1) having a internal mechanism for holding center even as the waves crash madly inside. thanks, yoga.
2) words with friends. so enjoying puzzling my mind with words–and breathing into my competitive knots to just enjoy, because it is a game.
3) getting to some warmer weather soon, hopefullies.
4) apples. can’t get enough apples.
5) the post office being relatively fast and easy even though i was in a crap mood. i even got the one smiley clerk.
6) the painting called sky that changes out my window all the time. like a great big gorgeous screen saver passing through hours and weathers.
7) dara. twas her b-day last week. i visited her lovely tree and wrote in the dirt. josh had already been there with a flower. i just miss her so much.
8) getting to go to kripalu in january for a wonderful program for cancer survivors. thought of dara tons, but also myself and my seven-year journey. it is quiet now, but never fully goes away. the words “incurable” do that to a gal. so it was lovely to connect with other survivors and think more deeply about thriving–and see the golden bricks to get there. some of which are already under my feet.
9) obama calling that woman after rush attacked her. classy, obama. validating, too.
10) blankets. they’re woven hugs for when the real thing isn’t around.
11) publishing directly to tha people. i love editors, but some times it’s just right to toss the filter.
12) my love. for working with, working through, working on. but also, playing. and cooking and laughing and culturing and planning and making a subway platform into a musical number with me.
1) the strong feeling i got last night during dinner that you had sent an email to the psychic version of the listserve. it said something like: ”hi everybody. i know you’re sad but i want you to know the truth–i’m free. i’m bigger than ever and i’m free. i know it might seem strange to ask you to be happy for me but i am joyful. and the love you have all given me is so beautiful from here. which isn’t a here really but an everywhere. please know I am ok–more than ok. And please use any sadness about my passing to do what it is that you do for the world. it needs you. i love you all. keep on rockin’, D.” and though i don’t know if she would use the word rockin’, it feels true enough to be a comfort and that is enough.
2) i am grateful for one painful lesson you gave me. i borrowed or you left that purple cotton baja top with the angel pin. it was a little silver angel that someone had given you. and you said you didn’t want the top back, but you did want the pin. and for some insane reason i didn’t give it to you. i just didn’t prioritize getting it back to you…. out of laziness or greed or passive-aggressiveness or something. i don’t know why. but it was something like months (years?) later and you asked about it again. and i mumbled some lame apology and you were like, “really? even though i specifically asked you and told you it was important to me?” and you were so right of course. and it just pointed to a part of my personality that i really don’t like… a little selfish, a little lazy, a little checked out. but i feel like i really took that in. it was an unpretty ethical violation that most people wouldn’t have mentioned. but you did and it helped me get my act together around stuff like that. just being aware that a part of me might have been playing a mean unconscious catch-me game. and the amazing part was, not long after that i said i would get the angel to you ASAP and you were like, “nah. don’t worry about it. i’m over it.” you said it in a way that was genuine and i actually felt something i haven’t felt very much in my life–forgiven. like you had really let it go, accepted my apology and continued to love me.
3) how you helped me with my body image. though you had many of the same hang-ups about weight as I did, and because you did, you had an added perspective. you could see my obsessing happening or your obsessing happening and laugh about it. and not reinforce and indulge the “oh-I’m-so-fat” voices in my head. it gave me distance from those thoughts. it modeled a kind of woman friendship i stuck to ever after– i never i’m-so-fat bonded again. because that’s not what good feminists, smart women, healthy women do, i learned from you. instead we ate ben & jerry’s. and i stopped throwing up for good. and when you went off to college you gave me books to read off the oberlin women’s studies reading list. like the beauty myth, which further rocked my world and healed the way i related to food and my body and women.
4) in high school an adult in my life said to me, with my pink hair and hippie punk wannabe clothes: i’ve never seen anyone so beautiful try so hard to be ugly.” this comment infuriated me but i felt helpless because i couldn’t quite articulate why. but when i told you you said, “well, there are different standards of beauty and she’s clearly judging you against one that’s not your own.” and bam. that was it. it helped me feel less wrong and validated my me-ness that this other person was not capable or willing to see.
5) how you dealt with your parents. both of them knew exactly how you felt about them, exactly the wounds they inflicted, and how they affected you. i always so deeply admired this. you cleared your shit with your parents. your dad said to me, “we worked through pretty much everything.” they didn’t become perfect in this process and neither did you, but at least you were clear. and i felt your anger with them (the kind most of us have) subside as you expressed yourself and accepted them. major.
6) whenever i went to you with boy stuff you wanted the juicy details and saw the bigger picture.
7) you showing up at my place in Brooklyn all rosy pink from riding your bike.
8) your receptivity. i loved giving you massages because you made the best appreciative noises. i felt like you were truly taking in what i had to give which made me want to give more. and as with everything else it helped me know where i stood with you. when the happy murmurs ceased i knew to do something different. or you told me. like the last time. i was pushing too squeezy on your calves and with the edema it hurt. you told me. i adjusted. and i was pressing too hard on your shoulders even though it felt like I wasn’t pressing very hard at all. “i’ve gotten so skinny… ” you explained. and i eased. you received, but with communication and boundaries, to the end.
9) your freedom with your body. from the boob tricks to the dancing to the sheila na gig tattoo spreading your belly button open, you were just so comfy in your skin. a comfort you earned in some ways, i think. making it all the more awesome.
10) how equal i felt with you. i’m looking at all this stuff and seeing how much you taught me, to my marrow, about how to be a righteous human. and you swept little sophomore me into the senior girls dorm to live with you. and yet i never felt like we were even different ages. i think this says something about my precociousness but mostly about how you treated people. as your equal, no matter.
11) your limited acceptance. it’s interesting. because for all your love and inclusivity sometimes you would cut people out of your life. sometimes inexplicably to me. i think maybe it was because you just didn’t have time for people who struck you as not being fully… something. your dad said to me, “i don’t suffer fools, and neither did dara. not at all.”
12) biloxi! someone from oakwood just reminded me–that week in mississippi we spent one spring break to do community service . he said we were like “two peas in a pod,” painting that house together. i mainly remember taking pictures of each others shadows, eating po’ boys, and laughing a lot.
thank you, d. more.
and now another night without your presence here. or with your presence different. without the earthly vibration of you. something that even across distances, i have felt most of my life. and it feels awful, i gotta say. i just miss you. it’s so oddly different than just not seeing you. a spiritual difference is there and though i want to celebrate your life and your light, right now i don’t like this absence one bit.
i know i did that whole list yesterday, but there’s more. especially after being with your beautiful peeps yesterday, hanging out by your favorite tree. what a good tree. so many branches, weeping-style. so much shade in summer, i bet.
i am grateful for:
1) pink bloque, the awesome political protest/street party/dance troupe you helped found. here’s what it was for those who didn’t see them in pink sweats dancing to a boom box: “The Pink Bloque is a Chicago-based radical feminist dance troupe dedicated to challenging the white supremacist capitalist patriarchal empire, one street dance party at a time… We, like most girls, just wanna have fun. We want to innovate, educate, and gyrate. We want to create change — if not in the nation where we live, at least in the way we engage it. We came together out of a desire to make protest more appealing — visually, physically, emotionally, viscerally, etc.” yeah.
2) you knowing, mayan-calendar style, without knowing, when you would leave. there was a log you created for your meds–i was always amazed at how virgo you could be for a pisces–and yesterday was the last day in it.
3) you going out on a full moon. and, for maybe just a tad of humor–a full moon in cancer.
4) loren mentioned this: your dimples. they added to your cabbage-patch cuteness. which, of course belied your fierceness, which also belied your kind, kind heart.
5) the words most often used to describe you on your now-a-memorial facebook wall: fierce, wild, fearless, beautiful, brilliant, powerful. and the word most often sent to you: love. what a heart, my friend.
6) your dad telling me his favorite dara stories, yesterday, by the tree. this one i had heard before, but forgotten: you were five, on the floor of his studio, playing with some things, and people kept coming through to talk about the politics of the day, in this case, nixon and watergate. they huffed and puffed. then when they left, your dad asked you: “so, dara, what do you think of grown-ups?” and you, age five, said: “yes means no and no means yes.” indeed.
7) another story harvey told me, which i had also forgotten. while at oakwood, your junior year you were offered a spot at simon’s rock. full scholarship, the works. because, of course, you were an engaged smarty. when our haitian french teacher erick got wind of this, he called your dad and told him, “you can’t let her go. she is the only person offering what she does to the community. we need her.” i was super-glad you didn’t go. i got to be your roomie, and that was awesome fun. and it was true, what you gave that place: truth and fun.
8) your boobs. those triple-D dara’s were something. forget the pencil test, you could hold a skateboard, our cafeteria’s napkin holder, and most impressively, the AP Bio textbook. not all together, but one at a time, arms extended. i thought it was so cool when you had them reduced when you could, weight literally lifted off your chests and shoulders. and you wrote a fun piece for GURL.com, to boob.
9) you meeting brad. you approving brad.
10) your sister telling me about a great line you dropped last week, as they were arranging and rearranging a mountain of pillows to keep you comfy: “it takes a village of pillows to prop a dara.”
11) giving a speech about you last night at toastmasters. i had signed up for it a month ago and they frown upon blowing off speeches, so i turned my yoga speech into a dara speech. i talked about how the principles i learned at my yoga teacher training at kripalu helped me be with you when it was hard toward the end. when my mind wanted to scream and cry or check out, but what seemed needed was simple presence. BRFWA: breathe, relax, feel, watch, allow. i think no one really knew what to do with it there, but a couple of people did maybe, and it felt good to share just a sliver of your essence with strangers.
12) getting to experience grief. i was just writing in an email this morning that i’m not sure what’s causing this great surge of agitation in me that feels so visceral. option a) when someone you truly love dies, they take a part of you with them and this is actually physically uncomfortable, painful. b) i am trying to hold on to either that piece or you, instead of doing what i should be doing, which is letting you/it go with both hands. i want you here, selfishly. i feel greedy for your presence, your listening, your you-ness. but i have this feeling that if i were really tuned into the reality of what’s happening, i would feel mostly pure joy. because you, my new awesome angel, are free. you are free of a body that was in the way of croissants and coffee and walks in the park and riding your bike and giving speeches and curating art shows and doing protest dances and making videos and listening to friends and making puns and traveling and all. now what happens i don’t know. but maybe it’s true, as your friend ryder said on the list-serve:
“Dara asked me how she could find power in this time. We talked about
how, when we die, there is so much energy leaving our bodies and going
into the world (and beyond) and we can give it intention and
direction, and that is the magic. It’s beautiful, powerful and
mysterious, so this is a special time, for Dara and all of us.
Dara is going to send a lot of energy out into the world, and i want
us all to be ready to receive it, individually and collectively, and
to do amazing things with it, because Dara has so much energy and
power.
DARA, YOU ARE NOT ALONE, WE ARE WITH YOU AND EACH OTHER IN THIS SPECIAL TIME.
I’m sharing this since we are all in this (world) together, and it’s
easy to feel disconnected via struggle.
When Dara dies, i am dying with her, and i invite others to join us,
because i know Dara loves to be with her friends. I invite all of us
to go with her on her journey, and to support her in her passage, and
carry her through, as she has done for us, in life.
Dara is eternal. We will not leave Dara, and she will not leave us.
Let us honor this magical time of TRANSFORMATION. Let us be energized,
inspired, connected and empowered by dara!”
i’m hoping to hopes that that and more goodness is true.
13) da love. da outpouring from everyone.
14) your dad saying, “i have been dara’s father for a very long time.” that’s how i feel about you too. that i have been your friend a very long time–even though we’ve drifted in and out at times, i have that eternal feeling when i look into your eyes too. which reminds me that there is an eternal. which makes the deepest part of my soul very happy with met longing. thanks, d. love.
1) dara, dara g., dara greenhair, or just plain d. 1971-2012
2) i am afraid of writing something trite or inauthentic here, because i know your bullshit detector is one of the best there is, but bear with me, sistah. this is for me, so i do something other than cry. so: i am grateful for your smile. you had one of the best. complete with deluxe eye sparkle.
3) your peaceful passing. i am glad you went gently into that good night. i could feel you in the afternoon, in a bubble of warm blue light. i could feel night falling, and you. i hit “send” at sunset because i could feel the passing. i am so glad you were surrounded by love.
4) your honesty. you would pick up the thing that no one wanted to say, and say it. sometimes this hurt, but usually after the sting was illumination. true aim.
5) your hilarity. you were saying this illness thing especially sucked because you like to be in control. you told me about the flower club you started in fourth grade. there were strict rules: “no boys allowed” and “must love flowers!” among them.
6) your hilarity, continued. a month ago you told me how the south park episode where the dads are all nuking their balls so they get cancer so they can get medical marijuana cracked you up. “now that’s funny,” you said.
7) your ability to see on so many levels: the emotional truth, the analytic truth, the hilarious truth, the political truth, the artful truth. they all kind of merged for great conversations about relationships, parents, therapy, death, illness, and more.
8) your ability to bring people together. i have never seen people rally like your people rallied, d. fiercely loyal cadres.
9) your critical mind. you sliced and diced and reassembled with newness.
10) your crazy grace in this illness. holy shit, mama. not to brag, but i thought i handled cancer decently, but fuck that, you handled cancer, an osteomy bag, many surgeries, a collapsed lung, “tumor fevers” (WTF?), injections, slippery veins, four kinds of chemo, several rounds of hair loss and hair growth, the stupid mouth sores, and the stupid tumors, and so many more indignities and pains with such grace. yeah, you kvetched sometimes, and lordess knows it sucked so hard. but i could see you anchored in healing, in wit, in staying happy and in flow, even as that nurse shot you up, even as the hospital idiots bumbled, even as that stuff just grew and grew and grew.
11) your chemo mohawk. your hair was so soft and fluffy.
12) you allowing me into your realm these last few months. i feel blessed to have shared the time with you. to have done some yoga and rubbed your feet and just chilled with you while you dozed. i am honored.
13) you going into forearm stand during chemo–for the first time ever, with such an accomplishment smile. truly gorgeous, my dear, my fear-facing hero.
14) dying at home, with dignity.
15) josh, everyone’s hero. for the tender kindness and devotion i saw him display again and again and again. he handed you a cloth during your fever and kissed you with such sweetness i wanted to weep. that is love, there.
16) getting me cozier with death. it can be a thing of love amidst the fear.
thank you, d. for bringing sunshine, and wisdom, and truth into my life. thank you d., for tolerating this tripe you would surely have found at least a little amusing. thank you d., for trusting me. i am sad we didn’t get a final-final good bye, but we did have that wonderful moment, where I swam in your eyes while holding your feet. and you said, “i love you” as i left, which now feels like way too soon (i should have stayed). and i did too. i love you, d., my dear friend of the last 24 years. thank you. love, love, love. and so much light for the journey. xoxoxo
2) crazy cactii that look like yosemite sam is just around the bend.
3) a love that feels natural and grand and ordinary and special all at once.
4) the recipe for chocolate cream pie i am excited to try next week. oh, the hope that it will be as good, or near as good, as hope & olive’s in greenfield…
5) reading: “raising children, raising ourselves,” by naomi aldort. this book is rocking my world. it’s a map not just to raising kids, but indeed working with ourselves and the people we love. basically: validate, release control, offer your loving presence again and again and again, no matter the storms that come. it’s filling some hold swiss cheesy holes in me, pockets of unlove, with possibility. with love for me. lovely.
6) holiday shopping–all done! is it weird that i don’t want to say “christmas shopping”? i may be the rare half-jew who doesn’t want to be thought of as too unjewish. i love mary, especially in her guadalupe form, but i don’t want to ever exclude my jew-roots, even though i am not actually buying anyone a hanukkah present. and maybe haven’t, ever. but my jewish grandparents did buy me hanukkah presents, eight of them, and i recall that as being a big deal, along with the chocolate gelt. gelt and guilt–that must be the name of someone’s memoir, yes?
7) purple. finding it soothing these days. it’s a color that reminds me of a bigger, richer, more complex picture somehow.
8) dara. it’s so hard. she’s so sick. and so amazing. i see her in the center of this crazy storm that’s taking over, and though it is unfathomably terrible, she is in it, present as pain allows. i wish i could heal the tumors with my hands, send them all away to feed on something else, like clouds, something unhurtable. an abstract host and not my dear friend. i don’t want to hate them though, even though i think they are little bastards. because, well, they are part of her. and therefore command love, even though they are unwanted life-suckers. does that make sense? you can’t heal with hate. but i guess i’m not sure how to heal what i hate that seems to be unlovable, e.g., tumors growing in my friend. i’m not sure how that works. my strategy is to imagine light through it all. light in every cell, hers and not-hers. light, light, light everywhere.
9) tennis balls. they are all over the house, for therapeutic reasons, and keep popping out unexpectedly from corners where my honey has been. my honey, the golden retriever.
10) living in a country without active war, with relative peace.
11) “UNDER CONTROL!!!!” – animal, in the new muppets movies, who is in anger management classes. working on that as my new mantra, especially when shopping or eating or doing anything else compulsively. UNDER CONTROL. it just reminds me i’m on autopilot and brings me back. heart animal.
3) getting the earlier plane, without a fee. and cruising through security–did no one decide to fly this weekend for the first time ever?
4) finding ways to move my body without yoga for the moment. i’m having wrist pain, and resting my entire weight on 90-degree-bent wrists again and again dozens of times a week was not working for me. now i’m making friends with the eliptical machine. and trying to figure out how to make that spiritual.
5) procrastinating writing the “art of procrastination” speech i’m giving on monday.
6) cuddles from my honey during stressful moments. his soft, loving touch only needs to be a moment and my nervous system responds like a starfish to tides. swoosh.
7) super target. black friday got me some cute socks. and a nano.
8) those little fake votives in yoga classes everywhere. they’re surpsingly calming and life-like, similar to the roaring digital fireplace.
9) “my fair wedding,” the david tutura show. i know, yes. but fun! moving, and pretty. although dangerously fantasy-escalating.
10) making my string beans/tomato/onions/garlic/lemon dish for t-day. ah, veggies. not that many in houston.
1) having this list to come back to when i forget my voice or lose it in a cramp of fear. it’s small but helps the big.
2) elf. ok, how can i forget how fun that movie is? i read about it in mindy kaling’s (from the office) memoir (not my favorite of the celeb memoir genre, but made me smile and chuckle a bit), and realized i needed a refresher. most fun movie i’ve seen in a while. and yes, this includes friday night’s ill-fated foray to see “harold and kumar’s 3-d christmas.” yes, i know. of course it was bad. my excuse is: a lot of people thought it was “fresh” on rotten tomatoes. it had a high fresh rating. and i consider this, a little, when movie-selecting. who wants to see a splat? but i digress. elf! funny, redonk, sweet, and a blond zooey deschanel who sings. need i say more? possibly. so: amazing holiday decor and some snowball throwing magic. and ed asner as santa.
3) not leaving the house yesterday, but rather: making lentil soup, baking gluten-free bread (from a mix, but still, i am martha, hear me dissolve yeast with almost exactly 110 degree water), cleaning, laundering, crafting (if painting the snack box white counts as crafting, which i’m not sure it does), finishing the mindy kaling book, and purging books. and sheets. and towels.
4) seeing elena azzoni read from her awesome memoir, a year straight: confessions of a boy-crazy lesbian beauty queen at bluestockings book store. she was of course hilarious and gorgeously pregnant and had a full packed house. so proud of her (wait, are we allowed to be proud of friends? outloud? or is that patronizing? or subtly self-aggrandizing?) and happy for her. also great to see our writing teacher and have him encourage me to finish my book. on which i am stuck, but about which i consider myself encouraged.
5) being with d. last week. it is rough. very. the news continues to be bad and worse. but her man is so gentle, so kind, so profoundly loving i am blown away by the tenderness–getting her a damp washcloth for her warm head. kissing her. i can’t even imagine. i wish i was a giant bunny and could cuddle them both simultaneously in a furry, soft, warm embrace. while infusing them with light from the center of the heart of the one true loving source of divine love. while of course not scaring the hell out of them with being a giant bunny.
6) i’m leaving this space blank because now i want to go to something more superficial and it feels better to skip a line after that.
7) apps. yes, i am a new iphone user and it is good. aside from the headache-givingness of its emf’s. i love the anatomy apps, drawing with a finger apps, aromatherapy apps, track my lady cycle apps, and more.
8) how i feel when i hit my water quota for the day–3 liters. better.
9) getting psyched to see the rockettes! yes, really. voluntarily and dragging along my mom and b. who will of course love it too. holiday time is culturally sanctioned magic. (pimped to sell stuff, i realize. but still, sparkly time.)
10) a great talk with my naturopath, whom i have known for 15 years. she’s also a shaman. and also amazing. and talked about the essential importance of me booming my creative life. reminding me i am an artist. which sounds embarrassing almost. no! i’m a journalistic professional with experience in increasing seo, optimizing visibility through content-rich multimedia platforms, harnessing the social media power of web 3.0. but yeah, artist feels true. now, how to live like one. starts in my head. allowing.
2) weekends with my sweetie, even (and maybe especially) snowed-in ones.
3) that the snow tree damage wasn’t too-too bad. sniff. rip, awesome trees who died doing their usual foliage thing, not expecting an october blizzard. and rip too the baby birdies who didn’t make it out in time.
5) visiting the new twins. wow. just wow. the work. the howling. the peacefulness they radiate when calm, like a forcefield of total zen chill cosmic silent love. amazing.
6) the hope that this new case (tested by wired) will help me not feel sick from EMFs every time i use my iphone.
7) running for seven entire minutes today in the park on soft surface. seriously that’s more than i’ve run since high school.
8) making lentil-pumpkin soup this weekend. delish.
9) helping people organize and move around furniture and generally spruce up their home space to make it more functional and beautiful.
10) listening to an old tape i have of a channeler in maui who told me at age 23 that i was creative but scared. and “reaching for happiness with both hands.”
2) being safe despite the many, many assaults in my neighborhood and others recently. take back the night–and take a cab. my new motto. which sucks. but what to do? other than walk with purpose, hide electronic devices, don’t talk on the phone, look confident, carry pepper spray, look the bastards in the eye, be home by dark, tie up your hair, wear pants, and know how to execute a quick sharp knee-to-groin kick? what else? sigh. really, though. i want women to stop being the first line of assault the minute the economy goes bad. how can we do this?
3) apples, fresh, organic, in fall.
4) sunshine in october.
5) getting “most improved” speaker last night at toastmasters. woot! and my speech was about gratitude. what it does, how i’ve done it, and how to do it. my first speech without notes. at all. look ma, no notes!
6) creating a life with my sweetie.
7) people reacting strongly to create laws to prevent what happened in ohio to the zoo animals from ever happening again.
8) friends, helping me climb out of complicated stuff too big for my small brain.
9) my latest article! in natural health magazine, november issue. page 64. cover story! and they kept my tina fey nod, which makes me very happy.
10) iphone! from china to hong kong to tennessee to newark to a fed ex truck in brooklyn!
