You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

There is no good.

And there is no bad.

There just is.

There is a season, though. The earth breathes, the birds migrate.

My roommate Jared and I went out to the Humboldt Bay National Wildlife Refuge a couple of weeks back. We took a walk along the slough at lowish tide. Here at the bay, the tide also changes the landscape daily. So we get the seasons yearly and the tide recedes and advances twice daily. Nothing is ever the same. It doesn't stay stagnate, like the Houston skyline. There is an ebb and flow to life here where nature has not been so obliterated by commerce and man's dominion.

We saw lots of birds, mostly pipers, but no geese. It's not the time of year when they are here. They just stop here on their way somewhere else.

I'm not doing that. This is the end of the road for me. I have made my migration. This is the end of the line.

The path begins on another bay, another coast very different from this one, where my children live. I will feel that tug to return as long as they are there.

I started this journey, this leg of my life, four years ago. I started this blog on a yoga weekend that I had gifted myself as a respite after signing the divorce papers.

I wrote hard in this blog, while I tried to find my feet in the stream, gave in, and let the current take me.

I tried to catch the wind but kept my kite string tied down near the capitol of Texas, and then, last February, I untied the knot, waved goodbye to Jim and Val and began the journey here.

And still we ran all summer, back and forth across the continent, so much to do and learn that I haven't had the energy to unravel it all.

And now we are here, and I have been busy these past few weeks digging in and putting down roots. I don't want to get swept away again.

Today is the my niece's anniversary. She's been married to a really sweet man for 5 years now, and they have a beautiful little girl. Her wedding was held in her mother's prairie, behind her art studio outside of Houston and was presided over by the man you see with me and my sons in the picture above. He spoke of the importance of love and family and taking care of each other. I was so moved. It was what I had always wanted, what I thought I had, even though lately it was hard to believe that. He had worked so hard on his "sermon." It was beautiful, it was eloquent, and it was bullshit. See me smiling? I am the best actress on the planet. I had that smile planted on my face, but I was miserable. Two weeks later, on a Sunday night after I had gotten off work at the Writing Center, turned in my midterms for my second to the last semester of grad school, and had to be back at my job teaching HS English in the morning, he told me that he didn't love me and that he wanted me to leave our home.

Five years. Facebook showed me this pic this morning, and it got me thinking. That night, I thought my life was over. It was. The life you see depicted in the above picture, a life that was a facade with a narcissist pedophile who used me for my money and my procreative ability was gone. Poof.

I broke down 5 years ago. The cracks had been showing, but when it was all said and done, like a coyote in a trap, I would have bitten my own foot off to get out of there. In fact, I did. In order to seperate myself from him, a compulsive manipulator who sees his family as his possessions, I had to leave my sons. I told myself that they were almost grown, and that it would be ok, but I struggle to maintain a relationship with them. Both grown men now, they still live with him.

But as I looked for this picture, I saw all the pics taken since. 

In them I am dancing:

Laughing with friends:

And crazy in love:

Life is good. I have a wonderful life. These smiles are real.

Namaste'

Not Drowning

Those who will not slip beneath
the still surface on the well of grief

turning downward through its black water
to the place we cannot breathe

will never know the source from which we drink,
the secret water, cold and clear,
nor find in the darkness glimmering
the small round coins
thrown by those who wished for something else.

~David Whyte
The Well of Grief

I am in the black water now. I cannot find my way out, and I am not sure how I got here or why, but here I am again.

No one wants to be down here with me and I do not blame them.

Keith peers down at me not sure why I don't want to come up. I do. I just can't. He can't see me reaching for him. I want so desperately for him to reach down and pull me up, but I am afraid that I will pull him down, and I know that he cannot breathe underwater. I see him up there in the boat; he's paddled out for me but cannot break the water that covers me.

I want to breathe; I want to speak, but I know that if I open my mouththewaterwillrushinandfillallmycavitiesandiwilldrownonmyown

air.

melting, spreading...

filling in the spaces in my molecules until I cease to exist

if only

i could cease to exist

and hear I am 

torn between the place I am and the place i want to be

silenced

no where to
go
no where to
be
no one to
be with

i do not know where i am
i cannot take care of another thing
another person
there is no one to be

i hear life going on outside my window
see the sun
hear the birds

there is nothing
wrong
there is nothing
right
there is nothing
to do about it

i cannot control this
it takes over
i was fine yesterday
flying almost
what happened?

triggers
you don't have a choice
why didn't you do this
why can't you be normal
you are making it up
why the fuck would i make it up
explain yourself
there must be a reason for this strong of a reaction
what is wrong
and then i have to take care of someone else
when i cannot take care of myself
afraid that if i don't convince them that i am happy
they will punish me
i have to be nice
i have to be grateful
smile
give in
and then
when i don't
when i can't
im done

my skin itches all over
my heart beats itself
against the cage of my chest
trying to force its way out
to explode like an alien birth
the buzzing in my head like bees
swarming
covering my eyes
my ears
a vice around my neck
squeezing
i cannot breathe
cannot catch a breath
the screaming in my head is louder
than the buzzing of the bees
crawling in and out of my mouth and nose
choking back the words
i cannot explain
i cannot open my mouth
i have no mouth
no air

it will not always be this way
it will not be this way tomorrow
if i can make it to tomorrow
if i can make it through this feeling
and this one
and this
if i can bear the weight on my chest
maybe i can find the coins
if i even believe they exist

Come for the Play, Stay for the Music

Starting something new is never easy. It often feels like starting over. I keep thinking about how many times I have done this. I'd like to say this was the last time, but I know there will be plenty of new challenges. I will say that I am coming to the end of what I hope is the last major shift of my life. I have wanted to hurry it. Patience has never come easy to me. I am easily frustrated. On the other hand I have a bull-headed stick-to-it-ness that lends its own set of troubles and boons.

I have been a fan of drastic changes in my life. If I were a betting woman, I would be an all-or-nothing player. I am all in. No one can say that I am not passionate. If I believe in something, I believe it with all my being. This is a good and a bad thing (Isn't everything?) The pattern is that I throw myself into a role that I believe in, make all the changes, and cut the ties to the old. It seems easier. Then you just don't deal with the old stuff. It's gone. New play.

But the last production still bears an influence on the new. The players may change but the central character stays the same. (That's me. I get to be the lead in this play. It's my damn play.I'm telling this story.)

So now I am unraveling the story, because I have forgotten it. I need a new narrative. There is some dramaturgy work to be done here.

Setting:
Central Texas.

For me this is where life truly began as an adult.  Leaving my childhood home in a yellow Pinto, packed and ready to go the morning after high school graduation, I came to Austin to go to study theater at the University of Texas. That summer, I worked as a costume mistress for the UT summer stock. I was Joe York's dresser in "Company." I met my friend Janie living in Kinsolving and learned to love dive bars. We walked over to "Hole in the Wall," ventured out to the Backroom on Riverside, sat on the grass at outdoor festivals. We were sure that the Austin City Council's main job was to entertain its residents. Live music, beer, days in the sun at Barton Springs...

I went to school too. Took dance classes and acting classes and worked in the Costume and Scenery shop. Art History, Costume History. Dr. Reinhardt, who taught Costume History, said that I always looked like I had just come out of a windstorm. I did. Long, crazy curly hair. It was the 80's, so I even permed it to make it curlier. Dance clothes with a wrap-around skirt tied over it and leggings were my costume. After a year, I left the dorm to move in with my cousin. It seemed I needed supervision.

Austin was different then. Rent was cheap, it was easy to go to Barton Springs, outdoor concerts were low-key and neighborly. I was in Heaven.

I met my bass player on the Spring dead day, the day between the last day of classes and exams. Janie and I took a six-pack and some snacks to Poor Man's Barton Springs for the afternoon.

When the beer ran out, we realized that it had to be happy hour some where, so we packed up and headed to the Flying Circus, where we proceeded to allow ourselves to be picked up by a pair of musicians.

My life was about to change for the second time in my newly adult life. I was about to become a traveling musician's girlfriend.

What do you call a musician without a girl friend?

Homeless.

Namaste' y'all.

My body leans to the left

In yoga, our bodies tell a story, sometimes one which we are unaware of and disconnected from.

In class yesterday, we were talking about how we block the memory of pain. Not only does the mind have a mechanism to deal with extreme pain of the body, but the whole point of anesthesiology is to help us to forget the ordeal. Still, the residue remains.

It has come to my attention how I favor one side of my body over another. I lean my head slightly to the left, my chin does not hang center but to the left ( I found this laying on a bench in a supported bridge pose with my head hanging off; I'm loving Iyengar yoga.), I lean my weight to the left and jut the left hip out. All of these things are my body speaking, and I think they speak of protecting the left side, which has been injured repeatedly.

When I was about eleven, I was riding my bike in our neighborhood. We lived in a condo neighborhood on the Dickinson Bayou. There was a circle that the housing was arranged around and a rode that came off of the circle that led to the bayou where there was a boat ramp. I liked to ride my bike down the hill toward the boat ramp. It felt like I was flying and could take off over the water. At the last minute, I would turn to the left and take the road that ran behind the condo building.

On this particular day, there was a car coming from the left. My bicycle collided with the Jeep and it ran over my left arm crushing the joint. The pain must have been excrutiating. I don't know. I passed out. I came to fleetingly when my mom showed up. I remember how scared she was that my arm had been over my head. They hadn't moved me yet. It must have been a mess. The people who were in the Jeep were our next door neighbors. They would have known where to find her quickly.

I vaguely remember the emergency room. They put me in surgery. This one blurs with another that came soon after. Another bicycle accident, another trauma. They slide together. In the second case, I knocked my front teeth out, had a head trauma, and surgery on my nose that was broken. I remember going to the bathroom and seeing a monster in the mirror; that monster was me.

When I woke up my arm was in sling over my head, and I was flat on my back. They had put my elbow back together and held the pieces together with a pin. I was to be in traction for at least a month. I went from freedom to immobilization and isolation.

I spent almost 6 weeks like that. My father spent every night sleeping on a cot in my room. He kept on lawyering and spent his nights with me.

They finally took me down and released me. The pin had been a corkscrew that came in from the bottom of the elbow; what would have been the top when attached to the traction pulley. When they took it out, it hung over my head dripping blood like a scene from a horror movie.

The real horror was that another surgery was necessary. Another pin was put in from side-to-side and my arm was hoisted over my head again. I had several hours of release and freedom to move from the bed and it was right back where I was. I remember being devastated.

I healed. I went to physical therapy. I don't remember the pain so much.

I do remember the feeling of being trapped, immobilized, helpless.

And my body has been affected ever since, partly by the sense memory and partly by the adjustments it had to make to the injury. My arm still does not straighten and won't really support me. Handstand evades me as a pose; in fact it terrifies me.

That's why hanging from the wall yesterday was so blissful. I was able to experience the feeling of inversion without stress and fear.

I felt that freedom that I used to feel when I rode my bike down the hill.

I've had other attacks to the left: When I was pregnant with Sarah, I was T-boned by a car coming from my left. My lower back bears that scar in a vertebrate that gets inflamed periodically. A man caught me with a right hook to the left side of my face, causing me to lose another tooth. And most recently, the car accident a little over a year ago where a car took out the left side of my little red car from behind. http://ruthiengelke.blogspot.com/2013/12/car-wreck-gratitude.html

These traumas to my body have done something to me. I have tried to push them under and ignore them. It seems the natural thing to do. But the cost is a lack of awareness. The fear comes out somehow. The examined life is no picnic, but the cost of not examining is high. We lose other things.

I don't want to run on fear anymore. I have for quite some time. I had a reason to look for safety.

If I do not dare to fly (because I am afraid of being hit by a small truck), I cannot fall.

I think it is important to note that the left side of the body is traditionally seen as the female and emotional side of the body. So it is significant to me that my injuries are on this side. I have felt attacked and vulnerable on my feminine side and have learned to protect it.

Another story.

Namaste' y'all!

Opening up the Throat

This is my first post this year.

My last post was on December 30, 2014. It's a reaction to some poetry that revealed some difficult truths. The one before that only acknowledges my move from the apartment in Pearland to the Love Shack in Buda.

I haven't been writing.

I haven't been speaking much either.

This past week I started feeling congested in my neck and shoulders. It felt blocked and cramped up mostly in that triangle where the neck meets the shoulders on the upper back. It hurt to raise my head. Then, I started feeling foggy in the back of the head and sensed fluid behind and below my ears, running down the back sides of my neck.

The neck and throat carry our mechanism for communication. I had some kind of a traffic jam going on. In fact, it is still clearing out. Traffic is slow, but it is moving.

I have been attending a few classes at an Iyengar studio in Austin. This blog began when I went to a workshop in Albuquerque that was at an Iyengar studio. I seem to be called back. My teacher was leading a workshop on the throat and neck this weekend,so I spontaneously jumped in.

I am so glad that I did. The work we did really helped me to begin to unclog the channel in my neck and throat where there is this traffic jam. One of the things we did was to create a sling to hang upside down from the wall. It was tremendous. I have difficulty going upside down because of my crushed left elbow. I have never been able to support myself comfortably. The ropes were able to support me and allow me to hang free. We did several poses at the wall where we trussed ourselves up in different ways to use the support of the ropes to free our poses. It was nice just to relax into them. I loved it.

The area that I have described as being congested is also part of the yoke that binds the arms to the torso. The arms reach out to the outside world and draw it in. We use our arms to encircle loved ones, to hug them to our hearts.

This is also the area where the head joins the torso and the rational and intuitive join the earth body. Input from our visual and auditory senses integrate with the tactile receptors in our hands and feet. It's a real crossroads here.

My blockage seems to come from my tendency to get stuck not being able to speak.

I can feel it, and I can draw on my senses, but I have not been able to use my voice. Thus, the blockage occurs. So much has gone in and not much has come out.

So, here I go. I am taking it slow, but I am loosening up my voice. I have been listening and watching and absorbing and processing. It is time to start to make sounds and be heard. I feel I have been holding back and protecting, choking back my complete expression.

I'm making a commitment to write every day. I haven't even been writing in my hand notebook. I've got to set aside some time to do this every day.

I think I need to do some singing too, make some beautiful noise.

I also need to talk to people. I have not been reaching out and talking to friends enough.

Namaste' y'all!

wounded Doberman pinscher

from Citizen by Claudia Rankine

The new therapist specializes in trauma counseling. You have only ever spoken on the phone. Her house has a side gate that leads to a back entrance she uses for patients. You walk down a path bordered on both sides with deer grass and rosemary to the gate, which turns out to be locked.

At the front door the bell is a small round disc that you press firmly. When the door finally opens, the woman standing there yells, at the top of her lungs, Get away from my house. What are you doing in my yard?

It’s as if a wounded Doberman pinscher or a German shepherd has gained the power of speech. And though you back up a few steps, you manage to tell her you have an appointment. You have an appointment? she spits back. Then she pauses. Everything pauses. Oh, she says, followed by, oh, yes, that’s right. I am sorry.

I am so sorry, so, so sorry.

I am so moved by this poem that I can hardly write.

I see Mic or Shamako or my god, Dione walking up to this house and it breaks my heart. 

I see any of my students from my many years of teaching.

 And I see that I have been the woman inside the house.

Fear runs through this poem on both sides.

There is the newness and the vulnerability of the patient and the therapist. We know that the speaker has had trauma in his or her life that was severe enough to seek counseling. The bond is tenuous, forged only by voice. They have not seen each other. We can also assume that the speaker “sound’s white” on the phone, which to the lady would only appear “normal.” In her world, everyone is light skinned. People with darker hues are deemed the “other.” It may be subtle. Sometimes it is just what is seen on a day to day basis.

I understand. I don’t like that I do, but I do.

The patient follows a path around the woman’s house to the back entrance but finding it barred by a locked gate, approaches the front door of the home. As a new patient arriving for counseling it is already disconcerting to find the entrance locked, but this image evokes Jim Crow, as well. The patient dares to approach the front door and surprises the woman.

We do not know why the woman answers the door in the manner that she does, but we feel her fear and anger. She is “a wounded Doberman pinscher or a German shepherd” guarding her domain.

She does not see the human being in front of her; she sees someone to be afraid of. This is not someone who reflects her own image of herself. The woman immediately changes gears when she realizes the mistake she has made.

“I am so sorry, so, so sorry.”

At least she stops. At least she realizes that her fear is not only misplaced, but hurtful. In this second excerpt, the pain is not even acknowledged.

A man knocked over her son in the subway. You feel your own body wince. He’s okay, but the son of a bitch kept walking. She says she grabbed the stranger’s arm and told him to apologize: I told him to look at the boy and apologize. And yes, you want it to stop, you want the black child pushed to the ground to be seen, to be helped to his feet and be brushed off, not brushed off  by the person that did not see him, has never seen him, has perhaps never seen anyone who is not a reflection of himself.

The beautiful thing is that a group of men began to stand behind me like a fleet of  bodyguards, she says, like newly found uncles and brothers.

Solidarity and hope comes through at the end through the wall of “newly found uncles and brothers.”

There is hope in these poems. Hope and truth. We just don’t realize the small ways we touch each other’s lives.

I’m still struggling to fight past and “see” clearly. What I see is pain and fear and lack of understanding.

But I also see hope and beauty.

Onward to a better world.

Namaste’ ya’ll.