my grandmother passed away today. there is nothing more to explain. i cannot believe she is gone now. i can still listen to her and she can still listen to me. i can still love her and she can still love me!

Brooklyn is getting WRITE!

I'm taking my writing workshops outside of the psychiatric space this summer and into BK! Yesterday I had my first "session" with someone in Park Slope. It went well and they're now breaking past the writer's block they had before meeting with me. They began writing yesterday!

My premise is to use one-on-one and group writing sessions for those who fit into the following:

1. writers who aren't writing but want to be!
2. folks who have experienced therapeutic results in writing and want this power a part of their lives more consistently, and
3. those who want to go from story-carrying their life to storytelling it

--I would provide guidance on how to release these stories into expression.

God-God-Within

My God-God-Within. We who recognize you thank you for this day and rise with the sun that is lit out and within us, as it emerges so do we. And when the day is murky and white gray we understand that our inner-sun is lit--warming our ambitions and nurturing our seeds of intention. We are One with its Shine of Love. I pray that we allow it to shine as boldly and brilliantly within as we do when we allow it to cover our faces.

snip

Whenever I dream in purple I always wake up when the sky is that same color in the afternoon. I can’t ever tell if when I wake up I am still dreaming but I’m able to walk towards the window in my living room and leave the bed where I was dreaming in purple. I get closer to the sight of the sky turning purple to somber blue to deep sea dark to eye shut black. This is when I know that all my five senses are working and I am no longer dreaming because I can smell the dinners on the stoves in the apartments below mine and I can read the bodega store front titles. And I can tell that no one else is dreaming because their eyes are wide open and there is no glare of the film of dreaming over their eyes like there is when one is dreaming while awake. I am absorbing the look of the people’s eyes on my block and feeling the night air right now. It is balmy and soft on my forearms and cheeks of my face. At this moment I am not a subject of my dreams. I wish our dreams could overlap, mine and my neighbors, so I could know what color they dream in, whether they dream in the same color purple as mine or yellow or no color at all.

Autobiography

I have always been underneath things and in between them. I was born cesarean because the doctor had to pull me out from under my mother's ribs (where I believe my twin sister kicked me to in order to make more room for herself in the womb those last few months). Arriving twenty minutes after my sister's natural birth made me the middle child. Since riding in a car one summer in Decatur, Georgia with the sunset turning orange-purple-pink I have always loved being under the sky, searching for a spot to stand where I think I can cup it in my hands if I want to. I cannot let my memories rest below the surface of the present so when we left my father in Georgia to move to Silver Spring, Maryland, I would remind my mother of the Christmas Tree falling and the car ride at night in the white Pinto, and other moments she wanted me to leave in Georgia, underneath the present, so the past would eventually settle down so far below us we would forget we were walking on top of it.

Being underneath and in between has given me nooks and underbellies as spaces to find my voice within. These spaces have been what I use to name myself. I have gone through several names, each representing a stage I have entered and left, each name an in between and an underneath I have gone through or I am still finding my way beyond. I was once a Reverend of paradoxes because I loved to marry them, a Disciple converting people into the Christian faith, a Mystic leading myself to a spiritual height beyond religion, a Common Ground for balancing these extremes. The latest name is my superhero one, Metaphor. With it I can create lifeboats, airlifts, and runways for people to use to elevate themselves at the therapeutic center where I conduct writing sessions. All these names are ones I have chosen at some point to identify with. They are what I have discovered when finding myself in between or underneath an understanding of how to express myself, how to live. There are names that run through me that I have not chosen, but that I will always find streaming inside of me in some way.

Deborah Gardner and Tamara Jackson are my womb women. Deborah is my mother and Tamara is my twin sister. Both are dense with pain and brilliance. It is what makes them impenetrable. I like to find the nooks and underbellies, but these women do not seek out these places. They are able to see and understand who they are and how to live their lives without ever changing their names or seeking hideaways to see the world through.

My mother worked nights as a press operator for 20 years. Though she is a woman who loves the light of day she slept through it for two decades. Once she changed careers and began a 9 to 5 schedule she learned that she could relate to both the night and the day, and how to effectively use the set of hours each sun and moon gives. From her, I carry with me endurance and how to be a gladiator of hope when it comes to pulling yourself out of where you know you are not meant to be.

My twin is already a mother and a wife. She became these roles in a matter of one year. To see her mothering a child has been the most literal manifestation of a metaphor I have ever witnessed. Before becoming a mother my sister mothered herself and taught me how to do the same. Growing up she was a reminder of our father because she resembled almost every feature of his face. My mother felt the marriage to my father she had intended to flee once leaving Georgia every time she looked into my sister's eyes. This treatment, along with being cared for at night by others' while our mother was resting for work made my sister grow into adulthood with a tendency to want to feel nested. She taught herself how to split herself and become Tami the mother caring for Tami the child in need. This I learned how to use to cradle myself when leaving home for school and moving alone to New York. This task of mothering self has been signature to my life as I've grappled with a clear path to take after graduating, with maintaining idealism and dreams in the face of a dogmatic 'real world', and with defining my own reality.

My womb women names and the ones I have listed before them can illustrate many parts of me, but I know I am dominated in my identity by the title writer. In the last couple of years, I have grown more and more unapologetic and committed to creating my life and value out of this identity.

Center of the Circle

Ring around the rosy a pocket full of posies. Ashes! Ashes! We all fall down! It is fun to fall when I am a little girl in my grandmother’s backyard believing posies will fly into the air, though I have no idea what posies are. All my stuffed animals and imaginary friends are holding hands in a circle surrounding me because I am the shake-it-senorita-shake-it-like-you-can-girl in the middle of the circle. They have all chosen me to be her. When it is finally time for us to ring around the rosy I run behind them instead of holding their hands because invisible hands and stuffed bear fur hold onto each other much better than my human flesh with all its limitations.

When it is time to fall down, however, I am not afraid because my time with these friends has made me believe I am one of them. I can even hear them giggling back at me. I am imaginary. Part stuffed bear, part invisible, and all these parts are a part of my flesh. We play together so often and for so long I feel as though my smile is an extension of theirs. I am convinced that I am made of the material of my imaginary friends. Once it is time for all of us to fall down my flesh will absorb into cotton and cotton into the invisible and the invisible will make me into the air that breathes inside of the ground.

It is only when we have to fall down when we play that I believe I become unreal like them. Falling never feels like it should because in my circle our invisible flesh and our cotton flesh keep us from ever having to feel the end of the fall. It is almost as if falling were like flying to us who are unreal since we cannot feel the ground to stop us. In my circle, when it is time to fall that is when I’m the happiest. It is when the ride from real to unreal begins. When I go from believing the fall will hurt to believing the fall will make me disappear. In the back of my grandmother’s yard my pocket full of posies will turn inside out and while they are landing on the weeds I am supposed to pull every Saturday morning and over the gold fish I have buried I will be inside of the earth. Invisible. Imaginary.
****
My mother places herself inside of our bathtub in the afternoons a few hours before she is due to be at work. She is a press operator from 9-6AM and the ink marks on her skin stay there through the morning hours until she gets into the tub. The bathroom window is shadowed by tree branches and leaves that cover its pane from any interaction with outside light so my mommy’s baths are always dark even in the midday. She makes it darker by having only one candle lit. This is her time to feel her sadness. Sometimes she has sunken so deeply into her sadness that she has moved beyond weeping. Awhile after in the water when her fingers are turning pruny, she finds a bellowing deep below her sadness that makes her sorrow sound like an opera. It is as if her pain lay on top of her voice and forced a song to release out of it. She has the power to be able to feel all her sadness every afternoon and weigh in on it to until it turns into a song.

When I enter the bathroom she quickly places one small wash cloth overtop of her vagina. It is always the perfect size wash cloth because it covers the pieces of hairs that even sprout to the sides. This is the only part of her body that she leaves unseen. Every other part moves underneath the water, her wrinkles and folds unfolding and folding back, the extra skin on her belly floating to the surface of her bath like stretched puddy, her breasts cupping the sides of her ribs and spreading so far down they almost fall into her armpits. She does not mind everything else on her body swimming around and being seen, but she keeps the wash cloth over her vagina.

Steam covers the bathroom mirror that I want to write my name in when I pass it with her glass of water in my hand. The water must be room temperature and it must be in a glass not a plastic cup, and you must hold the glass with your fingers proper distance away from the lip of the glass because it is disgusting to put your hands where someone else’s lips will be. A part of me thinks that my fingers touching where her lips will go is beautiful. I have to press my thumb and index finger right underneath the brim and carry the glass carefully. When I place it down on the ledge of the tub she will pick it up and bring it to her lips just as carefully as I was carrying it, and the very thin lines of her lips will correspond with the lines my fingertips have made on her glass. She will kiss my impressions and we will come together out of gentle touch. I keep forgetting to not touch the brim so she reminds me that this is nasty and disgusting to her, and that I am making it more and more impossible for her to have any peace of mind.

When she tells me that this is nasty and disgusting it seems that maybe I, and not what I am doing, am the nasty and disgusting one. All the skin on her face collects around her nose and in between her brows, turning her face into small bulges where the candlelight rests on top of shaking and waving. “I’m so sick of ya’ll not listening to me. You understand me? I’m sick of having to repeat myself! Dammit it’s just me! Can’t you see that? Can’t you make it a little easier on me, for Christ’s sake?!” She takes her sip of water, exhales, and reclines back against the tub. “You know you are Mommy’s pumpkin, right?” She waits for me to nod my head. “You are so special. You are very, very special to Mommy you know that?” I do. “The most special. You understand?” I have to nod my head again but I know this means that I am agreeing to be more special than my brother and my sister whom she never asks to bring her a glass of water. I am also agreeing to be on top of the pedal stool she has for me.

This is where I begin to understand the word “special”. It is also where I begin to understand that if you are the one in the center of the circle you can say who is special and who is not.
****
At church I hope to be chosen as the senorita in the center of everyone, but I won’t be chosen if I have nothing to offer. Everyone is surrounding the center of the circle where the leader of our ministry calls out to us.

“Who is ready with some good news?!” Eyes dart and shift, but every pair are sprinkled with tinsy broken pieces of light that are so itsy bitsy they look like they could be apart of the molecular fabric of the air around us.

Fourteen through seventeen years olds are filling a high school hallway on a Sunday afternoon, scattering through their memories of the past week hoping to find a moment in which they pleased the Lord God. The leader turns around on one heel, slowly. She is making her rotation in the circle with just enough speed to see into each pair of eyes. I have been pillaging through my memories of my past week since we all stood up for the last song before service finished. I have not found one moment worthy enough to share: unworthy memories here: because I am in search for thee moment. The one that will show I have removed all of the clothing of my life before Christ and am walking the streets bare pronouncing my utter nakedness for God.
Last week Mougando, a first generation Nigerian-American son, whose parents were converted three months ago, got the loudest round of applause when he shared. He said then that he felt it was time his entire class to know who he was and where they could find him. So he stood up on the cafeteria table one day during senior’s lunch.
“I know the way, the truth, and the light.” He had told his cafeteria. “From 330-430pm on Wednesdays I’m in rm. 318 every week so you can know too.” After he shared the moment with us in the circle he smiled an archaeologist discovery smile, as if artifacts he had set out for years to find were now in his hand. He then pointed to the three visitors who stood behind him whom he had started teaching the way to that Wednesday.
“No one has anything they can share this week?” She is getting disappointed and the wings I always find on her back are lowering and closing into her spine. We are all still searching. The sprinkled light in our eyes has gone delirious. Some of us have lifted up our faces to the fluorescents above and it has made our eyes appear as transporters. The tiny itsy bitsy pieces of light have turned our eyes into keepers of all that is unseen in the room, all that is keeping this circle together. If someone doesn’t share soon the circle we have formed could lose all its energy and dissipate. To not have a moment to share is not as worse as to not even hear of one. To hear of one is to be told in not so many words that the mission to baptize the world is real, that others believe in it and are making their Monday through Friday lives instruments of that mission, that you should be doing the same. Silence could discourage. Silence could make us think we are not worthy to be in this circle, to even have formed this circle in the first place. It could make us spiritless.
She turns around on one heel slowly, making time to find each pair of eyes, again.
“Is no one ready to share? No one?”

I am not ready, today. I will make it my life to one day be ready, just wait and watch. Please, everybody, someone, watch me.

Nina told him it was alright if He changed her name.

But she had three other names they called her hidden in her back pocket. She left them underneath the rock by the river she was being baptized in. She hid her other names before she went under. When Nina rose from the death of her former self who would write poems about how the Holy Trinity could be understood during sex, when this part of her was put to death she walked away with the other converts into the new Sun emerging from over the hill, and forgot to retrieve the names she saved from being drowned. Nina didn’t check her back pocket until years later when the only name she found was the one given to her by her father the last time she visited him, ten years before he died. It had soiled and faded and she could no longer say it anymore because she couldn’t recall it from memory. The Scriptures had taken over every part of her that could once mouth over empty space and fill it with meaning. She promised to die and wait for God, the He, to tell her how to live. But after years had passed since she put her life to death, Nina found that she had never been given a new one to live, and that there seemed to be, as the days walking towards the new Sun progressed, less and less evidence of the other two names she once wore.