My Boy

Way back when, I entered young adulthood without knowing a whole lot about how to connect deeply with other people, perhaps like many of us. I had my friends from childhood and that was about it. I socialized only when I had to. And I consciously limited those occasions.

In college, I worked at an animal pound and ended up adopting a dog. I had no idea what this would mean.

He wanted to be with me all the time. He loved me no matter what. It was all a new experience for me. I found joy in giving him a good life, and I ended up getting in touch with something inside me I hadn't often experienced since early childhood: The ability to be with another exactly as I was, without fear of judgment.

For someone who never loved a pet this may be hard to understand, but he was the twinkle of my mornings, the blue of my evenings. 

Love can lift that way.

After arriving in California in January 2006, I rented a beach cottage with a large yard for my dog’s last couple months. He had a brain tumor, and when he died, I understood that I was going back to an animal pound to do some work and honor his memory.

This multi-media project I’ve completed is nothing more than my best thank you for all the impossible doors he unlocked within me.

Deadline Creature

I used to have one of the greatest jobs ever: A daily newspaper reporter. Mostly I covered local news. I reported on city government, breaking news, features, the police and fire departments, some politics and an occasional document-based investigation. When my father died in 2004, I found myself not producing to the level I had come to expect of myself. My dad was a former journalist and after I went into journalism in my 20s, my father and I instantly developed a special friendship. Reporting and writing stories just wasn't the same without him. So I took a break.

I quit my reporting job in New England and, slowly, moved across the country to Southern California. I figured I'd do some volunteering until I was ready to return to reporting. The newspaper industry and economy went in the tank, however. Standing job offers were no longer available as my contacts had been laid off.

I tore through my savings account, though it lasted longer than I ever could have imagined. More than $120,000 lasted more than five years, during which time I took vacations to Italy and Paris, and took several trips to Portland, Chicago and Cleveland. I mostly lived with friends or family. But I also have had my own apartment as well as lived in a run-down beach motel during a couple off-seasons. Sounds romantic? At times the journey has been. Other times I have struggled. Like everyone.

After my money ran out, I picked up some spot work for AOL, and I continue to be grateful for that.

This year has been a return of sorts. I have learned once again how important producing good journalism is to my self-esteem. I am so lucky that the best non-fiction narrative editor in the country agreed to help me with my story of the Carson Animal Shelter. Working closely with an editor is a gift, especially a great one. Any story gets better under the direction of an experienced editor. It's a painful process, as the editor inevitably makes cuts and says it's not good enough, but such moments are a test for the writer to determine whether the work itself has improved from the changes or not. My story sure has improved from the first stab at a draft. It's not a book. It's a feature story, and I'm still shopping it. If I didn't have to pay the other journalists who helped with the story, I'd probably just run it in my blog.

But everything happens for a reason, and I hope to find a home for it soon.

The deadline for my finished story was last Friday. Since then, I've been putting together photos and captions. The photo above is what it looks like: Two volunteers giving a stray dog a bath. I wanted a photo of the dog shaking and the volunteers ducking out of the way of the spray, but this simple framed photo I ended up liking best.

Unclaimed Position

Yesterday we served coffee and oatmeal and hard-boiled eggs while security guards hired by the business association took photos of the homeless in line. They’ve done this regularly since the police and county health inspectors tried chasing the food servers away earlier in the year.

How about the position of the homeless in downtown L.A.: Being photographed in order to receive a free breakfast.

Afterward, my friends and I attended a burial ceremony to commemorate the year’s unclaimed bodies in the city.

There’s a reasonable chance some of those bodies ate food prepared by my friends.


Here's the latest on the breakfast line.

The Step-Down Room

The step-down room on the second floor was added to the Victorian in the 1940s. It is the most popular bedroom in the house, with good reason, beginning with the four steps leading from door to floor. 

Sunken rooms are fun, especially in a hippie house where everyone lives in voluntary poverty.

When my friends began occupying the Victorian in 1978, they used the step-down room to put together editions of their radical newspaper. The newspaper’s overflowing archives and parties have since been moved to the basement of the back house, so that the step-down room has passed from occupant to occupant, and I mean couple to couple.

Jim and Joyce lived in the step-down room 20 years ago. Now they live in Long Beach. Jim still enjoys driving up and answering the phone at the house on Saturdays, while everyone works at the soup kitchen.

The ceiling in the step-down room was painted a few years ago by a couple who fell in love after meeting here. After they moved out, Kurt and Sybilla moved in for a year.

Now the step-down room happens to be my girlfriend’s room.

Last night I fell asleep staring at the ceiling and listening to the sound of helicopter blades churning over Occupy L.A. Five members of this community were present at the eviction. Four were arrested.

I’m so grateful there was no serious violence, despite the local newscast repeatedly and unequivocally stating beforehand that 15 to 30 “bad apples” among the protestors were going to become violent with the police and the police will have to respond.

Don’t you just love it when reporters tell you the story before it ever happens.

Of all the garbage the local newscast dished out, my favorite was a demonstrator grabbing the microphone of an on-scene reporter and criticizing the mainstream media for showing images of people with gas masks ready instead of interviewing school teachers planning to be arrested. The station cut away to another reporter on the scene showing protestors with gas masks ready.

This morning, I flew to Cleveland to complete the data analysis for my animal shelter story. I'm really looking forward to sharing it here later this month.

Issues of fairness and justice have been on my mind, and how these sorts of stories are told. I find myself thinking about the future of this world plenty lately. 

But mostly I just like hanging out in the step-down room.

Enough Food For All

For Thanksgiving 80 people showed up. Forty were invited. It usually works the other way. Half as many as invited show up.

I washed a total of four plates and spent the afternoon playing croquet on the lawn with our guests.

I don’t get the alone time I’d like to have here in order to write, and this past week was especially challenging with the holiday.

But that’s the world. I’m thankful for a roof over my head and for being able to swing a mallet while the cleanup was done without me.

Clothesline

Kids from the neighborhood occasionally crawled up the hill at night and stole jeans off the clothesline. That happened in the 70s and 80s and even 90s, before this neck of East L.A. gentrified. Now many of the kids in the neighborhood wear nicer jeans than the hippies and anarchists who live here, and a pair hasn’t been stolen off the line in years.  

One washing machine spins the load here and no dryer. There is no shortage of clothespins, so long as side-by-side items share a single pin. Dish towels and general cleaning rags from the soup kitchen are washed and hung before personal laundry, which is how it usually works.

Pictured above is Catherine Morris. She has been to jail more than 40 times over the past 40 years in protest of various injustices, from the latest war to the consistent treatment of homeless folks.

So it’s a kick to know these people who have been doing civil disobedience for a long time, especially when we load up the pick up after working a full day in the soup kitchen and head out to feed everybody at Occupy L.A. Today they got ice cream. 

Staircase

Working and living here and working on my draft of my animal shelter non-fiction narrative has consumed a lot of my fire lately. But I chased some light in the stairwell this afternoon after my nap in the closet and wanted to share. Looking forward to reading blogs this week.

I plan to add a couple more photos of the staircase over the next couple of days. Ten minutes of light wasn't enough to do justice.

Yesterday

Got up at six. Had tea and toast. At the soup kitchen, we swept the outside seating area by 7. By 7:20, I was eating a pancake the cook whipped up for the early morning help. I made salad dressing for 1,200 people. I forgot to mix four garlic heads into half the batch, but it all worked out because the cook needed to get the pasta going quick and when he found out what I had left in the blender he was thrilled. While we served food, I tossed tomatoes in the salad and buttered bagels and opened donated bags of pasta, the sample size. 

Got home at 1:15 p.m. The week’s community meeting began at 2. It was noted that an unusually large amount of food was served for the first day of the month, which is when people who live on checks usually receive their checks. They don’t visit soup kitchens until their money runs out later in the month.

I made dinner. It consisted largely of leftovers from an acclaimed Monday meal. I’m lucky that way. On my very first “house day” in 2006 a friend of the community’s dropped off an entire rib dinner for forty. There were twenty in the house at the time, but we put it all away. I accepted credit for the rib dinner as I did the leftover buffet, though little was forthcoming. After dinner, five people performed a Gregorian chant after the cat was removed from the room. The cat knocked over a photo of Cesar Chavez on the top-most tier of the Day of the Dead altar in order to sleep. Luckily, there are many pictures of Cesar in the house. Also lucky that someone snapped a photo before Star was evicted. 

Before I locked up the house at 10 p.m., I forgot to fetch the 10-gallon pots from the garage and fill them with water on the stove so the early risers could fire up the burners for whichever anarchist or hippie happened to be making coffee and oatmeal in the morning. I fell asleep in the closet to thoughts of sugar plums and having the entire afternoon free today to write in my blog.

The Closet

My room is the closet. I've lived with my hippie friends three times, and I've stayed in a variety of rooms, but never the closet. I've heard tales of watching the hummingbirds come to the feeder outside the window and other enjoyable experiences, like napping, in the tiniest of rooms. The closet is the first room on the left at the top of the staircase. It was originally the bathtub and shower portion of the third-floor bathroom. Then somehow cement fell down the drain, and the tub no longer worked. A community member at the time, John, remodeled it into a nook of a room with a slim loft bed. This was about 1980. John didn't sleep in the room. It was more of a showcase piece. People just started living in it. These days beneath the loft is a dresser and a built-in trunk with a trap door that John originally fashioned to be a desk with a swinging tabletop. The space beneath the loft has undergone many transformations. The room itself attracts much in the way of decoration. Sam hung the bird feeder outside the window a few years ago. Sybilla painted the walls, floor and door a couple years ago. Before I moved into the closet this week, Mitchell was living here. Someone will stay here after me.

I plan to live in the commune through the end of the year. I'm grateful for what is my fourth stay here since 2006. I am diligently working on my animal shelter story and expect it to publish in December. I will keep you posted. I'm looking forward to talking more about putting it together. Meantime, I may write a little about this alternative lifestyle I will be participating in for the next couple months. And the house we all live in.

Peace Plan

The official decree says we aren’t supposed to hold hands. The newspaper of record says it’s an act of treason to smile at each other. The politician announces that we are not allowed to assemble in public if we plan to do so for longer than ten minutes.

My flower power queen, I want to climb the nearest garbage truck and sing about us. I want to croon it to the haters doing their best to disguise their fear. I want to drape my arms over the redcoats and chalk pink hearts on their shields.

Experiencing the basic principle of this world is a tradition: You do what the man with the gun says.

The expectations dwarf me. The grand plans might wash us away. I was born under a purple moon and honestly, no one really wants to see us together. But I’ll go anywhere you lead me, no matter which world, no matter which brand of gun.


For dVerse Open Link Nite.

Mr. Slow Learner

I have learned something worth learning.

Sure, I know how to touch your body a thousand different ways.

But it’s love that brightens the sky.

And making you happy is the greatest turn-on of all.

The Cave

I lie wounded in this cave. Deeper, something sleeps. Soon it will smell blood and come alive.

I won’t have to wait long. My head wound gapes wider each time I pull myself out of my acid rain and into this cave.

When I began evicting monsters from my past, I foolishly thought the project was all finished after a cleansing. Now I know the spirits own the catacombs of a damaged mind.

My night demon is coming awake. He is so big and beautiful. And fast. I feel myself smile fully for the first time since I last held such hope. Of course I will scream because I am a man. I can only dream he puts me away this time, and the earth tastes me in my entirety.

Franklin's Wolf

I read an amazing book, The Wolf in the Parlor. It’s non-fiction and written by Jon Franklin, a renown science writer and talented storyteller. In fact, when Franklin worked as a newspaper science reporter, the Pulitzer committee created a category so Franklin could win the prize in the early 70s because he so clearly deserved to.

The Wolf in the Parlor looks at the probability that early humans and wolves evolved together to become modern man and the dog.

Where we come from is one of the most fascinating and important questions we can entertain, I believe. Even a cursory review of the evolutionary trail brings us in touch with the enormous length of time as well as physical pain it took for us to get here, and how we have occupied the top dog position on this planet so very briefly.

If you are a dog lover, you’ll definitely enjoy the book. But even if you are not, the book provides historical insight on who we are because of where we come from. I highly recommend The Wolf in the Parlor.

Franklin also wrote one of the best books on writing I ever read, Writing for Story, but that's another post and another plug:)

Between picking up some work last week and going to a wedding in Chicago over the weekend, I detached here. But I'm very much looking forward to reading everyone's blogs and getting inspired to write creatively.

Did You Check The Oil?

The old Chevy van squeaked on ancient springs so that heads and even torsos at bus stops a quarter of a mile away turned to see. There were small dents and scratches, evidence that it was a working van, nothing more. A window was missing for a while. The button on the back door was missing permanently and short thumbs had trouble opening it. The back doors were full of bumper stickers of the far left wing variety. On the sides written in large letters: ‘Money for Human Needs, Not War.’

The steel floor between the bench seats was stained with years and years of spilled coffee from cups held by lazy morning hands during bumpy rides. That’s not to ignore the color contributed by the tea stains and juice stains and oatmeal, raison ruptures, and general grime, it’s just to say that coffee appeared to be the dominant stain.

Over the course of forty years, many different donated vehicles have been used to shuttle these hippie friends of mine between their commune and the soup kitchen they run a few miles away. The blue van served that purpose faithfully for ten years before dying completely.


For dVerse poetry pub's call for bumper sticker inspiration.


If you'd like read more about my hippie friends and I, here's a story from earlier in the year.

Out of Silliness

I am a silly dreamer.

I dream of leaving no debt to our children and grandchildren.

I dream of ending wars most people oppose.

I dream of a very simple and fair taxation system.

I dream of people witnessing an in-depth discussion of these issues by knowledgeable people across the political spectrum.

Among the silliest of dreamers, I tell you.

I don’t plan to write more about this. I want to return to more fun, creative writing. World events get to me sometimes. If you don’t agree with where I’m coming from these last couple posts, I’m extra thankful because how we treat each other is how the world goes. 

From the Heart

My heart and mind is with everyone involved in the Occupy Wall Street protests, from L.A. to Chicago to New York. The love and loyalty of the sun and moon to all who recognize that our political system is broken and all who oppose the continued indebting of our children and grandchildren.

Those who make their voices heard and challenge authority will predictably be mocked by the servants of power.

It is a grand tradition in this world.

Slipped Out

When the shadows grow so dark and night appears to have conquered the land, I genuflect and kiss the claw of the dark master. I’m very reliable that way. Put a little pressure on me and I powder like ash.

A little friction lets out so much blood because I celebrate the cuts. I salt them and stew.

You are a peppermint cupcake in my throat, but don’t look for me tonight.

I’m tonguing someone else.

Breaking and Entering

There is a hole in the ceiling of the universe that leads to ancient waters.

There is a crack in the floor that leads to ancient fire.

Within, I hold something ancient, too. It is guarded by illusion no burglar can master.

For I have tried, and I am considered skilled.

We may never know the reason for the water in the sky or the fire in the ground.

All I know is you broke me open.

Thief in the night.


For dVerse Open Link Night and Gooseberry Garden's call for Love and Loss.

Feed

I have a problem with will power, which means a bite at night threatens my life.

I scratch and tear until the flesh rips away.

So be careful about poking me in my soft spot.

I might paw at you way past the point of drawing blood.

By Then I'll Be Hungry

I’m serving blueberry daydreams with cherry sky pies.

Let’s get naked for a few hours and have a very productive late afternoon.

When the sun was born, God passed her around for all of us to hold. She glowed brighter with each of our kisses until she was just plain out of control on fire with our love.

I tell you this because I am in free fall orbit, and it’s not nearly dinnertime.



For the mythological Gooseberry Garden and Poetry Jam's question about Aphrodite's Jam.

Friendly Universe, Fallen World: The 5-Course Dream and a Chocolate Shake

Used to be, men with power could kill hundreds of thousands. Today, men in power could kill hundreds of millions. 

And they are headed for it. To deny this is to deny an obvious cycle of history.

The men with their hand on the switch of power aren’t bad. They are just diseased. They slave for masters with no faces, masters that cannot survive outside the shadows.

In a situation like this, it's possible somebody might say something to anger the men at the top so much that they remove their hands from the switches of power in order to strangle the outspoken. If that happens, I propose we take action.

I propose we hug and kiss them, hug them very tight and kiss their faces as if they are our own brothers and sons, because they are. Love them for the burden they have carried for so long, for those they have marginalized and murdered because they felt they had no choice. Love them for their own lives that have been sucked away by their dark masters.

Take them into our circle of family and friends forever.

Disassemble the switches.

And shine light in the shadows forever.


For dVerse Open Link Nite.

Positioning the Pack

The pack moves. The ground says. If you see one of us, ten hide in the green.

We adjust on the move.

We follow he who is worthy. We bring food to our weak. We move slowly for our injured. Our young work only when they have grown completely.

We mate for life with one partner.

We take down the largest animals of the land, but only what we need.

Our lives are man’s aspirations.

I know where you come from. I have seen your beginnings. I was a part of it.

Look at me. Look into my eternal eyes and know it is true.

I have seen your end too.


Submitted for dVerse repetition and the Big Bad Wolf Exercise.

The Wine Cellar

Our grandfathers blended hardy grapes with the strong taste of working under the sun for decades.

Our grandmothers brought together the flavor of childhood friendship with grapes grown alongside the alley.

Somewhere in this musty basement is a bottle with first crushes married to the sweetest grapes of the season.

Somewhere is a bottle holding the enjoyment of grandchildren with the last harvest of the year.

The bottles had been the least expensive wine at the grocery store, bought for the glass, emptied over dinners because nothing goes to waste, sanitized, and stacked under the stairs until the grapes ripened.

A new shade of life behind original labels. 

In the ancestral wine cellar, dust covers the racks of treasures.

They are for another age to open, and for dinner tonight.

We are still corking.

Cracked My Back

Nobody knows how we evolved. We used to be apes. This appears to be the history. At some point we stood up straight. How that was accomplished we don’t know. We have some good theories.

And I’d like to add mine to the mix. Put it this way:

I found myself standing up straighter than ever the day it went to the next level between us.


For dVerse Open Link Nite.

Rise Onto Me

I buried you under so much earth the mountains slipped. 

The soil was salted. I sealed your grave with a dark spell, and chilled the entire neck of woods.

I sent memories of you down the river.

The birds left. The sky surrendered. This entire corner of the world was forgotten.

And I moved on. I took love on the other side of the mountains, but it ended in a mad season.

Now I am in another.

You are exactly where I left you, as cozy as could be. Only now your rotted face perfectly matches my pain. Everything happens for a reason, my love, and now we can finally be together.

This forest tomb becomes our nest.

I always knew I’d raise you from the dead.

And enjoy you.


For Poetry Picnic at Gooseberry Island.

Late Summer Madness

Dark clouds arrived over my high ground, filtering sunlight and growing shadows over the land.

The shadows kissed the faces of the innocent. 

The hidden histories were recited. I sculpted them into the clouds. Then I leaked darkness into the sky and swirled a wish.

I wished for man to feel the shortening of days.

How long my mad season will last I do not know. The dark clouds obey the Wind. The Wind will do nothing except anything you say.

Your September forecast: Fall in my fields and forget your worries.

For dVerse Poetry Pub.

Singing with the Spirits

One tree is special. One tree’s roots run deeper and branches reach higher than any other. Fire does not work beneath this tree.

In the open, forest animals gather as we toast the sparks in the darkening sky, as we sing to the smoke and call to the spirits with dancing.

The old owl is out. The tall grass sways. A mole insists on tickling my ankle. The wolf king is pleased to meet your big cats. The fireflies are kissing your face as if they just met you. 

The moon, resting in the high branches, has even joined us.

I know you don’t like big parties, but I just couldn’t help inviting all my friends. I haven’t seen them in so long. Tonight is a celebration of life, and of returning to life now that you are in mine.

Beyond the Shoreline Branches

Within my forest the light rain whispers, the moss covers the ground and the leaves swing in the breeze like bells.

I am the deepest part of the woods, with ancient trees that rival mountains, their high branches thick as redwoods.

One path leads here. Our ancestors ferried from one shore to another within me to secure safe passage.

Perhaps I am the king of the forest. Or maybe I’m just a boy who couldn’t find his way out. Either way, I built the hidden stairs and the first city in the trees.

When a spell was cast on me, I lived as a refugee in my own land, searching but never finding the stairs again.

Trust me this deep in the forest.

The spell is breaking with every step.

Come closer.

For dVerse Open Link Nite.

Breach in the Moonlight

No one enters this deep into the forest. No one passes through my perimeter of wolves.

Yet the land speaks of new feet moving across the glen. The birds report news of a stranger in the deep.

I have been cut off for eons. I live in the high branches and the world under the tree. I have clear agreements with the great tribe of wolves. This can mean only one thing.

Love has found me.


Submitted for the Big Bad Wolf Exercise.  

Forest Fawn

I met you under a secret sky. The moon winked. The bullfrogs saw it. Jane and Mike went skinny dipping in the pond. The cattails were laughing.

It all happened while you danced.

You had grass stains on your knees and you were saluting the moon. You blew kisses in the air that cooled the breeze. You polished the faces of the prophets in the cliff wall.

You moved aside treetops to travel. You threw keys to the caged in the cities.

You were Night’s favorite daughter.

Your big cats found me behind a tree. I introduced myself to you. We did imitations of each other, and imitations of the imitations.

We caked ourselves in shore mud. The sky breathed down on us. Jane and Mike splashed in the dark water. The stars were laughing.

The moon winked. We had one night together.


For Poetry Jam's call for hallucinative work.

Condiments

For you, I mixed ketchup with red wine and stirred up a sauce that dropped a food critic to one knee. I found relish in the fridge and whipped up a sweet pickle ice cream you inhaled after your first tentative lick.

I crusted a beautiful filet of fish with crumbled Fritos.

I pickled leftover watermelon rind and baked Fruit Loop cupcakes that ended up on the menu at some fancy joint in New York.

I chilled honey-minted ice tea after an afternoon sunning.

I steeped the risotto in cheddar cheese, only because there were no strawberries.

I enjoy rummaging through society’s dustbin for treasures that need polishing, like working out of your mostly empty fridge.

You whip up the whimsical in me.

Uninvited Guests

I see you’re as popular as ever, which I suppose means everything is right with the universe. The tomato reddens, the moon rises, the Cubs stink and you’re leading a crowd of star-crossed men everywhere they want to go.

That’s so typical of you.

When the bottle broke, you made stained glass. And for this green chain of hope around your neck, the dawn has prepared breakfast in bed for you.

The air wants to carry you, and the sky has already leaned over and tapped you on the shoulder. The red fox is bringing you tea. The blue moon wants a rematch at hearts after you won last time.

Jesus is at the front door hoping for a bite to eat. Buddha is in the kitchen rummaging through your junk food.

I knew when we hooked up a few million years ago I’d have to share you, so I have to remind myself that sooner or later we will have each other to ourselves once again. Sooner or later the dusk and the star god will stop making plays for you and stop referring to me as the bellboy.

Sooner or later, the entire cast of characters will, satisfied or unsatisfied, go about their merry business, whatever it happens to be these days.


For open link night at dVerse.

Of the Wild

And so here we are, at the comical downfall of yet another great imperial power.

My dear, the gods could place us underground among dirt balls and bad water and I would weep with gratitude to touch your face in the dark. I do not need to live as a big cat smelling your musk in my late summer mane to get high.

I get high by your side in any skin suit.

Twelve thousand years ago we watched the humans and wolves come together. Then we ambled over the cracked earth in our caravan. We had our own pride, our own healing tongues, the sun and each other.

We had no words, only the holy language of understanding everything was ours with each other, and nothing by ourselves in the dark.

I am awake while you rest. I have scratched promises into the sky and marked this patch of earth with gouges, tonight and thousands of years ago. I did this for us and all who come after.

This clearing is ours because we are here.

My home is where you rub up against me.


Posted to Poetry Picnic on Gooseberry Island.

The Dark Season Rolls Over

Autumn dreamed of browning the tall grass and yellowing the leaves, cooling the stream waters and turning loose the ghosts from the ground, killing the flowers and shortening the days.

Dawn and Dusk served the seasons, and Autumn released the Halloween demons through more darkness.

Autumn sent life scurrying underground and the spirits spilling over the land. Autumn opened the underworld as well as the darkness.

Autumn’s touch meant death, but he strung the paper jewels together, lit the hills on fire and toasted the vines. He skimmed the pink sky and frosted the mornings. 

Autumn braided the fine branches of the tree of life.

Autumn made beautiful things, and only Summer saw this. Summer enjoyed Autumn's love for seeing this.

Every year Autumn's greatest work of art was killing his love for Summer into all the fall colors.

Autumn wanted to cover Summer’s meadow in maple leaves and breathe on the back of her flowered ear. 

Autumn rolled over and dreamt of late Summer.


This is the tenth part of The Seasons. Here's the beginning.

Open

Pull a pail of sparkles from the stone well. Shave crème from the blue sky. The ocean is reaching out for you.

Climb the eternal tree at dawn. Share secrets with the fish in the deep. Finish a work of art sitting on the easel for decades.

Kiss the face of a goddess. Walk on Spanish tiles in bare feet. Hear me whisper from across the world.

For so many lifetimes, since the father of creation rubbed us together from clumps of clay, we have been opening our baby eyes.

Some of us unfold slowly to the light. Some of us need time to believe it's true.

We are allowed to exist.

As we are.