The unicorn is galloping across sprawling, poofy, marshmallow cloudscapes, and still…. I am gonna thrust myself up on the bitch. Yes. I’m talking about my writing life… which has slithered like whispering water through my slender fingers as I incessantly pour into my life as a single mother. Actually, I feel some relief in the X-treme scarcity of Time. Because before Serena, there was too much of the stuff. I damn near drowned in the strange ocean of excruciatingly slow, linear, third dimensional existence. I guess Time is a beast that I came here to wrastle (and K the fuck O). What better way to restructure said relationship, than to dream forth a demanding little goddess who hoards every precious second, formerly known as “mine”.
I hear a mouse gnawing at the inside of my bathroom wall.
Is it legal to write a one sentence paragraph? I remember in high school, when “they” taught me about the “essential” components of a paragraph– An opening sentence with a main idea. Then a few supporting sentences. And finally a conclusion. I like considering the possibility that ONE single sentence can contain ALL OF IT. Like the universe in a grain of rice. Like how much blessed meaning can you squeeze out of one modest strand of words. What worlds secretly breathe and pulsate therein? It’s like those pivotal moments following the news that your mother “wishes to be made comfortable” (apparently code for “is about to die”)… and suddenly the slow drip of the kitchen faucet becomes the heartbeat of Creation. Your mind sprinting through stiff, sludgy oatmeal.
Ah, yes, it’s wonderful to be back in Athena Graceland. Fuck. Serena just called out to me from the bedroom, her voice a sharp arrow. It’s only 5:49am. Girl, go back to sleep. God!!!!!! Throw down some freakin’ mercy. Let a bitch express some damn philosophical frivolity (and an impending deeper cut) to the privileged few amongst the masses, who have, by your Grace, stumbled upon the treasure-laden, zany worlds that stream from within me. Silence again…. And a slow breath, pregnant with Hope with a hella capital H.
Ok, better get to the excruciatingly sharp POINT. Life. That is always the point, I think. Telling the raw, naked truth about Life. So watch me bust out a “Hemingway Simple” topic sentence on this urgent subject…
In so many mOMents lately, I find myself threadbare and just celebrating the rudimentary fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. She’s crying again and I can’t muster much explosive intelligence and cleverness as I endure her increasingly desperate call. I was hoping she’d self soothe and sink back into slumber. Dream on Athena. Well there you have it. Athena Grace, squeezing a goddamn drop of creative juice out of a huge ugly rock, imperviously lodged in a cruel and hard place. Bye.
It’s a new day. My body thirsts to practice yoga. But an invisible force inside me demands that I finish this piece of writing. This is my Life now… Squeezing single glistening drops of “me time” out of huge boulders of obligation and duty as I trudge through a panoramic mOMent of humble service and profound ordinariness. But that makes mothering sound like a chore… It is. And it’s not. It’s actually the best thing I’ve ever done…. And one of the hidden gifts of its fierce rigor is that being in twenty-four-seven service to Little Missiz Grace stokes the fuck out of the fire of my longing to be, do, have, and fully LIVE the other facets of my intricate, dynamic Self. Which is good. Because back in that other life, (now a microscopic speck in my figurative rearview mirror) the unwieldy ocean of perceived time drowned out my fire to engage and create.
Now that I have experienced conception, pregnancy, birth and sustenance of the object of my all-consuming Desire, I have a felt-sense of this sacred, feminine territory. And I can feel a new life gestating in my womb. It is my work in the world. A hunger is welling up inside me to play huge. And WIN. Which of course encompasses plenty of glorious failures along the way…. But winning looks like staying in the game. No matter what. Full contact. No holds barred. Stretching into domains of creative actualization and impassioned service beyond my wildest dreams. (And beyond the crippling social programming of my fore-mothers.)
In 2011, I did a two hundred hour yoga teacher training with Psalm Isodora, the renowned tantra yoga teacher who recently took her own resplendent and gritty life. Her training felt like flushing a couple thousand dollars down the toilet. In my experience, the bitch did not have it together. (But I give her goddess props for not letting that stop her. To live into huge vision, it’s mandatory to fuck up and make messes along the way.) The one gold nugget that emerged, gleaming from the sludgy chaos and bullshit, was the moment she said to me, “If you want something, you have to become obsessed with it.”
It’s true. I felt this all-consuming obsession with creating a child. And now it is building a soul-satisfying career that inspires, ignites and liberates the hearts of the masses.
FUCK. The mother fucking dog barked and woke Serena up. I could kill him. It’s only six twenty and I was sure I was gonna finish this goddamn thing today. FUCK EVERYTHING.
And now for the ultimate zen koan. It’s wild how victory feels simultaneously impossible and inevitable. Life is grinding me down. S L O W . So that in God’s Time, the spacious nothing that I am will ripen, rise and conquer. I really do want to take over the world. But not for my own gain. For the benefit of ALL. I yearn to be a vast, consuming source of neon spectrum, God-drunk, turned-the-fuck-ON liberation that doesn’t quit.
Life feels grueling. Wrought with unsayably deep, emotional complexity. It is requiring EVERYTHING. I am watching myself break the fuck down. I am starving for touch and deep, sexual loving. I have to bust out some serious kung fu just to claim a few moments to paint my damn nails. Yet… I feel a silken ribbon of holy whisper inside. And it assures me that I am Destiny’s bitch, whether I like it or not. And She IS this unquenchable, creative thirsting, bursting, swollen River ever gushing from within me.
PS– I finished this blog with my “Big Girl” suckling my breast. Whatever it fucking takes….
Athena Graceland 