BEFORE THE TRIP, A LITTLE CONTEXT PLEASE?

*Note: This was written a few days before the trip. The story is important to the experience. Also, check out the conference website here.

There is an inbetween in this life to be cherished. It seems there are so many people I know in either major life upheavels and deep hurt, waiting for it to pass (or transform into something gorgeous) OR are stuck and wishing something of that gravity would hit them, just to shake 'em up and out of their daily existance. Perhaps this is always the pendulum we swing between, but it seems particularly polar these days.

Yesterday evening was spent with my magic Sonia. Sitting outdoors on the insane New York street, we talk of this very polarity. What are our next steps? We've moved to (what has become) our city to pursue dreams, and on some level, have already conquered them. Now what? How afraid are we to break from our jobs, our comfortable homes, our daily existance to do what we really long for? A woman overhears me ranting my piece. From the corner of my eye I catch her nodding along. "See, she feels it too!" I exclaim. I invite the woman to join us, but she stays put, listening, smiling, nodding along, seeing herself reflected in each dip and turn of the conversation. Before she leaves, she approaches our table and plops down an AA brochure. "This is really helping me," she says. Though neither Sonia nor I could be considered alcoholics (I mean, I have but a drink a week, if that!), we appreciate the gesture. I tell her mediation is more my style. She applauds. Shares her own brief story of looking for peace in the moment. It seems the universe is placing the same message on my doorstep, even in the form of wayward strangers named Leslie wearing Martha Wainwright shirts. (P.S., as I told Leslie, if you're a Wainwright fan, please see the Leonard Cohen documentary "I'm Your Man," which features the whole fam, ok?) We tell her to read Eat, Pray, Love, promise her it is a book she needs (Sonia and I later laugh about how we feel the author could be sitting at this very table, she feels like a friend.) Signing off, Leslie gives us her blessings in a most New York fashion, "Namaste, bitches!!"

We laughed and rolled our eyes simultaneously at this special moment of New York-ness. Even when we hate this destructive city, there is always something that says, "And this is why you've stayed with me for so long." I shared the submission for the residency I'm currently working on. I encourage Sonia to pursue her memoir (I can't wait to read it.) She tells me the words come so easy when she takes the time for it. I urge her, again, to really take the time for it. We just have to be clear about what we want, keep working toward it, and the forces that be help to scoot us along. To prove my point, I share this story with her:

Months ago, when I was stuck in the middle of daily existance and the deep depression it placed on my heart, I wasn't writing. I was supposedly living this amazing life: a gorgeous, kind boyfriend, a home of my own that we shared (complete with a cat), a job that seemed (from the outside) creative and fulfilling. But while my achievment-based life was propelling forward, I was absolutey spiritually stagnant. My biggest love has always been reading and writing and I was doing neither. One night I took Marbre to see Yusef Komunyakaa read at the New School. I was indescribably moved, as always. On some level, that night he woke me up to what I knew I needed, deep down. On the train home I wrote the poem, "Questions for Yusef," asking Mr. K where his gift of writing derives from, and calling out for the experience of pain in order to write like him. I mean, I literally say, "what great suffer should I take, what beating must my organs endure." Yeah.

(Read the poem here: http://king-poetic.livejournal.com/97329.html)

As I was telling Sonia, I could have written this poem easily from a different perspective. Light, transcendance, god, ultimate love. But no. I wrote about the devil, dark forces, the demons that lie sleeping in us and come hurling out in our art. Not only did I write this poem, but I read it aloud. Spoke it out to audiences, recited it to the point of tears. Everything in my body shouted, "LET ME FEEL SOMETHING." I guess I needed this purging to start me off on what was to be exactly what I asked for, a painfully neccesary journey. A few months later and my life is turned upside down. I experience the deepest hurt that has ever been put into this mortal body. And then I get a letter. I'm going to Africa. For free. To study under Yusef Komunyakaa.

Before we leave for the night, Sonia tells me about seeing one of her favorite Bengali poets who Yusef translated (magically) at the Bowery while I was (unfortunately) out of town. The translation was so perfect, she was mesmerized. I ask Sonia to speak to me in Bengali. "What do you want me to say?" she asks, and I don't have to think long. "Say: We are amazing, beautiful women and our next steps will be gorgeous and incredible." And then came her lilting language of Calcutta, blessing me right in the middle of this crazy city we call home.

A brief interlude for Sonia: There are residencies and novels and books and poems awaiting us. There are foreign lands and lovers and deep friendships and mountain tops to dance on. There are so many blessed things heading our way. You are already talking to flowers, writing your own personal scripture. I can't wait to see what comes!

So today. My parents are on their way to Ireland. My mother worries incessantly about getting on a plane to Africa without being able to speak to her before hand. My father sends me a birthday email today, as there will be no birthday wishes from my family on the actual day. July 2nd. I know this birthday is all about stepping on that plane. No cake, no presents, no singing, just me and a big metal bird setting off to a new dream. I think of my birthday last year, which was a wonderful, quiet day with a person I loved, but I don't remember feeling much more grounded than I do now, about to take an 11 hour flight to Ghana. Although, truth be told, I am starting to feel grounded. Not in the traditional sense, but in the way that everyone has been telling me will come from this bottomless pit: internally. Self as foundation. Finally. I laugh and smile for no reason today. No reason!

And then there is something of a past lover admitting that way back when he was falling in love with you. Perhaps he is even falling for you right now, as he holds you in that familiar way and you know this will not happen again, but his eyes beg you to say otherwise. You see him so clearly for the first time ever. You shrug at all of his slimy-ness, feel the power of your healed heart that will never again allow that pain, enjoy the laughs you have always shared. Tell him about your wanderlust. Ask how he manages to be so on the move, all the time. Like everyone else, this man says, "but you are so Brooklyn." (New York, how did you crown me this? I didn't even grow up on your streets!) At heart I believe I am mountains and country and peace, but everyone seems to think otherwise. He suggests Denver. I shrug.

I don't think I got to tell you about the Russian baths and their amazing steam rooms or the massage or Maya's singing that stole my heart or Jme and how amazing his visit was, or the Chinese palm reader who gave me an abbreviated reading for the last $3 in my wallet and said I was going to die in another country (at an old age, thank good.) But those stories are stories for other days. I've gone on long enough. In the words of our momentary friend Leslie, Namaste, Bitches!!