It's Not About....

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain
There's more than one answer to these questions
pointing me in crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine.


Song lyrics - the poetry of my life. I can quote so many different songs and I am sure there is a line for every occasion. This one from the Indigo Girls has been swirling around my head for a couple of days now. I do not consider myself to be a scientist or a logician, if anything I am more of a chaos-lover. At least in my immediate surroundings. But when my life gets overwhelming and almost out of control I turn into someone who looks for definition. Someone who looks for order. And I will bend my will to create it.

My friend K strikes again. I know you are reading this Kar and I love you for hearing my cries into the ether. She sent my horoscope again last week. It was a sucky week for me. And in an effort "to smooth my heart down, long enough for the world to come around," I turned my brain inside out. This is what my horoscope said:

Leo July 21–August 22
You will be thinking of new endeavors, challenges, and how to best use resources. Notice intuition and perception are very strong at this time. If you tune in quietly within you’ll know who is thinking of and loving you. Concern about resources continues. However, in the long run this concern will evaporate. Did you expect something that didn’t occur? Is there disappointment?

Now I am not sure if reading this made me create new endeavors and challenges or if they were already in the works. But I am grateful for the opportunity. Do you spin a story in your head? Do you turn situations over and over again trying to figure out if what just happened really happened? And do you blame yourself when things don't go the way you want? I used to do these things - all the time. This past week I got a reminder of something - It's not about me! What an incredibly freeing thing to be reminded of. It's not about me? Really, I am NOT the center of the universe? Ahhhhh. It set me free. It's not about me. When I have challenges with other people their choices are not about me. The only thing I control is how I respond to it. The only thing I can control is how long I hold on to the moment.

This post is a less sexy follow-up to the Open Heart post. It is the day to day of opening your heart. It is the day to day of living in the world with other people. Most of my friends who read this blog are women. And I know we tend to be more emotional (although that category is by no means ours alone!). And we tend to discuss and turn over situations until we understand them. So if that is you and you want a little help moving through that today - here is more genius that my friend Kar sent me. As always I love you.

in peace
keisha

photo:Cinnamon Girl (I am thinking about changing my name to this - Love it!)

An Open Heart

That's supposed to be a good thing, right? Having an open heart. Letting people in and embracing life. I don't do it very often, because it is hard for me. I mean really in, where I allow myself to have feelings for them and not just allow them to have feelings for me. I am always focused on the ending. When that thing or person goes - what is left with me? Usually pain and sadness. I don't like those things. But I mean, who does? This is a recurring theme in my posts. How to strike that balance between being open to receive and protecting your heart. I don't know if there is one. I think you have to be fearless in love. And at the same time one of the things I do really well is give to other people - but I have kept a small protective bubble around myself, so people can get only so close and then I shut down. And all my bad habits come out. I unconsciously start pushing that person away. Some people can take it for a few minutes and some people can take it for years.

But that was my quest a.c. (after cancer) to be better at opening my heart because in true cliche form life is short and shouldn't we have as much love as possible in our life? My BFF (yes, I am really a 12 year-old girl!) and I have been talking about being an empath - someone who opens themselves up to the energies of other people and beings. I am a human empath. Always have been. I can tell when people are in pain and I take in that pain so hopefully it is easier for them to carry. I knew the moment my paternal grandmother died, even though my father didn't find out for another 2 days. And when I consciously take in others' pain, like in the case of my friend Mary, then I can have a safe place to put it. But when it happens by accident - wow, the results can be disruptive to say the least. In an effort to keep that pain at bay I don't watch the news anymore. I don't watch celebrity culture anymore. And I don't see movies like "Precious" and "Hurt Locker." I know what evil lurks in human hearts and I don't need to consciously remind myself of that. And I don't need to walk around with that in my system. But when it happens with a human in the world, it is harder.

Boundaries have always been difficult for me to create, that is definitely the result of being a child of an addict. There aren't clear boundaries in that life. So learning how to set "healthy" boundaries when you have amassed so many bad habits in that respect, is work. Uncomfortable work. Your resolve weakens, because wouldn't it just be easier to do what you have always done? Of course it would. But then how do you evolve? And isn't evolve/evolution my favorite word?

So, I am doing the difficult work of creating a boundary now. And sticking with that decision. Keeping in mind that this ache is temporary. And it will pass. I have a ring that reminds me that this is true - "This Too Shall Pass." And I will come out on the other side of this a stronger, taller woman. I would like to share part of an email with one of my other Mamas -

Me: "How long does it suck?"
Carol: "Oh, it sucks for a long time, but the triggers become fewer. Listen to Pema Chodren, that's the best idea. Love you and know you will be OK. I know my girl, she's a rocker. Ma"

We are all rockers. We can do this thing called life. Not always with grace and no bruises. But we must know we will be OK. I will. And I love you and open my heart to you today.

in peace

photo: Baily Hollen

The Food of Love

Nothing tells the story of my mood better. The last couple of days Hedwig & The Angry Inch's Midnight Radio and Origin of Love have been in heavy rotation up in the cut. Beautiful music - but that's my watch it girl, you're standing close to the end of the cliff - music. That and Sade - and she's been in heavy rotation too. Why? Not particularly depressing music. Sade sings about love, quite well actually. And Midnight Radio is about loving who you are even if you are a "misfit or a loser, you know you're spinning to your rock and roll - lift up your hands!"
I think it's because of the first time I heard these songs - the place I was then.

I have always been a very feeling person. As a Leo and a theatre person, I am prone to the dramatic. In my recent years I have worked on keeping the drama on the stage and out of my life, but it creeps in in little ways. Ways that if I am not careful I will miss. It creeps in through my music. It says - hey, I'm not feeling too great today so I am going to let Hedwig do my talking for me. Music has been the way I've communicated with myself and the outside world for quite some time. And I don't see that changing much.

Lately I have begun expanding my music. Listening to singers that I love sing songs I haven't heard them sing before. Lovely. And I think about how I am feeling emotionally now as I bring these new songs into my life. What memories will be ingrained on these songs 10 years from now? Happy, scared, fascinated, hopeful? Probably a bit of each. Much like smell, music can take me anywhere I want to go. And right now I want to be some place warm and sunny where I am young and vibrant and anything is possible; and the future is a distant memory. Where love ruled my life and all that I surveyed. And if I go to that music I know I will be in that place.

we are blessed may we recognize the blessing

in peace
keisha

photo:vuejadays

Let Your Freak Flag Fly

Do you think we are programmed to be the way we are or is it training, exposure and DNA -and by that I mean habitually watching our parents perfect a move? "Two roads diverged in a wood and I took the one less traveled by and that has made all the difference."

Facebook strikes again. Lately I have had the extreme joy of reconnecting with people from elementary school. Seriously, I mean people I met when I was five years-old! People I spent nine years of my life with. And there is so much from that time that I had forgotten and so love being reminded of. My past flashes across my eyes like the last moments before death - bits and pieces, smiles and tears. All in the hopes of remembering a life. Who would I be right now if I had stayed in New York at the age of fourteen? I left home and went to boarding school. It felt like the right thing to do at the time - it saved my life in so many ways. And yet, it turned me into a person who is really different from her extended family and from the people she knew when she was a girl.

Some of the questions I ask myself: would I still go to church? Would I still believe in a personal G-d? Would I have a different job or career? And is it even worth it to ponder these things? It feels like it's worth it in that it reminds me of the person I was and what I valued when I was young. I think I was always an unabashed progressive, never happy to fall neatly into a box but willing to stand in one while my vote was being counted. My friends are all over the globe and just down the street from me. And I have no one person, save for my sister, who can recall the best memories from my entire life instead of in 4 year increments. And all that is to say that I am rare and diverse. I can fit into so many places and have so many experiences to recall. Does that make me any less authentic? Is there some me that needs to show up everywhere and is always constant in her behavior and speech?

There was a white girl in college who told me that she was more black than me. Pissed me off. Because I realized that she equated being "black" with a kind of speech and walk and dress and music and food. I equated being black with being my mother's child, with having a very conscious understanding of racism and recognizing when I was being followed around a store. I equated it with trips to the south and family lore and being reminded that in my mother's lifetime my relatives could not share a bathroom with white people. With men who looked like my father and my sons swinging from trees and with the amazing hope of surviving the brutality of the Atlantic Ocean to stand on the shores of the diaspora and sing that note called blue, called jazz, called salsa, called reggae.

John Mayer recently (in what I am sure was a drug-induced spill of the tongue) told Playboy magazine that he had a "hood pass." That he was able to say words like "nigga" (I don't even say that word) but that his penis was a white supremacist. He didn't open himself up to being interesting to black women. What?! I don't really care who he has sex with - that is his choice but a hood pass? His penis is a white supremacist? Not funny. And it made me start thinking seriously about the issues of identity, culture and stereotype.

One of the reasons I stood up and cheered and talked back to the television during Obama's 2004 speech at the Democratic National Convention was because of this sentence: "children can’t achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white." Amen. As my grandmother would say, "I was called everything except a child of G-d!" when I was growing up. "Not black enough," "Oreo," "White girl," and even the dreaded "N" word. But it was all in an effort to define my identity. To put me in a box that I don't think I ever lived in. I think I came to this planet hard-wired to be the girl that I am. The diverse, crazy, compassionate woman that I am.

Identity is so hard. But as I see 40 coming around the corner I am getting more and more comfortable with the many sides of me. And I am loving them and giving them each an equal voice in my head instead of constantly warring with them. It feels good. And it reminds me to keep my game tight for the next evolution. So all the parts of this girl - the professor, the mama, the motorcycle rider, the good coffee and wine-drinking, tattoo brandishing, minivan driving, soul food munching, grits cooking, trash-talkin, sista is letting her freak flag fly. And if you send yours up the flagpole I promise to salute.

we are blessed may we recognize the blessing

in peace,
keisha

credit to whom credit is due: Thank you Robert Frost for The Road Not Taken and the allusion to the "note called blue," from Elizabeth Alexander's Poem Absence.
Ashe.

Today is the first day......And today....And today...

I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903; in Letters to a Young Poet

My friend K sent me something lovely yesterday, my horoscope. It said:
Leo July 21–August 22
You become more and more aware that you’re working with powerful forces this week. They’re not only cosmic forces but people around you will be acting them out. This is an extraordinary piece of information … to know that people in our environments act out planetary motion. Observe all work realities this especially this week. Remember also that from loss comes profound new life.

People in my personal cipher have been going in, up and through it lately. There is no denying that now is a time for serious personal growth for so many - those who are ready and willing (and some not so willing!) to do the hard painful work. Those of us who barely made it out of 2009 are being confronted with our quest - get it together baby. What?! Where is my lottery win, my all expense paid vacation, my date with Will Smith? Don't I get something for making it through last year fairly sane? Yes, you get the great joy of continuing in your evolution. I feel ripped off.

A friend and I used to say that "ignorance is bliss" but the fact that we know that makes us too aware to ever be blissful. Yea, dealing in philosophical syllogisms was our version of fun in high school. But there is some truth to that statement but also a huge gift in it too. Because we experience pain we can really know joy. Someone told me that living in joy was as simple as changing your mind. Really? That seemed awfully naive to me - just change your mind? Then why isn't everyone living in joy? Because it is a lot of work. A lot of work. And requires constant vigilance. And it takes a long time - you don't see the results as quickly as you do working out. Being on the low end of the patience spectrum I always wanted things to happen as soon as possible if not before. I lose interest in routine, constant prepartion and what I perceived to be the drudgery of every day life. And mastering those things felt like a huge waste of time. But they are foundation choices that give me somewhere to go. And I have been struggling with this same issue my entire life. This is my Galileo moment - my "get it right this lifetime" lesson.

I've started re-reading old journals so I can see that I have gotten better in this one aspect of my personal growth. I have made major strides. And there is still a long road to go. I have been really hard on myself most of my life - as I am sure a great many women are. And now I think that the best way to keep moving through my evolution is to be more gentle with myself. To accept those things I don't love about myself and those things I cannot change immediately. To live them openly and fully and not push them out of my mind. And with time I, we will all live our way into the answers.

And if I'm crying while I write these words

is it absurd of is it just me? - Tears for Fears

Yesterday I found an old friend on Facebook. First I found him on classmates.com and then something said check out facebook. He has an incredibly common name so searching for him previously had yielded no responses. But now he is friends with a common friend and has a picture posted. It is definitely him. And it doesn't look as though he visits his site too often so it may be awhile before I get a response. Or I might not get a response at all.

After the last 20 years of my life I feel almost like I need to be in a twelve-step program for my transgressions of youth and stupidity. The people I didn't understand and value. The situations where I put my interests above those of others. The times when I took more than I even considered giving much less gave. I feel the need to make amends. But what I have realized is that most people don't remember the things that you remember. Your bone of contention with someone is usually not their bone of contention with you, if in fact they even have one. So I am loathe to bring up past sad moments when I reconnect with an old friend. If I would like to rekindle my friendship with them I ask them if they have anything they are still upset with me about, or any questions from our collective past that they would like cleared up. If they have a past pain then we can work through that and I can apologize. I don't know if it does anyone any good to bring up things they are no longer angry about - why so you can feel better and they can get angry all over again? I find making amends to be more about the person you are asking forgiveness from than making yourself feel better. That still feels awfully selfish. It's about you feeling better not healing a rift. So, I clear up my hurts away from the person.

Recently I contacted a person I was friends with in High School. I called this person to get them to come to our reunion. They were less than enthusiastic when speaking to me. My initial thought was - "Don't you have caller i.d. If you didn't want to speak with me why did you answer the phone?" But then I realized that maybe that's what they wanted. Was to speak to me and act uninterested or even cold. And that's okay. I am really learning and accepting the fact that I cannot take the actions of other people personally. And I have always wanted to be one of those people who kept friends from elementary school through each and every job I've ever held. But I am not that girl. Maintaining the few close relationships I have now is a lot of work and I am not doing the best at those. It is even that much more daunting to think about maintaining relationships with people even more dispersed. And that is my process. That is my choice. So I do my best to treat everyone with respect and attention when I am with them or they are in my virtual cipher. Just taking it all one day at a time.

We are blessed may we recognize the blessing

in peace

Keisha

My Obligatory New Year's Post

Good Morning Loves!
I think I was "supposed" to spend the entire week cleaning my house and cooking scrumptious meals and getting ready to enter the new year with all the things I want to manifest in my life - done. That's not happening. The house is a wreck, there are dishes to be washed and I think we had Panera for dinner last night. But what is in intact and markedly different is my children. They are happy. They are not fighting with each other and they have spent a significant amount of time with me and Ilya this week. Being pampered, cared for and paid attention to. That more than tops the list - that is the list. Have a wonderful year, dear hearts. Know that it starts with a wonderful day, hour, second.

What follows is something I read on twitter this morning. It is from Esthero (Oh, how I love her) and was written by a friend of hers called Jimi Dava. I know him - in my bones. This story is my story. And I realize all of our stories.

Respect
Nanda Mama aka Keisha


Dava in Hollywood: Episode XIII : “The Phoenix”
on this last night of 2009 we find our hero typing away on his laptop….
and this is what he writes….

a distance great i have traveled to deliver this message to you, to present you with this little gift of me.
take it for what its worth. its one size fits all.

its very difficult for me to ask for help, even harder for me to accept it.

i cant remember the precise where, or when i was taught this lesson, but to me, asking for help meant that I wasn’t good enough, that i was weak and lacking, it meant that alone i was not sufficient, to me it meant that i was in need.
and that to me, was, unacceptable.

asking for help always raised the volume of the voices inside of me that have tried to defeat me, and so to quiet the screaming i sentenced myself into the cage of silence, where no one, not even i
could hear me cry out for some help.

So i learned how to keep things in, how to hide and hold that which pained me most, i learned how to put on appearances for the sake of others and for the the light under which i chose to bathe.
fueled by the weakness i saw in my father, i became what i wanted him to always be. STRENGTH.

but, looking back now, i wonder how well it has served me. in some ways, in ways that will always remain upright and steadfast, it has kept me alive, and in other ways, i see today that it’s killing me.

I was conditioned at a very young age to be a “man” looking back now, i think i was conditioned to be “the man”
but what does it mean to be the man?

perhaps it means just to be, a man, to be able to suffer the consequence of your ignorance, to be able to stand up when you have been knocked down, and not feel the shame of the fall but rather the pride of the rise. perhaps its the understanding that we you and I are not perfect, and within the search for our innate and intimate perfection we must accept the fact that though we are godlike, god we are not. perhaps being a man, the man, any man, is to be able to look around you and trust that you are surrounded by the same. The same greatness that we seek within must be appreciated and allowed to thrive in others. And perhaps to be able to trust the fact that you too, like I, am capable of greatness is
the true mark of a man, THE MAN.

For inside of this misunderstood and poorly translated man, lives a soul that wants nothing but to love you, and wants nothing but your love. and that scares the living shit out of me to admit, because that would mean that i have to trust you, and perhaps even more frightening, that i have to trust myself. it means that i need you, and your help. and that again, is very hard for me accept.

I have been so afraid to reveal my weakness and my faults, my vulnerability and my pain, because i thought you wouldn’t like me anymore. i thought you would judge me, i thought you’d find out that i wasnt worth fighting for.
I tried to be what i thought you wanted, rather needed me to be. because i think all i ever wanted was your acceptance, even if i rejected my innermost self in the process.

Growing up i was always ashamed of where i came from, being different, being Georgian in a world brand new, being called a “communist” by the children of democracy, being a Jew in a secular world, being the son of drug addicted gangster, having fucked up teeth, being skinny…. for the ideas of our self perfection seemed to exist within me before i was ever taught the definition of the word.

Today, i realize that the greatness in me, you and us, lies in the fact that we have withstood and overcome many of the preconceived notions that we have carried for way too long, i realize that strength comes from facing your weakness and not blinking away. I realize that being different is the greatest attribute we are blessed with. and so today i celebrate the strange peculiar me that has come this far down a road more or less traveled and i say to you i am ready, ready to ask for your help, and i might just accept it his time around.

So today, on this last day of a year i wish i could forget, and yet this will be a year i will always remember, i shed the cloth of my insecurity and ignite the flame of my rebirth, and stand before to see who the fuck i am and perhaps may i reflect you too.

so i am asking you…..

I am asking you kindly dearly and sincerely to help me, help me live a better life.

I am asking for deeper connections, i am asking for the contact of our eyes, i am asking for the shedding of our collective fears to touch each other and to be touched back.

I am asking you to rise with me from the ashes of this fire.

I am asking you to wake up with me, i am asking you to walk shoulder to shoulder with me, i am asking you for your hand and i’m offering you mine.

I am asking you to dream, your dream, and to help me achieve mine.

I am asking you to let go of our regrets, to release our egos and to allow us to penetrate deeper into ourselves so ultimately we can know each other.

I am asking you to help me share my knowledge and ask you to teach me yours.

I am asking you to help me be more present, i am asking you to help me speak more truth.

I am asking you to rise and live your life the way you have always wanted to, i am asking you to be my heroes, i am asking you to lead me with your examples.

I am asking you to help me forgive myself, and i am asking you to allow yourselves and I the ability to ask for help.

I am asking you for your help to help me love you more.

I am asking you for inspiration.

I am asking you to teach me how to be a man…

thank you for letting me speak to you.

I see you. all of you.

2010….. here we come.

Happy New Year…

love dava.

photo: Christina Cohn