relationship, spirit, cats, books and phd pursuits

i'm going in, again, still, in the spiral of spiraling in. i watch the cat curl around herself--the tail, the enso of the circle of the spirit of her wholeness--the totality of her being one sweet circle of a possibility and joy. i am tired. i notice the tiredness. is it good to write about the tiredness? amazing work week, accomplishments, achievements that will culminate in the sweet reward of a paycheck--and not a very big one--but a habit forming of showing up, learning systems, answering, smiling, being in a place, stationery, regularly, arriving and departing in a totality of what? for what? i learn. i keep learning. i keep learning in circles of spirals that, like the edge of the binder, spiral both up and down. classes are circles. books are circles. chairs in a circle are circular. windows both open and close. possibilities ebb and flow. breathing, in grief filled lungs, is what? where does the melancholy go when it's supposed to go away? i consider the conversations i've been a part of for the past few days--beginning with dr. joy degruy's event on thursday night, where i took money and checked names off lists and smiled and put up tables and easels and took them down and felt happy to have a role that allowed me to be in the space, again, of fascinating architecture and sacred purpose, while still using the pulpit to say things that have not been said from them before. my college boyfriend's mother invited me to church with her from time to time--all the time if i wanted to go--pentacostal, and she got the spirit, and it was a place of firing it up and letting it out and singing it out and being in the rich dance of what it was to be who you were filled with the spirit of what came down upon you and acting it out without acting--releasing it--like a baby throws a temper tantrum when she wants what she wants and can't get it--spirit, like babies, knows what it wants--and so.... empty, lost, head full of other people's ideas about how to breathe and live and sit up straight and wear shoes and mother children and be alive on the first divorced wedding anniversary of the burning of the dress. oh, for the burning of the dress--polyester--polly and esther--i think this is a gorgeous name for a 1970s vintage boutique. i had my mary tyler moore moment after leaving the first unitarian church on the night of the gathering. i was done with work, and i was there in the city, and i had a ticket to ride, and i chose to walk one of the last walks in the shoes i bought in january to wear to school. i chose them. i walked to the brand new ross in alameda from the poet tree house on some january night when i felt like i had $20 to buy a new pair of shoes and i arrived and looked through the racks and thought all about the children in some third world country that were paid, if they were paid, something like $.87/day to work in the factory and glue together the shoes and sew together the clothes that i felt too guilty to buy but bought anyway, too cheap to think about those things--the things like "where does the fabric come from?" and "who looms this shit together?" and "who is on the other side of these industrial stitches?" and "who died to make men free?" it's easter weekend in san francisco. tomorrow, there is the cutest jesus contest in delores park--the sacred ohlone land that was stolen from the native americans to make the missions that turned into their "schools" and "churches" teaching them to hate themselves, to hate their understanding of each other, to move them from territory to out of the way. this land taken over turned mission will now play host to a hoard of homosexuals claiming for themselves what jesus they'd do on the day he is to rise again--and i will be at work, considering the trickster in the buddhist tradtion, at the place i go to learn how to be a phd being so that i might or might not ever get to teach at the institutions of higher learning spread out across this america or europe or africa or continental shifts now causing themselves across the oceans of what will be will be. oh, for the release of this kind of blogged writing again. i am glad i am letting myself--my finger tips dance on the keyboard. there must be release for what a body holds and what a mind fills up with. there must be a letting go. there must be a pissing out. there must be a shitting, and preferably not in the pants kind, of "i don't need to house this stuff in me anymore" and then a careful deposit of the what is ready to be released in the receptacle designed to hold it. i put the shoes in the receptacle yesterday. i put the shoes where they go--in the green metal trash bin on some hill above the place where i bought the new shoes--just learning to walk in them--just learning to pull up the zipper and tie the string--just learning to feel how the feet are held just so-firmly and with structure and support--with a heel, still, a little higher than if it were a pair of boots for a man, with a purplish tint to the leather and stitching just so--a cow's skin? i think? i wear a cow's skin, treated and painted and sewn and slightly larger than my foot with strings that string up, laces that line across the face of the things that climb six or more inches above my ankle. oh, the disappointment of becoming who i am.... oh, for the disappointment. my mother told me to get on welfare the same week i called to say my best friend was sick of my shit and i just wanted to hear something good from her. is it menopause? this kind of eternal, weepy sadness? is it loneliness? is it loss? is it accumulated memory? is it post traumatic slave syndrome? is it post traumatic divorce syndrome? is it post traumatic motherhood system? is it possible to build relationships? is it possible to do something beyond destroying them? is it possible to rest? to sleep for three days? to do nothing? to die, as the great jesus was allowed to do, by cruxifiction, nails in feet and hands, this is the day he's really, really dead--before he sends his spirit body back to his denied lover, magdalene, before she gathers his best friends together, before the rising again of again. this is the day after earth day. this is the hour of this awakening moment of this here and now. this is the day after belvie rooks put together this incredible circle of civil rights heroes and poets and possibility thinkers and did the work to create a moment where cotton fields could be seen and ancestor spirits could come forth and dances and circles and inside and outside and lines and boundaries and doors open and shut and whirling dervish kinds of worlds could open and close and slide and shut and life and death and death and life and living and dead and rising again and spirit and spirituality and religion and crux and church and teaching and learning and allowing and being and believing and self and up against one's self and in the company of one's self and filling up with one's self and emptying out of one's self can spill out onto the floors and down the walkways of whatever this experience in time and place is and isn't in the here and now of this one day. i write to let the writing write itself. i do not own what i say here in these words released. i trust that out of me, they are free to do their thing. i am sorry the language i use is the one english of my american upbringing that has nothing but white privilege splattered in the bloody colors of every other nation of the world to make its black ink with. ink without inking. virtual words. release in all forms. whirling dervishes. post apocalyptic yessssssssssssssss ringing in the totemic passions and pathways of what does and doesn't work. oh, for the joy of joylessness. it is a deep breath in and out. it is taking a shit on the easter saturday of this song. it is a cat, precious, new, baby, lazing in the sunshine from the top of her condo in this palace of home filled with old love and new longings. i am writing again, but what? and why? this narrative thing of my things--spoken powerfully, oppressively, from the fear of fearlessness. this is the way of the ways. i turn back to the pages of the women's lives and their multi-cultural perspectives. i have this one more week's reflection paper to write, a final presentation and three term papers to complete. i am in. i am deep in and needing some release. structure is structural. new boots, i'm wearing now.