Two Saints

I have had the grace, the extreme fortune to meet two living Saints in my life.
I repeatedly sat at the feet of one, Sant Ajaib Singh Ji, for hours and hours,
imbibing his Grace and sweet words of Naam and Wisdom. This was the Soul
who allowed me to make sense of the insanity of the world. This was the Soul
who provided me with a bedrock of consciousness for my actions, who made
me a moral being.

Last year I encountered another Saint, Amma Ji.
I have friends who had spoken lovingly of her,
who go to her retreats when she visits the United States.
So I knew who she was, but had never bothered to seek
her out. But a visit with Seattle friends proved to be just
the right ticket to my first Amma Hug.

That first Hug left me limp with longing for more.
I was hugged to the core of my soul.

So this year I went on my own to get my second Amma Hug.
(See Hugging Amma Ji, next.)

How perfect that one Saint was a man, and one is a woman.

How perfect that I have begun both my 60th and 61st years
with a Divine Embrace.

No better Birthday Gift ever.

Delete Photos

My aging computer balked at the one thousand
or so new photos I added to her failing memory.
She began to move even slower than before,
and I found myself waiting, waiting, waiting for
simple tasks to be done.

So I began to delete old photos, to save space.
Making sure I'd saved them first (but can one
ever truly save anything?).

I came across a group of Margaret's Puerto Vallerta
photos; the 100 or so bullfight ones and the 200 ones
taken in the nearby La Tovara river and crocodile reserve.

A bloodsport never to my liking, but for Margaret,
the ritualistic, ceremonious killing of bulls spoke volumes
about her four formative years living in Spain.
She loved Spain, her people, her customs and habits.
Even this seemingly barbaric bloodsport, now played
in the New World.
So nearly the entire fight was captured digitally.

The La Tovara photos spoke of her eye for detail and
showed the caprice of her camera choices. Egrets here,
turtles there; an entire series of crocodiles, somehow
not menacing, just curious, scaly, large eyed
ancient beasts captured up close.
Lots of apparently meaningless river vegetation, fallen logs,
the bow of the boat, other birds, and even her hand.
She took a photo of her hand.
Outstretched, palm facing the camera.

I took the time to find the disk I knew I'd saved all these to;
to make sure.
Then I went about deleting, deleting, deleting.
I am now about to Empty the Recycle Bin, pull the trigger
on these 300 computer images, and I am overcome,
once again, (will it never be raw,
will it ever cease to elicit such deep emotion)
with profound saddness, deep appreciation, and love
for this woman who was my life of eighteen years.

Home

June 6th 2009

I am home from a month of travel.

I allow myself to look at my home
with new eyes.
She is safe and beautiful.

Now I have more beauty to give her,
to adorn her. From my travels.
Vessels, wall hangings, bits of glass,
beautiful posters, a bell;
From Israel. Croatia. Hungary.
Small things which tell a story.

I acknowledge that I have created
a beautiful home and a beautiful life.

I count my blessings. Daily.

Travel and Compassion

June 6th 2009

Travel allows me to exercise choices, on a daily basis,
which provide proof of who I am.
It allows me to choose
compassion for others while balancing compassion for myself.

What gives, what doesn't give.
What do I tolerate/allow, or not.
When do I intercede, or not.

My back hurting, with about 18 pounds on it, I want to sit
taking the tram in Budapest. And there's an empty seat.

Do I give up my seat to the older woman?

I motion to her that I will stand and she motions to me that
I should stay seated.
And we smile at each other.

It warms my heart and confirms our goodness.

Gimme The Heat

Daily, hot taste in the mouth, heat;
Then digest the flesh, the form of the
plant from which this heat is derived.
Taste and enjoy. Feel the heat.

Ginger and pepper (myriad kinds) -
no wonder the spice trade once flourished.
The combination of mouth euphoria,
mixed with the vital, beneficial, colorful
phyto-chemicals, poly-phenols contained
in the flesh of the heat providing plant
creates immunity.

Along with adequate sleep, safety, food,
exercise and of course the indispensable
Love and Purpose will yield
Health and Happiness.

Getting Through The Slow Grind of Grief

Getting Through The Slow Grind of Grief

The pain is real. The pain is more intense than any physical pain I have ever suffered.
It is the clawing at my soul, the ripping open of my heart. At its worst, it brings a sense of
utter hopelessness which pervades my every morning, afternoon, evening. In dreams I sometimes find relief, but not when her presence is felt, her essence enveloping the structure
of the dream, the waking to longing, then the cold realization that she will not return, she will be gone forever.

I pray each day: God help me to realize that loving you is the most important thing in my
life. I believe that this prayer has been answered. I truly comprehend that the real purpose
of my life is to love God/The Divine/The Almighty/She. I accept this belief, my faith, my love of The Divine as a fundamental, very real thing in my life. A given. A gift. A jewel. A sweetness in my heart that helps wash away the pain of grief. The sweetness envelops me with a soothing caress. It takes away the bitterness of loss.

I wrote most of this piece at the height of my feeling distraught/hopeless/negative. After reflecting more about what I want to tell you, my gentle reader, I realized that I need to let you know that I got through my worst morning in weeks, because my nephew David called me. He knew immediately that something was wrong. He knew, and told me several times that he could not stand to lose me. I am his last best link to his mother, my sister; her son who loves me as fiercely as I love him. As fiercely as I loved his mother. He pulled me through. I am indebted to him, and grateful that I can talk to him from my heart.

Getting Through The Slow Grind of Grief.

So I must say to you, dear reader, that you are to create a group of several people in your life with whom you can share your heart. People you can trust to hear you; with whom you can be vulnerable. People who love you and care enough to listen. Find this group of people because they can save your very life.

Learn to fall in love. With yourself; your home; your work; your talents; your thoughts and voice; and learn to fall in love with the things which will keep you vital as you age. Fall in love with routine, because the body, as all life, thrives on routine/rhythm/rhyme. Honor the things which keep you whole.

Vow to not stay stuck. Vow to go on. Difficult as this is. The routine in your day will help. My daily walks helped save me. One step in front of the other as my tears streamed down my face, as people passed and I kept my head bowed. For months on end I walked without seeing. I didn't want to see. In needed to remain inside of myself. The pain was too near the surface and would ooze out, unbidden. No contact with others created safety to remain inside. Inside myself. There was no taste to the world. No joy.
Routine kept my body whole, kept me sane, kept me alive, kept me healthy; allowed me to withstand the storm in my soul, the emotional void, the pain of my heart. Routine carried me on her shoulders and allowed me to come to Acceptance. In the deepest part of my soul, I knew I had to continue to live. The Acceptance was my vow to do so.

Fall in love with vegetables/whole grains/fresh and dried fruit/nuts/seeds/legumes/hot spices – ginger, cayenne, garlic, onion, parsley, cilantro/fermented food. Fall in love with the food which will keep you alive and vital. Begin to eschew the food which will cause inflammation, disease, pain for you. Fall in love with daily stretching/daily walks/daily movement of muscle, especially large muscles. Nothing has to happen all at once. Let it happen gradually, but for it to happen, the falling in love with these elements must happen. Fall in love with yourself, and with the basic things which will allow you to function at your best, allow you to be your best to serve. I am convinced that I wish to serve with my writing. You will find the way that you can best serve. You will find your way through this pit of grief. You will come out the other side wiser. Stronger. Better. You will live again, fully.

I have taken to writing as my way to stave off the very worst of the pain of grief. I want to write to enable my thoughts to live on. To enable my words and voice to find their way to others’ hearts. I hope to let others know that they are not alone. That there are others in the
world who feel their hopelessness and despair. Others who trudge through the muck of this
deep grief, who keep trudging in hopes that by not giving up, their words can be a reason to
live. Maybe my words will be of some use, some help to someone. This is my hope, and this
is why I write; to let others know they are not alone.

Grief slowly grinds down the heart, wears down the soul, relentless, unforgiving, brutal.
Does it get better? Yes, but achingly, agonizingly, slowly. As the months and years pass, the grief is not as intense.
Trust that grief's grip of pain will loosen. Trust that your world will get better. I’ve come through the worst of the agony, and know now that the feelings will shift. They will shift, I promise.

Letting Go of Old Jim (Crow)

This is the story of how I let go of a friendship. This is one of only a handful in my life that I've let go. Generally/Mostly I hang on to friendships. I've held on to at least 10 relationships that are greater than 30 years. These are the 9 women and 1 man who, along with my family, I love the utmost in the world. These are the ones I commune with at very least once a year. These are the friends who have known me for a generation, who I can tell my heart to, tell my soul to, and they can hear. They've been hearing for over 30 years now. We're good at it.

But this is about one I let go after only two years. Jim was 88 years old the summer I met him. I was 58. He walked a neighbor's dog each morning wearing Bermuda shorts and an old straw hat. He'd leave one ripe tomato on my front porch each morning for the month of tomato harvest the summer of 2006.
He'd knock on my door and want to come in to talk. The talk that people do when they're just becoming friends. But I rarely spoke; I just listened. I was still in shock from the unbelievable loss of both my sister and partner; talking about myself would elicit a flood of tears, so I didn't.
He'd talk about his wife who passed 20 years ago, he'd talk about growing up in Fon du Lac Wisconsin, about his jewelry business, about the woman who he last dated, about whatever. I'd always ask questions which kept him talking, so I'd just have to listen. It was good to have a human being in my home to break up the day. I knew how to ask questions so that I could get to know people; I'd done it for work for years.
And slowly, it became clear, not by action, but by Jim telling me , that he wanted physical intimacy. With me.
"I'd like to cuddle and have a hand to hold again." And he'd look at me.
But I never responded.

He had no idea whatsoever that I am a Lesbian who clearly wants no intimacy, other than verbal, with someone old enough to be my father. I was clear that I was just interested in being his friend.
"Jim, first of all, I'm YOUNGER than your DAUGHTER, and besides, I'm a Lesbian."

"Ohhhh." He said drawn out, slowly.
"I can see that now." And he looked at me fully for the very first time. He now saw.

So we became friends, cause I could be authentic with him, and he could have companionship. Like a puppy, he'd go just about anywhere with me, and wanted me to go places with him. We did this about once a week, for maybe a year. Movies, his doctors' appointments, CostCo, Walmart, Trader Joe's, more movies. Some weeks a movie and some appointment or chore.

As months passed, each visit produced a tenseness in me which lead to an insistence on looking for/hearing/noticing a sexist or racist remark of his. Or noticing that he would always remark on how good I looked. I was appraised, based on my looks. His objectification of me grated.

There were those remarks; his sexist and racist remarks which told his way of seeing the world. He didn't see women as equal to men, and he always/sometimes only saw their looks. His racist remarks, said off hand, common to white men of his age were appalling. If women were unequal to men, people of color were less than even women.
Words matter. Words count. And his words told his beliefs, as words always do.

And his remarks of objectification always came. Always grated, always left me feeling disrespected, and frankly disgusted. He would comment about the "girls" or "Mexicans" or reminding me that he'd only seen Black people "in the circus", and that he thought a "wide nose and thick lips" are "ugly." Oh this hurt me. Or how his past female friend had become "dumpy looking; she's let herself go." His words caused me to be sensitive to what he would say next, what obscene remark would come next. The very worst, the one that came as a physical blow to my stomach, as if he'd punched me: he said he would not vote for Obama because "if you let one in, others will follow." His distrust, his fear of "the other" was real; and it was all too typical of white men of his age. His age when Jim Crow laws were the norm, when Black men were jailed for no good reason other than to be used on farms and factories as slave labor in the south; when Black men, women and children were hung from trees, for no good reason other than sheer hate, the "Strange Fruit" that Billie Holiday sang of. The time of Jim Crow when the overarching norm was acceptance of hate, acceptance of the idea that skin color determines goodness, decency, trust. As in Nazi Germany, the acceptance of hate as the norm allowed brutality and mass murder to flourish. When we acquiesce to a norm of hate and discrimination, we further
its cause.

Could I truly believe what I was hearing? It seemed as if most of our time together became my hearing some obscene comment of his, then my pointing out why the comment was offensive to me, but also, made no logical sense. People's skin color is no different than people's different hair color, or eye color. Truly. He truly could not comprehend the idea that all people are one, because we are from One. He would try to correct his speech for the next ten to twenty minutes or so; but that's exactly the point. He was just "correcting" his speech to make me feel good. Not in any way because he too saw the hatefulness of his words. Words which were so indicative of the general feeling, the general mood of his life, that for those of his generation, they became convention. Words which bespoke another era. An era when it was just assumed by all whites, talking to each other, that any one of any color was somehow not to be trusted, was inferior. An era when "everyone knew their place."

So there we were. Me feeling the need to comment to him on comments he would make. He threw out his hate filled language as if he were talking about the weather. Listening to him, it was clear that in his circle of friends, everyone took it for granted that this is how one spoke. He would mention the "Mexican" who committed a crime, muttering about the "illegals." Or how the "girl" looked behind the counter at his doctor's office, commenting constantly about how this "girl" or that "girl" looked. Always about looks. I would point out that he wouldn't call a man of 40 plus years a "boy." I would point out that we spend more money on corporate handouts than the sliver of funds that go to provide human basics for people in need. The tenseness always lead to my becoming upset, angry that he couldn't comprehend how offensive he was.

And he would always say: "I don't mean anything by it. They're just words. I just say them. They're what everybody says."

And I'd always say: "But they mean something to me. If you're going to hang out with me, I cannot hear them."

His words stung my sense of decency. He doesn't understand that we are all One. We are to be judged by our character, by our integrity, by how genuine we are; and repeatedly he'd judge by gender, by color. People were seen through a filter of preconceptions, prejudice.

He spoke what he truly believed. Because try to hide anything, people always speak their truth. He spoke how he saw the world. His truth.

Not mine.

There we stayed for about a year. He truly believed that his words had no consequence, and I could not help but see the consequence.

Then something in me said enough is enough. I was aware of feeling frustrated, irritated, angry, when in his presence. I began to avoid contact. Especially face to face contact. I knew that each time he saw me, he looked me over and did a mental check. Not to notice skin, eyes, sheen, glow, overall demeanor; no, to notice if I were still pretty to him. To see my "prettiness".

I resented that he did this. I resented his words from a generation prior to mine. In his words
I heard the hatred of the southern sheriffs with their whips and bullhorns and clubs. And the southern folk, with so much hate and fear on their faces, in their eyes. T.V. for the first time showed societal hate and insanity. And the Chelsea Massachusetts folk, especially the young white men. They hated too. It showed in their faces, in their attacks on the Black children bussed to white schools. It was ugly. It was obscene.

I experienced Boston in the early 1970's to the mid-1980's. Each day the papers threw in our faces the hatred of the Irish-Italian establishment. In the early 1980's Black women were being killed in Boston and no one noticed, no one cared.
It was during this time that I lived with and loved a woman of color. Demita, a proud, strong, intelligent Black feminist. She never took bullshit. She was clear as a bell, and beautiful. She taught me so much about how to be strong. She kept me sane the time that my mother almost died. She'd hold me in her arms at night and talk to me and soothe me. She let me cry and hold her and be comforted. Mightily. We were not lovers. We just loved.
And I grew up in New York City, the Lower East Side, with Puerto Rican, Black, Chinese, Jewish kids in my neighborhood, my friends. I truly didn't see skin color, I was just one of the kids. We played together, had band class together, did stuff after school together. And on the subway, my mother taught her daughters to look closely at people, and to see the beauty in everyone. So we did.

So here I was, always "correcting" this man who claimed to be my friend, but who always said things which hurt me. When he made the remark about Obama, I felt as if I'd been kicked.

Sometime in the fall of 2008 I said goodbye to Jim. I accepted that he will never change and I do not need to try to change him.

I live with my decision to let him go as a friend. I know I hurt him. I know he did not at all comprehend my inability to continue to call him a friend. I know he did not "mean" to hurt me, but he did. I have family members who are racist and sexist, but I don't keep friends who are.