Where The Action Is

artwork by Kris Waldherr / The Goddess Tarot

It’s Spring.  I can remember exactly what I was doing, dreaming, thinking, feeling exactly a year ago.  I am starting to think that either time is travelling faster or I am moving slower.  Whichever it is, I have been glancing at a drawing on one of my meditation spaces; it’s a picture of a woman gracefully juggling two globes.  If you were to add about six or seven more globes to the drawing, I think it would be an accurate depiction of how I often feel.  Not that I am necessarily visibly juggling so much. On the surface mothering, being a good partner, writing, friendship, and a search for work are what I’ve got up in the air, but underneath the surface…that’s where the real action is.  Take a listen:

Should we move back to the States or stay in Europe ? By the States, I really mean New York. If we move back there, what will I do to earn a good living? Do I really want to move back now or wait a few years until Bush is out of office and if Bush is out, does that mean war is over? And what about this Europe? All their dirt is so ancient and hidden, they pretend to be accepting and sophisticated but that veneer is fading fast. Look at the riots in France, the anti immigrant sentiment in Holland and Belgium, the Spanish soccer fans who made ape noises at Black players last year,... And do I really want my daughter to grow up without a conscious, Black community? I am nowhere near at peace with the idea of her being the only and the exception. I have already heard that her skin “is pretty, not too dark,” and her reflections here are divided, and often more concerned with assimilating, partying or nursing wounds from home than with bonding. 

My daughter’s smile is delicious! Her laugh, her voice, and her facial expressions are things I look forward to daily. But the smile I enjoy so much today is not the same one I saw last week, and the child I held last week is a different child than the one I held two weeks ago.  Just when I get accustomed to something, it changes.  And it changes whether I am ready to change with it, or not.  This is heady stuff for a person like me.  Some days I realize that if my husband and I do a good job with Serene, she will outgrow her dependence on us and interact with us simply because she wants to.  I can already picture myself staring at a 30 year old woman, reminiscing about the face she made the first time she ate carrots.  This is about learning to let go and live in the now.  And I admit, I can be pretty bad at it.  When I think about moving back to New York , I realize sometimes that it is not New York I am thinking about inhabiting, but my memories of New York .  I am thinking about the café where we used to gather to read poetry, I am thinking about the subway token, I am thinking about the street festivals where my then single friends and I used to look for fabric, shea butter, and prince charming, I am thinking about late nights spent listening to live music and 2 am phone calls, “Girl, did I wake you?” “No, what’s up?” “Listen to this poem I just wrote.” I am attaching a place to a person I used to be, a dreamy somebody who was sure that we would all make a living from poetry.

 A few years ago, I decided to pay a visit to one of my favourite spots, The Brooklyn Moon Café. “The Moon,” as we affectionately called it, was a spot I used to frequent. Its owner, Mike, was always supportive of me and my poetry.  Back in the day, I couldn’t go there and write because I’d be interrupted by a friend (or two or three), get caught up in spirited conversation, or end up seeing my partner walking down the block and go off somewhere with him.  In those days the café didn’t serve anything but tea and muffins and the air conditioning was no match for a space full of eager- to- read poets on Friday nights.  With all this nostalgia running through my mind, I went to the Moon. Well, the place was painted completely red, it had a bar and a menu full of good food.  I ordered something, sat eating alone, very able to write. I watched all the faces go by, faces I had not seen before, faces that reflected the gentrification going on in the city and I watched the people in the café greeting each other.  I realized, finally, that it really was over.  Sure, lots of us from the old scene are still tight and most of us are still doing our art, but times have changed.  We have changed.  Sometimes it is easier to live in the safe surety of my memory than to deal with all the questions that the present raises.  Well, just like I can’t deal with my six month old like she is six weeks old, I can’t face life and look over my shoulder at it at the same time.

Most folks are full of ideas.  I am no exception.  If I had a dollar for every good idea I’ve come up with… for my own books, for anthologies, for college courses, for articles.  Somewhere between the ideas and actually making them reality, I often stop myself.  I could say that something or someone stops me, but I know that the only noun that has ever gotten in my way is me. 

They say, “If you do what you’ve always done, you’re going to get what you’ve always gotten.”  I hear myself saying this.  Not now, but me almost ten years ago.  I was telling a friend that I was going to approach my writing, my relationships and my life from a new angle.

Juggling.  Ideas, reality, the past, the present, writing, motherhood, partnership, The United States, Belgium, Holland, friends, family, optimism, realism, meditation, action, dreams. 

My twenty-something year old self is putting in a call to my 32 year old self.  “If you do what you’ve always done you’re going to get what you’ve always gotten. If you are going to juggle, just do it differently and drop whatever you don’t need.”

I turn to thank her but she has already disappeared.

I look forward and juggle like our lives depend on it.