commodity
Traded to the highest bidder
Where your gifts are a charge card
To which no one pays any interest
And I am the welcome sign
On the wrong side of the door
Asking you to leave me hanging
When what I meant was “Please come in”

Several months ago, I had an ugly epiphany about myself while I was driving home from playgroup with my toddler. It had gone later than anticipated, which meant he was tired and crabby. I exited the freeway towards the two lane highway I had to take to get home only to find the entire road blocked off by police officers. I started to get nervous.

“Excuse me, officer, can I get through? I live that way.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. There’s been a fatal accident and the road is closed.”

Now I’m really getting nervous. “But I live that way… How do I get home?” I asked, as my son started howling in the back.

He told me I would have to take a different route that is at least thirty minutes out of my way. Great. I drove off, going the wrong direction because I was so distraught over having to take a detour. I felt the panic start to trickle through my gut. I know how my kid gets, and how he won’t sleep in the car, and how I was going to have to put up with my eardrums being impaled by a grumpy baby’s angry screeches when I was already tired and getting a headache and I still had so much to do when I got home. Then it hit me like a two ton bowling ball…

Fatal accident. Someone’s son had died, and I was annoyed.

I have never felt so disgustingly self-centered in all my life. There I was, safe and secure, with an obviously healthy child strapped snuggly just behind me, and I was upset that I would have to put up with his caterwauling for a bit longer while some other woman was finding out that she would never see or hear her son again. I am very ashamed to admit that this is true. My jaw dropped like I’d just been slapped in the face. I quickly repented and started praying for the family of the man who had died. It didn’t stop my son from crying, and it probably took closer to an extra hour to get home, but I did stop being upset about it. My kid might be doing his best impression of a banshee, but at least he was breathing; and when we got home, I could scoop him up and hold him close enough to feel his little heart beating right against mine.

It was a nasty shock to realize the truth about the kind of person I really was, compared to the kind of person I thought I was. It’s never easy to see yourself that way, but I am so grateful for the opportunity because changing it is easy. Just change your perspective. 

This was the start of a journey, one that I am still on. Learning what it means to truly love. That’s what this blog is about.

…for now.