Tuesday, February 5, 2013
What is perfection?
I know what women look like. This height and this weight. This bust and this nose. This hair and this gait.
I know what women look like and where they find their value. I sense it inside me, between the place
that screams, "You can be better than you are!" and that place that whispers, "Just give up".
I really only know what one woman looks like. Another height and another weight. Right now with a bruise
on her thigh where she hit the table, and a knick off her thumb from dancing up the stairs. And that scar
on her toe from a knobby-kneed six-year-old's barefooted adventure. The hair on her legs sticks up,
a thin dotting of tall grasses without color growing out of the cracked earth that is her shins. Her belly folds over
about the same amount as her breasts, which peak out from her rib cage like elbows from a car window.
She has a face that crinkles into a smile, tight with the tension of expecation that pulls from puppet strings
somewhere between her ears. Her legs grow wider towards the top and begin to wrinkle
She has a face that crinkles into a smile, tight with the tension of expecation that pulls from puppet strings
somewhere between her ears. Her legs grow wider towards the top and begin to wrinkle
like the gravity-defying trees in Thailand. And isn't this
what women look like?
what women look like?
Friday, February 1, 2013
Like This
When I fell in love with a man, I found myself replacing that uncertain concept of G-d with his image in prayer.
Invocations I have recited my whole life, simple proclamations like "I love You Gd", seemed directed suddenly at Keith rather than the divine.
This frightened me when I considered myself a Christian, because it seemed the definition of heresy.
This frightened me as I rebelled against my Christian upbringing, because it seemed the manifestation of patriarchy.
Now, I see that the only way I could hope to understand and love G-d or the spiritual is to understand and love what is natural; present; real. To love Keith.
Rumi:
If anyone asks you
how the perfect satisfaction
of all our sexual wanting
will look, lift your face
and say,
Like this.
When someone mentions the gracefulness
of the nightsky, climb up on the roof
and dance and say,
Like this.
If anyone wants to know what "spirit" is,
or what "God’s fragrance" means,
lean your head toward him or her.
Keep your face there close.
Like this.
If anyone wonders how Jesus raised the dead,
don’t try to explain the miracle.
Kiss me on the lips.
Like this. Like this.
Invocations I have recited my whole life, simple proclamations like "I love You Gd", seemed directed suddenly at Keith rather than the divine.
This frightened me when I considered myself a Christian, because it seemed the definition of heresy.
This frightened me as I rebelled against my Christian upbringing, because it seemed the manifestation of patriarchy.
Now, I see that the only way I could hope to understand and love G-d or the spiritual is to understand and love what is natural; present; real. To love Keith.
Rumi:
If anyone asks you
how the perfect satisfaction
of all our sexual wanting
will look, lift your face
and say,
Like this.
When someone mentions the gracefulness
of the nightsky, climb up on the roof
and dance and say,
Like this.
If anyone wants to know what "spirit" is,
or what "God’s fragrance" means,
lean your head toward him or her.
Keep your face there close.
Like this.
If anyone wonders how Jesus raised the dead,
don’t try to explain the miracle.
Kiss me on the lips.
Like this. Like this.