The milkmaids have returned! They are adamant about stealthily climbing into my mind and pouring out of my finger tips. This lost posse of sacred women, nestled neatly in the forgetful folds of our contemporary, technologically outrageous, complicated and way too important for its own good, world. The more I write about them, the more I want to write about them. I guess they have become my imaginary friends. Recently, I have adopted a handful of imaginary friends. Their names are Paramahansa Yogananda, Krishna and Jesus. You see, in this recent incarnation of me and my relationship with Mykael, and my relationship to relationship, I have found myself often alone. Don’t feel sorry for me or anything… I am practicing loving and cherishing my aloneness… But sometimes, when I go to church alone, and I feel a few shreds of bitterness that Mykael is not by my side, I just invoke one or more of my other [imaginary] boyfriends. Honestly, the three of them are the best boyfriends a girl could ever hope to have.
But every woman knows that life does not revolve around boyfriends. So the milkmaids have come to bathe my mind in their sacred ocean of milk. Krishna is a cowherd. His wife Radha is a milkmaid. Don’t quote me on this. I’m not a journalist who makes my livelihood by researching the trousers off everything that I write about. I am just a plain old woman who has a mind full of all sorts of tidbits that have found their way in to my cracks and folds and vast scapes of breathtaking inner terrain. But I’m pretty sure that our blue, heroic friend kicked it with the milkmaids and even got to bone one of them! After they spilled out onto the page again yesterday, a curiosity arose in me. What’s so compelling about milkmaids, Athena?
In my mind’s eye, they are nothing less than a holy vision. Their skin is whiter than a sea of fresh milk. Similar to the image of Sri Krishna, their features contain a certain pristine perfection. I imagine them to be the poster children of innocence and purity. Innocence. Purity. Take a moment and actually consider the resonance of those words rippling through your mind and body. When I feel innocence and purity come to life inside me, I feel divinity.
I have no idea if I’m making any sense, because I woke up this morning feeling a strong desire to find a new cafe… a new place to write. But I couldn’t think of one, so I just went to Café 504. When I got there, I could not think nor settle. So I hopped back on my bike and now I am at Mykael’s café… A-GAIN. But it’s much better here. Mykael is not even here yet. I am starting to be able to hear myself think. On the way over, I stopped at the pull-up bars by Lake Merrit. This is a new habit of mine. I can do TWO! But yesterday when I stopped to get my pump on, I met a man who told me that it’s all about doing sets. When he first started, he could only do two. Now, months later, he can do FIVE SETS of two! So today, I did my two… and then I rested and then did one and three quarters more! Who’s such a bad ass? Who’s a bone thug in harmony? (I think that was an R&B or a rap group not too long ago… Oh the things that have impressed themselves in my mind…)
Anyway, when I contemplate the essence of the milk maid, I feel a similar vibe to that wafting off of our favorite Virgin, Miss Mary! I suppose they are different archetypes. Maiden and Mother… but they both appear extra white in my mind’s eye… Not white like Caucasian… White like the afforementioned ocean of milk. White like sinless. But I like to think that these milky maids DO have a naughty streak. In Athena’s mind, innocent does not equate to innocent in the biblical sense. Far from it. And anyway, Krishna’s bitches lived before the bible was even a glimmer in the twisted eyes of the would be thumpers, priests and dogmatic Jesus freaks. The last thing about milkmaids~ though pristine and tender, like the inside of a fresh baked baguette, they DO have a tough streak. Ceaselessly waking before the sun in order to squeeze countless udders dry takes some serious woman power. I bet they’re pretty ripped. And I bet they are more than comfortable basking in holy silence. I bet they have great senses of humor. I bet their laughter sounds like the boisterous flirtation sung by church bells reverberating inside sacred wells.
Ohmigod. Suddenly the music they are playing in here BLOWS. My head is pounding with a hollow, sucky beat and my heart is twisting with anger. I wish I could vacuum seal myself in a quietude just east of all this noise and disapproval. You know what just saved my life? This guy sitting at the table adjacent to mine… he’s reading a little paperback, and was just moved deeply by some of the secret words in his papery universe. I know because he rested the book on the table, hunched over, so that his face was a couple of inches from the text, and he meticulously underlined something. Do you get it? He is so enthralled in his little world built for one. Now he rests his receding hair-lined forehead in one of his meaty palms, elbow propped on the table. Such absorption. Yoga (union) at both it’s most basic and its finest.
In other news, it’s Mykael’s birthday. I’m feeling SO grateful to love him today. Fuck, how guilty would I feel if I couldn’t find my love for him on his own bloody thirty ninth birthday?!
In other OTHER news, I am pleased to report that all those blessings I extended to you in yesterday’s writing boomeranged right back at me all day yesterday! The smoothest among them occurred when Mykael and I were eating lunch on our front porch. We have started this campaign to be “good neighbors”… What does that mean in this day in age when everyone goes about their *crucially important* business with ceaseless vigor, enclosing ourselves in our separate boxes, with our separate little family units and never-ending streams of pressing matters spilling forth in a chain of fruitless attempts of existence justification. Sheesh, all I’m driving at is that indigenous cultures, living close to the earth were on to something.
A “good neighbor” is generous, friendly, open, connective. Since the days have become warmer, we stocked the fridge with beer and the freezer with popsicles and neapolitan flavored tofutti cuties, so that we could offer them to passers by. We had our first takers yesterday! Three chattery, spirited milkmaids in disguise! “Hello!” Mykael called to the virginal, creamy creatures, and soon enough they were devouring lime popsicles on our porch and gossiping about benign frivolities with us. Then the very tall, slim woman wearing a purple tennis skirt invited us to come collect the eggs from her three chickens this weekend while she and her hubby (Krishna?) are away! They live in the very red-assed house down the block. I tell you all this, because I BELIEVE that if we all make an effort to cultivate kindness, connection and generosity among our neighbors, the world will be almost entirely healed. Ya dig? We all think war blows and have all these really intelligent, righteous ideas about what the world leaders “should” be doing and not doing… but what about our very own block? Let’s create peace and goodwill on our street, inspire others to create peace and goodwill on their streets… And watch with glee the becoming of a world of profound sistah and brothah-hood.
And the other important rule to be sure and announce when you offer your neighbor a beer or a box of chilled chocolate milk, is that the recipient is NOT required to “earn” it, by sticking around and making conversation. That is strictly a bonus if they do. The offering is one of unconditional generosity.