Grief is love with nowhere to go,

some shaman said and

took people to the sea so

their tears became tides and flowed freely.

 

We did this

for ourselves and each other

at the same stretch of sand where we grew breasts and scattered beards.

 

Though there wasn’t much beach left

everything and everyone else was the same.

 

Except you were gone. Are.

 

You grounded us

even as the one most cloudlike.

 

In your garden I sobbed,

picked an unripe yellow lemon and

rosemary (remembrance),

to inhale comfort

 

because we never came out here together

only your dark room a hundred times.

 

only in my dream

you showed me your flowers

which will only spread over your ashes.

 

because you will not grow into

an old mindless man with us—

you who were always most elderlike in our youth.

 

because you can’t fully beat this and

make greater meaning of life

or say aloud

we already have.

 

Somehow this feels like both betrayal and forgiveness.

Oaxaca - un bendición

 “The sky is amazing. I can’t describe it, sometimes it is all blue, others blue with tiny drops of clouds, like a tiger. That is how we tell the day here.” The woman shifts her gaze from the brightness overhead back to us and invites us to prepare for the ceremony.

Temazcal is a place of heat. “Death by heat.” A bath of mescal and a breath of mescal that destroys our masks. The many masks we wear for others—one for our mother, one for our child—and the most powerful mask of all, the mask we created for our self, formed by their opinions over time.

Inside is the womb. A place of release and rebirth for all aspects of ourselves: the physical body nested in the stomach, emotional body in the heart, and spiritual body in the back of the neck. We rub oils and creams and liquid on each. The first infusion, I instinctively find the centers before she instructs where to go and feel aligned. 

She is Zapotec of the lineage of the dreamers, and her gift is future sight for herself and others. She saw the end of her marriage coming ten years before and began to prepare for it. But even saying this she cautions us not to fear the future but rather focus on inner joy.

You can only be happy in the moment. The present. The past is full of regrets, but these only exist in what we haven’t learned. We must give grace to ourselves for doing the best we could with the tools we had at the time. The future is full of anxiety for the things we plan for that take us away from living in the moment. 

“What stands in the way of your happiness? Your brain. Because your brain and your heart don’t speak to each other.” 

Sudor de enfermedad pours out— drowned in mescal, cucumber, mint, orange, nopales, pineapple, and cacao. We make ourselves sweet to greet the past parts of ourselves, those that need the tenderest healing and to communicate with those we have lost. I look at my middle school self and tell her I don’t have to be perfect or anyone I am not anymore. I send love to my grandmothers and grandfathers. I decide to give the tree de tule an offering. I explain to Jasper that he is being fathered too. She chats and drums and yips and hums. 

 “In the beginning of the path is your birth, and at the end is death…You will lose everything in this life; everything you find on your path will be taken from you, so you must rejoice in its presence while it is here and you are.”

“Death is always walking with you as your friend,” her father told her as a little girl, but she didn’t like that. He said it was because “she hasn’t taken you yet.” Now, after 61 years she still walks with death as her friend. 

Then she prepares a bath and sings to us. I am a child as she pours the water over my face and caresses my cheeks and forehead. I feel held by the softest of hands that belong to the strongest and wisest of women.

When we finish, she cautions us to leave slowly. Our survival instincts are down, we may feel invincible and hit our heads on the way out. I forget this too soon…

--

 

The tree of Tule is as big as a house, made of dragons and deer faces, limbs dancing with themselves and psychedelic whirlpool burls. It’s over 2,000 years old and 636,000 tons. The plaque below marvels at its majesty and says --essentially-- beside it, mankind is nothing but silence. It brings me great peace to know that creatures like this exist in our world, even when have done so much to annihilate them. This tree has survived the Spanish conquistadores and watched us evolve through the ages. I hope that she or they will watch us disappear into the shadows as well and breathe the air we leave as dust. 

--

Maybe it was the grasshoppers I ate in the guacamole, but more likely the cocktail, a giant fruit salad beer mug filled with mescal, that made me decide to become a luchadora. When we walked into the tienda I immediately wanted a mask-- the one with the golden sun symbols-- even though it covered my mouth and smeared my red lipstick underneath.

And when we got to the parque with the golden lions on each esquina I knew this was my first battle. I must mount and ride one! I slid my mask on and scrambled up the side of the four-foot base then into the great cat’s back. 

For a moment it was pure glory-- leaning forward and back, arms in the air, victorious. Then I dismounted, jumped off and stuck the landing. I did it, I thought, living this moment fully, then pain sharp and strong flooded my foot. Fuck. My heel hurt like hell with any weight, and I crumpled to the ground. Later I looked up the injury, anxiously awake and wondering how I would hobble around the rest of the week and learned it’s common for skydivers. I decided to give myself the luchadora name Paracaidista, jinete de leones.

--

The next morning three coffees and two advils later (deciding against those Mexican pain killers everyone suggested I take) and with umbrellas for crutches I hobbled into the textile museum and beheld the woven intricacies considered a form of rebellion against colonization.

“The wefts that float on the back of weavings, like embroidered silhouettes that evoke ghosts, are open to fortuity. Sometimes that small aperture to randomness makes the reverse more beautiful than the obverse. Revés means both reverse and setback-unforeseen circumstances where destiny plays havoc with our hopes. In textiles revés is not fated but intentional manipulation of threads, conception. The hidden side brings us closer to the magic of creation.” -Alejandro de Ávila, curator of the textile museum

The description feels written just for me, just for today. The guard at the front looks at me and says slow down, take it easy. 

I try to. I grit my teeth with every step and use the umbrellas to creep forward as an off-centered insect going bah-dum-cha with every motion. We make it to the market and enter smoke alley, the aisle of carne asada, and I feel overwhelmed by the people and the meat and the motion. I creep forward slowly. Find a table, get a beer, a tamale. Later weave through the lanes of textiles, ice cream, a woman peeling thorns from cactus, mescal tasting, leather, hierbas y polvos, cow hooves dangling in front of me, people seeing how I walk and stepping back, sometimes. My mask is gone, my able body, and I struggle to be seen this way, as weak. Even though I often feel it, it rarely shows. I rarely show it.  

--

On the road to Hierva our guide says she has a surprise for us and shows a painting on the rock face done 12,000 years ago. This place is considered one of the origins of humans and of corn, the seeds found are so old. What a ways we have come. 

The Hierve el Agua mineral pools are cold and colored and formed in the bottom of what appear as frozen stone waterfalls. These natural travertine rock formations were once a place of great power, where indigenous leaders gathered to decide profound things. Now we lounge in the pools and lizard on the rocks looking across the valley. Resting our  souls from the walk down and the journey that is this life. Courageous, others call me as I hobble up the hill, but I don’t feel it, and I blush a color that will spread and soak into my skin even through the scattered clouds. 

They use only the heart of the agave plant to make mescal, ground down with a giant rolling mortar stone pulled in circles by the donkeys we pass. The leaves are just compost. Men pile wood onto the espadin mound, hot stones and plant matter smoldering them. Each has a different sabor. “Mescal is not just to drink, but also to experience, it can be spiritual, creative,” our guide offers.

 At dinner, they prepare our sopa de piedra, an ancestral dish in which hot stones are placed in the broth to cook the fish. We talk of being cared for, the challenges of allowing this, of planning for it in the future. Of partnership, relationship, of growing together and inhibiting each others’ growth. The rocks hiss and bubble around the eyes of the shrimp. This is a dish made only by men, a show of gratitude for the women in their lives. “Pueblos de usos y costumbres,” I am told. 

--

Sun rises over shadows of blue Sierra Madre mountains, setting a pastel rainbow into the sky in all directions around our puddle jumping plane to Puerto Escondido. 

“The dream of my life is to lie down by a slow river and stare at the light in the trees to learn something by being nothing a little while but the rich lens of attention.” ~Mary Oliver

My partner sent me that this morning. Today is a day of sitting in nothing, too burned to even make it to the sea, just strong enough to watch the waves from the edge of the sand. When I call him to say goodnight, I ask if he can start saving money, so the next time I travel, he will carry me when I fall. 

--

My soul longs for the ocean, so deeply entrenched and unconscious that I don’t realize the sense of loss until its filled, until I dive in and feel satiated. This is the culture of my youth: the shore break, undertow, sandskin, whisper and pull, sandleflops, dropins, pull outs, squeeze and wooosh, sunscreen squints, whitewash. I stagger into the water and feel at ease, swim out past the break, come into the sand, watch a woman chase a dog with her sandal, surfers catch a point break, swim back out and get caught in a sudden set, my body weakened by overcompensating and my lungs at lower capacity than I thought them to be, emerge breathless, saltwater coming out of my nose, and feel mortal. 

As we walk into the refuge we receive half coconut shells as cups in place of tickets of entry. “There are seven types of sea turtles, and six are in Mexico- Viva la Mexico!” Four of the six are in Oaxaca. Main threats to their survival are humans (eating eggs, poaching), climate change baking the sand (which effects the gender of the hatchling— the hotter it gets the more likely they are to be females and “males are important too”), and effects of urbanization (hotels and condos right on the beach confusing them with lights that are not the moon and bringing cats and raccoons). So all us. 

He calls us in close to go over the directions for their release. “Inside is not just a baby turtle but a lot of people’s efforts and energy. Inside is a life. Pay more attention to it than your phone please.” I name mine Douglas, Sarah names hers Emma. He says it is good to develop a connection with them. Maybe come back ten years later to free their children, since they are attracted to their birthplace and find their way home through a kind of magnet in their heads. We carry them to the edge of the rope and tip them from the hulls. 

They don’t move much. Seem tired, stunned, overly sunned. It’s not a race but it feels like it. “A race to live, and the seagulls are vicious.” I give mine a blessing and cheer him on. “Sí! se puede! Vaya con dios! Vamanos!” Un bendición tradicional. “Tienes el corazón de leon,” the woman next to me coaxes. 

Douglas wanders back and forth, perpendicular to the sea. Emma moves very little. They both struggle. It resonates. Finally a volunteer rescues them and carries them to the edge of the fierce surf. Their chances of survival are about 2%. I ask the volunteer how long ago they were born. Some, around 3pm. Others yesterday, but they couldn’t climb out of the sand themselves. They were kind of neurologically impaired, he says. “In nature they would become soil. We give them a second chance.” Seems like Douglas and Emma may have been in that crew. I wish them well and wonder what their encounter of this world will be, so many dangers, so much wonder. 

---

The bioluminescence is pure magic, the water a combination from the sea, the mountain river and thermals. Disturbance glows. Fingers spread and leave a path of light with every stroke, diamonds pour down as the hand pulls towards the sky, the flow over breasts and knees like electricity. Nothing compares. Water is light. It is in and around us, emerging from the full darkness beyond. I float back and let go and it swallows me. 

Growing out of the cracks

Croatia first smelled of sea— the sourness of fish came upon me when I stepped out of the car in Dubrovnik— sour but not unpleasant, then lightened into salt in the breeze. Later it was layered with fresh bread and sugared pastries from the bakery below on the steep hill. 

This is the first solo trip abroad I have taken in many years, since I developed my chronic illness and all that it entails. I mean to remind myself of my power, the parts I have lost with the salary and stability, the sides of myself that only really come out in places unknown.

Trees grow out of nothing here. Cracks in the cement, in ancient urns mounted on the sides of cathedrals, gnarled vines reaching to strips of sky through narrow streets, figs perched in fortresses. So much of this city had been destroyed by the “Homeland war.” I saw the faces of Dubrovnik Defenders— black and white photos lining a room in one of the palaces. Much of the walls have been rebuilt, the white cubes symetrical and starkly contrasting to the darker, more textured original. But still the scars show, and the trees grow out of cracks in the pavement. 

Traveling alone I hear things I shouldn’t. Answer questions that are not asked of me, often. Otherwise I am left alone with the thoughts spoken in my head, sometimes spinning in circles, and the toll of the bells, the horns of the ferries. I miss the call to prayer, my reminder of mindfulness. I should find another here. 

Instead I become bold again, make friends, and take a lover. 

A cute couple in the corner swaying and smiling. I like your sunflower hat. Where did you get it? They’re American too, best friends and friendly. I dare you to go up to someone and say why don’t Croatians dance? I challenge them, mostly because I have eyed a tall dark-haired man with a chiseled chin sitting on a stool in the corner and want to light a fire under my liquid courage. 

He’s sweet, shy, makes me smile. He feels younger but not terribly so. We talk and drink and kiss, and he takes me to the club downstairs next door to watch Croatians dance, prove to me they can and do, but by then I am too tired so I take him home, promising nothing because I am not that kind of girl and making sure he doesn’t get the wrong idea, I don’t do one night stands. 

“Technically I will probably come to America sometime so it will not be a one night stand.” Still, it won’t happen. I don’t trust men with my body like that anymore, never really did to begin with. 

The first day had been nearly perfect. I climbed the highest mountain, looked out over the ancient city, wandered its streets and fortresses, drank next to the cliff-strewn sea, chased peacocks over a monastery island, pulled urchin needles from my foot and forged on, sat upon the iron thrown, tasted local wine and beer and put myself out there again in this world.  

In the morning, I woke alone. He’d said goodbye and kissed me maybe. I had been more than half asleep, it had been so early it wasn’t quite light yet. He’d left his shirt but not his number. What would I have done with it anyhow, I wondered, and how did it make me feel to not have an chance of seeing him again, a different sudden kind of closure, and whether he had to go to work because I realized I hadn’t asked where he had to be when I didn’t have to be anywhere else for once. I kept his shirt.

I continued my solo adventures, exploring rocky cliffs, white sand stretches, turquoise waters and cobblestone ways, until I run back into one of my American friends. She lives 30 minutes from where I do in North Carolina and grew up 30 minutes from where I did in California. Sometimes when you decide to leave the world alone, it brings you back a piece of home I suppose. So we become partners in crime or at least in beaches and wine. 

“This is honey grappa, something light to cheers with,” opens our meal.

“I’m a bitch about wine, I dated a sommelier and lived next to one,” she tells me. “And I never negotiate with food.” I don’t think I have ever tried to.  

“The black truffles are a very special and traditional Croatian food. They are found with dogs. The best way to find them is with pigs, though but they are very hard to train.” I didn’t know that, I always thought pigs found them. “Yes, but they find them and they eat them.” Who could blame them? Humans and pigs are really not so different.  

“I’m glad we got the mushroom soup, I needed water,” she says. “This is my way of getting water.” The food is fabulous, and I love having company to enjoy it. “Now, you don’t have to hold onto this memory alone.” 

I make it to my final destination, or so I think.  Pedro checks me in to his hotel, and though it feels late to me, and I haven’t eaten real dinner, when he offers a grappa I say yes. 

He was proud of the Croatian brandy he served me, one dark made by his father, full of herbs—to cure covid, he joked. The other light, made by his mother, he couldn’t tell me what was in it either, he didn’t know. 

They were a loud people he said, their language harsh, and when they spoke they became animated, passionate. I had seen it, in a pizzeria my first night. A group of older men seeming to yell at each other, without any sports game going on, and mussed about what they spoke of, perhaps something completely mundane like the weather. 

He talks of this place, his family. His grandparents who had streets named after them, who died in the building of that square, who were war prisoners and heroes. These are the places you should tell me to see, I said, gesturing to the map he had laid out, not only the palace. He told me generations of stories, all of it because I had asked whether there had been any favorite donkeys in the family when the people had lived with them as pets for warmth in winter. There had been one. 

The center of Split is ancient, white, beautiful, wise-stoned, and teeming with tourists as they do. I climb the tower, visit the tomb, and when I go to check in for my flight the next day, I learn it doesn’t exist any more. Hasn’t for a while, but no one told me, and no one will really help me find a way to get home. But I need my medicine and miss my dog, and I am tired of this city already, yearning for my stability and porch, so I have a little cry and a little wine, and pull my shit together and decide to drive across the country and fly out a day later instead of staying and leaving it to them to figure out. I have never rented my own car in another country. I struggle to drive at night with my eyes. I feel overwhelmed and brave. 

I do it. I make a day of it. I stop in Plitvice National Park and walk through waterfalls and caves and moss-covered lakes and mountains. I drive through Zagreb in the dark to see the museum of broken hearts and the object remnants, to have a last supper, duck salad, walk the plaza, and return the rental car with the windows fogged, freaking out about where the key drop and parking spot was. But I did it. By myself. I still can. I proved it to me, and I feel capable and confident and able again finally. I feel my heart open and myself back as the flight takes off towards the home.

Teşekkürler Türkiye

I was afraid of this trip. I’ve been to over 35 countries in the last two decades, but now my body feels different. I haven’t traveled alone since I developed a chronic illness, and the medicine to control it slowly drains my vitality, my immunity, in order to keep my sight. The pandemic has dissolved into endemic but is still present in a heightened awareness of every cough around me. 

I am extremely sensitive in my mid thirties. To noise, to light, to smells, to triggers known and unconscious. Weddings are one of them, but this one will be different, I tell myself and my therapist. I will be surrounded by my friends, some of the people I love most in the world, who understand and are attuned to me. If I get sick, someone will help take care of me. This time I am part of the wedding, officiating, I have a role to play and will not be all alone, left with my pains of the past. This time it was my best friend getting married, best in the world, and it would be different. 

And I will be okay after that in my week traveling solo. The anxiety will dissolve into excitement… what everyone keeps asking whether I am and what I will become… one of these days, maybe on the plane ride. 

—

Every place has distinct sounds. I am sure these exist elsewhere, but they become embodied by a particular culture upon my arrival. Turkey wakes up to dishes clanging and the call to prayer. 

Like the ebb and flow of the sea. The shuffle and stacking, the scrape and slide, not quite porcelain nor plastic but a mixture of metal and some kind of cheaper clay or glass. Then the wail from the minaret just beyond our block, broadcasting out across the golden horn. How did they do it before sounds carried this way? Does the call translate to meanings we might understand or is it known deep within bones, before language was born?

The prayers enter through the red velvet-cloaked and fig-framed window of the old Şebnem Hotel. The fig that must be older than my great grandmother, if that’s possible; it’s four stories tall. The dishes clang just outside my door. The pattern continues through the morning, the call– of prayer and refrain– clang of dishes. I turn over wishing for sheets and willing my way back and forth from reality into dreamscape, blurring the distinction. 

Apparently the call is a reminder but does not require an immediate response. You can pray once a day, combine them together. They warn you at first light and last, so the space between is your freedom, and in it lies both responsibility and flexibility. 

Ali introduces us to his country, and how to remember his name— he says that 60% of the men here share it. He leads us to the roof terrace where breakfast will be. I recommend you take this view to start each day. It will affect you. That is Asia. This is Europe, we are so close. 

There are two Istanbuls. One is here, above. One is below. I can show you, be your guide. If you like. 

We look up the word for thank you, Teşekkürler, and stumble over the syllables, and he smiles. 

Istanbul has always been a crossroads, a meeting point and perhaps clashing point of different worlds. We opt for the self guided tour and walk the ancient streets and ruins that have outlasted empires and conquerors. 

The mosques feel deeply calm. There are no icons, no images of humans to judge you, to remind you of pain or scorn or sorry. There is a relief in the peeling paint, the stoic marble stone, the golden scrawling scriptures in a language so foreign I cannot feign interpretation. The name is misleading. Hagia Sophia is not a woman but divine wisdom. We created every living thing of water, whispers her fountain. 

—

I lost my panties today. Or they were stolen. Both scenarios seem exactly equally plausible and impossible. I could have sworn I hung them in the locker at the hammam, but they were gone when I came back from my massage and sauna. I checked the floor, the trash, too embarrassed to ask if someone had somehow turned them in. 

But I did ask if my friend’s massage was different than mine. I had heard his masseuse ask Do you work out? As she rubbed his arms, and his reply I work outside, so maybe his was sensual too.  

But how much time had she spent on his inner thighs; did she spread his legs so that his feet fell on either side of the table before digging knuckles into the backs of his calves; had she climbed on top of him? No, nothing like that. 

No one had ever rubbed my breasts before and left them exposed long after finishing that area. No one had ever sung in my ear, hummed to the melody of the music playing softly in their native tongue. No one had ever pulled at my hair. Perhaps it is part of this culture. Or some aspect of the “couples massage” we received in the same room to get a free clay mask. 

But when I returned to the locker my panties were gone. The woman, who had been called very very beautiful by another customer just before she took me to the back, had vanished. So I wondered. 

—-

Then came the vows. Well, not quite, the wedding preparation was such a whirlwind it felt almost like a fast forward. The friends arriving, the reunions, the organized events, the last girls’ night out together, the local liquor, the sparklers at dinner, the waiters dancing in the streets, the street cats, the mangy dogs, the ringworm, the oldest perfume in Istanbul, the figs, the rain, the double rainbow, the seagulls dropping fish heads, the bazaars, the spices, the Turkish delights, the stone towers, the meatballs, the street stuffed mussels, the cigar smoke, the traffic, the catching up, the last minute changes to the final words of the ceremony, the crumble into bed. 

Like Istanbul, the wedding was a combining of cultures and a negotiation of values and needs in two languages. Turkish people don’t have a spoken ceremony other than what the government official delivers. For Amy, the ritual was one of the most important aspects of their union. For Yigit, the wedding was not just for them, but his family, to make them proud, to showcase their lives. I never knew how much matrimony was a negotiation and a compromise– especially the wedding itself– until I was part of it.

Then came the day of the wedding. Waking early for hair and makeup. Hair that would stay pinned tight all day and makeup to be re-done before we were whisked into playboy bunny pink robes for the bridal party photos, swept aside in the family room for all else. 

Can I have some tea? 

Why not madam.

Watching. Watching her become a princess bride. Hour after hour. They layer on the makeup, then the hair, the dress, the shoes, the writing of her sister’s name on the bottom of the right heel as a blessing, a ritual, the best part of the preparation. She is full of grace from start to finish, always. Even as the makeup artist’s photographers circle like moths to a light and cut off the circulation of our true connections as sisters and friends, opting instead for posed photos. 

One of my favorite things about Amy is how well she treats strangers— with so much love and deep curiosity for the stories they hold. By the end of the night, her “attendant woman” Zehra is sharing her deepest secrets– that she would kill her stepmother if there was no such thing as prison.

I have always felt deeply special to be Amy’s chosen best friend. Like somehow I won. Tonight, in my way, I get to give her away— to the promise of happily ever after. 

Please, turn towards each other and take hold of each other’s hands, as you dream of your forever together.

These are the hands that will tend your garden and build your house into a home. These are the hands that will hold the ladder and the dog’s leash; the hands that will wipe crumbs from your countertops and tears from your cheeks. These are the hands that will catch you when you fall, hold you when you tremble, and push you upward when you need extra courage. Someday, these will be the hands that hold your children’s hands, and your grandchildren’s.

Bu eller bahçenizi yesertecek, evinizi yuva yapacak eller. Ayni zamanda bu eller  köpeğiniz Hero’nun tasmasını tutacak, tezgahınizdaki kırıntıları, yanaklarınizdaki yaşları silecek eller. Düştüğünüzde sizi yakalayacak, titrediğinizde sizi tutacak, cesarete ihtiyacınız olduğunda sizi yukarı doğru itecek eller. Ve bir gün, bu eller çocuklarınızın ve torunlarınızın ellerini tutacak.

Yigitcigim, Amy’yi bugündez..? Evet, I do. 

Do you Amy..? I do, Evet. 

Now, with the power of our collective love and our blessings, we celebrate you- husband and wife, Yigit and Amy Ulucay. You may kiss the bride. The peacocks perch on ancient pines before a sherbert sunset. 

Then came the dancing. The bride and groom swept each other into the ballroom and glowed with love and joy. They were perfect. It was perfect. Classic cinema in action. They danced from one table to the next for photographs, then they danced with a troop of female drummers, and then they danced down to the after party. Amy wore the polish off her toenails and her smiling cheeks to the point of pain. But she did it. We did it. Nailed it. 

—-

Then came the after party, the group honeymoon. Twenty six of us swimming in the Mediterranean, sipping on Aperol spritzes, eating family style seafood, climbing castles, shopping for towels and rugs and trinkets, jumping off the boat into synchronized swimming circles while a drone watched from above.

Five days of sharing a hotel room with my best guy friend and moving as partners do through all of it. Of riding a scooter through the villages and pomegranate groves, of splitting meals and blankets, of yes ands. Of fighting over hikes or beaches and forcing make up hugs and laughing about it over beers. Five days of looking at us through rose colored glasses. Of nearly everyone wondering what about him? and asking and offering advice and each of my closest girlfriends saying something different.

I thought of my lover back home: charming and generous but sporadic at his best, apathetic and absent and erratic at his worst. The man in bed beside me now met all the needs he didn’t. But my lover met other needs and made me feel differently. So neither was a complete complement, and thus I am always my own plus one. It’s hard to let go, even when you know better, and break those deeply rutted patterns of attachment. The pull and push away. 

–

The final night we made it to the Antiphellos, an ancient theater just outside town, and I crept up the crumbled steps, half original, half restored to take in the view from the top. The light poured over the performers: first a violinist solo enchanting, creating the sounds of longing from string tips; then a local band, singing together in Turkish, one playing a giant tambourine crested in little rattling beads, rustling each other jovially. The harbor and waters and mountains and ruins lay beyond. I felt my eyes filling with the same salt of the sea, the surge cresting over down my cheeks. Tears of joy at the sight of this magnificent place, the sounds of it, and the feeling of being surrounded by love. I was overcome by gratitude for this experience, for what I had and what held me in this moment. 

Slowly I descended. My best guy friend looked at me as I sat down and said, We really need to get you some good cold medicine tonight. I laughed at him and sheepishly replied that they were tears of joy. That I was happy and grateful and felt loved. He nodded and gave me a shoulder squeeze. 

A little later, I looked back at him and said, I need to tell you, You are one of the most beautiful men I have ever met—inside and out. He simply smiled and asked, how many violins do you think these rocks have heard?

Unbelizable: A poem of Mayan Healing

Call in the manatee, body scarred, belly full of new life,

Nurse sharks, churning tornados of teeth,

and sting rays with marks like Masai on their backs.

Call in the full moon and a fire of gnarled driftwood, wreathing.

Call in sea horses, clinging camouflaged to ropes their bodies mimic,

Cat Spur medicine, guarded by fire ants, to heal the bite of death.

The heat of flesh on flesh, bodies intertwined, spirits spreading.

You must try to understand each other or the roads will separate.

Everything with a heartbeat and everything made by hand

has a soul. Be careful what you put your energy into.

Give it as an offering, held by three pillars,

those from the first hearth of creation

in the dark waters of a primordial world.

The deeper into the cave the more devout.

Methods determined by the power of the prayer:

a circle cast in ceramic with obsidian;

a small chip to break perfection;

or absolute destruction, annihilation.

Give blood, the best of the animals,

the pinky of your hand,

and finally the young princess.

Call in the rain in final desperate hope.

Blood of my blood to please the great spirits.

Call in the brown jays, who warn of hunters, snakes and the big cats,

Howling monkeys battling for territory to embrace the dawn,

The rubber tree oozing latex from machete slices to manifest America’s destiny.

Call in Conch shells scattered carelessly across the south blue caye

And bone fish feasting on lobster heads cast away.

Call in Iguanas who cling to facades of fallen jaguar kings—

the faces of rain, of sun, of the tree that spans from heaven to earth.

Weave the cosmos into colorful bands and blouses.

The universe interconnected in every stitch.

What is time? Not chronological as we force it to be.

Nothing is urgent but the snake’s bite.

The healer clasps her hands around leaves on your wrists, your head, your heart

and prays.

Whispers, swish, and cluck in ancient tongues of her ancestors.

The beat is too strong. We must do it again.

Do not touch yourself, the energy will not flow.

She takes fresh boughs from her medicine garden

Sprays alcohol upon them and beats your body

To clear it, to cleanse it of contamination

The Mal de Ojo.

Then smudging, sacred copal. Alone you sit

until the tears come

and flow together in streams down your cheeks

onto the crystal about your throat.

The tears we shed yesterday have become the rain.

She cried once too, she tells you.

The rituals were nearly lost, only her uncle did ceremony

in secret over the mountains.

Dia de los Santos came and she was called

to honor the ancestors in their ruins.

Sadness took her as she envisioned the once flourishing city.

So much lost, so much taken.

Sorrow for the pain of her people.

Then she heard them, conch shells calling,

from the North, the direction of the winds, the messages.

She thought she alone had heard them. But her family was there,

They felt it too—

A turning, a resurrection, the period of recovery had come.

The words are coming back,

hieroglyphics, inherent understanding from deep within.

Collective rituals that cross modern borders,

rebuilding sacred civilization.

Her tears came often during ritual, a recognition,

A reckoning.

For so long, you did not cry.

But there is purpose in the tears, release.

You are guided by a light. It brought you here.

I can see it

and the soul returning to your face.

Breathe again with the wind.

Call it in.

#icelanded

#icelanded

Homage to Odin, of words and wisdom, poetry and bard.
Epic saga of the separated sisters’ quest for a feather, shark meat, and adventure.

Velkominn.

To rolling bucolic green backdrops,
Plates of ripped, ridged earth,

Tectonic shift to surface salt and sulfur.

Rocks remain from Viking victories,

Justice first served for the four kingdoms, to the quarters:
Earth to the north, air to east, fire south and water west.

Ram horn spirals,
Baby black sheep bleating,
Horses muzzling in soft rain.

This is a bridge of trolls.
That volcano of dragons.

Fingers of clouds exhaled by knolls, cascade over elven waterfalls.

We are ice walkers, following lines to horizon beyond.

Carve the sign of Thor into the mountainside to find the bloodstone.
Bless Freya on the compass pillar thrust ashore by captains lost.

Glacial waves crash, gnash, snarled lips peeled back to show teeth beneath--

dark, rubbed soft, revealing.

Sun bleached sea monsters among black stones,

whisper under bare feet ancient psalms in forgotten tongue, the Elder Fudhark.

Frost soaked cliff cracks stone bones

like a holy book left in rain.

Trust no rocks, wander not for shore birds nest below.

Feel the heartbeat of lava beneath moss skin.
Red eyed ravens feast on hidden remains.

House the elves to protect the bridge.

Light on water, fingerlets,

Lupin bundles,

Heath buttercups.

I will call you sugar mountain, you volcano you.

My body becomes the pink beach, flesh-toned sand.

Sticks, stones, bones.

Never forget this spiral, prehistoric symbols swept away in rising tide.

Steel boat beached in high grass a century ago,

Ribs worn through, portals of a forgotten beast.

Race to the ends of the earth, most westerly breast of Europa,

To find the nesting puffins, to make your heart sing.

Press your body into the cliff as it juts to nothingness.

Peer down at the vast below.

Seal your identity on this blood moon eclipse we cannot see.

For the light is always bright here, brighter still as home nears.

There is a vastness, as earth in cosmos.

Reminder of mortality, a grain of sand.

There is not the feather.

Nor not the tools to repel down this face and away from fear

As the old men who still collect eggs to honor the ancestors.

Reversal of roles in reverence.

Read runes to harness lunar shadow in everlasting twilight.
Become Uroz, the ancient ox, wild unbridled strength, a seed,

a beacon for self and world.

Chariot on one wing, birch on another, grow roots and go forth.
You are so strong, so brave, and shouldn’t always have to be.
Breathe in presence, out peace.

Breathe in balance, out freedom, connect.

The trolls journey at night, we follow by day.

They have been caught and frozen, shovel in hand,

trying to tear the coast apart.

The fairies watch wondering as we peer through the sorcerer’s door

at cauldron within, foreign markings that feel right.

A struggle, a sorrow, but never more.

Ravens are much larger than crows and

the invisibility spell takes far too much blood to be my magic.

A sickening in this death over stolen milk,

Such scarcity.

Warm water, cold rain, rinse, repeat, release.
“Your heart is the softest place on earth. Take care of it.”

When the world is ending, will you want to know, as Odin, and die in honor?

Will you watch the clouds roll in with me? On these last lava rocks and soak them into our skin.