Out of the Frying Pan...

         It’s hot. Really, fucking hot. And not “cute” hot, not the watermelon-on-the-shorts-pocket weather that teen movies are made of, which renders many a prepubescent boy inert on his way into a freezing movie theatre: no. This is a fierce, unruly hot, the type that sticks to vinyl bus seats, and makes sleep a distant dream.

            I’m sitting with my legs fanned out in front of me, double window flung open in a desperate “ah,” waiting for the night air to fold in and eventually, blessedly, replace the stink of day. Here in Southern California, we don’t like heat. Warmth, sure—a thin Pashmina in a cool restaurant, or the spray of salt over sun-bitten shoulders—but the moment it gets icky, we want out. Last week, in the middle of teaching high schoolers the joy of improvisational theatre—not itself the least uncomfortable task in the world, but whatever—one of my students squirmed from her cross-legged seat. “How are you?” I inquired, knowing that if high school was anything like I’d left it, she probably hadn’t been asked in a while. “Ugh. I’m just so over this heat,” she told me. “It’s like, really awkward to wear UGGs in this weather.”

            And so it went. Santa Barbara was subjected to temperatures crowning 100-degrees, civilians forgot how to drive, and workers pooled their sick days. Artists clung faithfully to air-conditioned coffee shops, and a hundred UGG-booted teenagers followed in suit; ruminating, in an accidental sweat lodge of our own unease, upon the question at our sticky hands. What happens when we’re truly uncomfortable?

            The answer: we want out. By any means possible, as quickly as possible. Someone tells us that drinking hot coffee lowers body temperature, and we let it scald our throats. A comment made in passing sends embarrassment to the cheeks, and we hide inside a bathroom ‘til the pinky stain of giving-a-shit trickles back from whence it came. As a general rule, we’re not cultured into waiting—wading—through moments of discomfort, but rather, to claw our way out of the boiling pot. When someone sends a message that I’d rather not read, I tend to “lose” my phone.

            And why not? We live in a society where there’s a pill for this, an app for that: a glass of wine to curb gracelessness, a paint to dab on any zit that threatens to spoil school picture day. The moment a relationship is more than laissez-faire, one party can make eye contact with a girl across the bar, taking her outside to tongue the corners of her slightly-downturned mouth, because—oh!—is it not a little better to break something than feel strain? If we wait a little longer, there’s a chance that we’ll feel pain.

            However, if we wait a little longer, there’s a chance that something infinitely interesting will happen. I reminded my quasi-boyfriend of this, the day after he found another girl’s mouth at the bar, and watched as his own lips bunched up in discomfort at our conversation. Staring out the window, 4:00 p.m. heat pouring in, I resisted the urge to do what I always do: to mend it with chatter, fill in the holes of our awkwardness in order to rescue us both from the pit of confrontation. In that moment, self-doubt gnawing at my core, the bloom of humiliation flooding my face like ink, I would have done anything to leave. But I didn’t. I imagined tracing my fingers along the inside of a pressure cooker, the same one he had placed himself in—“I don’t know, it was moving so fast, I got scared”—and felt what it’s like to just be. No judgment, no scraping my way out of the pot. Not running, just being: angry.

            Which, as it turns out, is a new one for me. The genuine rush of anger as it arises in our gut—not rooted in blame, nor as a cop-out for another, less tangible emotion—is a fascinating thing. As opposed to frustration, it seeks not to destroy: simply to burn, self-contained, until the ground is clear for takeoff. As human beings, we have three panic buttons: Fight, flight, and freeze. The latter is especially dangerous for women, and by far, the most common; when it comes to getting good and angry, some of us don’t. We’re steered away from it. However, it’s like swallowing a cold stick of butter; the nausea comes from the edges, from the weight as it sinks like a stone. A minute in the oven, however, and that shit’s as smooth as gold. Throw in some other ingredients, and forget it. You’ve got cookies.

            So. A minute or two of watching this beautiful boy—mouth getting smaller by the minute—swelter in a prison of his own making, I thought about what it means to sit through a moment of discomfort, allowing it to blaze: not demolish, just burn. “I know your spirit animal,” he told me once, over wine and the glow of beginnings. “You’re a firebird.” And indeed, as I rise from the ashes—relishing what has been burned, because it means something new—I’m beginning to think we all are. Firebirds, that is. What else could possibly explain the Bikram Yoga industry, if not the subconscious desire to cook one’s organs in an airless room, just for the chance to emerge into the crispness of night, and for doubt—like sweat—to be left in a puddle behind?

            Meanwhile, in the hills above our beloved, blistered city, the worst drought in years rages on without pause. My mom keeps her valuables in a kit by the door, ready to jump at the first sign of fire. I sit in my room with my back toward the wall, thinking of my own blaze, my own heart. “We are powerful,” a friend told me, tugging a strand of my gingery hair between her fingers, her own crimson locks sweeping across her face as the Santa Anas blew in from the east. “Don’t forget, firebird.” And I won’t. Not today, as my mother makes signs for her house, designating what cannot be burned. Not today, as a buildup of tinder spills out on the hills, and our lake is as dry as a bone. When checked, wildfires are natural; they consume in a cycle, returning nutrients to the soil, chewing up putrid plants to make way for new seeds to appear. It’s the buildup that’s cause for concern.

            Next week, it might be cold. And that might feel just as awful—in its own, stuck-in-a-tent, icicle toe type of despair—and it might be marvelous, too, in the sense that it forces some change. In truth, it’s discomfort that saves us. It’s sitting through moments of out, I WANT OUT that’s the detox: emerging, we’re altered. We are bent, but with bravery: warm, slightly softened. Like butter. And better, somehow.

Once Upon a Lucid Dream

          When you’re someone who goes to festivals, it’s easy to forget that there are people who DON’T. There are people who think “energy healing” is a form of Clif bar. There are also those for whom a “transformational” gathering—complete with fire-spinning, sage-burning, and copious amounts of face-touching—is something akin to a weekend in hell. “I think Patrick might like to go to Lucidity,” my mother told me; meaning my stepfather, the same man currently puttering around in the garage, and the proud owner of nearly two dozen paintings of poker-playing dogs. “Don’t you think?”

            I looked at her, trying to find the best way to say no, I think he’d rather spend a week under military torture than have hundreds of gorgeous hippies ask him about his feelings; however, I just laughed. Who am I to judge what person will benefit from three days under the oaks? Just because my tent looked like I sneezed out four pounds of glitter, who am I to say that someone who sat in silence for the duration of the festival—feeling, perhaps, that he was in the exact wrong place, wishing he could be anywhere else—didn’t transform just as much, if not more?           

             6,000 festivals just happened, oftentimes within the same person. Oftentimes before breakfast. There is no such thing as one “festival experience”: the whole is woven of countless little threads, each one leading to a particular version of heaven. Whether heaven was pounding a dance floor, covered in dust, or the rogue avocado that got squished to your pillow—it’s all part of the cloth, and heaven just the same. All I have is the way that I feel; so here I go, tugging.

            The week before Lucidity, Jill asked me for fashion advice. Mind you, I’ve never considered myself to be a “festival person”; I still forget earplugs, and at least once during each gathering can be found hiding under the covers, wishing my face didn’t stink of patchouli and sunscreen. I’m no more well versed on the intricacies of festival season than I am on any other season, baseball and television included. Still, when asked, I can provide a pretty accurate orientation on the rules for dressing at festivals: mainly because, there are none. Feel good, I told Jill. Feel silly. Because, after all, bound up in the intense ephemerality of festival culture—and the fact that whatever you choose to glue on your navel, braid through your hair, or stuff in your boots, it’s all gotta fit in the trunk of someone’s Volvo—runs a deep appreciation for the absurd: the chic, the dangerously zany. “So,” she asked, palming her hair from her forehead. “If I bring a pink boa and Valkyrie hat, I should be good, right?”

            Correct.

            Fashion within chaos is one of many ironies bound up in festival culture: the most glaring of which, perhaps, being to ‘Leave No Trace.’ The fundamental concept of creating a temporary city out of thin air leaves, well, a bit of a trace—and you can bet that for every well-intentioned mermaid separating her paper from plastic, there are at least a hundred eighteen-year-olds wondering how many cans of PBR they can bury behind their tent. It’s inevitable. However, the idea of tracelessness begs more than the question of whether we can leave the land the way we found it. Besides pillars of bamboo, the countless vendors, mason jars, LED lights, and camp stoves, what happens when thousands of people pack an entire coming-of-age into the course of a weekend? Regardless of whether our tire tracks can be seen in the dust, can that much energy simply dissipate from whence it came? Would we even want it to?

            That’s the thing about transformational festivals: they are miniature lifetimes, disguised as weekends. One can’t show up without expecting to encounter a little puberty. Now, I’m no Lorax; I can’t begin to speak for the trees, nor the countless glow-sticked Lucidibeings who spent the entire festival on a wave of compassion and bliss. Perhaps theirs was paradise, pure and simple. However, to claim that my experience was entirely positive would deny a fundamental aspect of what I value most about these things: that within each festival, as within a life, there are peaks and valleys. Reuben put it best when he said that for some, the transformation occurs when you park a mile away from the site and schlep your bag up a hill. For others, it’s lying in a cold tent, feeling the weight of Alone. If you’re lucky, you come face-to-face with the things you like least about yourself: because oh, how the mighty fall when the Porta Potties stop getting serviced! When their friends ditch them, when they can’t find their toothbrush! In the end, though, it’s not the difficult moments that outweigh the whole; the people you’d rather not see, the snippy remarks that emerge from camping with friends. One needn’t watch MTV to know that when you throw a bunch of people in a teepee, shit happens. No: the difficult moments simply lend credence to the victorious ones, reminding us of their beauty, providing contrast. Like the negative space within a painting, it’s the cave that reminds us of the light.

            So you’re spat into the Universe, discover face paint for the first time, hit an awkward growth spurt around Saturday night when your sleeplessness kicks in, and circle around to the glow of wisdom by Sunday afternoon; hopefully in tea with close friends, catnapping in the shadow of a cycle well-spent. But what happens on the other side, when you’re forced to reintegrate into life as you left it? For me, after an hour-long struggle with a dead car battery and spastic descent down the 154, I went straight to my job as a cocktail waitress. I probably don’t need to explain what a challenge this was for you to imagine me there, sun-drenched and sad—with a nose full of dust—seeking a flicker of recognition in my customers’ eyes. There’s a reason for decompression parties. After a week spent engulfed in the festival blaze, the default world seems vanilla; you see an accordion, and feel bummed when it doesn’t spit bubbles. What do you mean, it’s socially inappropriate for me to kiss someone on the mouth every time they deliver my coffee? What do you mean, you don’t want to hold hands? Like every good teen movie, there’s the moment you look at your festival family—buoyed by the connection that lingers so effortlessly, bringing you home—and ask: What happens when we leave? Like the kids in The Breakfast Club, leaning on archetypes, all hormones and fear: “When we see each other in the halls on Monday, will we say hi?”

            The truth is, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes, reintegration is selfish and swift; and before you know it, you’ve forgotten the feel of that one perfect shower, and are worrying about things like loan payments and bras. You’ve forgotten the people who occupied space, who became all you wanted, if just for a night. In that way, festivals are like summer camp: as Isabel put it, a land where you gauge your successes and failures within the microcosm of Friday to Sunday. Alive Stage to tent. On the one hand, when the “real world” returns and what seemed like the Biggest Mistake is now distant and mute, there’s relief. You exist, you move on. On the other, like a postcard dug up from a sea of old summers, we must learn to re-read what we felt. We sink into the evidence, a talisman of feelings past, to remember the weight of what seemed like the whole. After all, isn’t it better to have wandered around the festival, looking but not looking for that person you made eye contact with—who saw you, who you may have decided to love—than not to have loved at all?

            Yes.    

            At their core, that’s what festivals are: the bold-faced desire to create something beautiful out of the extraordinarily temporary. I felt it when we set up our teepee, stringing fabric and lights in the trees, filling our nest with live music and baskets of food. I felt it again when we hung lengths of silk across a chain link fence, bunching and lifting just so, making it lovely for just that: to be. To exist for three days before the same crew of people rolled through with Kubotas and screwdrivers, tearing down everything they just worked a year to create. Maybe it’s weird to decorate a dumpster. But if you don’t at least try to make good what you’ve got—to make light of what’s fleeting, what one day will leave—why bother with living at all?

According to Michael Meade, “Myths heal us by placing us in proximity of a ‘whole story.’ Not that any one myth tells the whole story, but that a genuine myth has everything it needs within its shape of beginning, middle and end.” Lucidity is myth: our collaborative tapestry, a lifetime contained in a campground. The truth is, for every time I sat in the Pyrobar, swearing I’d clock the next person who said the word “manifest,” came a moment of total tranquility: a child in a garland of feathers, or an hour spent flat on my back with the stars, the hum of a deep set of frequencies lodging themselves in my bones. I’m not above a little Kool-Aid. Viewed from the outside, it’s easy to dismiss festival culture as frivolous and false; and yet, like Meade says, “The same can be said of love.

            “Only those who surrender to love know what love means, how it heals and how it teaches. Myth also requires some surrender and, like love, a little sacrifice.”

            I don’t know about you, but in this, I’ve been saved. I made life in Lucidity, and found peace in my growing pains, too. Nowadays, we sacrifice so much to the linear progress of time; “Yet to find again our mythic sense and touch timeless things, time is exactly what must be sacrificed. Only when time becomes broken can the ‘once upon a time’ realm of genuine imagination appear again.”

I remember the first time I heard about fairies, and felt that belief make a nest in the pit of my heart. Lying in the Lucidity starfield at night, a mess of green laser beams, I was that small girl again.

“Then, creation becomes possible again, and love has a place to enter…”

I may not be a festival person, but I know a good thing when I feel it. And like you, I feel it. I feel it in my bones.

“…and healing can follow.”

            Follow it has, follow it will. Down the rabbit hole, into the Universe, across the plain of a dream only just coming true: it no longer matters to me whether sleeping or waking. I know what has changed in my heart, what pressed up from those grounds. Like most things worth experiencing, until you feel it, you can’t know what you’ve been missing; and like most things worth experiencing, it’s better to know it will vanish by morning than not to have loved it at all. The doing of it is what makes your heart sing: the giving of it, of ourselves, is what makes this sweet festival real.

So you know? If it’s packed in a tarp until next year, if it’s gone when a storm finally hits, so be it. Paint the sign, stick the fence full of flowers; you’ll be better for it, by the time that it washes away. We can love it enough to let go. In the end, we can still pray for rain.   

Nearly Departed

You walk off the stage, taking longer than you should; then again, time is something that never quite occurs to you. It’s early May, the time just before end of school sets in, and the crowd ebbs and flows over us like sand being stirred from above. The sun dips behind a cloud as I shove my fists further into my pockets, feeling around past a melted chapstick and crumpled $5 bill. As you pack your guitar into its case, looking to most like you’re tying your shoes, my feet make a beeline toward you—tugged by an invisible thread over some long plain of silence that breaks open in threes: one-two-three one-two-three one-two-three hold. Suddenly, color gets sucked from the sky. I forget how to be. Late afternoon on a lawn full of teenagers, waiting for one of them to call out your name—or mine—one of us, anyone, just so the other will know what sound to mold our mouths around. I’ll stand in the parking lot afterward, hoping to catch a glimpse of your back as it ducks into a car, something to ground the wave—the almost impossible knowingness—of having already held your face in my hands. “Fauxstalgia,” a friend later calls it; or the feeling of fact, of intense reverie, over an experience you haven’t yet had. What he forgets to mention, however, is the way this truth pounds in the chest. The unfurling that occurs, like a flower that turns toward the sun.

       There are stages to every story.
It was broken down for me, once, like a table of elements: Boy meets girl. (Girl frets about hair, boy hugs girl from behind.) Boy loses girl. (Girl cries into hair, boy stares longingly into faraway ocean.) Boy gets girl. (Girl gets grip.)
Life goes on.
I let this wash over me as I sat with my back against the water, skin crisping in the midday sun like a leaf held under a magnifying glass. Two blonde women approached from the opposite trail, and I knew at least one would feel obligated to stop and tell me, like she was delivering some indispensible truth, that I’d need to wear sunscreen. I’d thank her, smiling so my lazy eye doesn’t crinkle, in that way I always do when I’m still in control. Sure enough, they stopped—matching pink Nikes glaring up from the concrete—and the shorter one leaned in so her breath caught the wind. “Careful,” she said. “You’re really burning up.”
     “Thank you,” I blinked at her, marveling at how many people go out of their way to tell me this. Like my fair skin is a revelation, something that only they see; as though by alerting me, they’ve done their good deed. Like I can’t feel the sting on my face. Like I don’t know my own transparency.
      Meet, lose, get, I wrote again and again, circling the middle word like a fish in a gaping whale mouth. It’s the course of every good sitcom, every meaningful romantic comedy. What’s not lost cannot ever be appreciated. Still, the words oozed like a drone onto the page, and I wondered why my dad said that what’s yours never leaves you: because most things of love do, at some point, evaporate. They were never really yours, he’d argue. Right. But the thing is, I never meant to own them. I only wanted something to fill in the blank for each memory made, or made up, or whatever: to be hit in the heart from the right type of drum, because frequencies cure. Just someone to wait for at a stoplight.


I’m walking with hay sticking out of my sandals, hay pushing in from the toe and up under my arches, dirty with campfire ash and silty mud. High noon, and the late winds of summer play games with my hair; the bare field ahead opens up like a yawn, heat streaming out of its mouth. Sweat drips off the end of my nose, and I’m aware of your presence nearby. I don’t know that it’s you, exactly, or that you’re even here; but if asked, I’d say that my skin is on fire. I swim past the row of vehicles that scream back the cloudless sky, feeling the gaze of children who have not yet un-believed what they sense bursting out of my body. I see you emerge from behind a partition, a full head taller than the boy in the Thin Lizzy shirt, and feel like I’ve swallowed an apple. I can read the hours you’ve spent in the sun from the shape of your skin, like rings in a tree. Your head’s to the left, laughing at something Thin Lizzy has said, and I somehow forget to forget: suddenly, I’m left only with you, with the moment before you turn your head, and the sensation of skin beneath fabric. Thin, like a sheet. A blue dress in early August. I wonder if your smile matches your steps, and it could have been hours. Then again, we both know how heat plays games with the body.

       I put down my pen, coming back to the park and the river; my back against the water, earthy smell pouring out from the trees. Each time someone ran by, my hand snapped to my hip, to the place where my phone wasn’t buzzing—no more than it was five minutes before, and five minutes before that—halfheartedly searching each jogger’s vibration for some sort of message, or truth. I pulled the phone out from my pocket and stared at it, scowling. It stared on, feeling nothing. You pathetic fuck, it said. How did you come to be owned by my face?
Earlier that morning, in front of an online yoga class, I pulled socks over my hands to keep them from slipping. A pupil-less woman in tight pants and ponytail laughed as her leg bent back over her head. “Don’t worry if you fall out,” she told me. “I fall out all the time.” Lies! My calves began their violent shake, and I plopped to my knees. This bitch wasn’t fooling me. “Whew! I know I’m certainly feeling it.” You don’t feel anything, you stupid robot! I pulled myself onto my belly, forehead flat against the tile floor. “Find the place where you’re about to fall over,” she twittered, “and hold it there.”
“Hold.
Hold.
Hold.”

With my head on the floor like that, I thought that I felt my phone buzz.

It hadn’t.


The third time we meet, it is from behind. Your shirt smells like cigarettes, and I know that my window is closing. Before you turn around, I place my hands up to my wooly hat, then move them down over my eyes. This is my face. This is my collarbone, my shoulders, my chest. My stomach, my pelvis, my knees. This is my hand. I am see-through. From your back, I can feel you surrender. My lips on your ear. I lose track of my life and would drive the car, drunkenly, and a dozen more things that refuse to make sense; but somehow, you hear me and smile. Cards drop out of my wallet, and I force myself to notice: to remember that I’ve already eaten dinner, that I don’t really like beer. But certain things wobble and fade when your hand lifts my hair from my neck.


       The breeze came up over the water, exhaling across my notebook with a definitive huff. I traced my fingers along the coarse pages, outlining words, starved for the feeling beneath them. A butterfly drifted by, lazily matching the wind with its attitude, and I wondered if bugs can feel loss. What if it missed its chrysalis? Did anyone ask if it wanted to change?
Clearly dehydrated, still stalking my phone, I pulled myself up from the rock. On my way to the drinking fountain, I remembered a friend who believed she was being followed by butterflies. “My girlfriend died in a traumatic way,” she told me, bopping the pedestrian signal with her thumb as we waited to walk. “And the energy felt clogged. I could feel her around, like she hadn’t crossed over.
“But when I started seeing butterflies, I knew it had happened. She had left. It changed.”
With my head dipped down to the fountain, I thought of my own little ghosts. When somebody’s home is a shrine to a breakup, photos of the recently evanesced looking down from each surface that sticks to her face, eyes following me as I wade through the space left behind. The nights that I drive home from work and a song hits the radio, packed with the outline of someone I’ve tried to forget. My house isn’t haunted, I’m sure…but those stop signs? They’re brutal. I cry for our unfinished business each time that I brake.


This time, our meeting is the sum of three parts: One, a bus with a low overhang. I smack my head as I duck into my seat, and sitting with my knees curled into my chest, spin soft words of comfort inside. Two, a porch and a man eating a turkey sandwich. He offers one bite for a dollar, my eyes drooling over the bread, but I decline. Three, a swarm of people with paper cups in their hands; recognizing a girl from the bus, smiling, then remembering how I’d hit my head. Disappearing, embarrassed.

Body, blood, spirit.

I finally see you from across the room, white hat hovering above a mountain of sweaty curls, and dip my head down to find lipstick. Reemerging, I fold through the crowd, moving forward and to you like an electric current, like a pulse. That familiar draw. You tumble back from me, clutching your heart with your hand; and I know, suddenly, that I’ll fall. I’ll fall even though I designed this room, imagined it with all my heart, picked the wallpaper and dotted the carpet with flowers and placed myself in it, all of me, with a jeweled star in my hair and shoes that stay soft when I walk. When I dance.  

In the alley behind the bar, we look at and through one another, gingerly tossing each word in to see if it sinks. You ask for a lighter, I think you say ladder. You walk away, and a man pushes past. You here alone? He asks. Yes, I reply. Oh, he says, raking his hands through his hair. You don’t look like the kind of girl who comes here alone.

But I did. I come here alone every time, rifling through circumstances, searching. And I remember, when I see you: your cycles, your glue. This is what it feels like to have missed someone for a long, long time.

You return, but your eyes stay focused on the person just behind my left ear. I know that my window is closing again, that glorious in-between granting a moment of touch, and I pull my chin up to your shoulder. A sloppy kiss, then I float away: feet moving aimlessly, knowing only that it’s time to go. I’m sure that you’ll speak, so I stare straight ahead—but suddenly, sense your retreat. It’s strange how the spine recognizes Alone: to contract then relax, sure only that you’ve somehow stopped watching me leave. 2 a.m. on a Sunday, 65 degrees, and I’m not too small to feel pain. What’s terrifying is to think that maybe, at some point, I’ll feel nothing.


I wiped my chin on my sleeve, finally coming up for air, watching the last of the water bubble its way down the drain. Behind me, small notes caught the air as someone noodled their way through a clarinet waltz. I began walking away, but paused when the music halted.
“You writing a book?” a voice asked.
“No,” I replied, turning around. A boy with long, stringy hair stared back at me, clarinet perched on his knee, squinting his eyes in the sun. I cleared my throat. “I’m writing a letter.”
“To someone in prison?”
“No.”
“Oh,” he sniffed, placing the instrument back in its case. “I didn’t realize people did that anymore. Write letters, that is. Other than to people in prison.”
I waited to be released, but stayed mysteriously rooted as this stranger loped toward me. Before long, we sat: tracing patterns in the dirt with our fingers as I spoke to him, and he listened, about the past lives in which I’ve met you before. I don’t know anymore, I squeaked, words jamming in my throat as I tried not to cry. I can’t tell if what I’m remembering is real or made up.
He paused, thumb making a crescent moon shape in the soil, then spoke softly. “Do you know what ‘idiosyncrasies’ are?"
Kind of, I told him. I think so.
“Well, I’m not sure, but I think they’re this thing where you meet someone, and you have the feeling that you’ve met them before; but not only that, you’re remembering how you felt the last time you saw them. Only you’ve never met. But the feeling lingers, like muscle memory…and it’s like you know you’ll love them, because you always have. Because you’ve done it before.”

I remembered you, then, and the blue dress that streamed out behind me. I’ve held you in my muscles for so long, you know; I can’t help that you’ve haunted my bones. Breathe through them like air; let me float in the knowingness, knowing your bones. Sifting through all our lifetimes like sand.

“Anyhow, I’m pretty sure that’s what it means. People were just wrong.”
We sat for a long time, neither one speaking, watching the sun fall behind the water. “What is it?” he asked finally, drawing his hands up into his sleeves.
I want, I told him. And it played like a tape in my heart.

I want, I want, I want, I want, I want. 

      He leapt up, suddenly, wrapping me in his thin arms like a bird. I breathed in his smell as we hugged, but nothing stuck. “I see you,” he said, smiling crookedly as I pulled back. He furrowed his brow. “Are you going to write a book?”
“Yes,” I decided. “Maybe.”
“Well,” he said, brushing off his knees as he stood. “It’s going to be good. Maybe.”

~

I made my way down the hill, past the ducks treading circles in water, past the women in sneakers and babies with soft heads and gums. What happens to all the wishes I’ve hurled toward you? Are they stored until next time, preserved under snow? I think of it, still, when I pick up a dandelion. My mouth makes a wish before I try to explain; and sometimes, it even comes true. Other times, I wash away the small superstitions that tether me to your shape, and I live. Maybe this time around, you will see your own shadow. This time around, maybe one will stop drifting away.

     In the end, though, I’m not worried. We’ve done this before. And if asked, I would do it again.

This in No Way Revolves Around Miley Cyrus

Dear Indy,

I wish to speak to you on a subject of the utmost importance. It is topical. It involves our sweet, aching planet—our less sweet, but equally pained, government—the community of Santa Barbara, and (eek!) even Lucidity Festival; it is at once creative, political, philosophical, and personal. It involves each of us, equally, interchangeably, together.

Flash mobs.

And before you throw this paper down, assuming yet another theatre kid’s half-baked plea for attention (“Give me a location! Seriously, just give me a location, watch what I can do with the first ten lines of Macbeth!”), allow me to explain: this is not your average theatre. This phenomenon resists definition, slipping through the cracks of propriety, threatening to disrupt everything you think you know about performance. The flash mobs are coming, Santa Barbara, and they just might save us all.

I know what you’re thinking: “Flash mob! That thing where everyone shows up in identical costumes, perfectly coiffed, to perform polished choreography while a crowd of onlookers gawk in simultaneous jealousy and awe! Right?”

Wrong. I know that world; that world was my world, the family of dancers and directors who shellacked me into believing that my life’s ambition could be whittled down to whether my name made the top of the Nutcracker cast list. Don’t get me wrong: I am grateful for the discipline this instilled. However, when it came down to it, my question to the girl in the mirror—perfectly poised, one speck in a sea of bunheads—was never, How am I pushing my artistic boundaries? But rather, Am I wearing the right leotard?

Flash mob, on the other hand, occurs when a group of all shapes, sizes, abilities, and backgrounds comes together for the sole purpose of creating a strange scene in a public space. It raises questions: for example, What happens when the boundary between performer and audience member is blurred? What happens when there is no ideal body type, no expected aesthetic? What happens when the performance space can’t be controlled? Just last week, at Lucidity Festival’s “Rising Vibes for the Universe” event at the Arlington, I participated in two flash mobs: one Bollywood, one Michael Jackson. For the former, we rehearsed for a few weeks, carefully orchestrating the spontaneity that accompanies flash mob. I’m well aware that “orchestrated spontaneity” is an oxymoron, and that we were, in fact, wearing identical costumes; however, not even our hip jingles could save us when the music failed to play at an audible volume. Only our attitudes could do that. As we plowed forward with smiles on our faces, the audience filled in the gaps—clapping hands and stomping feet to create the necessary rhythm, allowing us the opportunity to roll with the punches. That’s the gift of flash mob, after all: unpredictability, and the chance to make the best of what we’re given. Improvisation, connection. Far from alienating others, it calls upon us to carry their weight: all the while trusting that they will do the same when the time comes.

Flash mob, like love, requires a suspension of disbelief. It demands that we trust our instincts to save us when we’re handed something unexpected. For example, if a flash mob is announced mere hours before the performance—giving nothing but the instruction to show up and wear green—guess what? You show up and wear green. If you know the choreography, the skit, or the intention beforehand, excellent: but if not, you’re still wearing green. If an elbow gets thrown in your face, you use it as a prop. You laugh. And best of all, you’re granted permission to apply these lessons to other areas of life: for instance, one can’t help but believe that the current political situation would lighten if a crowd of mismatched dancers entered the White House, singing and dancing to a chorus of “Why Can’t We Be Friends?” Using silly art to make people uncomfortable doesn’t always disrupt unhealthy stalemates. But it certainly doesn’t hurt to try.

When we’re invited to question the boundary between performer and audience member—unsure of who is “in on the secret”—we unlock a whole host of other possibilities. Forget questions of wearing the right leotard; performance is demystified, and separateness itself is revealed as a construct. Suddenly we’re all players, and are handed a truth that we—that’s right, Santa Barbara, us especially—are in desperate need of learning: how to stop taking ourselves so damn seriously. It’s happening already, and I know you can smell it. Art projects are oozing outward, the Funk Zone gets cooler by the minute, and on a nationwide level—hell, on a worldwide level—people are beginning to question everything. We’re less and less content with the idea of a heavy velvet curtain obscuring us from what takes place in the wings. We want to see the stage sweepers. We want in on the mess.

Here in Santa Barbara, we don’t usually like messes. We like our days seventy degrees and sunny, our commutes fifteen minutes or less, and our performances clean. However, “clean” doesn’t cut it anymore; and flash mobs, in all their nitty gritty, are inclusive and egalitarian in a world that tends to be neither. Without trying, they simply are: revolutionary.

I recently approached a group of high school students about performing in a flash mob; and by default, they flipped their hair and averted eye contact, behaving as though I’d just asked them to wear a coat of tarantulas. But the seed was planted. Fast forward two short months, and those same students will be joining us for our “Thriller” flash mob at the Sunken Gardens: on October 26, we will all participate in a worldwide effort called “Thrill the World,” pretending to be zombies in order to raise funds for charity. And you know what? These students, along with hundreds of others from all walks of life, are setting the tone for the type of person they will be: one who expects art to exist everywhere, who lives in the moment, accepts all bodies, and has fun.

As Howard Thurman says, “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do that.” Even if what makes you come alive is, ironically, dressing like a zombie and pretending to be undead, go out and do it: “What the world needs is people who have come alive,” and people who have come alive need more flash mobs. So. The next time you see one, I hereby invite you to partake in the madness: clap your hands and go there. Love the improvisational art in your community. Join in. Let go. Believe. And who knows… the spirit you save just may be your own.

Sincerely,

Jenna Tico

Terrible Twos, or: How a Toddler Taught Me to Stop Regretting and Love the Life

1. Someone once told me that we die the way we live; i.e. if you spat through life with the courtesy of a groundhog, digging shit up, you can expect the same gracelessness from death. And a sweet life begets a happy ending. I'm not sure if I buy it entirely... it seems to me that the only 'rule' in death is the fact of it. However, I do know that--without fail--Benji will wake up the way he falls asleep; if he goes down screaming, he'll get up screaming. Every time. Likewise, if he sinks to the mattress with his face an inch away from mine--legs and arms wrapped around my torso in total surrender, blinking a little longer each time until his eyelids eventually droop to a close--it is the same way he will emerge: smiling lopsidedly, shuffling his way back from whatever dream just came.

Most mornings he resembles a Muppet. A geyser of hair at the back of his neck, sleep running in snail trails down his pillow-pocked cheek, a soft cotton T-shirt bunched up around his bellybutton. I walk to meet him, usually in my own version of sleep-dilapidation, and do a brief assessment: is it gonna be a good day? Sometimes he hugs me around the waist, other times he smacks me in the kneecaps. In any case, the Muppet waddles past me down the stairs and begins his morning sonata:

"I wan ceeweal."

There are no exceptions to this rule. In life as in death, and in Benji, we come out the way we went in: wanting cereal. Maybe grumpy, maybe smiling, but with surprisingly little ailment that a fresh bowl of Rice Chex can't cure.

2. The great thing about toddlers is, like dogs, they don't hold a grudge. If Benji and I have a rough morning, or if GOD FORBID we run out of cereal, I can guarantee he will have forgotten about it by the time I pick him up from preschool. If you throw a dog out on the porch because she has eaten your socks, or if you lose your temper with a 2-year-old because--guess what?--he tried to eat your socks, there is usually a twenty-minute turnaround before he is ready to love you all over again. When I walk to meet Benji at 3:30, the baby strapped to my chest and a string cheese sticking out of my shorts pocket, the morning's events are irrelevant. I search the porch of half-pints for the one face that knows me back, for those Bambi eyes and curly head, until I find it; and when he runs out to greet me--little hands outstretched--and pours himself into my hug, it doesn't matter what happened at breakfast. Grievance is a myth. We are always, always forgiven.

3. I wonder what Jimmy Choo was like as a child. Did he try on his mother's slippers, picking at the bits of fabric and lace until he knew--yes, I want to spend my life's work making horrendously beautiful women's shoes?

If so, he ain't got nothing on Benji.

Shoes are his favorite, but fashion is his thing: and as for many, the source of great joy and deep frustration. We've all had those mornings when you're late for school and nothing looks good. You try on seven dresses, only to leave the house in the same jeans and t-shirt that you put on when you woke up. For Benji, this is compounded with the toddler mantra of DO IT MYSELF. It doesn't matter if his buttons resemble a Rubik's cube, or if he feels the need to wear a woolen sweater when it's ninety degrees outside: no matter what he chooses--and believe me, he will choose it--he insists on putting on himself. Getting dressed can take anywhere from five minutes to two hours; but like most things with a child, you don't get to hit Scene Selection. You wait it out.

One morning at the beginning of our time together, we were on our way to catch the bus. Benji, feeling the need to change his shoes three times, sat on the floor picking at the velcro. Benji, we have to leave.

"NO!"

Benji, we have to go. We're going to be late.

"NO!"

Benji, we seriously need to leave... I'm sorry, but I am going to help you get dressed.

"NO!"

At which point he tore off his shoes, the rest of his clothing, and tried to bite my arm. With the baby in one hand and our overstuffed diaper bag in the other, I came to a crossroads: get the child dressed and out the door through sheer force, or abandon the plan altogether. Instead, I plopped down on the floor and began to bawl.

Boy, did that ever scare him.

"Jenna okay? Jenna okay? Jenna crying."

Yes, Benji, I'm crying.

"Jenna crying."

Yes, Benji. 

We sat there for a long time, curled into each other's arms, discussing the fact that everyone cries. He played with his toes, looking up at me ever so often just to check if I had started up again; the sheer novelty of it, if nothing else, had him transfixed. I looked down and him and was wracked with guilt. We all need our mommies sometimes, Benji, and right now my mommy needs me. And I'm scared.

"Jenna crying."

No, not anymore. 

He looked at me and smiled. We got up hand in hand, and started to pick at the tornado of clothes on the floor; I grabbed his pants and t-shirt, and in one final valiant attempt, began to squeeze it over his head--

"DO IT MYSEEEEELLF!"

Of course.

But one way or another, eventually, he did.

4. The gift of letting a toddler 'do it himself,' unless you're trying to get somewhere in a hurry, is witnessing the genuine rapture of accomplishment. Doesn't matter if he pees in the toilet, drinks water out of a cup, walks down the stairs without falling, or pours a decapitated Barbie doll a cup of imaginary tea (all true): completing an action, any action, puts him on top of the world. Our walks to and from preschool are peppered with choruses of "I DIIIDDDD IITTTTT!"…which throws some perspective on how the rest of us approach household tasks. Today, while making toaster waffles, I gave it a try. The handle stayed down on the first attempt, and the waffles emerged in the most goldeny-brown way.

"I did it!!!!!"

The cats looked up at me, judging. But I was far too busy eating waffles to notice.

5. No matter the owie, no matter how big, a kiss will make it better.

6. At some point this summer, I surrendered basic hygiene. Last weekend at Beloved, I curled up inside a hoodie of my own stench--caked to perfection, of course, with the sweat of dozens of other dancers and a thin layer of Oregon mud--to sleep in the middle of the woods. There were showers available, but for $8 a pop... and at this point, I'm more than accustomed to disgust.

Before Benji enrolled in preschool, it was a miracle if I got to brush my teeth in the morning; let alone shower, or do something to my hair to make it resemble anything other than roadkill. Now that he's gone in the mornings, I may get the chance to hop in the shower--but I never expect the clean to last longer than an hour or two. With babies, spitup happens. Often more than once in the space of five minutes. Creamed carrots happen, close-range urinations happen, and applesauce explosions happen... usually when you are on your way out the door. I've given up on the idea of cleanliness because other things matter more. One afternoon as I lay comatose on my bed, staring at the ceiling and contemplating which future-building career nonsense I wanted to procrastinate on first, Benji did a nosedive onto my stomach.

OOF.

He hauled himself onto my torso, planting one knee on either side, and grinned the biggest grin that has ever been grinned.

"Jenna, I  LOVE you."

And happiness swam through my body like electricity. There is no feeling like it. None.

Benji, I love you so much. You're my best boy.

At which point Benji's smile cracked open, his eyes lit up, and he delivered a stream of saliva directly into my open mouth. I leapt up, running to the bathroom in a futile attempt at disinfection; knowing all the while that if I had to choose between a clean mouth and hearing someone say he loves me--his crinkly eyes revealing that he really, truly, loves me--I'd choose the latter. Every time.

7. Have you ever heard "The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round? How about the lesser-known verses, like the mommies on the bus (shh shh shh)  and the money on the bus (clink clink clink) and the horn on the bus (beep beep beep)? Have you ever heard it more than once in the same day? How about twenty-seven times?

I have.

8. If I've learned anything from my proximity to Montessori, it's that two-year-olds hate to be uprooted. They get off on their sense of order; the pink spoon goes in the pink spoon spot, we wash our hands after we use the potty, we hold hands when we cross the street. So what happens when you uproot a toddler not one, not two, but three times over the course of one summer?

In a word: poop. When the world as they know it appears to be crashing down, when they can't get a grip on where or when they are supposed to sleep, some kids take to exercising autonomy over the one thing they can control--their bowels. And by some kids, I mean Benji.

All in all, he's done incredibly well. We went from a madhouse in the Southeast to a family den in Alberta to our current home in Sellwood, and of all that backing and forthing, there was only one incident where he felt the need to smear feces on the shower curtain. What started out as sheer disgust from me, though, has morphed into sympathy; what would I do, for example, if I were in his miniature shoes? What did I do when I was just a little bit older than he was, packing up my blue suitcase twice a week to volley back and forth between my parents?

I remember sitting in the counselor's office at Roosevelt Elementary, mandatory penance for any kid dealing with Divorce. Divorce. It had such a dull clang to it, even then; but all I really remember feeling was annoyance at the counselor's inability to anticipate my game preference. I mean, Checkers? Really? I was five. She could have at least invested in some Disney gear. But instead, we bookended each other once a week--the counselor and I--around a checkerboard and a state-funded program, neither one adequately stacked to handle what might unfold between us.

Since then, I've continued to uproot. The whole time I was traveling, people asked me if I missed my own bed; and sure, I did. I missed the idea. But the truth is, I haven't had the feeling of my 'own bed,' or the comfort it supposedly contains, for many years. And even then, I had a suspicion that home was something you create. It's not a mattress.

So. One sticky July evening, we took Benji out for ice cream. After waiting in line for nearly an hour, we settled at a table near the corner--and about five minutes in, his mom pressed too hard on the side of her cone, and it shattered. It wasn't even Benji's ice cream that got sacrificed; but somehow, in his brain, that didn't matter. Something about seeing the cone explode into dozens of sugary pieces, no longer the shape it arrived in, set off an alarm in his head. Fat tears rolled down his face, and as we cooed over his screaming--half-laughing, half-crying at the fact that he was devastated over dessert--I began to think. We all crave a sense of order. For me, it doesn't mean staying in one place; if anything, it's irregularity that I seek. But it's still a pattern. I can drink my chai in a different kitchen every two weeks, subconsciously marveling at my ability to adapt to each teapot's particularities, but you can be damn sure that it's tea I'll be drinking.

9. Shameless perk of hanging out with a toddler: access to your own personal parrot. In one day, I can get Benji to tell his father that he is a "Classy Gentleman," can ask him to say "HELLOOOOO!" to just about anyone, including the representative at Virgin America, and can trick him by rattling off tongue-twisters that he will feel the need to repeat: like Perplexing. Or Transylvania. Or Crisps.

"Pedrprexeen. Dansyrvendah. Kips."

I solemnly swear to use my powers for good and not evil. But. Let's just say... the next time the bus driver sighs audibly when I struggle to collapse the un-collapsable stroller, he's got another thing coming.

"HELLOOOO, baaathead."

10. Mid-July, I received a phone call that pulled the rug out from beneath me. I remember exactly where I was standing; pad thai sizzling on the stovetop, the exact weight of the pink dress that hung loosely from my shoulders. I remember feeling like my brain had been sunburnt; but not long afterward, realizing the control center had switched to Numb. I ate the pad thai, but my throat closed around it.

The worst part, perhaps, about caring for an addict is knowing you are powerless. Nothing you can say or do will alleviate the fact that they are at war with themselves. After I received that first phone call, I received others--all variations on a theme of hopelessness. It's a defense mechanism. It's the only way I know to move forward with my own life. 

Meanwhile, I was listening to toddler Pandora and trying to perfect the ratio of almond butter to raspberry jelly. The Numbness did my laundry, went jogging, and even spent time with friends and family; it inhabited a functioning body, kept it functioning, but did nothing to bring light into the places that hopelessness lodged.

Benji did that. His unwavering hope, his unflinching belief that every day is the BEST DAY EVER because he gets to eat CEREAL, snapped me into a place of reckless optimism. Like animals, toddlers can smell when you need extra love... and for the week that I needed him most, he enveloped me in it without asking for anything in return. (Except maybe an almond butter and jelly sandwich. Or two. Or three.)

11.  Forget what you've heard about the Terrible Twos. Nothing you've ever seen on television, no half-guilty glance at that mom in the supermarket dragging her kid by the snap on his overalls, could possibly sum up what it is actually like to deal with a toddler during peak tantrum season; that is, unless you've lived with one.

Benji, despite all his warmth and goodness, is capable of taking his voice to this guttural place--a scream so potent that you're left wondering if it's even human--that renders me inert. I freeze like a stunned chicken. Funnily enough, it's almost never rooted in anything substantial; when he actually faceplants on the sidewalk, more often than not, he shakes it off and keeps running. Brushing teeth, however, can be an all-out war.

"I WANNA BRUSH MY TEEEEEEETH!!!!!!!"

Benji, when you throw your toothbrush in the toilet, you don't get to brush your teeth.

"WANNA BRUUUSHH TEEEEEEEEEEETH."

Benji, I don't like it when you punch me in the neck.

And so it goes. This is usually the point that the baby starts to cry, inspired by the general cacophony and not one to be outdone by flying toothbrushes. Sometimes, I can smell the tantrum coming a mile away; like when we're about to cross the street and Benji gives me this look, a look that quite plainly says, "I am going to do anything and everything in my power to scare the living bejeezus out of you." At this point, he tears across the street in a flash of sandals and hair, and I am forced to pin him to the sidewalk and wrestle him into the stroller, where he proceeds to scream himself into oblivion. I usually walk around the block a few times, smiling eerily at anyone who passes by, pretending that I--like they--have no idea how this demon snuck into my stroller.

When he's done howling, however, Benji brings his hands up to his face and begins his mantra. "Takea deeep breat, caaaam down. Takea deeep breat, caaam down." Sometimes he'll do this for five minutes before needing a response.

That's right, Benji. Deep breaths.

"Big hug, Jenna."

Big hug, Benji.

I thought about it once, and realized something funny. If he's at his Terrible Twos--throwing fits in grocery stores because he's tired, or they've moved the yogurt-covered raisins, or he doesn't know what's coming next--where does that place me? I'm twenty-two years old. That's TWICE the two, 2x the terrible, 2x the need to throw tantrums at bath time. I proposed this idea to Benji once, watching dazedly as he constructed a tower of legos. What do you think about that, Benji?

"Peanutbuddur petzels."

So we're really not that different, him and I. All we ever want, all we're ever truly screaming for, are peanut butter pretzels and a long nap.


12. When you're a child, there's this delicious feeling of riding in the back of a vehicle and losing all sense of time and space. It doesn't matter where you are, or where you're going; all you know is you're getting there, and someone else is making sure you do. You can close your eyes, the sounds of the street ebbing as your consciousness does. There's no resistance in this. No wondering whether you should take out your contacts before you fall asleep, no fretting over whether you've shut down your computer or fed your fish or finished the shit that stands between you and a good night's sleep.

Benji, you've inspired me to feel joy down to my skinny skin skin. When we went to Sauvie Island, watching you run into the water--your feet galloping over one another, your skin glowing under tiny droplets of sun and sea--I felt something awaken in me, like wonder. I'm not sure I knew what that meant until now.

Or rather I did, but I had forgotten. Forgotten until I watched you eat hummus by the fistful, bits of cracker stuck in your hair, blackberries staining your cheeks and your chin. Forgotten until you ran into my lap today, wrapping your arms around my neck and pressing your nose to mine; giving me that look  that says you'll trust me forever, your accordion ribcage crumpling and expanding like it's just learning how to breathe.

When I think of leaving you, I want to collapse.


13. To walk down the street with a toddler is to know that you might end up staring at the same flower for twenty minutes, and often do.

14. Sometimes, magic happens. The more enlightened among us might see perfect timing: as things being set into motion long before they actually come to fruition, as souls making an agreement to meet when they're ready. The rest of us just feel damn lucky.

A little less than 2 years ago, I met Shakey Graves at Pitzer College. I remember walking up after his show, stupidly confident as only someone in a costume rental can be, and inviting him to a party at the Co-op. A little less than 2 weeks ago, I saw him again; this time, at a bluegrass festival. Still stupidly confident, but minus the costume, I approached. He looked at me quizzically.

"Did you by any chance invite me to a Co-op?"

As a matter of fact, I did.

Suddenly, his brows split; I did my best to appear nonchalant, but ended up tying my purse string in a quadruple knot just to have something to do with my hands. He cleared his throat. "Do you have any idea how much I thought about that night? Here's how I feel about missing that party: re-GRET. Re-GREEEEEET."

That was about the time that my legs stopped working.

But they must have started working eventually, because I remember two-stepping beneath the trees behind the Pump House. My dress bunched up around my ankles, and I sank into the realization that anything can happen. Anyone can drink a box of red wine, stare down the throat of possibility, and stomp over a mat of muddy hay; anything that can occur between two human beings having a real-live connection, will. And does. He scratched against my cheek. This is why I invited you to the Co-op party, I told him, and laughed. And he buried me into his arms.

Running away from his car that night, the light peaking over the stage in the distance, I drank in the things that only I'll know. Before I settled into sleep, however, I played the evening's reel in my head; by morning, it'd already be settled into half-dream, and I wanted to remember. If I didn't have time to anticipate it, did it really happen? If a tree falls in the forest...

The funny thing about a little bit is, you always want a little bit more. When Benji has tortilla chips, if you let him have a few before dinner, he'll boycott his burrito altogether and cling to the idea of chips: CHIPS. Suddenly he wants to eat all of them, and won't be able to think of anything else until he does. For me, it wasn't enough to kiss the sunrise with a beautiful stranger; I wanted him to be inside my head, for him to know that I know that he knows that feeling his fingers in mine was a point of no return. And yet... when I ran back into the woods that night, his song at my back, I found magic in the mystery. There is love in what is left beautifully unfinished, because that in itself can feel whole.

And that is what separates me from Benji. At times when I feel like we both just want to eat a quesadilla and listen to Raffi, I remember this: holding back, leaving room for anticipation, is something I've earned. It's something I've grown into, like my grown-up clothes.

The next day, I got a message.

"You are a real live Disney princess."

And that was enough. According to Benji, that's the best compliment there is; and lest we forget, his is the only opinion that matters.


15. The roof of my mouth has already healed from where I burned it on my pizza. I run my tongue over its slickness and understand: Our hearts have the ability to mend themselves. Isn't amazing how things fade?

Some things, however, stay with us. When I pitch my brain forward to years down the road, picturing Benji in his adult life--running, perhaps, through his own dawn-lit forest--I hope he retains what his childhood has taught me. When he sprints toward the swing set, or into my arms at the end of the school day; when he collapses into bed, blanket tucked under his arm, sleep already saturating the pillow... he has no regrets. None. He surges through life like a rocket, knowing that each day is NEW, and better than the last--how could it not be? Sure, today we got to watch The Elephant Show... but tomorrow, we'll probably do it again. And again. And again.

A beautiful night at a music festival is not the pinnacle of my young life. A highlight, sure--but not the pinnacle. This is the case in babies and in bluegrass, and is the lesson I leave the summer with: that life, if we choose to see it as so, is really only ever getting better all the time. There's always a bigger playground, better shoes, a later bedtime, more joy than we thought we were capable of feeling. Benji, he wants to grow up. He's in a hurry to get to those shoes.

As for me, I'm learning to be content where I am: sitting in the dining room in a house I don't own, cup of tea at my elbow, a baby asleep on my chest. From the other room, I can hear Benji talking to his train set. He doesn't know yet what this type of freedom feels like; the kind that comes with having suffered, felt, lived. The type I have learned as I grow. He does, however, know what it means to move from your heart: he does it every day without even trying. It's as natural to him as a swing set. Or Raffi.

And we're teaching each other, my Benji and I. Holding hands as we cross the street and into the sweetness of life.