Winter

Always turns to Spring

even when I sit, cold hands

in my lap, hopeless

Envy and Comparison

Envy and comparison

are useless.

An absolute negation

of our inherent Buddhahood.

Our inherent capacity

to manifest

whatever we’d like to see

happen in our lives.

To keep track of what

others are doing.

To allow the apparent

success, happiness, fortune

health, love or accomplishments

of another,

bring

a small pain to our own

heart

as we reflect

on what appears to be

our LACK OF

success, happiness, fortune

health, love or accomplishment

is to abuse ourselves.

It is to look at ourselves

and say to ourselves

“You’re not good enough.”

“You’re not trying hard enough.”

“It’s your fault.”

“If you were only smarter.”

“Nobody likes you.”

“You’ll never amount to anything.”

“Why try?”

That voice.

Is your enemy!

We should treat ourselves

as our own best friend.

When a friend is feeling down and in trouble,

We wouldn’t put them down even further.

So why do we do this to ourselves?

Abandon ourselves at the crucial moment?

We should stick up for ourselves!

We should pat ourselves on the back

and look in the mirror every morning

and be glad to see ourselves.

Stand up for yourself.

Your life has infinite potential.

Go for your dreams.

And applaud the folks around you

who are enjoying fortune.

Don’t compare yourself to them or envy them.

Good for them.

And good for you.

You have the whole world at your feet.

Waiting, for your instructions.

Returning

I have these boxes
in my garage
titled
“Emergency Writing Box”
1, 2 and 3
Not good
to have your life’s mission
in boxes
in the garage
and numbered
but
no apologies
for my mothering and career life
swamping
my creative life.

Only
a determination
to return
to it.

And so
I picked up
Emergency Writing Box 1
and found
tucked neatly at the bottom
Coco’s and Feliza’s thesis
and memories
of Santa Cruz, La Habana, Albuquerque, Berkeley
-quiet conversations
storm my mind.

Bound and hardback
more than one hundred pages of ideas and passion
and years of research
contained between the covers,
I flash back to our present.

Is me, standing, in my pajamas at 2pm
with gold slippers on
in the musty garage
holding the Emergency Writing Box #1
while
baby sleeps softly in our bedroom, six-year old
plays online Kirby games, and husband, weary from
the Holiday bustle, retreats to the NFL website,
a metaphor for
the condition and challenges of my writing life?

Knowing that Leo
crosses his fingers
every time I head for the garage
to not bring in
one more book
to our nine hundred and fifty square foot space
I defiantly
tuck my girl’s theses
under my arm
and stride across my backyard
into my house
with certainty
that I will clear a space
for their work
as a symbol
and reminder
that our creative work
has a place
on the front-burner
of our lives.

para Coco y Feliza

Longing

I don’t recognize my life.

I don’t recognize my men, whose life I am committed to.

I don’t recognize this wooden bungalow that I’ve occupied for 8 years.

I don’t recognize the work that I am wholeheartedly committed to.

I don’t recognize the stack of bills that I pay every month or the ones that come once or twice a year and ask me for thousands.

I don’t recognize the routine.

The mediocrity.

The predictability.

The standing-still.

The same faces.

The same time of year that keeps coming around and finding me in the same place.

I feel trapped,

I tell Leo.

We are.

But only temporarily, the tone of his voice matching the gentle rain.

I want to run.

Hard and fast.

Want to look at a map

and plan my get-away.

Too connected to my daily life.

Too, too connected.

Longing for novelty

and unfamiliarity.

I’m 38

and when I was 28,

I was on the road

with a backpack, a map and

on foreign soil.

Today

I am at home

with my feet on the ground

and my obligations

pecking at my feet,

and I want to be flying,

high in the sky.

Homing Myself

Got everyone off
to Tita Moo’s
stopped at Figueroa Produce
for a few days of groceries
answered some emails and posted on Facebook
while uploading videos to YouTube,
grabbed keys to garage
and scanned the dim shelves for
“Emergency Writing Box 1”
spot it
open to find and grab
Children’s, Writer’s and Illustrator’s Market Guide
Over-sized, Velásquez Spanish and English Dictionary (Bastard, I was looking for you)
but
don’t find Clarissa
get a hold of “Emergency Writing Box 2”
and find a treasure chest
grab
Walt Whitman
Anne Lamott
Jimmy (los dos, Baca y Baldwin)
Sandra
and a handful of Alice
and, of course,
Natalie, who publishes in Shambala
pero todavía no encuentro a Clarissa
“¡Loba! ¿Cabrona, dónde andas?”
No more “Emergency Writing Boxes”
to go through
and I realize that I can’t leave the garage
without Clarissa
and then I spot her
reach over boxes, spilling over with baby stuff,
old picture frames, papers (all my papers)
and then climb over a shovel and the barbeque
to touch the dust jacket of
“Women who Run with the Wolves”
got it
can now begin my journey home…

The MRI – where all are equal!

Onto the hard slab

foam ear plugs in

strap your head in

and put the

Silence of the Lambs

face cage on

“Are you claustrophobic?”

the Filipino technician asks

I am

I answer, “No”

and begin to chant

Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo

under my breath

so that I don’t start thrashing

in the tube they’re sliding me into

“You’ll hear knocking and like a jack hammer sound,”

he says

“there’s a microphone in the tube, call me for anything”.

Monster machine begins.

I chant to keep my breath steady.

rhythm stick taps

somebody’s knocking at the door

somebody’s ringing the bell

then

the jack hammer

chant stronger

suddenly nose itches

and I want to cough

I remember him saying

“Don’t move your head.”

I chant the itch and cough away.

It’s over.

“That’s an ugly machine,” I say.

Head still strapped down.

“Yeah, but it gets good images.”

“There has to be a quieter machine! We can’t be in the 21^st centurty with that loud machine.”

“It’s the magnets. They’re banging together to alter your molecules.”

WTF? I didn’t give permission for this fucker machine to alter my damn brain molecules.

“Yeah, well, I bet rich people have a quiet machine and don’t have to go through this poor person’s contraption.”

“No dear. If they’re gonna have an MRI. They have to use this exact same machine and put up with that noise.”

“So, you’re saying we’re all equal in the MRI?”

“Yes.”

“O.k.. I like it!”

Para mis Ancestros

tus huellas

me guían

a mi razón 

por estar en esta planeta

no les voy a 

desilusionar

gracias por su gran ejemplo y esfuerzo