Streaming...

I'm streaming in from a disparate night channel, where I was left this morning at the edge of my bed, edge of water, edge of something that knows me when I have forgotten myself. And it's good when after hours of struggling to wake up, to wake up others, to find our way into the day, that fifteen miles across town when I sit at a table, random, look out the window, lost, Holly walks in, smiling, "Thought I'd find you here," as she unpacks her laptop.

This table, our buoy, we sail side by side. Eight stories due this week, she’s cranking, and when I look over to catch the shape of her movement, I see. She’s alive. Over the top of silver screens, I say, “You look alive now.” She nods, scribbles notes, we don’t have to complete sentences. Thank god.

If I could write I would say that I’m falling apart. I’ve always been falling apart.

Days ago, my sister says when I was born it was all so touch and go, life and death. The door swung back and forth, back and forth, no one knew if I was coming or going.

It's always a kaleidescope, me falling between shifting colors, dimensions flowering and decomposing, second by second. Day by day. Between cereal and euphoric glimpses, one turn. Between black holes and crumbling cliffs, another turn.

“Dad worked long hours but every night he went to the hospital to be with you. Even after mom came home, late at night, night after night, he returned. ‘That’s my girl, I gotta go,’ he’d tell us, dropping us at grandma’s. As soon as he left she made us get down on our knees. Lacking faith she still commanded, “Even horses drop to their knees, you can do it, too. Come on, let’s pray for that baby.”

“In the din of incubators, the wet nurse held you to her breast, while you held dad’s pinky finger. You fit in his palm, that’s how small, that’s how unsure we were. When you finally came home it took awhile, nothing was fully formed.”

“Don’t you see? You were a gem…”

********

In an old Christian church I listen to the Gayatri mantra. Deva Premal haunts the walls with Sanskrit syllables and it’s perfect. The looming, stain-glass figured Jesus leans from the ceiling and blesses the holy wave, he parts the waters of convention and tradition and practice for his old friend, Indian devotional song. I hold my face in my hands, feeling Jesus in the warmth and smell of flesh, my own breath against all that mercy, full of thanks, full of relief, emptying all the tension of opposites. I listen to the reverb at the core of vocal strands, each impulse of love pushing molecules so beautifully they strike like a match, strands dissolve into the harmonics of chords, my body, from my body, the wave lifts to meet her……and, finally, through all the anger, I let it in.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. I can’t open my eyes. I can’t part from the space of light, delicate respite. But I have to eventually open to receive how the reds weave with sound. My Tibetan rug holds all the musicians. I wonder at the sight – just what these rugs were made for, to honor worship, to adorn the practices, to behold what cannot be seen and make it flourish with pattern.

Jess and I lug the rug into my car at 1am the night before. Candles, vases, plants, shawls, silks – I walk around the house and remove them from their place. I don’t know why, but I know I’m being called. I know the call.

We’re setting up the stage, preparing the space, welcoming. I wait for Jess in the basement. Deva Premal walks in and straight for me. She opens long arms twenty feet away and I feel the space gathering, and then the embrace. I look behind me to find someone else, but she's coming for me. She enfolds and doesn’t let go. And doesn’t let go. I want to let go and she whispers, “Thank you so much for being here.” I can't let it happen, “I’m here because of my rug.” She releases enough to see my eyes and smiles, “Oh, it’s much more than that.” And then I’m telling her that I listened to her chant as I wrote the book, during that entire year, blasting beautiful voice in my headset, eyes on my baby, writing. I had forgotten, but it’s as if she hasn’t forgotten. “Your book is important. Do your work.”

(to be continued...)