Giving Birth to an Empty Uterus.

Recently I had been having this issue, not a femergency necessarily, but still a feminine issue I needed to get checked out by the Gyno Doc.  I went.  She checked me out and said, well I didn't find anything, but just to be sure, let's do an ultrasound to have a better look at your woman parts.  So I did.  I had never had one before.  The technician put the gelatinous stuff on my lower belly and expertly placed the blunted wand above my nethers.  And Waaa!  there was my uterus on the screen in front of me, and Waaa!  there were my ovaries too.  My uterus was empty.  My ovaries were... eh, oval.

Hi You, its Us!, Uterus and Oval Ovaries sang in chorus as they stared back at me.

They looked okay, the radiant technician noted, nothing alarming here.  Thank the Lord.

I sort of pranced out of the doctor's office glad to have that over, deeply grateful for the good news, and deeply grateful to still have some medical insurance.  As the week proceeded, however, the vision of my empty uterus began to plague me.  Popping up in my thoughts.  A vision in the back of my head.  There is something profound about seeing that at 37 years old.  My feelings and ideas are still inchoate, but there is something really rich and melancholy about it.  I am yet unable to articulate what is going on with me about it.

So I began painting... Uterus and Oval Ovaries are me and I am them.

"Empty Uterus"

So far its called Empty Uterus.  But I'm not done, and maybe it should be called Empty Uterus, Full Life.  I don't know yet.

Women's Healing Prayer.

G

lory be to Thee, O Lord my God!  I beg of Thee by Thy Name through which He Who is Thy Beauty hath been stablished upon the throne of Thy Cause, and by Thy Name through which Thou changest all things, and gatherest together all things, and callest to account all things, and rewardest all things, and preservest all things, and sustainest all things—I beg of Thee to guard this handmaiden who hath fled for refuge to Thee, and hath sought the shelter of Him in Whom Thou Thyself art manifest, and hath put her whole trust and confidence in Thee.

She is sick, O my God, and hath entered beneath the shadow of the Tree of Thy healing; afflicted, and hath fled to the City of Thy protection; diseased, and hath sought the Fountainhead of Thy favors; sorely vexed, and hath hasted to attain the Wellspring of Thy tranquillity; burdened with sin, and hath set her face toward the court of Thy forgiveness.

Attire her, by Thy sovereignty and Thy loving-kindness, O my God and my Beloved, with the raiment of Thy balm and Thy healing, and make her quaff of the cup of Thy mercy and Thy favors.  Protect her, moreover, from every affliction and ailment, from all pain and sickness, and from whatsoever may be abhorrent unto Thee.

Thou, in truth, art immensely exalted above all else except Thyself.  Thou art, verily, the Healer, the All-Sufficing, the Preserver, the Ever-Forgiving, the Most Merciful.

- Bahá’u’lláh

FREE BUNNA FOR EVERYONE!

How's that for an alarming title?

shamelessly stolen from HowtoCookGreatEthiopian.com

BUNNA!  BUNNA!  I screamed it in my head this morning, having realized at 4 am that I totally had no coffee whatsoever to get up and make.  Again.  For the 2nd negligent day in a row.

The title of this blog post is entirely misleading and patently false in its advertisement.  I am not giving coffee to everyone.  Unless, you know, one by one each individual person wants to come to my bohemian hermitage and huddle around my little table and drink coffee with me and tell me their stories.  Then, its free coffee for you!  And you!  And you!

Earlier, I stumbled into the grocery store at 5:30 am searching for a little, cheap tin of coffee.  The only woman working, at the express lane, was an enthusiastic, high energy Black woman who kept saying "MMmmmm Yes, girl!"  which I found super charming.  She was tall with short hair, bright pink lipstick and a radiant smile.  Having inquired as to how she manages to exude such infectious bouyancy at such a wee morning hour and whether she drinks coffee, she emphatically proclaimed "MMmmm, Yes, girl!" and pointed to the tall to-go cup of coffee sitting by the register.  I smiled.  I drove back home like a zombie.

Plopped myself in front of the computer and listened to the blub-blub-gurgle-gurgle of the coffee maker.

Moments thereafter, I sipped on my dark, rich, embarrassingly cheap-no-standards-coffee-for-the-masses and I read about how to stay wild and also the trouble with the snooze button.  

Now, I will do some immigration work before I go pick up my son and go to the Baha'i center.

Happy Sunday.

He's SO LUCKY.

We are all so sick of the word 'privilege' that we could puke for distance at a high velocity and take out the nuclear warheads in Pakistan.  Even anti-racists are sick of that bloody term.

So what I am going to use instead of the word privilege is a far more insidious word.  A word that is the proverbial red-headed stepchild of adoption discourse:

LUCKY.

*pauses to give audience time to recover from collective gasping and shuddering*

My kid is lucky.

OUCH.

Oh yeah.  That is possibly the worst adoption community violation you can make, calling your kid lucky.  I am risking getting ostracized here.  But for a second let's strip away the adoption story.  Just for a smidgen.  Let's pretend my kid is a just a person in the world.  For a tiny moment that will capsize in two seconds time, let's strip away everything about adoption, race, and loss.

Let's just talk about resources.

Holiday Cookie Making!

Our beautiful Tiny Solstice Tree!

My kid goes to Kindergarten in an affluent community in a big, hella diverse city with loads upon loads of cool, cultural resources and with an entrenched, historical, culturally-rich Black and immigrant community.  On top of that, he sleeps in a bedroom that is all his own in two different locations; one where his Dad lives, the other where his Mom lives.  His parents are progressive enough to live a few miles from each other and to passionately share the perspective that they should get along and work towards their kid's best interests.  My kid will start going to Spanish class once a week before his Kindergarten class starts.  After his Kindergarten class, once a week, he will also go to theatre class.  On top of this, my kid goes to Tae Kwon Do twice a week and this Tae Kwon Do is no joke either in terms of expense or value; it is uber pricey, it is wonderful!  At 5 years old, my kid has traveled all over the place.  He has been to Alaska, British Columbia Canada, Cairo Egypt, has visited Ethiopia since being united with his adoptive parents, has traveled all over Texas, has spent over a week on the beach in Florida, has been to New York City several times, upstate New York, Philadelphia, and Seattle. He gets to hang out at his paradisaical grandparent's farm out in the Midwest and help harvest vegetables and feed cows.  Museums?  Galore.  Restaurants?  As if.  Kid activities and events out the wazoo.  My kid gets a flu shot every year.  My kid regularly goes to the doctor AND the dentist.  My kid goes to adoption gatherings.  Let's talk about toys and gadgets, shall we?  At his Dad's he gets to play on the iPad with a much greater frequency than I am comfortable with.  He has a drum set.  A guitar.  A kid's trampoline.  Baseball bats, soccer balls, footballs.  Puzzle sets, plastic toys of every nature you can imagine.  [And the amount of toys he has is actually minimal compared to the amount of toys his peers have, by design.]  Cars, trucks ad infinitum.  I ordered him a train set for Christmas.  We haven't even gotten to BOOKS yet.  By design, this kid has an overwhelming, outrageous, flowing out of every hole in my apartment, amount of children's books on every subject, lofty, superficial, deep, educational, super-hero-ey, you can possibly imagine.  Not to mention, we live three blocks away from the most precious children's library in town that is CHOCK full of gorgeous children's books and educational toys and guest children's entertainers.  That library just had a parade and a celebration with cake and people dressed up like Dr. Suess's cat-in-hat etc.

He has two parents; both of which are lawyers, that really love him and care deeply for him and do everything they can for him.

This kid, as a kid in the world, is one lucky kid.

I don't expect him to appreciate this, or be thankful, or even like it.  (Especially not at this age, not that it wouldn't be nice if someday he appreciated these things in the contextual abstract sense.)

But the luck he has in terms of resources is out of this world.  I did not get a lot of this stuff growing up, and I had a pretty decent childhood.

Last night I was watching this Aileen Wuornos documentary.  Man, what a fucked up childhood.  I felt sorry for her.  Yes, I felt sorry for the men she blasted away, but I felt really sorry for her too.  That is a sad, sad childhood for one person in the world.

Motherhood: Devil in Details.

A few mornings in the past couple of months have had me up early sewing thick star patches on my tiny son's Tae Kwon Do uniform.  They are hard to sew on.  Ironing them on is not an option.  I only get around to sewing them on less occasions than I'd like to; the occasions during which I reduce the small pile of stars collected in a plastic plate.  Mostly, even when I am a tad late or a tad rushed, I take good care of my Mom business.  My son is well-fed (lots of vegetables), he is clean, he is loved, he is learning a lot.  He seems fairly emotionally balanced and happy especially given the upheaval of the past year.  I take him lots of places.

A perfect Mom I am not by any stretch.  I work full-time.  I come home exhausted after battling daily apocalyptic traffic.  A procrastinating grunt, I rush and yell sometimes in order to get my son out the door and to school in the mornings.  I am impatient.  I expect a lot.

But often I can be good.  A decent, affectionate, attentive, present mother.

I sew his stars on.  Not always timely.  His ardent participation in the discipline itself takes priority over the sewing of the stars.  He is at Tae Kwon Do, as required, twice a week.

Sewing on his stars at 6 am in the morning makes me feel like a Mom.

I have this vivid memory of this one heart-rendering moment, among others, when I viscerally felt I embodied Mother.  Last Spring.  I stood on the sidelines of a soccer field watching my son and his pint-sized team mates scrabble, fumble, kick and whine over a jostling soccer ball.  I remember seeing my son look up and scan the sidelines looking for his person.  All the kids had a person there, a person who was intently watching their clumsy beginner athlete moves, a person who was connected to them, a person they knew and trusted, a person who would jump and scream and call their name and clap and send waves of positive energy out into the field to touch upon the heart of the mini zealot chasing the ball.

Amidst all the chaos unfolding on the field, my son stopped, looked over at the sidelines.  His eyes scanned until they found me.  And he smiled!   I think I saw his puffed chest relax a bit.  Once he found me, he sprang into action again and rejoined the organized mess of small feet whacking at an escaping ball.

I felt so proud to be there for him.  Moved to tears that I was his.

Fractures.

"Life, art and emotion are inherently messy. This acceptance of messiness has been my turning point. I now embrace that I have a messy soul, mind and heart. They are filled with joy, and filled with defeat. They bounce between success and failure, tears of happiness and tears of sadness, earth-shaking love and underworld-shivering loneliness. Containing multitudes means not just embracing different facets of the good; it also means accepting the faults and failures. The reason I could not do this before? I could not sit calmly in the mess. I never understood that beauty develops precisely because of, not despite, the fractures we experience...

Among other changes, I want to (re)discover a feeling of fearless love, toward life and toward myself and toward the passion and willingness to be vulnerable and caring that have led to the best things in my life. Somewhere along the line, fear sneaked in, snatched that away, and sabotaged the good. I want it back."  

~ Patrick Linder

Eat a Turkey, Kiss a Goat.

Accept invitations from far-flung, soul friends

Fly north for the winter

Wink at the feathery juggernaut overheard

Camera snuggle with wild abandon

When your heart is a salty pretzel

And your mind occasionally shudders at the mysterious, winding future

A future as fleeting as the present, as precious as the past

Think of splattered bright gold paint on a canvas

How it mimics a dripping ray of brilliant sun

How it materializes a five year old’s wonder

Listen as your leather boots lightly crackle the frosted grass

As you glide across the acreage of a charming property you can’t afford

With your beautiful, dark-skinned lover on your heels, never close enough

Laugh at diminutive ears on a noisy, round-bellied goat

Tilt at the waist

Pucker up


- written by me

Thanksgiving: Lamentations in Ass Major.

Let's get the thankfulness part out of the way lest I come across as an ingrate:  I am thankful for everything in my life.  Blah blah blah.

Actually, this post has little to do with the observance of Thanksgiving.  Wanna decadent feast for thought about Thanksgiving?  Leave and go here.

Oh yes my little thing here is less about the essence of this domestic holiday and more about admonishing the friends and family of couples whom divorce.

A divorce is hard enough as it is on the directly impacted two individuals, and the attendant child(ren) in residence should there be any, without having to field the major assholery of friends and family during the process.  Even under the best of circumstances, a divorce can be a painfully protracted event, often landing like a calamitous A-bomb smashing the town of live citizenry beneath its unrepentant, cruel weight and leaving a noxious atmosphere that endures for god knows however long.  Aftermath is expected.

In lots and lots of divorce cases, the air eventually clears and a brand new, better, glorious day arrives.

But listen, friends and family, don't be glib and insensitive during the delicate time in question.  Don't be an asshole, ok?  Divorce is one of the hardest, most psychologically trying events in life some people may ever wade through.  It is a death.

Apropos of someone around you experiencing a divorce:  If you have known the wife or husband for years and years prior to that respective party's union with his or her marital partner, and there was nothing major either one of the wife or husband did to the other one or to anyone else involved that is particularly egregious and grounds for inflicting assholery, think before you act where it pertains to husband and/or wife you knew for so long or are actually related to so as to not unintentionally be a righteous dipshit.  For example, if said husband or wife, that you knew long before that individual commenced union with his or her marital partner, would appreciate you not contacting his or her now-ex-marital partner, how about having respect for those boundaries?  Is that too much to ask?  You may feel a loss and perhaps resentment that the separation of two individuals you were close to has caused you to have to change your friendship and family dynamics.  A byproduct of this, yes you have experienced loss too.  It sucks.  Your son-in-law is no longer your son in law.  Your brother-in-law is no longer your brother-in-law.  You still love him and are pained at the idea that he can't be intimately in your life anymore and you place blame on the spouse you knew longer because if that spouse would JUST have stayed married, these particular losses of yours wouldn't have occurred and your life would be super fine and dandy.  Whoooooopppie doooo!

Look, selfish dear sweet friends and family, a separation is a hypersensitive time.  In my case, we have had to be separated for one year before proceeding with legal absolution of materially changed circumstances.  One Whole Year of contemplating the very real demise of a decade of together erecting a loving family and household.  Until you experience the termination of an institution that love and intimacy built during years and years, you will NEVER know the devastation and the drudgery and the nights of flooding tears that something like this carries with it.  Despite that my ex and I have remained as amicable as humanly possible for the vast majority of it even going so far as to have dinner together with our son on occasions (PLURAL) and attending his birthday festivities together to show a unified amicable front, it has not been what I would characterize as an easy year.

What I am trying to tell you is this:  While my separation/divorce has brought a loss to you, your loss is no where near as enormous and no where near as deep as mine.  So buck up.  And stop asking me if you can contact my ex.  Stop contacting my ex.  Let us be.  Let us have our boundaries so we can move on and heal.  It doesn't mean you don't love him.  Reach out to him once and tell him you love him.  Fine.  But leave it be.  For my sake, stop the intervention for a period of time.  For a year or two.  Let us move on, let us learn to fill the profound canyon created by this earth splitting event with new life.  Have a modicum of understanding that this divorce is less about you and far more about us, the primarily impacted.

Dear Sister, I don't want you contacting my ex to ask him for my old pie crust recipe that you want to make for Thanksgiving.  I know if I asked him for it, he would go dig it out and provide it.  I know if you called him, the same.  Cause he is a nice person like that.  But that recipe is a casualty of this divorce.  No one needs to call him to ask him to dredge it up.

No one needs to remind him right now, that we were all together during many Thanksgivings of the past.  That that particular recipe I used on repeated occasions to make lovely and delicious pies that all of us, together, cooed and yummied over.  That that cookbook has my flour-caked fingerprints all over it and that I won't be using it this year to make a pie that we all enjoy eating, together.

This shit is hard enough.  So suck it up, go without the goddamn recipe this year.  It's not about you.

We will heal.  He and I will use this experience to grow because that is the kind of people we both are.  Every day I feel stronger.

In the meantime, while the wound is still gaping and fresh, thank you for not being total assholes.

Just Me and My Filing Cabinet.

For the longest I have been wanting a functional filing cabinet.  But, I have not been wanting to pay full price for one.  (I am a cheap motherfucker, m'kay?)  I traveled the globe near and far, delving into every nook and cranny and alley way, attempting to unearth the object of my desire.  (And by that I mean I went to the Goodwill a few times and checked craigslist.)

Sadly, I was not able to find a decent, free discounted filing cabinet.

I sucked it up.  Went to Staples.  Painfully parted with $80 or so.  And came home with this modest, yet gleaming, inviting gem.

All I want out of life is to be left alone for one whole day with this small item o' luxury.  So I can Type-A it up in this bitch.  Oh to ORGANIZE and FILE!  I dream of the day when I can place every loose paper in my apartment into this aluminum piece of magnificence.  (Okay not every paper, like hell t-h-a-t is going to happen, but some of this paper and these documents, and these legal files, and the overwhelming amount of paper I've gotten from my son's kindergarten curriculum.)  God, I ask you, one day!  Me + Filing Cabinet = Love.

How can I describe the amorous emotion in my heart for my new filing cabinet?  MY filing cabinet.  (It's all mine, MINE.)  Impossible.

Thus I humbly resort to borrowing the Bonnie & Clyde immortal lyrics of Jay-Z and Beyonce.

All I need in this life of sin is me and my filing cabinet
Down to ride 'til the very end, it's me and my filing cabinet
All I need in this life of sin is me and my filing cabinet
Down to ride 'til the very end, it's me and my filing cabinet

Ergib with a Side Order of Cognitive Dissonance.

I spit this painting out yesterday.  Ergib means dove in Amharic and that is the title of this painting which will be donated.

I booked a trip for my son and I to fly to Ethiopia in the Spring of 2014.  Just he and I.  We will visit some people in the Southern Nations and Nationalities People's region (SNNP).  We will go for about a week.  It will be his second trip to visit Ethiopia since arriving in the U.S. with his adoptive family.

Honestly, I am not that excited about going back to visit Ethiopia.  For many reasons:  1.)  Selfishly, I would rather travel somewhere else, to see a new place. 2.)  It is a super-privileged annoyance to make the long trip down the congested, rustic highway, full of wagons and donkeys and sheep and walkers, from Addis Ababa to SNNP.  3.)  The trip to Ethiopia a year and a half ago, while it went impeccably smooth and was incredibly fulfilling, left me in a pretty serious depression post-return to the U.S. (part of which I believe was due to the malaria medication I took that completely fucked me up, part of which was the emotional impact).  4.)  I don't want to go to Ethiopia to "tour" the country...which as a ferenge is something I will involuntarily end up doing as I know my friends will take us around and treat us as mild royalty the latter which I am not interested in at all.  The idea of staying in fancy lodges and site seeing of hippos and giant birds is not that appealing to me notwithstanding an appreciation for Ethiopia's natural wonders.  And, you know, we've already done that.  We will go with one purpose in mind, to reconnect to certain people.  We did tour last time, and we stayed in a nice hotel on a lake, and we ate nice dinners, and blah blah blah in a country that has for decades echoed in global statistics with its poverty.

I feel the weight of a great obligation the scale of which is a life commitment to take my son to Ethiopia.  I am happy and proud, however, to visit Ethiopia not just because its people and culture are truly beautiful, but because I am taking my son back to reconnect.  I am able to do that.  Which is a big deal because it's hella expensive to fly that far!

I love some things about Ethiopia.  Again, its culture, its people.  But I do not love that country.  Its government is authoritarian and represses its people, jails its journalists, squashes freedom of speech, categorically prevents private land ownership, has entirely failed to prepare Ethiopian migrants for conditions they would face in the Middle East even when those migrants departed on legal visas.  Not to perpetuate the poor African bullshit stereotype that I loathe, but seriously large numbers of people there are suffering in Ethiopia on the daily.  I say this as having been witness to the testament and physical sickness and suffering of my boyfriend who arrived to the U.S. from Ethiopia less than 2 years ago.  One can just go to Ethiopia to see suffering.  But you are looking at it as a ferenge whom just spent thousands of dollars to make the trip, which is psychologically distasteful enough, forget the dissonance if you are open and sensitive enough to feel it and to listen to it in your heart.  To hear the intimate stories and stories and stories of an ex-pat about what life is really like there is something else altogether.

I see many adoptive parents say on Facebook how much they love Ethiopia.  I understand now what a Western privilege it is to blether on and on about how much I, as an American, love that country.  My boyfriend has said he hates that country, his country of origin.  He hates the suffering it inflicts on its people.  We talk often about the realities of what it is like to live there.  The family lost to disease, the shoeless, a friend recently diagnosed with HIV, the wild cost of accessing healthcare and buying anything that might be considered even the most benign luxury item like extra pairs of shirts, that living in a gojo, while gojos are cute, is actually pretty sad given the bankruptcy of amenities and the hardship of life that entails.  He hates the government and with good reason.  Marveling out loud, he is enamored with the idea that we can protest in this country; that Ethiopian-Americans can loudly and energetically protest in front of the Saudi Arabian Embassy in the U.S. and not be brutalized / persecuted by our government as those in Ethiopia were brutalized by theirs. WTF, Ethiopia?

And WTF United States for supporting Ethiopia's authoritarian regime?  Just, what the fuck?

Don't even get me started on the forced divestment of land from rural farmers / families for purposes of foreign "investment".

It's easy to love Ethiopia when you don't have to live there.

It's My Birthday and I'll Be Hateful if I Want To.

I'm 37 years old today.  Today I am going to be WILDLY INDULGENT.

My birthday gift to myself is allowing myself to be hurt and angry and not accepting the attendant guilt.

I reject the guilt.  I accept this process.

I am not over this divorce yet, emotionally.  I am not.  I am way better.  But I am not done hurting.

My ex-husband placed the final straw on the heap of increasing fragility that was my best friendship with my old best friend.  But it wasn't his relationship to repair or ruin, it was mine.  He apologized.  I am trying to forgive him, but I find that I am not capable yet.  She and I were friends for almost 20 years and now we are no longer friends.  I knew her and her history long before she ever met my ex-husband.  My ex-husband severed the last thread with something he did that was incredibly thoughtless.  I'm going to get over it, but I'm still really hurt.

This morning I stood in the scalding hot water of my shower and said

I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.  You are a smug asshole.  You can go fuck yourself.  You think you are perfect.  You have a nice job and a nice house and you can go fuck yourself.  I hate you.

Over and over.

I cried until I had to puke up phlegm.

I indulged.

And now I think I've got that moment out of my system and I can go on for the day and treat myself to lunch and a glass of wine and pasta later.

And be happy for life!!!!

37 years of LIFE!!!!!!!

Success is a Dead Elephant.

On Saturday morning my Baha'i tutor and I met at a coffee shop.  I will call my tutor Yemen for purposes of this blog.  Because she had this cool bracelet on that her sister bought her from Yemen.

We sat by the window through which splendid rays of morning sun broke and cast light on our skin and in our eyes.  Somehow, owed to a scripture passage, the discussion arrived at coveting.  And how as media grows and the world shrinks, the United States defines the increasingly global idea of success in the manner that is our material culture foists upon the world the illusion of Western success.  The new iPad, iPhone, shiny new car, big house, trendy clothing.  Get more stuff = appear successful = believe yourself happy.

Such that in developing countries where the people used to believe success was a different matter, or an indigenous way of life, the ideas of many people across the world are evolving towards a belief that success is what the United States conveys that it is.

Yemen told me that she has a friend that works in conservation for a global non-profit.  That this friend relayed to her that in China, where a burgeoning middle class rapidly shifts world economic and ecological impact, ivory is a symbol of success and therefore, highly coveted.  

China's hunger for ivory is fueling the poaching of elephants across the world, according to her friend.  Projections by some, that I can't cite to here because I have not personally researched it, this is thus hearsay, have wild elephants disappearing entirely from our earth by the end of the coming decade.

Okay right, maybe the United States is not telling everyone to go out and get themselves some ivory, but the U.S. certainly loudly demonstrates how to expensively objectify success.

Pass the vodka.

A Girl in the Attic with a Light.

Halloween is over.

It was fun.  Not overly stressful.  My son, in all his luminescent, energetic glory, was a Fire Chief.  I think we had a total of five Halloween-esque type of small gathering thingies over the course of 1.5 weeks.  Still happy it's over.

I did not get the job that I interviewed three times for.  Yes I was called to the organization for a grand total of three different progressive interviews.  Ultimately, I fell.  From a high place.  Just call me Abraham Lincoln.  Or don't.  Whichever.

I am seriously considering opening my own office again and planning to do it, progressively, over the course of the next 6 months to a year.

Also, I had a somewhat emotional conversation with my ex-spouse yesterday that brought me closer to closure.  All year I have been inching towards healing.  Sometimes it's been five stumbles forward and one knee-scraping tumble backwards.  Yesterday I took a giant, rendering leap in Healing's direction.  A giant leap towards really being able to stuff this marital separation/divorce into a box that I can place on a shelf in my heart.  I won't seal the box up, I will just lightly close the lid.  I will then delicately place it on the shelf, turn around and walk forward toward the light.

Imagine that I am girl in an attic.  I have a box in front of me.  A lid lies to the side of me.  Say the box is a pleasant, eye-pleasing shade of salmon.  A mixture of deep pink like a heart, orange like a sunrise, warm like love.  Strewn about me are clothes and sundry items and some sentimental things.  My job is to put a house worth of belongings neatly into this small, salmon box.  I am still in the process.

Ex-Spouse said that we had a great friendship and that is what kept us together for almost a decade.  Interestingly, its the same thing I have been saying over and over for a long time.  Once again, we saw eye to eye.  He also said that it is better for both of us that we move on from the marriage.  That this is better for both of us and didn't I agree?  I agreed.  Ojo a ojo.

I hung up the phone and really felt a visceral glimmer of hope.  A hope we will reclaim our friendship someday, that it will just look different.  I think I felt for the first time that he was releasing me.

I said it before and I'll say it again:  My marriage did not fail.  My marriage ended.

And a new life is beginning for both of us.

The Great Unknowns sing a song that has the lyric, "Why did God make forever such a long, long time?"  If he and I had only promised each other 9 years, the marriage would be considered a resounding success.  A marriage for 9 years.

I'm going to pretend that what we meant that fated day that we stood together, hearts pounding and palms sweaty, at the altar was:  I will share my life with you, I will be your witness and love and care for you, but after nine years, I will set you free.  Our marriage will end.  But our friendship never will.  It will be hard.  I encourage you now as I hope to be able to then to free yourself from the anger and the pain.  I will encourage you to heal.  I know you.  I will know that I knew you then.  You are worthy of knowing and you are worthy of wanting to marry.   I know you are good people and that is why I promised myself to you.  I will still care for you, but differently.  I will still raise our son with you.  I will respect you and care for you, even if that part of my heart has to shrink to make room for another, and if you are ever in a pinch I am here.  So after 9 years, you will still have me, I will just not be your husband / wife.  You may have another husband or wife and I will not resent that.

My Baha'i tutor came over this past Sunday.  She has beautiful brown skin, a soft creamy voice and a tranquil affectation.  She also has a boy's name which I love.  She said, "God does not want you to be mired in shame.  God wants your inner light to shine.  God wants you to cast away the guilt and to walk with dignity.  That is what God wants for all of us."

My Adult Transitional Object.

Her name is Grandma. She came to live with me/us about 14 months ago. I never thought I would form such an attachment to a cat, but she is the most hilariously docile, sweet-personalitied thing ever. All along I was a cat person. And now I am officially that crazy woman who talks to her cat as if the cat is a tiny child.

Awakening.

Last night I set my alarm for 4:00 a.m. in order to get up and write.

I am writing a book.  I plan on working on my book for an hour every morning, rain or shine, dead or nimble brained.  The tentative title of my book is called "Dinner with 80 Million People".  So far that title beat out "Cosmic Fikir".  Well, because the book is not just about fikir.  And I've decided that fikir does not even have to be the focal point.

I will not now tell you what it is about.  Suffices to convey that it is a memoirette with a little bit of love and adventure and serendipity and sorrow and agony.  A bunch of juicy existential crap.

Something happened to me that I don't think has happened to anyone else.  If you want to know what it is, you can read my book.

In a few weeks I turn 37.  I plan on having my book finished, revised, edited, polished and published at the very latest by the time I turn 40.

My boyfriend encouraged me to write on my book for an hour every day.  He wrote a book one time.  An academic magnum opus about migrants.  There is a copy of it in the Library of Congress and you can also find it on Amazon.  He is kind of awesome like that.

Partly owed to the few glasses of wine I had last night, I was in an extremely deep slumber when my alarm screamed this morning.   After I stopped the alarm, I turned upside down on my bed, feet at the headboard, and just lay there.  Groggy.  My mind a black ocean.  Everything inside me wanted to close my eyes again and sink back into an unconscious state.  I felt I needed sleep like one deeply longs for love.  After about 12 minutes, I got up and crept around the house, visiting the bathroom, the coffee maker, my cat, and hitting the lights.

My book got a slight workover, mostly in the form of correcting and rearranging a few things I had previously written.  More importantly, however, this morning was spent, in all seriousness, with a great deal of gratitude for my life and circumstances.  After I sat at my computer for about an hour, my son awoke and tiptoed into the living room of my tiny apartment.  He looked so cute.  Still in pajamas, he scrunched himself onto our soft, green couch.  I put a blanket on him and kissed him many times.

By the time we left the house in order to go to school and work, we were both clean, had clean clothes, we had slept warmly all night, we had breakfast, the dishes were clean, laundry from the washing a few days ago was still fresh, all bills were paid, I had lunch for work, he had a snack for school.  We got into my car that works - with heat!  We drove off to confront our daily responsibilities.   Having arrived at his school, we parted with declarations of love and an exchange of hugs and kisses.

The past 8 months of being out on my own and forcibly, like most of the world, taking care of everything administrative, logistical, physical, critically necessary to exist...  Finding success in self-sufficiency, being educated enough to find a job that easily pays my bills even if I barely have any money leftover, has been a godsend.

Days of good fortune.

Where Are You, Immigration Reform?

Below's an eensy beentsy, teensy weeny article I wrote yesterday for my work.  Because 1.)  I have nothing else to post here momentarily, and 2.) I know, I just know, Dear Reader, that YOU want to know what happened to immigration reform.

In this climate of paralyzed government, bitter political infighting, widespread domestic economic fears, and unrelenting international crisis particularly in Syria, immigration reform, an issue at front and center as recently as this past summer, seems to have gotten lost.  Comprehensive immigration reform has been an objective of the immigrant community, advocates, and pro-immigrant organizations for a long time now, like for over a decade.  In 2004, I began immigration-related work.  My boss at the time swore up and down, left and right, in circular fashion, in figure eights, that immigration reform was imminently around the corner.  Many years and many failed attempts at passing meaningful laws like the Dream Act later, the struggle for a comprehensive immigration reform package that would brilliantly renovate our currently dysfunctional, unwieldy system is still ongoing.  On June 26, 2013, the United States Senate passed the “Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013” (S.744).  Like any legislative effort mounted at bringing about comprehensive immigration reform might be, it is a monstrosity of a bill.  As it’s a long-awaited monstrosity, it’s thus deserving of our encouraged, detailed attention.  In its “Summary and Analysis” of the BSEIMA / S.744, produced last April, the National Immigration Law Center states that, “[T]he bill would provide a road to citizenship for approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants and overhaul the family immigration system.  The bill also would create stringent border enforcement and deportation measures, and ramp up workplace enforcement by mandating that employers use an electronic employment verification system (E-verify).”

The most important, or at least the most collectively gratifying, aspect of the Senate’s BSEOIMA / S.744 bill is the provision putting forth a potential pathway to United States citizenship for the approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants living here.  To this end, the bill creates “Registered Provisional Immigrant” status (RPI). RPI status is not tantamount to that of a “legal immigrant”.  RPI is a gray category in between being undocumented and being an immigrant lawfully allowed to reside in the U.S.  However, the greatest benefit received by immigrants by coming out of the shadows and accepting RPI status is that the status comes with the ability to legally work here in the U.S.  In essence, if not in name, an individual granted RPI is allowed to be here under the law, to work and thus reside, even if individuals with RPIs are not lawful permanent residents.

To qualify for RPI status, an individual has to be able to prove he/she meets certain criteria, as follows:  He/she arrived to the United States on or before December 31, 2011, he/she has maintained continuous presence up until the date of application for RPI status, he/she must have settled any all federal tax liability, he/she must not have been convicted of a felony or three or more misdemeanors, and he/she cannot have previously been on any lawful status.  The grant of RPI status to any qualifying individual is dependent upon the implementation of particular border security measures.  Before any individual can be granted RPI status, the Department of Homeland Security has to certify that the border security strategy encapsulated in the bill has begun.  Further, after the border security strategy begins and RPI status is allowable, the Department of Homeland Security has to announce whether and when border security measures are substantially put into place in accordance with the bill.  Only after the Department of Homeland Security confirms that certain border security measures have been put into place, and after and individual has held RPI status for ten years, can individuals with RPI status go forward and apply for their lawful permanent residence (LPR) or “greencard” status.  After three years of holding LPR or “greencard” status, an individual can apply for U.S. citizenship.  The path is a thirteen year stretch from RPI status to U.S. citizenship.  

Essentially, the matter of legalizing the 11 million undocumented people has to happen as steps subsequent, and then concurrent, to the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to beef up border security.  If the threshold border security measures are not reached, say for instance because there is not enough funding, ostensibly the 11 million individuals striving to sort out their undocumented status cannot get very far, procedurally, in their aim to legalize and ultimately gain U.S. citizenship.

The substantively robust Senate’s BSEOIMA / S.744 bill includes various other notable provisions that:

• Expedite the process towards U.S. citizenship for so-called Dreamers,

• Eliminate certain family visa categories such as the category that allows U.S. citizens to sponsor their foreign national siblings for a greencard,

• Eliminate the Diversity Visa Program,

• Create the V and W visas that allow family members to enter the U.S. to reside here while awaiting his or her greencard and creates a new worker program for low-skilled workers respectively,

• Require all employers to utilize the federal government’s employment eligibility verification system, i.e. E-Verify

• Give more protection to immigrant workers who may suffer workplace abuse, and provisions that expand grounds of inadmissibility and removability,

• Eliminate country-specific limits on employment-based immigrant visas, which have caused enormous backlogs for applicants from large countries like China and India, and

• Raises the annual H-1B non-immigrant specialty employment visa cap, raises H-1B wage requirements, and requires employers to make significant efforts to recruit U.S. workers in order to submit an H-1B petition.  The current H-1B visa cap of 65,000 (the number of H-1B visas available annually) is replaced with a cap that fluctuates between 115,000 and 180,000 based on a market escalator formula that considers employer demand and unemployment data.

Summer felt like a promising time for the possibility of immigration reform legislation to finally make it to the President’s desk.  Sadly, momentum seemed to wane dramatically with the heightened violence in Syria and our government’s deliberations over whether to intervene.  And we all know what happened after that, the government shut down owed to the fiscal snafu.  Even in this atmosphere of debt ceiling uncertainty and stock market drops, however, a few of our leaders on Capitol Hill are responding obdurately to the trend of letting immigration reform fall away from grasp yet again.

On October 2, 2013, in the midst of Democratic and Republican fisticuffs over how to reopen the government, Democratic leaders within the U.S. House of Representatives released their proposed legislative treatment of immigration reform.  According to Mike Lillis, writing for TheHill.com on October 2, 2013, “The sweeping proposal, which largely mirrors the bipartisan package approved by the Senate in June, is designed to keep the immigration issue in the headlines and intensify the pressure on GOP leaders to bring a reform bill to the floor.”  Lillis further notes, however, that Speaker of the House John Boehner (R – Ohio) “has already rejected the Senate’s approach to immigration reform and is not expected to act on the similar plan from House Democrats.”  Earlier this year when immigration reform appeared to be a more popular subject, the Republicans in the House issued grumblings and complaints about the Senate’s BSEOIMA / S.744 bill, citing that the border security measures included were not strict enough.  There were also rumors, or at least predictions, that any reform effort ultimately produced by the U.S. House of Representatives would exclude U.S. citizenship and perhaps only provide a path to legal permanent residency (LPR status) at best.

The tragedy of not addressing the dire need for immigration reform is multi-fold.  Not only is allowing the 11 million undocumented immigrants to come out of the shadows and procure work lawfully a humanitarian imperative, but doing so would boost our economy according to many credible studies.  Therefore, by not successfully tackling immigration reform now, we stand to serve the enormous immigrant community an injustice while simultaneously sabotaging our nation’s chance to take advantage of a movement that would substantially advance its economic recovery.  This was going to be our year for reform.  Finally.  But with each passing day that we inch towards 2014 the likelihood shrinks and takes our hopes with it.  To answer the question of where is immigration reform?:   Much like a longsuffering, frustrated driver in the District of Columbia whose car sits idle behind a long line of cars, many traffic calamities, and a juggernaut of pedestrians and cyclists, immigration reform sits idle, trapped behind a long line of issues, many political debacles and a clash of ideologies and political pandering.

"People were dying every day from apartheid itself." - Denis Goldberg

Long Walk to Freedom is extraordinary.  I just can't stop saying that.  Nelson Mandela is 95 years old.  He lives in Johannesburg, the primary city from which he fought for freedom for decades in South Africa.  When he inevitably passes on to another life, this world loses a man within which lies an enormously bright spirit - the likes of which the world is rarely a witness to.  Where do these caliber of so very few people come from?  Willing to stand up and keep standing up in the face of unrelenting abuse and horrid oppression.

Like the Germans who opposed the Nazis, willing to pay the ultimate price for taking action en contra what they knew was just wrong wrong wrong wrong.

This is a very recent interview with Denis Goldberg, the White freedom fighter, 15 years younger than Madiba, who stood next to his Black colleagues at the Rivonia trial and faced death for opposing apartheid.

And now I'm late for work because I don't want to stop reading all about everything that happened in South Africa.

"Second Wind" by Kimberly "Redefining Freedom" McCrae.

I didn't just read the following poem, I savored it.

The moon reminded me that I was once a dreamer

Was once all

“Once upon a time…”

and

“Happily ever after…”

was long walks on spring mornings

and soulful duets with the water

I was an ounce of southern comfort

With a dash of Brooklyn flair

And every gospel anthem in between

Was never skinny jeans

But was bell bottoms

And a high wedge sandal

With painted toes

On bridges built into the sculpted arch of a foot

From tank tops

To turtle necks

I was someone’s wish upon a star

And I knew that home

Was where the heart was

So I had oft found a temporary dwelling place

But never yet found a permanent home

I was sexy

That’s what the moon said

As the clouds laughed until they cried

Remembering my 5 inch heel sashay

Coaxing cobblestone into catwalk

I was hips

And lips

And fingertips

With brains

And fame

And his last name

I was Ms.

Just in case he was not Mr.

And he

Was only he

When I let him

I was fine

Not like wine

But like a vintage car made new

Was hair

Lots of hair

That waved and kinked and curled

And never asked permission

to dance in the breeze

I was mambo

And samba

A ballroom dance in an embroidered gown

I was sipping wine on a fire escape

Counting playful stars

flirtatiously winking at me

I was city streetlights

With subway rumble

And tokens to take you

On a ride to eternity

I was beef patty and coco bread

With peach cobbler

and pink lemonade

I was eclectic

I was forever

Was forever and a day

Was no apologies

And no strings attached

A ferry ride

leaving here

Going there

A romantic moment

Hiding in the charm of a smile

I was it

When it was my turn

I crossed my legs

Sipping on starlight

And the moon agreed

It will soon be my turn again

Copyrighted 2013, Kimberly "Redefining Freedom" McCrae

Period.

I got my period today.  Isn't that a stupid way to say I'm menstruating?

It isn't gross.  It's not too much information.  It's a fact of life for half or more of the global population.

Spoiler Warning:  The rest of this blog post will contain more bletherings about me being on my period.   If you are a prude, make like a baby and head out of here.

Now then.  For whoever is left (echo chamber) I will proceed with wild abandon.

Womanhood is an interesting experience.

As one might await the fall of mankind, I'd been waiting on my period for several days.  Like I do every month.  Just today it came.  My period punctuates its dawning day with fatigue, listlessness and an abject lack of desire to work.

Here I sit at my desk.  Making a pathetic attempt to pretend to be productive.  Sometimes I do what I call my Swan Flamenco Chair Yoga.  Visualize it:  I'm sitting at my desk, which is a triangular cubicle thing.  Staring at a giant iMac screen.  Sitting in a none-too-thrilling roller desk chair; Staples-issue black with little wheels.  My arms rise in tandem up above my head, then sway from side to side in perfectly-timed simultaneous movement.  I curl my hands ever so slightly to mimic the delicate gestures of a flamenco dancer, ignoring what is the confused look of the male coworker seated next to me.  This pain, he does not know.  He does not get a period.  So he condescends to give a question mark.  Dick.

Unfazed, I continue with what can only be described as an Olympic performance of the Swan Flamenco Chair Yoga.

This is not waste, this is grace.

My arms stretched to near perfection, I go back to surreptitiously typing this post.  As I type it, I am hoping no one walks by during the crucial moments it takes me to churn it out.  Intermittently, I will answer a text message from my guy friend in Pennsylvania whose wife walked out on him last spring.  He is a big, ole hot mess right now.  I truly feel bad for him.  Convincing him to make some changes to his own self and surrounds in order to bring a patina of optimism to his life has been an uphill.  I said, Revamp your house.  He said I'm a guy, I hate decorating.  I said, Well reinvent yourself, go to Barnes & Noble, buy a home decor magazine, see what moves you, don't get overwhelmed, pick one wall in your house and paint it.

Damn, I should be a professional counselor.

Oh god the Russian guy I work with just walked by.  I swear he is a spy.

This is life and death, folks.

The death of my uterus lining for the month anyway.  It makes my back hurt.  Blood feels like it is draining from, not my nether region, but my brain.  I become ghostly pale, my skin can get blotchy.  I get completely super anemic.  I desperately crave gored gored and am ready to procure it at the cost of anything.  My hormones experience a seismic shift.  Vice grips are painfully crushing what's above my cervix.  The urge to claw out the eyeballs of any man who dares cross my path ebbs and flows.  For days, it's all Lord of the Flies up in here.  In a word:  Danger.

People don't think much of a menstruating woman.  They think this stuff is beyond ordinary just cause it happens every month to virtually all females who are not in menopause.  As if the world weren't misogynistic enough, we have to go from period to less pause, the latter which is followed by pause or, you know, death.

Look, all I'm trying to say is that society takes the matter of the menstrual cycle lightly at its own peril.  Next time you are merrily farting down the road in your car and you see what you might at first believe is an irrational motorist cut you off or put the pedal to the metal a little bit too fast think hard about what is really going on.

Women need three days off from work every month.  Three days that correspond with the first three days of every woman's period.  This is not weakling excuses.  This is reality.  Women should not have to prostrate themselves to the stupid traditional work schedule dominated by men.  For three whole days out of every month women should be able to just not go to work while they are menstruating.  That gives them three whole days to lay in a fetal position, drink wine, blog, work on their book, watch soaps, eat bon bons, pick at their toe lint, navel gaze or just do whatever the fuck they want in between changing tampons and liners for three days.  Three whole days that do not also involve being forced to look at the face of any adversarial, question-mark giving, member of the opposite sex during work hours.

I know, I know.  You are thinking that during those three days men will get a competitive advantage in the work place.  Well, the period of women's periods will be interspersed throughout the month, for one, so not all women will be off for three days at once.  Also, men are nothing without women.  So pathetic is their collective sensibility and sensitivity, that they would just devour themselves up in a big cutthroat testosterone-overkill messy environment.  One need not worry.

Now if you will excuse me while I go back to pretending I am writing a letter for a client for 2 more hours.  After which nobody better stand between me and my bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon.

Monstrous Enmity.

Nelson Mandela, a scholar, a successful attorney, a law firm owner, a husband, a father, an indefatigable freedom-fighter, sews clothes in prison in Pretoria, South Africa.

"At six o'clock we received sleeping mats and blankets.  I do not think words can do justice to a description of the foulness and filthiness of this bedding.  The blankets were encrusted with dried blood and vomit, ridden with lice, vermin, and cockroaches, and reeked with a stench that actually competed with the odiousness of the drain...

The prison, according to apartheid dictates, separated detainees by color...  Our diet was fixed according to race.  For breakfast, Africans, Indians, and Coloureds received the same quantities, except that Indians and Coloureds received a half-teaspoonful of sugar, which we did not...The diet for white detainees was far superior to that for Africans.  So color-conscious were the authorities that even the type of sugar and bread supplied to whites and nonwhites differed:  white prisoners received white sugar and white bread, while Coloured and Indian prisoners were given brown sugar and brown bread..."

This is a small excerpt from Nelson's Mandela's autobiography Long Walk to Freedom.  It supplies the smallest example of what is enormously replete throughout, at least, the first half of the book, that which is the incredible, baffling, immoral denigration, maltreatment, discrimination, disenfranchisement, segregation, ridicule and humiliation meted out to Black Africans by White colonial-European-descended Afrikaaners.  Simply, Africans were treated like animals.

From my perspective as a mixed-race-heritage 36 year old woman living in the United States in 2013, it is absolutely astonishing.

The passage excerpted speaks of the time before Nelson Mandela went to prison for over 20 years.  Before the 1993 de Klerk / Mandela Nobel Peace prize.  And yet well within the past 50 years, squarely within the lifetime of my father and myself.

The profound indignities so recently suffered by Black Africans in South Africa at the hands of Whites are incomprehensible.

Into the Fire, Mom and Dad.

I ran this morning, in the dark, as the cool early fall air caressed me.

I ran to this song.

I ran away from every petty or malicious demon chasing me.

I ran away from the three consecutive nightmares I have had about my Ex for three nights in a row.

Then I alternately cried, deep sobs difficult-to-breathe, and ran.  It came upon me an incisive understanding of what my parents went through 32 years ago.

Divorce is devastating, Mom and Dad.  I am sorry you had to go through that.  I am so sorry you had to make excruciatingly difficult choices under extreme emotional duress.  I was 4 years old, my brother was 6 and my sister was 10.  You sleeplessly worried about us.  You cried and cried and cried.  You started life over, and it was an epic challenge for both of you.  

You were devastated.  You were guilt-ridden.  You would spend the rest of your lives wondering if you could have done things differently or better.  I know you did that especially, Dad.  I know you blame yourself for every insane thing that happened to my brother.

Mom, Dad, it's not your fault.  You are human.  You really did the best you could.  

It is impossible to walk away from a family life and a marriage, even when it is absolutely impossible to stay.  Devastating.

I am so sorry for your incredible despair and your profound suffering.  I know it took years for both of you to heal.  Mom, you never really healed.  I'm so sorry.

I ran and as I ran I saw the wreckage of the emotional cataclysm around me.  I tended to every one of the wounded.  

I ran over to Hurt, laying there in a puddle of blood.  I patched up Hurt's wounds and I kissed her on the forehead and told her she would heal.

I climbed over dead bodies to reach Resentment, legless, screaming in rage.  I applied a tourniquet, injected morphine, and told Resentment its time had come, despite my best efforts.

Guilt was face down in the mud.  Only upon reaching her did I see she had extensive open wounds.  I had to stop the perilous amount of bleeding.  I sutured, then bandaged every rupture.  I told her I loved her and that it was okay.  That she conducted her service with valor, but that she would be released and never called upon again.

I reached Anger just in time.  Except, no, I was too late.  Anger was dying.  I said a prayer.

Finally, I reached Sadness.  Sadness, in a fetal position.  I enveloped Sadness in my arms and we cried together.  With kind words, I assured Sadness she would beat the odds and be reborn.