reverb11: S01E02

December 2 – Sangha (Tribe)
Where have you discovered community in 2011? What are the defining characteristics and essential qualities of your tribe?

i'm a rather solitary person, so it's difficult to think of myself as even belonging to a tribe or a community. growing up, i was never a joiner. i wasn't a girl scout or on sports teams; i didn't have a ton of friends or attend all those sixth-grade parties where your eventual fate is sealed. i had myself & books & music & the entire cities i built in my head.

and yet, somehow, despite my discomfort in most social settings, i look around and see that a tribe - a family - has grown up around me anyway.

i can't think about my community without thinking about the lyrics to "the perfect space" by the avett brothers. although, like i said, i was never much one for joining or group activities - i always envied the people that were. i always harbored this little side dish of jealousy for people who've had the same best friends since childhood or, hell, even siblings. i secretly longed (while simultaneously rejecting) the idea of being that girl at the mall surrounded by her girlfriends laughing at some inside joke.

but whenever i tried to be that person, whether i was 13 or 30, it just felt ... forced, and i've ended up losing more friendships than i have maintaining them. to be honest, whenever i thought of community, it kind of freaked me out. like it came with some sort of rule book where i had to eat dinner at a certain time or wear certain clothes or listen to a specific kind of music all while saying something insightful & intelligent on some low budget movie that everyone knew about but me.

my parents tell me that when i was younger, i would just go down to the end of the driveway while the neighbourhood kids were out playing - and i'd just stand there. i would stand there and wait until one of them came up to me and invited me to join in. and, if that didn't happen, i would just go back to reading.

and i kind of feel like my adult tribe grew up the same way.

when i think of the people closest to me, sometimes i don't even know how they got there: summer missionaries back when we were 19 or 20; an old college acquaintance with whom i barely had more than a passing dialogue half a decade ago; that high school kid that took out my trash when i was working for the newspaper. how did those people become these people - the ones that know and love me despite my quirks, the friends that understand that sometimes i just need a weekend to myself, my treasures who are always there when i reach out and who push me to toe the line, to blur the line, to erase the phucking line.

i realize i have a number of different communities for which i am grateful: my e-mail family whose commentary on life feels just like having a conversation; my work family who understand that sometimes we have to make dark jokes to keep our own lights shining, my biological family who still manage to have game night at least once a month; and to all the friends that have come before & will come after. i would never seek to diminish the relationships i have. i am blessed to be cushioned by amazing people.

but, when i think of my tribe, and i know this is my tribe because of how i can't imagine just walking away from them to go to something else, i think of a select few. i want to join in their lives; i want them in mine. when i find myself still building these cities in my head, they are inhabited by my soul siblings.

my tribe personifies balance, tolerance & [the perfect] space.

"i want to have friends that i can trust
that love me for the man that i've become
& not the man that i was
& i want to have friends
that let me be
all alone
when being alone is all that i need."

reverb11: S01E01

my friend,

i've already been able to put my word for 2012 into play with this first entry, but i'll get to that later.

at the end of 2010, celia suggested we make vision boards for the upcoming year - foam boards on which we glued and taped visual representations of the things, ideas and words that we'd like to see present in 2011. so, for this year, i chose the word CALM.

as one year changed into the next, i wanted to usher in a year where my heart, mind, soul and spirit had a soft place to land - and, to do that, i knew then that i would need to surround myself with calming elements. my vision board contained quotes and photos of traveling, the poetry of mary oliver & a vinyl record.

and it worked.

i began my 31st year by traveling solo for the first time in washington d.c. (thanks, jace!) and will undoubtedly end this year back at the very place i began: my grandparents' red-brick home; my home. from january to january, i've traveled to ten states and purchased plane tickets to spend a month backpacking overseas. from 2011 to 2012, i've found myself calmer than i can remember previously being, surrounded by amazing girlfriends, swimming in laughter & wine & happiness, lying under the stars in previously unexplored oases in my own home state and breathing deep what can only be called insatiable joy.

all day, between decorating my grey-walled cubicle with dollar tree's finest wrapping paper & garland, i've thought of what i want to manifest within my life for the pending new year. it wasn't until i sat down to write this post - worried that i was doing it wrong, that the words wouldn't sound right, that i'd bitten off more than i could chew with a 31-day commitment - that the word i was looking for wrote itself on me: RELINQUISH.

re·lin·quish [ri-ling-kwish]
1. to renounce or surrender (a possession, right, etc.): to relinquish the throne.
2. to give up; put aside or desist from: to relinquish a plan.
3. to let go; release: to relinquish one's hold.

do you remember that photo i sent you a few months ago, about letting go of one's fear one t-shirt & sock at a time? well, i am building my new year around that photo & this word.

as i stare into my as-of-yet determined future, i want to relinquish whatever expectations i have for it and instead concentrate on being here now & embracing whatever this crazy/beautiful life presents to me. as one of only a handful of people who truly know me, you are, i am sure, all-too familiar with my guilt complex, and this coming year, i hope to relinquish control of the things that i cannot change, should not change, yet still feel an almost debilitating responsibility toward. i cannot fix whatever is broken inside my mother, so i am releasing myself from that burden. i am surrendering all the prettily wrapped ideologies i have as to who i think i should be in god & in my faith and instead i chose to embrace him or her or they in those quiet, yet vast, places within me where i happen to know they still exist. i renounce the 12 years of stuff that pack my closets, gather cobwebs in the garage & hide in drawers that i no longer need or use or have all the parts for.

and, i suppose, above all else, i just give up. i offer up my cracks & faults & glories & beauty & humour & fear & joy & doubt & confidence & inhibitions & all my pre-packaged plans.

planes

i've always been enchanted by airplanes in the night sky. i'd always imagine where those people were going ... or from what they were running. either way, seeing those lights among the stars always filled me with a sense of romance.



tonight, the pooch and i were going for a long walk - since night seems the only reprieve from oklahoma's sweltering summer heat. somewhere on the other side of sparrow park, a group of musicians were playing banjos and guitar and the last refrains of earl scruggs' "foggy mountain breakdown" filled the otherwise stagnant air. and, as i always do, i looked up, confident i'd seen an airplane leaving, departing or just flying overhead.

i wasn't disappointed. there above me was the red and white of someone's adventure or misfortune; opportunity or escape. and, as i always am, i was filled with a melancholic joy.

there have been tens of hundreds of thousands of times i've imagined where those people were going and hoped upon a million dreams i'd one day be among them.

i recalled a particular night in selma, texas, where my childhood friend shannon and i sat out on the river and watched a plane fly off into the distance. i don't know if i vocalized it then, i don't know if i would have even known how, but all i could feel were the chill bumps on my skin and the quickening of my heart and the knowledge that simon and garfunkel's "homeward bound" was the perfect soundtrack to that unnamed sensation.

or a time when i was living in portland, oregon, and lay out on the deck of my apartment - scared, lonely and hopeful. i imagined someone on that plane was heading back to oklahoma and could send my love to the people i'd left behind. or maybe a new friend would be landing in portland and our common loneliness would lead us to one another. i waved up at the plane - just in case.

or tonight, sitting in the park, petting my pooch, and thinking about all those times before. sitting there in the same neighbourhood i've lived in for the past eight years; the same neighbourhood that has expanded and grown internally to embrace the woman i've become. i watched the plane until it left my vision for chicago or newark or gatwick; until it became just another light among the stars.

and my typically sad excitement was still there, only now with the knowledge in a few short months i will flying over someone else's night sky. flying toward countries where unexploded landmines still exist, the all-too-real reminders of war and independence; to countries whose beautiful castles and villages were destroyed in the name of ethnic cleansing, but who rose again and represent nothing if not beauty and resilience.

and i offered a delayed wave to the people above me and before me. because on that night when i journey above someone else's dreams, i hope - i pray - there's someone below who's waving up at me.

"above the planet on a wing and a prayer,
my grubby halo, a vapour trail in the empty air
across the clouds i see my shadow fly
out of the corner of my watering eye
a dream unthreatened by the morning light
could blow this soul right through the roof of the night." -- pink floyd.

the great affair

"our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. but no matter, the road is life." – jack kerouac

because a picture is worth a thousand words.



zola packed and ready to hit the road.


the road.



the key to a successful road trip is having a traveling pal who is just as enraptured by the wrong turns as with the final destination. (wrong turn. winterset, iowa. john wayne's birthplace.)



new friends in an olde tavern. (new glarus, wisconsin.)



happiness is whenever, we can get together. (green city market. chicago, ill.)



shot-ski. (uberstein. chicago, ill.)



there is no greater comfort than journeying with the kind of friends who not only ask you what you plan on doing with your one wild & precious life, but join the adventure with you. (pre-florence + the machine show. chicago, ill.)

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and then there was the warrior dash. 3.28 country miles laden with lumber-climbing, pole-sliding, fire-jumping, mud-crawling intensity with my besties. (i can say bestie because there's wasn't a clean part of us. that makes it ok. it also makes it ok because afterward we took showers in a truck stop).

each day i find myself more & less surprised by this crazy life i get to live, and the amazing people that come along for the ride. we really are all in this together.

there's gotta be a fiddle in the band. two is better.

i'm not a good dancer. i usually abhor crowded dance floors & large numbers of people moving in obscure gestures all around me.

unless, of course, the following criteria are met:

-- my dance partner is an octogenarian with more spunk than men half his age;
-- the venue is cain's ballroom;
-- the dance floor legitimately has saw dust on the floor - and it's being used for appropriate purposes; &
-- the music is 1930's western swing.



i can remember growing up to my grandfather singing bob wills' songs under his breathe. occassionally one boot-clad foot would start beating time to the music in his head, the melody of his memories.

there'd be western swing and gospel music playing from the cab of that old green chevy each time we drove to southeast oklahoma to visit family.

so, last night, when i accepted dancing hands that were withered and rough, i felt like i was living just a little for my grandparents. each couple i saw on the dance floor made me wonder what they were like as young people. maybe they met and fell in love while seeing bob wills perform at cain's. or maybe it was under far-less glamorous circumstances. there were so many stories twirling around me that i couldn't keep up.

there was a sense of magic to be surrounded by people who had lived my years times three - and still has these amazing smiles on their faces and literal bounces in their steps.

last night was a testament to what it means to keep living, and living well.

and it doesn't hurt when there's a fiddle in the band.

3 a.m.

"mine is the night, with all her stars -- edward young.

i remain in awe of the night. there's something about being awake when everyone around you is sleeping; it somehow manages you make you feel both larger and smaller - and maybe a little like a spy.

i love the mornings. i feel most professionally productive after 4 p.m. i'm relatively useless between the hours of 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. but once everyone else starts settling in with pajamas, bedtime prayers, books in bed & goodnight kisses - i start settling in to me.

it's when the words start coming again - haltingly, tentative & a little shy, like they're not quite sure they're welcome anymore. they've been in hermitage, much like the person they belong to, but i think they're ready for a new season.

so while they're pushing through the new earth, i leave you with this:

"outside my head, i cast a shadow.
i'm not someone who's seen this side of me,
but it drifts across the ground so down i look.
i could spend my time wondering who i was.
and i could count the times that i had lost or won.
And i could turn toward you and ask you what you saw.
but what do these feelings mean ..."