Monday, April 13, 2009

That Great Circle

It was ten minutes to seven. I left the room with my little binder and notes in hand, to do a final bit of preparation in my little office-away-from-home: the local ladies' room. The local National Organization for Women (NOW) chapter, co-sponsoring our evening in Fredericksburg, VA, had laid out a fine spread: strawberries and fruit, crackers, cheese and several bottles of wine. A few friendly young women worked with older ones setting things up. Jean and I, along with Maria Papacostaki (who drove in that morning from Philadelphia), and Sarah Knorr from Richmond, were the evening’s special attraction–“Oh, it’s the authors!”–and it was sweet to enter a new circle, to share another world of the sisters.

The evening had been put together by one quite amazing woman: Alicia Knight. Alicia, writer and Sisters Singing contributor, political activist and child-care advocate, is also my sister-in-law. It was Alicia who had brought in the NOW connection, and no wonder–I learned that night that among many political roles she recently became President of the Local NOW chapter.

Alicia and I had looked at each other earlier that day, saying, really who could predict who would come? Several of her friends, and also friends and family of Sarah Knorr’s would be there… but beyond that, who knew? Since most of us reading that night were unknown, and did not live in the local Virginia area, I was quite prepared for this to be a sparse gathering. And that would be no problem-who could be greedy with so much abundance during our tour? A sweet, small group of 20 or so would be fine. We’d finish our tour in a communal way, with plenty of extra wine and cheese waiting at the end.

Getting ready in those last moments, I touched up lipstick, then found a quiet place to sit and think. We had the rhythm of it now. We were in a lovely meeting room at the Central Rappahonick Library that we’d earlier transformed into a Sisters Singing space with cloth and artwork, the grandmother drum and the altar. I looked over my notes. Then rose and dusted myself off for another dance with the Sisters.

And in those few moments, some alchemy occurred. It was as if some great push of breath washed into town. Suddenly 40 or 50 women and men were standing around chatting, sipping wine, catching up, finding each other. More people made their way in every minute, so that by the time we tore people from their refreshments and began the reading we’d added ten more chairs to the group of fifty, and some people still standing in the back.

Good old Fredericksburg. You had to bow your head and say thanks. That old sweet colonial town where you can visit George Washington’s mother’s Mary Washington’s house, and drive right by James Monroe’s law library. Cobblestone streets and an old apothecary with the original sign out front and a little museum of the jars and herbs and old bones stored in the shelves along the back. A quaint little town with a vibrant arts community and weekend drum circles that keep the town flowing and shaking. I’ve loved Fredericksburg since Alicia started bringing me here years ago.

Gazing about me, I found myself floating over to Sarah Knorr. As it turned out Sarah was standing with two of her biological sisters, beautiful women who glowed in the same quiet way as Sarah. How lovely it was to touch their hands and say Welcome. With Sarah were other friends, who were also "sisters," as she put it, and her wonderful husband Ken, who we’d met at dinner. He had volunteered to take photographs and had his camera out. People poured wine and found their seats.

What an amazing final night it was. People wept in the audience, everyone entirely present with every word. As soon as I stood and began speaking, thanking NOW and then specifically naming Alicia, the audience spontaneously applauded. What can there be said of this sister? That she is the beloved wife of my much-loved, deceased brother Dan is enough to make me love and cherish her. She is the mother of two young men who I consider my own, my nephews Roger and Lee. She has an uncanny place in this world: a fearless way of saying what is true, but not only talking. She brings her sons to volunteer at voter precincts on election days, attends Democratic conventions, volunteers to help returning soldiers and the military families in her area, though she worked hard against the war. Her father was a Vietnam veteran; and she understands the world is complex and full of contradictions.

Alicia. She’d promised small for that night, and said she’d do her best to get people to come, but as we got started a realized that Alicia and her friends don’t do small. So there was wine and drink and food and also the son of a local NOW member who is running for Virginia Lieutenant Governor who stopped in to introduce himself to the crowd. A lovely, tall, electable-looking person who spoke of social justice and raised our hopes for a future with good-hearted people acting for the collective and the circle. Later I saw him, square-jawed and handsome, walking out with our book in hand.

Sisters singing. All around us all evening there were Sisters: that great gathering of community which seems to spontaneously form around our book. Women and men, young and old, people holding Sisters Singing, thrilled to be sitting down to listen to poetry.

In addition to the amazing Alicia herself–who read her beautiful poem from the book, as well as a terrific piece about the election of Barack Obama–there are two things about that last evening which still thunder in my heart. One is Sarah Knorr. Lovely Sarah, who had been a sweet note of fresh Virginia air during the entire process of working on Sisters Singing­-always signing her emails wishing us spring blossoms like dogwoods blooming in her neighborhood, or thanking us for all our hard work. Lovely Sarah, who’d written a beautiful, soulful piece about loving her mother through her illness with cancer. And also a poem about the sacred present in the simple act of making soup. She was as lovely as her emails and her poetry, as lyrical in person as one might imagine.

This, I think, is why I came to be with the Sisters. The little meal beforehand at the diner, hearing about grown children and life’s work, about writing and poetry and what is calling the soul. It is a great and luscious thing to put a face with a Sisters Singing writer or artist, to meet their beloved family and circles of love. It fills me with some great happiness, as if these wonderful names I have been tending for so long can live even more deeply in my bones. Sarah read her work with great beauty; we all sat entranced by a glow that seemed to come around her as she read of her mother, of love, of illness, of an exuberant alliance with life and memory that can never be extinguished, not by illness, pain or death.

Yes. As Sarah taught us, so may we live. And following her courage, I did what I had imagined I would do that evening. In the town near where my brother Dan lived, in the presence of his wife and two sons and many who had known him, I read the piece “Requiem” I’d written in his name. I’d spoken with Alicia, Roger and Lee in advance and they’d all said they were looking forward to hearing me read it.

But then there is nothing like actually doing it. As the evening opened, I had dedicated the entire reading to him, my voice breaking, and I wondered if it would be possible for me to do this. The piece was written four years ago, and has been carefully edited to be published in Sisters Singing. But still now, whenever I re-read it, I weep. I saw Roger next to his mother, and Lee off to the side. When I thought of them, when I thought of our great loss, my voice broke. Breathe, dear one. Breathe. And then that great breath that filled the room earlier came and filled me. I stood tall, and carefully, feeling each word, read of my brother Dan teaching me as an ancestor, in the world beyond this world, telling us all to go on loving.

And I walked then into the forest and to the great stream, and vowed to love, only to love. These lines end the piece, and as I came to them it all flowed into me, and I could hardly croak out those last words. But I did, and around me the room shone like brightness everlasting. Roger held Alicia, and I looked up, a bit stunned, full of tears, saying, “I’m so glad I got through it!” From the first row, where Jean sat, I heard her calm voice say, “Yes you did.”

Yes, I did. I heard the call and made the journey and sang out the words. It was impossible to do, it was impossible to re-visit that great heartache, and yet the teaching that Dan holds for us is so important, and so grand. He was there with us, an elder now, impossibly tall, holding us all. I could only look up, raise my hand to the heavens, and say Thanks, brother. Thanks.

So much changed after my brother Dan died. Still his life echoes like a great flowing chamber of prayer and love. I feel him with me, inside my skin and in my bones, and I am stronger for it. He lives for me every day in his sons, in Alicia, in all of us his family, every morning when I pray. Oh Dan.

I’m sitting now cross-legged in bed, tapping away at my sister Pauline's house. It's Monday, three days later. I’ve attended a wonderful family wedding–Jean and I, along with my sisters, nieces, nephews, cousins and friends dancing our hearts out. I’ve danced with Roger and kidded with Lee in his dark blue wedding suit. Along with my wonderful sister Pauline, we have visited my nephew Paul and his wife Shosh and their two kids in Columbia, Maryland, playing basketball and soccer with four year old Nick and two year old Becka. Dan would have loved all of this. And, I believe, somewhere, he still does.

We've come to the end of our great journey. Tomorrow Jean and I will go to the Smithsonian, one of her favorite places on the planet. And on Wednesday we will make our way back home to California.

I take a deep breath, try to capture it all. A kaleidoscope of images and people file past when I close my eyes, like a moving merry-go-round with figures I myself chose, or that the grandmother spirits conjured for me. All of us involved are changed for this passage. Maria Papacostaki, who read her haunting, beautiful poetry at the readings in New York, Philadelphia and Fredericksburg, said to me at the end that she could do this for another year: travel town to town, carrying the Sisters. Reading the poetry itself is a by-product, she said. It’s being together, meeting everyone, sitting within the field that the Sisters create. It’s that irreplaceable thing, a circle of love and intimate connection, that everyone wishes to touch and doesn’t want to leave.

Go to the great River. Share the great Life. This is what my brother Dan taught me. When we love with a great heart, we love him-and we love all of those we have lost and all of those we have yet to meet. When we cherish each other, we cherish every ancestor, every star in the galaxy, every leaf in the bud ready to unfurl. We say it is possible. It is possible to be called and to spring forth, to hear a call for poetry and creativity and to answer it, to find community wherever you turn.

I did not know it, but as I think of it, perhaps I did. In creating Sisters Singing, we were at essence calling forth a circle. A place of connection that lives on. We have at our center not a book, but our hearts. We are ready to move into an unknown future. Together. If we are together, with each other, held by that great circle where the living and the dead and the spirits and the grandmothers all live, it will be alright, it will be shining–it will be a fresh day indeed.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Permission To ...

I think Riva Danzig changed my life.

We were all sitting around the dining room table in Philadelphia, that sweet night after the reading at the Big Blue Marble Bookstore, Elenna, Riva, Jean and I, along with Maria and Terry at their house, all of us still unwilling to relinquish each other. But finally I was listing to the side, tired, so tired after our long, luscious week. My clothes and things were spread across the room upstairs, and there was a train to Union Station in Washington, D.C. to catch in the morning. I felt that need that is so important when I travel, just to sit with my stuff–you know, go through my suitcase, figure out where everything is, re-arrange, find again, touch, smooth and organize. This process can often involve sweet moments of reverie, looking at some earring and remembering suddenly who gave it to me, staring at a poem in a book before I pack it into the bag. Who knows how much times passes? It is lovely to not have to think about it. A second or two or fifteen minutes? Time stretches, I fold my clothes, I figure out where everything is, I gather myself together.

Jean had come home that night and in her focused way, before we had even sat down at the dining room table, rolled up her clothes in her suitcase and laid her coat over the handle. It had taken her about ten minutes. It is a particular gift she has, and I envy it, but I will never have it. So later that night as we all sat around the table, I turned to her and said that I needed to go upstairs and futz with my stuff. You know how I am, I said, and I was concerned that I'd keep her up, and maybe she'd rather sleep in the other room so that I wouldn't disturb her. Jean said No, it was okay, she was awake, no problem. Good, good, I said and my thoughts turned to something else and the quiet ebb and flow of the conversation seemed to continue on... Until a moment later when Riva returned to the table, jotted something down on a pad, pulled off the cover sheet and handed it to me. It was a PERMISSION SLIP. My named was dashed in her handwriting across the top. Below my name the form continued: "has permission to..." with enticing options to check off: "sleep in", "watch a movie", "say no", "say yes"... But I didn't read these at first, for Riva had checked at the bottom: "other." And in the blank line next to it she had written: "to futz".

The note was signed briskly, as if by an M.D. diagnosing a cure.

Permission to futz! I looked up in that small moment and time shifted suddenly. The universe had shined down upon me a small but very important new light. This Riva Danzig was full of lovely moments of brilliance, and how could someone not be in admiration? Not only did she have these terrific permission slips, but she'd diagnosed a yearning in me that was small yet profound, something that I always feel just a little bit guilty about. And she handed it to me as my own distinct birthright, even healthy and laudable, and something that lives deep in my bones. Until then I had not really named that slight voice underneath, rattling sometimes like a whispering mean river, saying I am running late, wasting time, not accomplishing much at all, keeping people waiting. Riva said she'd found my interaction with Jean charming and considerate, but that underneath she had noticed that little edge.

So she gave me permission to futz.

I write this morning in Frederick, Maryland, about to attend my nephew Brian's wedding to his beloved Lily. Last night we were at a lovely family rehearsal dinner, and our last few days here on the east coast will flow with my large and rather amazing family. Our Fredericksburg Sisters Singing reading was an unexpected, gorgeous blessing, and that evening is ruminating in me to write about soon. But today, my Permission Slip is with me. In the several days since I received it, I have noticed something changed in me. I've been given permission... to be myself, to be slow, to be mindful, to be in reverie, to be out of time, under the radar of the clock and the next appointment. Like a shaman dancing the spirits to a new place within a person's life, it is as if Riva returned to me a small part of my soul.

We sat around the table that night delightedly writing out permission slips for each other. We were thrilled with Riva's offering -- she and some friends had designed the forms themselves and had them printed. I've got my Permission Slip here now. I'll keep it close. I'll open it back up, when I have to remember. Not so much that I get to futz (though that too), but that I can name all the ways I am me, stretch time into my own river, that I can be all of my various selves. Even those that our fractured world does not know how to make room for. Permission to... Yes.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Philadelphia, P.A.

So we ended the evening on Tuesday dancing in our pajamas to Motown in Maria's bedroom, our stockinged feet sliding on the slick hardwood floor, moonlight shining in the window, shaking our hips and laughing with the sheer goodness of everything. The next morning we would part this small version of our Sisters tribe: Maria Papacostaki, her partner Terry, Elenna Rubin Goodman, Riva Danzig, Jean and I. But it wasn't time just yet. Earlier in the evening, Jean had stood before the wonderful crowd at the Big Blue Marble Cafe and charmed everyone by saying she'd never been to Philadelphia before but knew it from the famous Motown song: "Philadelphia, P.A., everyday, we're dancin' in the streets..." and she shook her hips as she danced the little tune and the audience knew they were in the hands of a pro. She opened with "Prayer for My Mother (at 83 Years Old)" -- and what I notice as we travel around and some pieces are read more than once, is how a poem changes, opens and expands. There is no other word for it. Sometimes a poem is fated to be read: it is as if it darts through the air like Cupid's arrow and claims its prey.

It was a spectacular opening to a wonderful night. Afterwards Terry said it had the same feel as the reading on November 8 in Santa Cruz, though the similarities were probably not apparent at first. We were in the upper floor of a small Victorian brick building, with stairs that creaked so that we always knew when a newcomer was coming in a bit late. Forty people crowded around, filled the chairs, and ended up sitting on the steps, sipping tea from the little cafe counter in the back. It was connected, intimate, down-home, and sweet. Quite different from the stage and lights and mike in New York City; but the same at essence–we were, yet again, held within a number of interlinking circles, so that women came in and grinned huge to see each other from various circles and tribes. Others arrived completely fresh: one lovely woman right in the front told me she'd seen the flyer we posted at the High Point Cafe across the street just the day before. Colleagues and friends and sisters and partners all sat with us, listening to the Sisters sing.

Yes, the sisters. As we travel, what I love and admire and did not know to expect is the wonderful way the tribe expands to include all who cross into our world. At the end of each evening, we are all sisters. We have traveled a path of poetry and song together and our souls shine. Elenna, staying with her relatives in New York, had taken the train to Philadelphia the evening before, and when she rose to read she commented that this evening in particular there was less of a distinction between reader and audience. Everyone there shone with some great gift of spirit and grace, and, crowded as we were into the small second-story space, we were rather like Jean's poem "We Must Insist", leaning into each other, arm over arm, head tilted, listening. Yes.

Maria read a poem in memory of a friend who died just months ago who was beloved to many in that Mt. Airy neighborhood, and standing before us it was as if all the poems took substance and held together, embodied in the room. Riva, reading this time her poem "Sacred Things" and then a second poem of new love.

Love. That was the only word for Rayyanna Shah, who was with us that night, twelve years old, reading her wonderful poetry–and also poems by her mother. Rayyanna is a seventh grader at Al-Aqsa Islamic Academy; an accomplished poet and artist and also a devoted cook, learning recipes handed down by her mother and grandmother from Africa. Rayyanna's beautiful mother was with us, and as I gifted her with a copy of Sisters Singing, she took the book in her hands and said, This is so needed. Women have so much to offer. I will take it home and read, page by page...

Good people, everywhere. Rayyanna is part of the We the Poets program of Philadelphia's Arts & Spirituality Program--and the idea to have them as part of the reading came from beloved Lawrie Hartt. Cathy Cohen, who runs the We the Poets program, spoke of their work to hold a space for shared poetry among young people of various faiths. How luscious it was to hear Cathy and Fatima James read their student's work–some written by African-American students about the election of President Obama, this new world we have entered, in which we now stand. Yes.

And in between, there was music everywhere. The amazing Jackie Curren, who is Artistic Director of the Anna Crusis Women's Choir -- led us to sing. She'd brought xeroxed songs from Sisters Singing and we had them before us for several rounds of pure, easy song. And again we were in the hands of a wise woman, leading us with her pure voice and good heart... there is something about singing that holds the soul and binds a circle. Yes.

By the time we had journeyed through the evening to Jean ending with "We Must Insist", we had found that insistence within ourselves: we knew together that there is a way to live that re-visions everything...commerce and money (picture Riva blessing the small cash we handed over at the Indian restaurant before the reading), poetry and song (as We the Poets and Sisters Singing publish our own works of creative spirituality independently), selling books (the old-fashioned way, circle to circle, hand to hand, word of mouth and fingers, touching).

How lovely to sign books and talk to everyone afterwards, that sweet buzz of friendliness and gratitude held by all, Maleka Fruen of Big Blue Marble Bookstore saying she loved the evening and that several staff members of the store have become enthused with our book. I remember the staff member Claudia, who we happened to meet when we visited the store on Sunday, saying her sister was coming in from Germany that day, just in time to join us for the reading. How lovely to see Claudia and her sister there on Tuesday night, meeting each other's eyes and grinning, as I read about sistering, and it was clear they knew something of what I spoke.

Yes. How can I say anything but yes? We have a book and we have a tribe and we have a community of sisters which is wide and expansive and includes women and men and children and all who become part of this generous net. Welcome. Welcome. And afterwards we drove home across town and pour drinks and eat left-over Indian food, ravenous again, laughing and comparing notes and telling tales. We were all sleeping at Maria and Terry's house before relinquishing each other in the morning. But no one was putting their head to the pillow yet. There were toasts and blessings around the table, that true sharing of wise women. Then finally it was time for bed, time to change and lay ourselves down, but suddenly instead we'd pulled out the laptop and clicked on the iTunes. Let's finish what Jean started, all those hours before.

It doesn't matter
what you wear
just as long as you are there...
All we need is music, sweet music,
there will be music everywhere...

Sunday, April 5, 2009

A Convergence of Tribes

I feel them around me, like a collage of beautiful faces from the Bowery Poetry Club in New York, surrounding me like a primrose of light or a string of beads woven in an energetic band within my heart. Many faces, many deeply interlinking stories and tribes. I sit up late cross-legged on the bed, one long day later, after everyone has gone to sleep in Maria Papacostaki's beautiful Philadelphia home. I close my eyes, and they are there–Nancy Rigg, who flew in from California, glowing and beautiful–surrounded by her family as she read "Life After Death," then introducing her sister and the two little boys in her story. The boys are grown men now, and were seated in the audience with their own young children in strollers. In one of many uncanny synchronicities surrounding the day, the reading was Nancy's birthday, April 4. Surrounded as she was by so much love, it became a sweet, luscious birthday gift.

And the wonderful Elenna Rubin Goodman, also just arrived a few days before from California, introducing me to her dear New York friends and family, who were clearly thrilled to have her back in her hometown. Elenna read her essay "Taking The Tail" beautifully, as if channeling her human and animal ancestors like the Medicine Woman she is. It was lovely to see Elenna embracing her long-time friend, the poet Maria Papacostaki, just arrived from Philadelphia; and Maria reading her evocative, lyrical poetry so that we were floating in Greece along with her.

I can picture the faces as if fingering prayer beads. The very beautiful Elizabeth Sturz walking in with her husband Herb and many family members, embraced with love by her niece Ratna. Elizabeth has written books and published poetry for many decades, and was helped onto the stage by her niece Paula de la Cruz, who read Elizabeth's poem "Listen You Fire Flingers" as if channeling not only Elizabeth but the great Mother Earth herself. It was stunning, fierce, clear-eyed, thrilling–as if Paula understood the poem from some great depth of her being.

My beloved Jean, always a fresh delight to everyone, spoke of her love of the redwoods and the mountains of California, and read "Just Brushing the Lips Of" as a praise poem to Spring. There was wonderful Ratna, surrounded by her family, reading "Spirit Sisters", and knowing that she was offering a creation myth, the kind of story that has sustained humanity throughout the ages.

And there was Riva. Riva Danzig, the wonderful, the soulful–reading her poem "Sacred Things" about her marriage with Karen, her partner of twenty years. It is a poem about the daily rhythms of love, about raising children and making a life, finding the music that lives in the heartbeat of a couple. Riva is a native New Yorker, born and bred, and not ever having met her, knowing her only through her beautiful poem, I had imagined that she and her beloved would be with us that day. But weeks before the event, as Riva and I were emailing about another poem she might read, I learned that Karen died of cancer four years ago. And what I could never have known was this amazing synchronicity: April 4, the day of our reading, was itself the very day marking the 4th anniversary of Karen's death. Riva read "Sacred Things" with great beauty, and her second poem, "In Memorium", was about the process of caring for Karen in her illness and then ultimately relinquishing her, and again I was weeping, the unreasonableness of this life, and how we are handed these moments, a beautiful woman reading poetry of love and grief, and there was nothing so true, anywhere, but that moment, then.

April 4. Nancy Rigg's birthday. The four year anniversary of Riva's partner's death. And, as Nancy began to read, there was just another lovely wave in the circle of synchronicities: Nancy's essay, in the form of a journal entry about a pivotal moment of healing after the death of her fiance, opens with the line, "Almost four years since Earl's death..."

Okay. I know we have a magical book. I know the spirits are with us. But like all humans I forget or I don't believe or I'm confused or tired or puny. But these things happen, and they are real. On one unforgettable afternoon, many tribes surged together to share one singular moment; all revolving around the love of each other, a dedication to carrying the stories, a valuing of poetry and of language that shines into truth.

In my prayer beads of beautiful faces is Audrey, a lovely woman who is blind with a seeing-eye dog, who'd gotten an email from the local Threshold Choir just the day before. She came out to hear us read, alone with her dog, hugging me warmly, saying we should make a CD of the spoken poetry, that there is nothing like hearing a poem read by the author. She plans to take Sisters Singing home with her and scan it so that she can hear the rest, but it's won't quite be the same as hearing the author. And thank you, thank you, she told Jean and I, before having Jean make out her check, then asking which direction she should turn to begin to make her way out of the club.

It was like that: her getting the email just in time, the old friends of Ratna's from Canada who, quite amazingly, just happened to be visiting New York this past weekend. They were thrilled with it all, with Ratna's reading, with everyone's. One of them said if we'd worked for years trying to plan such a convergence we couldn't have pulled this off. Families, children, young people, college students, people of every age and type, sitting with us as we read of grief, exaltation, love, eros, spirit, ancestors, and the everyday world of prayers and love.

At the end a women named Ina excitedly told me she was my friend Ina Nadborny's aunt, there with Ina's cousin, and they loved the reading, and bought four books to give as gifts. I threw my arms around them, unreasonably happy, and we got our picture taken. I felt we could talk all afternoon, that I already knew them, as I already knew so many there, although we'd never spoken before and may never have our journeys join again. No matter; there is a linking here that is ageless and unspoken.

Ratna said to me on Friday morning, New York won' be like Asheville. New Yorker's aren't so easy... you know, less is more. It will be a less effusive crowd. I understood her point, and it's true, Asheville is a dear place where people are connected in circles and communities. But as I talked to many of the sixty or so people there in New York on Saturday, I detected no less enthusiasm. People are pretty much people wherever you go. One woman said she could have listened to us read for another hour. For a moment that afternoon, there was simply one full, united tribe; many thrilled people surrounded by a wide and touchable bandwidth of love.

New York was a great, crazy collage; we were there for less than 24 hours, and ended the day in Philadelphia with Maria and her partner Terry. But there is one last face that stays with me now: Ratna's Uncle Bob, where we stayed for our one night there. Bob, 88 years old, is paralyzed from a stroke two years ago. Bob, with incredibly kind eyes, saying he's always loved women, thrilled to see Ratna, and telling us stories of her and their family. Bob, who welcomed Jean and I, holding out his one movable hand, grinning in the way that a true heart grins. Jean read him a poem, we showed him Sisters Singing, with Elizabeth's work and with Ratna's. I'm sorry I can't welcome you in the way I'd want to, he said. Oh Bob. You made New York warm and gentle. There could have been no sweeter welcome.

Skyscrapers, delayed planes, taxis with GPS maps on a screen in the back, porters and elevators up to the 12th floor. And the wonderful Bowery Poetry Club, with a little cafe in front, and a beat-up crazy stage and bar in the back. We loved it; we'll never forget it; the young New Yorkers pouring the drinks and helping us get set up. The grandmother drum, all set on the stage by the lights and the mikes, and then they starting coming: the grand, beautiful mixing of the tribes. It was another day in our Sisters Singing world. And a day unlike any other.

One woman I'd never met said to me, You are living a good life now, aren't you? Yes. Yes, I am living a good life now, it is a sweet, good life. I see that the human tribe can be filled with light. This fills me. I'm filled with faces. When I close my eyes, people beam back at me from across the ages, through memory and literature, on the line of a poem, in a song, the sisters singing our way, dancing lightly upon the earth, saying, as Riva said after the reading, Yes, let's dance. Let's dance!

Friday, April 3, 2009

Blessed Delay

A travel delay becomes sweet opportunity, when you are a writer. We sit on a plane in the Charlotte Airport, all flights delayed into LaGuardia New York. Ratna Sturz, who is traveling with us, calls her family in New York to coordinate schedules and to check in about the reading at the Bowery Poetry Club tomorrow. Jean naps, then gets up to stretch in the aisle. We’ve already been sitting on the runway for over an hour.

Oh my. How to not be delighted by this unexpected gift? I had wondered how to proceed, when I was already so overfull. I wanted to stop everything, and say Wait!, sit still, stop time, let me think! This morning, Asheville, tonight New York. Tomorrow, reading at the Bowery Poetry Club. Everything moving.

Now this. We’re sitting still, we’re still; it’s glorious. Though I feel a bit guilty, as if my great wish for some unlikely pause had the power to delay the whole plane. Of course not; but I am clear that the power of intention is in fact the equivalent of a laser beam. Nothing could have proved that more deeply than last night in Asheville.

A glorious day. We ended it all at midnight at a pub called The Bier Garden, sampling local ales, eating together ravenously, laughing, toasting everyone involved, who we all agreed, were brilliant. There were eight of us around the table: Terese and Michelle, along with Lynn, a friend of theirs, the amazing artist Robin Rector Krupp, the wonderful Laurel from the Jubilee Community Center, Jean and I, and Barbara, a friend of Judy Phillips who Jean met by serendipity just before reading, who lived in Santa Cruz for years before moving to Asheville.

The energy of the thrilling crowd carried us through to that moment. It carried us through dismantling a three-artist art show with 40-50 pieces—Michelle’s ceramics and photographs; Robin’s paintings, drawings and children’s books; Terese’s nature photographs. It carried us through putting Jubilee Community Center back in order; relinquishing a very happy gathering of 130 people; signing books; hearing stories; talking to the wonderful women and men of Asheville.

One of my favorite things was inquiring how people got there. Every answer was slightly different. Some were connected to Jubilee!, some to the wonderful Debbie Nordeen and Womansong, the Asheville women’s choir; some to Holy Ground, where the art show hangs all month; some from the writer and writer teacher Peggy Tabor Millin’s amazing classes and community; some from Sunday’s newspaper article in the Asheville Citizen-Times. Some, like our new friend Barbara, came because Judy Phillips had called her up and suggested it. But there was something similar about all of these answers: the interlocking webs of love, sistering and connections that hold all of humanity.

Yes. It was an evening of ascent, saying Yes to community, to the webs of connections that make us who we are. Yes to the possibility of finding each our own true connection to the spirit that is not forced or dictated by others. Yes–to women’s voices, to women’s poetry, to the tears in Peggy Tabor Millin’s eyes as she read her story of tending the death of a beloved friend, which begins “We birthed her…” Yes to holding sisters–as Ratna invited her wonderful sister Lisa to read her poem “White Lotus of Peace", with a particular verve that moved us all. Yes to the lovely poet Kimberly Childs, who has a condition which affects her speech, asking her friend Karen to read her poems on her behalf. It was as if Karen was channeling the deep poet with Kimberly, who said she has never heard her own work read in all its profundity and depth. It was one of the more affecting moments of a stunning evening.

How lush, too, to finally meet the artist Robin Rector Krupp... a dynamic being of light and pleasure. Robin had received the Call for Work early in the Sisters Singing process, and sent us a wonderful package of art to choose from. Jane Nyberg and I had been delighted, spreading it all out before us, and in the end we included three of Robin's lovely paintings. How sweet it was to embrace her, after hearing her name for so long, to share history and stories, and to hear her read a poem that night about art as her deepest, most intimate friend. Yes. A woman devoted to her soul's creativity for many decades, living a life in entire connection with her muse. Yes.

And gracing it all there music upon music—Womansong offering a few of their wonderful favorites as well as songs from Sisters Singing–“Rain Fall Down” by Bayla Greenspoon and “Let It In, Let It Go” by Marie Summerwood. One hundred and thirty people singing together in harmony and rounds; filling the room, Marie’s chant carrying us all. And then, after more poetry, ending the night with “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”, and now I was crying, I couldn’t sing along, it was too much, that wish to touch spirit... above the clouds, in the sky.

And then there was Jean giving us the last poem “We Must Insist”, and earlier in the evening, Andrea van de Loo, visiting from Santa Cruz, offering her spirit poetry as if a direct transmission from the divine.

You don’t know. You put forth great effort, you plan and organize and the emails are endless, and you fly to Asheville and you are thrilled to see your friends. You spend the day setting up, hoping it will have mattered, that the word traveled, that there is something in Asheville waiting.

Then they come and the evening is stunning. People take home many books, and Womansong CD's, and gorgeous art; happiness flies through the air like stardust. Everyone floats out, in the thrall of having been well-sistered. Showered in poetry and music and art: what could be better? We couldn’t sleep, we walked the streets of Asheville at 10 pm, finding a pub where we could eat and drink and tell the stories and laugh. There were pitchers of ale and telling how we all got to be there, in Asheville—our own creation stories that remind us who we are.

The stewardess announces another delay. I’m losing power and will have to give up my little writing ritual soon. Around me people are standing and talking to each other like we’re at a party or a bar. The young men in front of us hear Ratna making arrangements for the poetry reading tomorrow and ask all about it. One of them is about to perform in a new Eve Ensler play, and shows us his script. Jean brings out her poem “Just Brushing the Lips Of”, which she will read tomorrow. Everyone’s heard of the Bowery Poetry Club, and wishes us well.

We’ve got another hour on the runway. I’ll walk the aisles, stretch, and read. I’ll think of Asheville, of North Carolina, of the hills outside Terese and Michelle’s home. I’ll think of the town, of the warehouses transformed into artists’ studios, of Twelve Bones BBQ, where we lunched yesterday–known for President Obama’s campaign visit last year. I carry this with me now. I have done this. Next, New York City. But I’ve been given this blessed delay. I sit, I breathe. I take it in. The Sisters sang. We all imbibed the song. It is possible for intention to burn across a continent, to activate the circles of caring and community in the many interlocking webs of our lives, to carry a thing through.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Terese & Michelle...

I no longer remember whose birthday it was, but I was gathered with some of my local homegirls in Santa Cruz, sitting around after opening gifts and eating cake, when Terese broke the news that she and Michelle were going to leave Santa Cruz. They wanted to live a slower life, she said; they wanted to devote themselves to their art and to actually living, rather than spending their lives working to pay for their lives. And, a few months later, they leapt. They did that thing so many think about: they sold everything, jumped in a motor home, and drove across country to a new place.

And the place they chose was Asheville. Asheville, North Carolina, a crazy, unique, vibrant and energetic town in the mountains of the southern United States. They live on an acre of land about 15 minutes outside of town, farther up in the hills, with a view of the Blue Ridge Mountains from their kitchen window. Vistas all around, young trees and singing birds, the east in early spring. Beautiful. Downstairs Michelle has created a studio full of her ceramic masks and amazingly sculpted female torsos. Terese has begun a business restoring old photographs and creating elegant books of family history images. Three young cats, a brazenly blue sky with bright white clouds floating past. They show us the windows they have put in, the improvements they made, the rooms they have designed. It's an easy, open home, full of sweetness.

We talked all morning around the kitchen table, with tea and stories and history and laughter. We lingered in Michelle's studio for an hour, talking about art and life, how to make a living as an artist, how to keep with the soul of it. We rested in the afternoon, then walked the property around 5pm, just as the light became quite bright. Woods and hills and two mountain ranges in the distance. Glory.

It's 10:30 pm; the day has come quiet. I sit in the living room tapping away on Michelle's laptop. Jean soaks in an epsom salts bath, and is calling me to it. Terese has floated to bed. Michelle is thinking of their current art show at Holy Ground, with work from Sisters Singing along with Robin Rector Krupp, and how they will pack everything up in the morning to be displayed at the reading tomorrow night at Jubilee! Community Center. It's been a sweet, quiet day–time out of time. Old friends, catching up. Delighting in a new home found, a place that holds destiny. There are some worries and concerns, the usual issues of life. But it isn't hard for me to see: my friends are happy.

Tomorrow morning we will meet with a group to set up Jubilee! for the reading, though I caught a glimpse of the beautiful space tonight when we strolled through downtown Asheville. We visited Malaprop's, the terrific local independent bookstore that is co-sponsoring our reading. We strolled through the lively town; I could see why my friends chose this place; why anyone would. There is a vibrancy here that is unique to this land. There is a particular energy here; it holds healing.

Off to epsom salts, warm water, sweetness, and dreams. Tomorrow, the sisters will be singing. But this is that moment of nighttime quiet that has come to be one of my favorite times of day. The house is settling. The hills are easy. It's time for sleep. I feel the spirits of these mountains holding us like gravity in their arms. Thank you, thank you, for offering sanctuary to my friends. Thank you for calling us here. May our chorus broaden out; may it echo yours.

Those Old Crows

Two great black crows squawked their way through the better part of my last day in Santa Cruz, just outside our window in the redwoods across the way. If I were a wiser person, I would have stopped everything, gone outside, and watched for an hour or two to get the gist of the thing. Were they mating? Were they playing? Crows mate for life; they enjoy clowning with each other, they have large extended families where the young are raised by aunts and uncles if the parents can’t. So what was going on up there? Well, I didn’t have the good sense to go be with the drama; I flung my way through yesterday like an unseeing woman, fogged-in, without a brain.

Instead of sleeping, I was up late the night before. Tending the endless stream, getting the programs together for the east coast Sisters Singing events in Asheville, New York, Philadelphia and Fredericksburg–re-reading poems, choosing timing, considering possibilities, sending emails. Buzzing along into the wee hours with the speed of great intention and love. I awoke the next morning suddenly deserted by it all. It was as if I’d dreamt some slow leach of who I am. I am preternaturally calm in general. How strange to find that my heart fluttered like an unsafe bird with a predator nearby. I could not find the source of the unquiet, and lurched my way through the day feeling as if I was inside the mind and life of a stranger.

But by the end of the long day it was all finally done; the programs complete; emails arrived and answered; bills paid; clothes packed; everything punched neatly in a three-ring binder. Just before sleep, I wrapped the Sisters Singing grandmother drum and fit it into my plane roll-on. The drum came to me in a dream where the Zimbabwean medicine man and healer Mandaza Kandemwa took me and the Sisters to the ocean and told us of a drum that would carry us and the book into the world. He held the drum carefully in his hands, but it was not fully manifested. It was mine to go and find. A few weeks later I found her at Rhythm Fusion, the great quintessential drum store in Santa Cruz, and she has been with us since the first gathering on November 8. I understand that she is meant to be at every Sisters Singing gathering–she is sacred container, cauldron, singer, and witness. At the end of the journey, the grandmother drum will be the energetic bowl holding all the sisters.

Sigh. I sit crowded on a plane, the laptop cramped in my lap. The drum and other parts of the altar are wrapped in the bin above me. I’m tapping away just like those old crows yesterday. All day as I was running errands and keeping track of details, the crows called and caawwed. Crows have carried my father's spirit since his death. And they share some energies with him–a bit loud, even brash, a tendency to be over-bearing. But charming, funny, handsome, intelligent as all hell. My dad, the one who led the parade in Ireland, the one who carried many people under his great wingspan... it was as if he was with me, blacked winged in the skies. In those old crows I heard the leader of the parade telling me to journey forth, daughter. Journey forth!

I am not alone in this work. There are the crazy-wild grandmother spirits who have led this journey from the beginning. There are the spirits of my mother and my father, who led Americans all over the world on their tours. The spirit of my brother Dan, always present. Within my ordinary human frame there are African medicine men, teachers and mentors, animal spirits, ancestor guides. Everyone has come to the party.

The plane begins to land towards Chicago. We’ll spend three hours on a layover in “Oprah’s city”, as Jean keeps calling it. She and I are chattering together like old dear friends; we have rediscovered something in each other these days. Then we’ll be on to North Carolina, to see my dear friend Terese at the airport, the long drive from Charlotte to Asheville, then on to see her beloved Michelle and the new home they have made there.

I begin a whole new part of the story. Today I am located again within my skin. The spirit beings are with me; we are held on invisible air in the sky, just like this plane suspending, unbelievably, on air. Each human is a great gathering. We meet as people–our ancestors and animal spirits and invisible guides with us all around. I can feel everyone, living being and ancestral spirits, a great choreography, all getting ready to meet for the dance.

March 31, 2009 1:30 pm