Dean Young has died-RIP dear poet

 

“Delphiniums in a Window Box”
by Dean Young

Every sunrise, sometimes strangers’ eyes.
Not necessarily swans, even crows,
even the evening fusillade of bats.
That place where the creek goes underground,
how many weeks before I see you again?
Stacks of books, every page, character’s
rage and poet’s strange contraption
of syntax and song, every song
even when there isn’t one.
Every thistle, splinter, butterfly
over the drainage ditches. Every stray.
Did you see the meteor shower?
Every question, conversation
even with almost nothing, cricket, cloud,
because of you I’m talking to crickets, clouds,
confiding in a cat. Everyone says
Come to your senses, and I do, of you.
Every touch electric, every taste you,
every smell, even burning sugar, every
cry and laugh. Toothpicked samples
at the farmer’s market, every melon,
plum, I come undone, undone.

Well, dear ones. I have finished my 10 day retreat/training with Upaya, the Zen Center and boy howdy, I'm still recovering. 12 hour days on zoom is gross. I will remind myself that I am immensely grateful that I have the time and money to do this program at all. But sheesh. Getting up at  4:45 to meditate and then we're off to the races with more sits and walking and some breaks when I ran down to the lake and threw myself in.

Now I have to write eleventy hundred papers, read more books, finish my rakasu, make an ancestral lineage chart X 3 on mulberry paper, do more volunteer hours and make three more field trips. No problem. Most of this by the end of December. 

I gardened this morning before the heat, watered everything and contemplated which plants are truly dead and which ones I need to prune. I know nothing about pruning. Nothing. I'm averse to it but if this garden of mine doesn't get room to breathe, they will have to hack through the underbrush to find my front door. 

In two weeks I go to Holden Village to be on a trail building 'vacation' with Washington Trails Association. We're gonna stay in a Lutheran camp and move out from there every day. No tent camping, hooray! And there's a sauna. After the first 7 hour day, I will probably need to be carried back to base but there is another old queer who is going and we can keep each other company in our oldness. 

Don't know if I've said this here but I've been exploring my 'identity'. For a long time there were a few choices: to be lesbian and be butch or femme. Definitely on the femme side. But now there are a plethora of choices and the lesbian never really 'fit'. Vacillating between non-binary and gender queer. I was using non-binary but have settled on gender queer. A better moniker for me. Even though ultimately there is no gender or labels or whatever. 

Our wedding rings came while I was on retreat. Have to investigate whether it is more advantageous to be unofficially married for tax reasons. Must ask my tax guy. Regardless, next July it is. With a party and family and friends. I just hope it isn't a terribly hot day...

Ok, I must get back to the business of writing a paper I started this morning. I will reward myself with  a swim.

Much everlasting love

 

There I am. Without swimming I'm done for. I hope they can lower me into the water when I'm too old to get there on my own.

 Dear friends-

I did it. I swam from Martha Washington to Seward Park with Robb on a paddle board beside me. I alternated between anxiety, fear, elation and calm. The water was mostly calm with some wavy bits. I found myself grinning the closer and closer I got to the shoreline. It's about 1/2 mile, I guess. No soreness the next day either. I am officially a badass. 

Now next challenge...swim a longer distance, right?

Sweet young Nik came over and tiled my backsplash in 2 days. Beautiful. However getting the outlets back into the spaces he left has presented a challenge for me to solve. Ah well. 

Starting a mindfulness based childbirth class tonight, goes all weekend. Unfortunately the blue angels (yuck, nothing about them is angelic) will be overhead. They are 30 BILLION dollars fighter jets that do formations in the sky directly over our neighborhood. They are incredibly LOUD and scary. This happens every year.

Just visited an Olmstead park in my old neighborhood. The Volunteer coordinator contacted me because I'm looking for volunteer hours for chaplaincy. And she wants me to initiate sitting/walking meditations (!) among the greenhouses and the gorgeous trees, some of which are more than 100 years old. There's even a gigantic sequoia on the grounds. I am screaming, I'm so excited. What she/they want is exactly what I want to be doing. The one catch is making $$ for the park, after a two year shut down, they're pretty broke. I can ask for dana donations. I of course, require no $$. We also talked about bringing in folks who need to rest their anxious/fearful minds and hearts from the current fuckery, to allow them to rest and give and get love from the trees. The conservatory is gorgeous too and we walked through the back lot where the maturing plants are. 

Well, time for a swim in my big momma lake. Sooooo grateful she is so near by. 

Pema Chodron, in the new edition of When Things Fall Apart, reminds us the this moment is the path, just this moment with its' misery, joy, confusion, anger and peace. The only path we're on. This living moment. 

May we all walk with awareness in this present and precious moment. 

Much big love. 

Her voice like a bell

Wow

 It's summer hot here today and I'm volunteering at Kubota gardens, one of my favorite places. It's normal hot here today, unlike other parts of the country. 

Pulling weeds is what I can do. Following the news is painful so I avoid it. The NYT is my source, already a week old. I read once that a man in the outback of Alaska came into town once a year for supplies and he was given the daily papers from the previous year, all the news that was a year old. He started with January one and went through each day with a year old paper. How would that be? Knowing what happened the year before, thinking about it with no recourse to fret about it (well, I suppose you could) but it was all in the past. I don't think I could read the daily paper from 2021 without breaking down. Or maybe I'd just stick to the crosswords and Wordle and what the celebrities are up to. You know, Spanks and designer clothes and the Oscars. Really important stuff. 

My AC is a beautiful thing. 

Well, I better go get my gardening jam on. A hat. Sunscreen. Sandals. I already have my bathing suit on for later. 

 

Dear ones,

I have been working to figure out how/what the hell am I doing with chaplaincy, whatever that might be. 

I have thought I'd be helping traumatized healthcare workers who have witnessed terrible things at their jobs. Where is the respite for us???

But.

As I go through this journey I have discovered that I am being pulled toward my non-human friends. All of the Earth. Her trees and frogs and birds and rocks and waterfalls and more trees. Diane and I did a hike called Lake 22 up by Granite Falls, north of Seattle. 

It was spectacular. And hard. The old growth trees were the largest old growth I've even seen in the PNW.  Trail ended at a snow fed alpine lake. We scrambled over rocks and sweated and ate our peanut butter sandwiches. There were so many trees, so many beautiful trees. I told Diane I wanted to do my chaplaincy right there, among those old women. 

Haven't we always loved the Earth? As children we discovered the smells and sounds and creatures as we lay on our stomachs watching the most minute bugs and snails and the occasional garter snake. I would crawl under the bushes in my yard and construct tiny houses for the fairies who lived there. I climbed trees just to sit there and look out at the world. 

I told my teacher that I felt loving the Earth was somehow less important than ministering to humans. She gently reminded me that we are not separate from all of life, that we are inextricably bound to Her body, fed from Her body, one day to return to her body. 

Well, of course. 

So how do I enter into an intimacy with the Earth herself? I know and I don't know. 

She is our mother and we are all her children. How could I have forgotten? 

I'm being called home.  Home.

 Here I admit things I don't anywhere else. I guess I'm willing to be embarrassed in a post. 

I have watched Young Royals twenty eleven thousand times. It's beautiful and heartbreaking and sexy and troubling. The acting is gorgeous. Season two can't come soon enough. Like HeartStoppers. Jeezus, adolescence. As the art teacher in HeartStoppers says, "Being a teenager is terrible."

Rachel, a buddy in my chaplaincy program texted me this:

"I'm just gonna watch teen television, work at a cemetery and pretend the world doesn't exist." My sentiments exactly, well maybe not the cemetery part (part of her volunteer hours). 

I still cry so often. Am I depressed? Scared? Overwhelmed? All of it? Boris Johnson is gone and that's good. 

In an hour I go pick up Diane (AKA Jolene, my preferred nickname for her as she is from the south). We'll hold hands in the car, I'll cry some more, we'll walk the dog and then we'll go to the spa for soaks and massages and Korean food in their little cafe. Then we'll come back to my house and we will just be together. I can hug her and she can hug me. We'll talk and laugh and get serious about trust and love. I don't know how to do any of this and I'm not sure I ever did. Me and the teens being all awkward and clumsy and weird as we try to figure it out. 

GAWD. 

For fucksake I'm OLD. 

Love you all. 

Joshua Hyslop - More Than This [Audio]

 Dare I write this? December 3rd, 2022.

We're gonna get married. OMG. I know I thought I would marry someone back in 2017 and that was a HUGE mistake.  And I didn't marry her. This is not a mistake. Diane;  funny, talkative, quirky, thoughtful, tender, trustworthy and lovable, this person who I have loved forever. So much history, so much water under the bridge.

We needed to grow up, deal with our shit and land (in our 70's!) with our open hearts. 

If we lose our constitutional right to marry, we'll be ok in Washington State. Jeezus.

Because of Roe, I'm coming out all over again. At this age, I'm invisible anyway. So I'm owning it and letting people know. This is what a queer person looks like. We're everywhere. As I have made my way through many documentaries about queers and trans folk, the damage it has done to people who can't come out or the people who do or can't hide who they are who have been shamed and shunned and beat up and killed, I have to show up for them. Maybe I posted this before but I'll keep saying this. 

May we all be free from fear and hate. May we all live lives of beauty and peace.

Tonight we go dancing together. In a candle lit room with gorgeous music. Every day, every minute is precious.

 

 

 Let Them Not Say

Jane Hirshfield - 1953-

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Let them not say:   we did not see it.
We saw.

Let them not say:   we did not hear it.
We heard.

Let them not say:     they did not taste it.
We ate, we trembled.

Let them not say:   it was not spoken, not written.
We spoke,
we witnessed with voices and hands.

Let them not say:     they did nothing.
We did not-enough.

Let them say, as they must say something: 

A kerosene beauty.
It burned.

Let them say we warmed ourselves by it,
read by its light, praised,
and it burned.

 Today at the pool, a young pregnant woman asked how I was. I replied that it wasn't my best day. She teared up and said she was worried about her daughter who will be born in September. I cried with her as she said, "And I'm gay".

I worry about my trans friends and my queer friends. And all the women who will have to carry unwanted pregnancies or who will attempt to miscarry and hurt or kill themselves. I worry about the poor and marginalized. 

Dangerous times. United States we are not.

We are not. 

 Dear friends-

$125.35-------Current student loan balance

                                                          PAID IN FULL

I graduated in 2002, yep, twenty years ago. 

Time for a small celebration. 

 My dears,

I'm back from the wilds of California (and many driving hours and $$$ gas money) to spend time with my family, well, parts of my family. My grandson is lovely and wonderful and my heart bursts with pride to spend time with him. He's polite and funny and nice to everyone. His girlfriend came (wearing braces) and they are traveling to Greece with her family this summer and then they have agreed to part ways as love interests because they want to explore others and themselves. What teenagers are so deliberate and thoughtful? He even asked if I minded that he drank a beer??? I reminded him of my family hx of alcoholism and the evils of alcohol in general. But I was so impressed that he ASKED ME. Of course he can have a beer, dearest boy. There were more adults around than kids and we were in the middle of nowhere. He's a sensible guy and I can't explain how much I love him. 

My old girlfriend came too. Last minute she called and we arranged for her to fly to Sacramento where I would pick her up...it was wild, added miles and time to my drive but I didn't mind. We'll see each other again in October...and December...and February. Be still, my heart. We talked endlessly and laughed and held  each other and kissed. At our ages, honestly. Her kisses still make my toes curl. And that's all we did.

I have been reflecting on all of this rekindling and I have realized some things. 

My mindfulness and meditation practice is affected by some excitement and distraction. I'm noticing and tending to these feelings with curiosity and tenderness. 

When I came out many years ago, she was the first person  I fell deeply in love with. Deeply. In. Love. We had so much to work on and over the years, we have. She's still the same and she's totally different. Just like me. I  have released her over and over, with anger, resignation, sorrow, all the ways. 

Now I have no expectations. We may visit each other 4-5 times a year and live on opposite sides of the country. Maybe we'll live together again one day. I don't know. Before, everything felt so important, so imperative. Now, I'm ok alone and I'm ok with her. Both ways are satisfying and peaceful. 

Back in Seattle, one of the midwives has covid (natch), so I'm on call today, tomorrow and Saturday. I really hope I can go to Pride on Sunday. This year feels so important to show up. 

Before our rights are taken away. When I think of my beloveds who are queer and trans and non-binary, I feel so much sadness and fear. Losing Roe, what's next. So I will go downtown and cheer and yell for all the drag queens and muscle boys and marching bands and dykes on bikes and all of us in our variety and glory. I will remember the ones we lost along the way; to AIDS and hate crimes, addiction and suicides. 

Living with this undefended heart is so hard-to just let the pain and sorrow in, to feel it, to tend to it, without hatred and anger. 

I will be there  for Tommy and James and Jim and Crazy Thunder and Clark and Paul and Chase and Richard and Kenny and Alison and Hazel and Micha and Diane and Robin and Gina  and Michi and Holly and Judith and Hazel and Raven and so many others, for all of us who came out.

Ólafur Arnalds - Full Performance (Live on KEXP)

Me and Clark saw/heard/experienced this musician and I must say my wee mind was     BLOWN    by gale force winds. There were pianos and strings and a drummer and they're from Iceland which might be in another galaxy. This group had been cancelled twice in Seattle over the last few years because of, you know, and they were so GRATEFUL to be performing in front of a live audience. 

Clark and I cried and gasped and held hands. I'll send another clip of them. Absolutely phenomenal.  

Ólafur Arnalds - Zero

Dear friends-

It has been a rough week. Today feeling better, some better. The sorrow of the world bears down. We are in this together, of that I am sure. And all I know is to love family, friends and strangers alike. Especially the strangers, the most desperate among us. I can't call those that pull the trigger monster. They are someone's child, baby, relative. I recently read that adolescent gunmen are suicidal and wanting to die. They just take others with them and cause untold suffering. But deranged? Sure. But they are someone's kid too.  If we can find a label, then we've 'solved' the problem, contained. That's not how it works. 

We're in a world out of balance. Guns ARE the problem. When will it end? When? And how do we continue to love the world anyway we can?