came into this world
A few days ago, I find a decades-old poem, typed in a visual design on my Canon typewriter on December 21 in 1989. It is about birth. Thirty-four years later on December 14, I turn seventy. Unimaginable, back then. I remember the 36-year-old woman in the freezing attic, rented from a friend, on a bitter cold night, ready to uproot her life and embark on a new journey. After six months, I am involuntarily catapulted back to my life in theater and teaching. But that winter – solitude my companion – the first spirit movement of a new chapter, the beginning of a slowly unfurling deep transformation, lasting the next four years. Taking me to places of death, endings, new beginnings, re-birth. Not the first major dramatic turning point, and not the last.
When the very first step
is not
a step
I remember: never-existing childhood jumps
leaps
into the blueness of
virgin days
tasting the ground
my burnt soles
black
the very first step
was never
a step
was like bursting glass
was like shooting stars
what it was
before
the ground pulled
away from underneath
me underneath me
i will never know
what it
was the very first step
never a step
feet embrace earth trees had lost their leaves
pink flesh mother was icy wind between my teeth
robbed of the sun in my neck
mother’s heart of glass the heartbeat of mother
burst into pieces chasing me into this world
the sheet the room falling tearless
were covered splattered blown dry and empty
with glass with blood dry and empty freeze-dried
when i i came
when i into this world
came into this
world
Winter is a time of vulnerability. At the point of greatest Darkness, Light starts to return again. Yin gives way to Yang, both energies engaging in the dance of balancing and change. Nine days ago, on a very clear new moon night, the densely woven mystical carpet of stars arching far above, celestial bodies bejeweling the deep dark winter sky – enchanting me. Before entering my bedroom cottage, I linger outside in stillness, head hanging back, faced raised, I revel while being showered with starlight. The big oaks shelter me from the glare of city lights. In those minutes, a softening and expansion takes place. I feel the gift – Mama Oak and her protective far-reaching arms are gone, now the night sky above is opening up, reaching for me. The Belt of Orion lingers low near the Cork Oak, since childhood my most beloved constellation. Comforting solitude.
what comes into the world for you on this solstice night?
Solstice night, my parents talk about going separate ways, journeying on from each other and leaving this house where I grew up. I sit down on the cold stone steps outside the house, underneath the Japanese maple that was always so vibrant in the summer and fall. Now it is bare, but strung with lights. I just want a few conscious moments with this place, site of so much of my life, so much struggle, so much taken for granted. Despite whatever tumult I experienced, it was a stable childhood. There was no war at our doorstep. The wars were elsewhere, in Punjab, in Kashmir, in Germany, in Palestine. Whatever slow violence took place here, it was relative stability. I learned the ins and outs of wealth, of ice dams, of skating on thin ice, of snapping turtles, of water stains, of nowhere to go, of hiding cigarettes, of crying silently, of my mother’s loneliness, of my father’s absence, of well-varnished floors, of a smooth banister, of sediment-filled water, of long showers, of books and books, of tile on my feet, of my father’s laughter, of my mother’s cackle, of my sister’s gossip, of our secret handshake, of forts built out of mats and couch pillows, of the stars at night, of the quiet, good and bad.
ReplyDeleteMy first step was not a step either. I stood up and ran across the living room and crashed into the chimney, amazed. This is the story that I hear: I am running, agile, ready for whatever comes next.