125. Beloved Entanglement
Spice up your life
On Saturday, I drank two very strong cups of coffee and drove with my babies up to the Botanical Gardens. It was a rainy morning and Florian and Alma were nervous on the bridges that crossed over the rushing Mission creek, from the dry sage Chaparral to the spicy bay Oak woodland. I observed my annoyance that they were nervous – wishing for them a capacity that I myself am still learning. So much of my days spent with my kids is them co-regulating with me - using my body and presence to make themselves okay. But what I am tasked with - what we all are tasked with is - how am I making myself okay? What an undertaking! It brought to mind the story I tell myself about who they should be - bold explorers? Instead of who they are at this moment, dear ones who need a hand to hold.
After they had finally become curious and muddy, I brought the babies home. I made them bean and cheese quesadillas and cut up oranges the way that I like (supremed – see this cute video by Fanny of the wonderful Green Spoon on citrus) and Jeff got diapers changed and pull-ups on and corralled the kids into their room for naptime. My dear friend and colleague Shea picked me up and we drove to Santa Barbara Airport for the Educating for Careers Conference in Sacramento.
I noticed my hands were shaking when I went through security – first when the TSA officer barked at me to insert my id into a slot, second when I stood inside the full body scan device that always makes me feel a combination of being arrested, hands above my head, or getting an MRI - encased by whirling plastic. Incapacitated and vulnerable. On display.
Our flight was delayed so my colleague Dean and I exited the terminal and sat on a little green hill outside the terminal and talked about life. deep stuff. living and dying and all of it, sitting by a diseased Oak Tree that had gone almost completely brown and was infested with what I now know is the Gold Spotted Oak borer - lil fuckers were all over it. This infestation is now an epidemic in our California oaks : the Chumash knew about it and practiced controlled burning, something we’re finally reinstituting in our forests after the catastrophic wild fires of our recent past.
We flew from Santa Barbara to Las Vegas, the turbulence was intense and Shea held my hand as we watched the horizon dip and shake outside our tiny windows. I said multiple times “I just feel like we're not supposed to do this” - this human beings in airplanes thing. Shea was so freaked by the flight that she ended up deciding to rent a car in Vegas and drive to SAC instead. I ended up biting the bullet and boarding our next flight.
During the flight I read the beautiful book The Disobedience of the Daughter of the Sun: a Mayan tale of Ecstasy, Time, and Finding One's True Form by Martín Prechtel. Oh this book this book this book. You know when you read a book and you wish that you had found that book earlier so that you could read it over and over and over again. In fact that is what Martin suggests doing in the beginning of the book. He writes that anytime you stumble or are unsure or don't fully grasp something in the book he encourages you to start all over again from the beginning and go back and forth until you have completed the story. However, this story, as any true story doesn't end - this story is the “BIG STORY” we are all living out and have been living out for all time.
I first came across Martin Prechtel’s work when I was living in Albuquerque. I was going through a breakup and my dear friend Arden invited me to go to Martin's school, Bolad's Kitchen. Nestled between ABQ & Santa Fe, very close to the life giving Ojo Caliente Hot Springs, this school is like time traveling and finding a pocket of the most cherished corner of the Earth, lovingly and tenderly stewarded. Martin’s land, while desert, is rich and cared for and among the animals: the horses corralled, you come to a stately Adobe hall with a Blue Door beckoning. The floor is covered in rugs woven nearly alive with colors, earthy vibrant and from the high ceiling hang Moroccan lanterns of glowing glass and murmuring metal. Martín when he emerges to his pulpit is dressed in Soft buck skin, the pants and shirt fringed, his footsteps cloaked in moccasins. He has a shock of white hair, his face is Windswept and ruddy. I know what you’re thinking because I thought it too - is this guy some kind of cult leader? His charisma is palpable, his presence undeniable.
He begins to speak, no he begins to pour forth like a river of human wisdom sharing jewels and our memories, our collective human knowledge that we have forgotten that we have, in fact, been told to forget. I still have a CD that I purchased at the library of Bolad’s kitchen - a collection of reed recordings pressed into shellac by the excellent Dust to Digital label. This is how my day at Bolad’s Kitchen started, listening to these reedy recordings from far away caves in a hall of wonders. He speaks in riddles but Martin’s work is to help us remember.
Why I tell you this, why I tell you any of this, is that this is a big story and it is this story that we are meant to tell and Martin's beautiful book reminded me that it is my duty to bring forth my story no matter how inconvenient that might feel. One of my discoveries while reading this book about a daughter is how I have clothed my body, my propulsion in something created by my parent’s and those before them and I live out their legacy, walk that path. Reading this book on this plane trapped, I remembered it is not my responsibility to live out my parent’s dream and the silly thing is I don't even know that it is their dream – it's just the dream that I told myself was their dream for me. It is my responsibility to tell this big story to commit to my beloved entanglement with this world. This feels like a late discovery in this 37 year old body but c’est la vie.
In Martín’s words :
“We must dig towards the sound of what we love.
Make a channel in the walls of our parent’s house, a small hole through the restrictive thinking we’ve grown up with, using the tool of our assigned duties, our creativity adapted to our passion, thereby making an opening so that we can see through the cocoon-like mores of our upbringing.
When we love we must be creative and make our deceptions beautiful in our forays to get closer to the beloved.
That is partly how we become artists and true adults.”
So now I’m going into my beetle self and boring a hole through the thick clay I’ve constructed around me, and making a hole for my wild untethered longing, that I may be reunited with my beloved. May you also carve this channel in your own lives - I want to see what comes in!
Martyr! By Kaveh Akbar
Cyrus is a young Iranian American poet novelist obsessed with the idea of martyrdom, or what makes life most meaningful. He decides to go to Brooklyn to meet with an artist dying of cancer named Orkideh (orchid in Farsi) enacting an exhibit called Death Speak, where she is living out her last days in the Brooklyn Museum. The book cycles between character perspectives and is peppered with Cyrus’ poetry as he composes a draft of a book, working title “Earth Martyrs”. While reading this book, Roxanne Gay’s book club, The Audacious also started reading it and she came up with some delicious prompts : “On Cyrus’s third visit to Orkideh, they discuss grief and art and the meaning of death. She says to Cyrus, “What I mean is, I think maybe you’ll find your real ending once you stop looking for it” (182). What do you think Orkideh is trying to tell Cyrus, in the context of the discussion they were having? Cyrus opens up a little more but feels guilty about burdening the artist with his own pain. With so much talk on the internet (and in real life) about emotional labor and what you should and shouldn’t expect from the people around you, what did you think of Orkideh’s response? What do we owe each other?” I loved this book and the themes of grief, duty to family, faith & how to carve out our own art practice.
DUNE PART 2
JESSICA. Strong Pregnant Seer Mama conversing with her own baby daughter with the wisdom of all women flowing through her. Water is Life. Fear is the Mindkiller. I go apeshit for this shit. I’m so hyped. FREMEN BEDOUIN TENTS. Let’s talk about it. It’s dumb that they took the Arabic out. Denis is a legend.
2 things I want to eat!
Orange Chicken Roast with Fennel and Shallots
Orange Chicken Roast with Fennel and Shallots
Iced Berries with Limoncello White Chocolate Sauce
Iced Berries with Limoncello White Chocolate Sauce
Love you to pieces,
Kate