Endings and beginnings

The essence of my being is founded on the breath. What my senses hold as truths, the breath reveals as deceits.

I look upon my body and see its boundaries, definitions and myriad functions. Parts with names, one doing things other parts cannot. I taste saltiness and sweetness on different parts of my tongue. I feel the clothing on my skin but not on my kidney. My voice sings but my toes do not.

I protect my body because it is mine. I feed it, rest it and let it play. I take it to places I believe are safe for it. I give only nourishment that will produce longevity. Its youthful appearance, abundance of energy, and generally happy temperament are validations for my choices.

All of the above say, "This body is mine. I make choices for it."

What shatters the sanctity of these long held beliefs, is the silent simplicity of the breath.

The breath comes from the everywhere of nowhere. For the briefest moment it mingles, partakes, gives to a body called a Marie and then, exits out into the same space wherefrom it came. A repetition of how many of this has gone on and yet not a single one can be identified as mine. How? If it's always leaving me, how can I call it mine?

Oxygen comes from plants but, which plant (or plants) gave me my last breath and which plant (or plants) have I nourished with my exhalation? I cannot choose when and which plant to get my breath from and which ones to give my exhalation to. If I cannot identify and delineate where which came from and to which I'm giving back to with my breath, then neither can I truly identify where I end and where I begin.

Since my breath is not mine, then anything attached to it isn't mine either: life, family, possessions, country, beliefs. All my fears, emotions, insecurities, dreams and virtues that I deny, uphold and identify, are instinctive sensory by-products of the breath....They are but rainbows in the sky on a rainy summer day; the personalization fades in the light of awareness.

At the heart of all this is this --

I am breath.

I am nameless and formless....

The Ledger

On good days, I am comforted with a pacified thought: one day I'll know what I really want to be when I grow up and I shall never again touch financial statements, debits and credits, budgets. In difficult periods when the mundaneness chokes my innate artistic expression: I am a whore to the paycheck and benefits. This was the spectrum of my 9-5. For 25 years.


Here is a strange awakening: A writer is an accountant. The writer accounts for his imaginations in words. The accountant is a writer who uses numbers to present what has transpired

I bring the accounting to my written word; to straighten the accounts of my life's beliefs of what life is, of my warped perceptions of humanity's place in it and the misunderstanding of what my role is in the midst of it.

I was born blue. Breeched and an umbilical cord coiled three times around my neck, 21 hours of labor and with forceps and midwife, out I finally came. The first trauma is from birth, it is said. Unacknowledged it remains unhealed; it becomes a subconscious template for life's decisions and motivations.

The ferocity of my father's love for his children was expressed in over protection. He instilled fear of the world and its dangers with the sincerest of intentions. Education, listening to the news, avoiding less than the best company of men and women, and most of all, listening to his advice are what we, his children, must have in order to be truly safe.

He and my mother waited outside in the car for four hours while I, dateless, boyfriendless, attempted to be a part of the prom. A few weeks after my engagement, my father, in a tone of sarcasm borne out of frustration and fear for my well being said, "I sent my daughter to college and here she is about to suffer poverty in marriage. She has chosen to marry someone with no college degree." Fifteen years later, upon meeting a man I fell in love with, but again lacking a degree, he threatened to never speak to me again unless I desisted this most monumental mistake of my life (thus far).

Marriage gave me the much longed desire to finally find my own safety measures against the world. Even at ten years old, I knew Catholicism was not for me. It didn't make me feel safe from damnation; its dogma and what it takes to reach heaven seized my child mind and put me into panic attacks which no one knew of. My chosen religion would make all this go away. Permanently.

With tremendous relief (and even deep happiness), within three years of the search, here was Hinduism and a Guru. A Self-Realized being in human embodiment loves me, saves me, the world, and every single human being on the planet. I can finally relax. Now, all I need do are mantras, selfless service, live a righteous, pious life and I am freed from harm and from the curse of having to return, in human form {or any kind of form!) into this hell house of a world.

I despised the news. All news media are but shallow and made up demagoguery; the worst is not publicly shared. I however searched, read (devoured) only books upon books of conspiracy theory threads, the dark sinister machinations behind the scenes of the New World Order, Big Pharma, and all of this type of ilk. This is the truer evil my father knows nothing of but I, feeling internally superior to his antiquated news gathering, am protected because of my knowledge.

But after all that, something shifted.

Perhaps it is to the credit of finally loving unequivocally, where there is effortlessly no terrain for the mind. It is only one amorphous, undefined, borderless, unpredictable uncertainty. And in this human love, my myopic lenses of the world became painful to look into.

My belief in the Oneness and sacredness of life is hypocritical of my belief in wanting protection in the arms of the Guru and religion, of salvation and damnation. The strength of my belief in the reality and sanctity of my personal self perpetuates the perversion of the dogmas, of the merit of possessions, of the value of judgments. And with all these, the consequential anguished loneliness of life.

If I do not protect my foot from my hand, or my eye from lips; if I do not analyze and seek to reform or transform the particular way my heart beats or voice sounds; if do not have a need to comprehend how and what the bad bacteria are in my body which nourishes it in its own way then, so must I take the mystery, malevolence and magnificence of humanity in toto.

Love's true accounting makes whole the writer's imaginings.

First Aid

I am a writer.

It is very strange. How can something that is extremely self-evident be so self-denied?

In my teen years of rebellion, emotional morass of confusion and depression, isolation and resentment I wrote letters to my mother. What I could not say in person the pen and paper gave me voice to. She never responded nor referred to these once received. I also never got a beating or was punished for the contents that were expressed in them. That may be the first sweetness of this calling.

My very first public poem was in my junior year in high school. Public because I had someone else read it. I came into class and offered my friend Grace if she wanted to read it. A few layers of surprise in this act revealed itself; that I would share it, she would say yes, and finally, with eyes welled with tears upon finishing it, she says, "Can I keep it?" I laughed and said, "Of course!"

When I read somewhere that journaling is great practice, I reacted as though I discovered the wheel. It came at the right time, my impending nuptials. A father who doesn't think your choice of spouse is good enough; future-in-laws who want to spend money on a wedding when you'd rather elope; budgeting with a fiancé that isn't a believer in budgeting; Molotov cocktail for a disastrous celebration. I wrote like a fiend. Peace prevailed to the end.

It was the year of the most acrimonious union-management bargaining at work. The email exchanges between the parties read professionally. The tone was all but. After weeks of reading the volleys of accusations and mistrust, it broke me. I jumped in the fray and wrote from a desperate need of sanity in the space. The union member who had been taking the lead on this particular battle, after a couple more much needed clarification points finally took place, put his bullets away. On the side he wrote praising my writing and said I ought to do it more.

One September, after 12 years of marriage, I wrote my husband. In one page and five short paragraphs, I told him I wanted a divorce. The document was the finality I needed to feel the reality of what I had long decided. In the weeks that followed, I penned a letter to his aunt, quite dear to me in many ways, revealing what was underneath of what seemingly was a perfect marriage in everyone's eyes. All I remember from long and loving response: Keep writing. You're good at it.

Emotions are the fires that burn me into submission to write. As a Libra rising, Aquarius Sun, emotions are messy, ugly, undesirable. I'd rather the spiritual ascetics of an even and balanced equanimity to all of life. That's the ideal. Reality is this.

How to fall safely

In a moment of crisis the heart is pounding a mile a minute, the mind is hammering a million thoughts with scenarios after scenarios that play out one after another and, all along, the body is rigid with fear, barely taking a breath.

To be able to be with a crisis, wikihow's tips on how to break a fall are a great guide:
1- keep your head up
2- avoid putting your palms on the ground to catch yourself
3- breathe out
4- fold your body like an accordion
5- if falling from a height, roll as you hit the ground
6- practice falling on soft surface when you aren't actually falling


It was rush hour on 287, 15 miles per hour kind of traffic. Cellphone rang. I picked up. Two minutes into the call, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a police car to my right. The guilty man's flashed thought is of course, "Damn it! Did he see me??" In the next half of that split second, the cop's eyes and mine met. As I looked away and drove past him a bit, his car went from being in the next lane nearly parallel to mine to right behind me.

1- Keep your head up
Seeing this, I moved from the middle lane onto the right most. He followed. Yeah, he's pulling me over. I signaled and got on the shoulder. I didn't bother giving him the chance to turn his lights and siren on.

This is a very, very bad situation. Nightmare, actually. This is my parents' truck. My car's starter is flaking, ready to die. Game plan: use their truck for two weeks till my brother can come and fix it. Plenty of time to do it. That was 6 months ago.

What's worst? The new registration is M.I.A. (parents' retired half way around the world, dunno where it is). That expired 5 months ago. This means the inspection is overdue. Five months ago. Finally, the coup de grace - cellphone usage while driving. In New Jersey.

Every muscle of my body was taut, waiting for the police officer to come to my window. This is always a special kind of hell. Interminable. What will I say? What will he? God, I should have tried to resolve the registration before this! I can't even imagine ALL the violations that'll be written on this ticket when he's done. And my premium! That'll jump in the next billing. That should be a nasty number.

My mind-panic is now completely ratcheted.

2- Avoid putting your hands on the ground to catch yourself
I took a moment to get present to my breathing. At first, I couldn't. Then, soon as I brought my attention to it, I felt a shallow, chest constricted kind of breathing. I then took a very deep, conscious breath and release. Followed it by another deep one, slower this time.

I leaned myself back into my seat and took my attention from the chaos going on my head. Still no officer. I gave up thinking because it felt pointless. I took more deep breaths as I waited and I let my senses capture the near perfect summer afternoon.

"License, registration and insurance card, please. Do you know why I pulled you over?" the soft spoken officer asked me. I told him, that I didn't know (I really didn't know but I did have an assumption). He said, "Cell phone usage while driving" I meekly admitted, "I had just picked it up, officer." He nodded and then proceeded back to his car telling me to wait.

Wait agony number 2 times 2.

Will he give me a break? If he doesn't, do I try to ask him to give me a second chance re the cellphone use? What can I say that might help me reduce my violations? Here we go: my mental dog chasing its tail.

3- Breathe out
I took my attention to my body again. Did a breath check. I'm barely breathing again. I go back to putting all my attention into taking one, very deep breath. There are thoughts swirling, seducing me to return my attention back into analyzing, planning and mentally yammering about what's happening.

As I took one deep breath after another, with great effort, I focused on my heart chakra and found myself breathing into it.

4- Fold your body like an accordion
Then, something I've never experienced before. As I was keeping all my energy and attention in my heart I felt a distinct awareness of the officer's heart chakra. It's as though the two were talking with each other. I had no idea what was being said or happening.

5- If falling from a height, roll as you hit the ground
It felt strange to feel this and I, for the tiniest fraction of a millisecond, was thinking of manipulating it for a desired result. I didn't. I stayed out of my head.

The police officer returns and peeks his head by the passenger window, "I'm only going to give you a moving ticket. It's $54. I'm not going to give you cellphone usage. That's $254 and 4 points on your insurance. You didn't lie to me about using your cellphone so this is what I'm doing for you. I've been doing this all day and people lie to me. You told me the truth and so this how I'm going to take care of you."

My eyes welled up in tears. I gave him a very sobered, quiet thank you officer. I was so moved and surprised that it's all I could say.

Lotus

The clouds dotted the horizon.

The wind pulled on them like a child's fingers does to cotton candy on a stick. I was transfixed at the view. That's me, I realized -- fleeting, random, short lived. It appears out of nowhere and disappears completely.

Up until recently, I was obsessed. I needed to know the meaning of my life, what I am meant to do. It was quite a project; constantly on the look out on how and where to find reputable sources and how to get as many of them as possible. I studied astrology, akashic reading, numerology and face reading, to name a few. I had two professional astrologers map out my chart.

This root of this life-long drive began when I was very young.

At night, when everyone was asleep and I couldn't, my thoughts would automatically drift to wondering what happens when I die. As I thought about all the child pleasures I'd no longer experience, the faces I would no longer have, my 6 year old self would go into a full blown panic attack. I was drowning...but on land.

It's clear things seem to have changed.

"As above, so below. As within, so without."

The stuff clouds are made of, my body is made of.

The leaves in a tree is made just like me - bits of earth, of air, of sunshine and rain, of fire.

Wherever a leaf comes from before it becomes a leaf, it returns to.

My life, this life, this name is no different. It is but a leaf. It goes through a season of life then leaves. There is nothing to think about nor plan for. There is no necessity for knowledge.

Trusting my way of being at all times, is NOT something a book can nor should provide.

I begin to live trusting the uncertainty and the unknown.

Do Not Resuscitate (DNR)

I don't want to ever pray again. Prayers are vaccine and amulet. They are done to repel or attract a thing, a someone, an event or a desired result.

Her voice was panicked, desperate. She said she feared for his safety. He has abandoned his family and refuses any kind of contact in order to be with a young woman who, upon asking around, has a reputation a mile long and lives in the worst neighborhood. She implored that I pray the novena with her so that he returns safe (and soon) back to our parents.

That was the pivotal moment -- I said no. To pray for his return is to wish against where he wants to be and how he wants to be.

She was in disbelief at what she heard. A tone laced with a hint of accusation in it, she asked, "Even if your elderly parents are suffering from anxiety and their health is being affected by his absence??". I responded with a slow and quiet breath. The pause was intended to emphasize my answer and, without any attached emotion I said, "Yes, even if our parents' health are suffering as a consequence."

Once, I lived through her hell. It was a helpless fear-desperation paired with the haunting what-if's scenes running amok in my head. As the wretched sobs racked through my body, there I was on my knees in grief looking for a life line. Through tear-blurred vision, I fumbled for a name and a number to call on my cellphone. It was surreal. I heard myself ask for something I've never asked anyone for in my whole life: to pray for something for me.

My vulnerability undressed me to myself; a vulnerability that is the bitter fruit in the belief of a personal self. And prayers, they only fortified the illusory ego-made boundary.

Prayers want anything other than what is. It is meant to exorcize the looming uncertainty and sedative for every present pain.

But then, I see, this thing I call me, having a name and an address, is really mostly ocean mixed with earth. This 75%-30% combination, bi-pedal in shape is called human. It's still mostly water.

And this brings me to...

Emotions are the waves on the ocean of my being. Emotions appear and disappear with the same constancy that waves do on the surface of the sea.

I watch, not judge, not measure, nor wish to change the undulations of anger, doubt and desires as they roll in...and out on the shores of my daily life.

I will no longer inoculate myself from feelings of inadequacy and powerlessness.

To pray is to hold my heart hostage against myself.

Let me be a silent surrendering to All, including what terrifies and depresses.

I free fall untethered to any deity except for the one ever present within.

The Gift

All fears and desires are sacred. All betrayals are holy.

The wholeness of life divides itself; to taste of itself as sweetness and savoriness to the senses.

The shadows exist in the light of the Sun. The light of Yin born from a dark heart complemented by a light heart within the dark expanse of Yang.

Seasons, the path of the heavenly bodies, the movement of atoms and molecules are eternally balancing one another from one infinitesimal moment to the next, from every life to another.

Nature's wisdom defies and mocks man made concepts of justice and love. To say a man lives like an animal is given as a curse. Yet, a greater curse is man's superstitious and dogmatic belief in shame, guilt and regret.

The hummingbirds take their nests from other birds, intentionally removing (sometimes killing) the young chicks of the original avian resident. Female wolf spiders eat the male after copulation. Mother pigs will, if there are more piglets than there are teats, kill the runt of the litter because its cries make the brood vulnerable to predators.

All that happens is a constant balancing of a zero sum game.

In accounting, it is called double entry bookkeeping -- the debit must equal the credit. Any anything (asset) acquired is equal to the sum of the liability (debt) taken on and owner's equity (ownership).

Food and liquid taken in the body, must and will eventually be eliminated.

Simpler yet, the breath, basic unit of life. The inhale seamlessly, effortlessly cycles into the release in the exhale, one after another, over and over again. The two always matched, evenly, squarely.

This is the law life: every desire is mirrors its fear, every betrayal a loyalty.

A Mother's Love

To love puppies
and sunsets sinking slowly
in an artist's palette sky

These I know how to smile to

For nothing there pushes
or pinches or hurts or
cuts and takes away.

But, I want to love
only love....

So, off I go...
looking....

for darkness and shadows,
hurts and pains, losses and deaths.

Making aloneness and loneliness
my right eye and left

to map and unearth

to drop sink deep,
deep within the depths of no safety,

to bite into the bitterness,
of the desolateness in wanting purpose,
pointlessly, gently snuffed out

in a breath

Can I smile a smile
of embrace and surrender
to this dimension of love in manifest?

Shadows make a butterfly
and a battlefield.