Jul 5

Scapegoat

(written for Rev. Justin McCreary’s sermon, “The Devil I Know: Demonic Themes in Spiritual Formation”)

The Garden Bountiful had everything we needed–

The safest of havens, plotted for us in love
Carefree, we moved among the trees
Untouched by shame, untouched by pride.
Innocent: how could we know? Our
Perfection was lost upon us
Until I laid my hand upon the tree
Ran fingertips over encoded bark
Until I heard the leaves
rustle secrets to the passing wind
Until the hunger set in
hot as flame
Sun-rusted flesh gave way to teeth, and
juice ran down my wrists.
Innocence: how could we know? Its
boldness, its fragility lost upon us
until it had fallen, irreparable.
Knowledge, grief, and
death came in their time
But tell no stories of how I was led astray.
Tell the bittersweet story of children and parents:
Say I found wisdom worth pain;
Say I found yearning that outweighed death.
Jul 5

Trusting the Science

With summer kicking up, I am reminded of Camp Mercury’s philosophy that growth and learning doesn’t happen while safely contained in bubble wrap. We have to be willing to have “skin in the game,” to be willing to fall flat.

I’m a huge comics/sci-fi nerd, and one of the things that always brings me to tears is when the gadgeteers trust their science. When Tony steps out of the window of Stark Tower, he trusts his math, his calculations, his process to save him from Loki, to save him from the NYC sidewalk, to save the world. In the end, it’s his science—his Work, his Self—that gets him though the aftermath of New York, through betrayal, and back to a headspace where he can go home and be a good partner, a good Avenger, and better to himself.

Today, I’m trying to needle around where that surety has gone. Since my job dried up, I feel like I’ve become a bit of a employment-centric dancing bear. I have to work very hard to shove past the tedium, and to manage my expectations when I find a job worth pursuing.

Amidst all of this rudderlessness, I am eating my fears. A month ago, I sucked it up and took my road test. Twenty-five years after I could have had a driver’s license, I finally did it. No one has died. I have not died. It is good, and I am proud.

Jul 5

Love Letter to Mother Mississippi

Dear Mississippi, how should I begin? As a Unitarian Universalist, I can only speak my own truth, which is informed by a deep relationship with the elements.

Water: In heavy rain, cats yowling, the lightning in the sky giving me a glimpse of the Chunky River’s churning. A sudden doom fell upon my shoulders: I was moving somewhere they would name a river Chunky without a trace of irony. Hot on the heels of a life-altering breakup, storm season in Mississippi was the perfect accompaniment to my unraveling. I moved here for love, a love lost 19 days before my entry to the state. I would stand in the rain or at the edge of the Reservoir howling, crying big fat tears, not yet realizing that I had freed myself.

A year later, the rains rolled in, and I was a different person: worn like riverstone, I stood in the deluge, trading kisses. While we adamantly told everyone we weren’t dating, we were slowly building a marriage.

Fire: I lived in Miami, where I would burn through long sleeve tee-shirts, I lived in the Dutch Oven of pollution that encapsulates Atlanta. Nothing prepared me for Mississippi’s summer swelter. I suddenly understood the concept of braising on a whole new level. I was able to truly appreciate my newfound friends’ investments in deep, covered porches. Fire: do any mosquitos burn quite like Mississippi?

Mississippi is where I took my anger and turned it into passion. I have always been outspoken, but Mississippi helped me to hone my candor into a useful tool. I have always been opinionated, but Mississippi made an advocate out of me. I had aways written, but Mississippi made a writer out of me.

I had carried so much anger within me, that proverbial hot stone, and in Mississippi,  the hottest part of the forge for so very many social struggles, I shaped that anger into an instrument for activism and growth.

Air: As a child, I would spread my arms wide and let the wind catch my whole body like a sail. I still do this. Everyone notices the wind in Mississippi: I think everyone holds deep gratitude for the breeze that slices through soupy August, just as we steel ourselves for the icy barrage that whips through January.

The lightning in Mississippi is superior to any other place I have seen: the way it splits the sky, that primal beauty, laden with wonder, awe, and fear. Unburdened by decades of old habits and reputations, I let the lightning split me, let the air move me, spiraling me deeper into my own self. I came to an accord with my intellect, embraced my nerdiness, and allowed the air to bear away the tatters of an old life long outlived.

Earth: I had grown plants, but never had a garden. I am still in no hurry: the trees in Mississippi are incredible. Jackson is an anomaly: after years of asphalt, limestone and pure red clay, to be able to have wild animals afoot, and sensory reassurance of happenstance nature around me in the middle of a city was overwhelming. During a nasty storm, a wild goose took refuge on my apartment porch: we weathered the storm together, he on one side of the glass, me on the other. I sighted a deer across the street from the mall. I have seen a living armadillo trundling alongside Pear Orchard Road.  In Fondren, there is a tomato plant that crawls out of a crack in the sidewalk each year, bearing fruit against all odds. I have seen a red-tailed hawk snatch a jay out of the sky, and a community of bluejays rise up to exact vengeance. All my life, I would listen to Stevie Nicks and sway: she made me feel like a gypsy, a stray cat. I wanted to be untethered, easy to transplant. I put down wide but shallow roots.

Suddenly, I had a home. When my love and I bought a house, we knew it was ours because of the massive grove of trees… the trees that bent nearly to the ground, but did not break in Katrina… but played dervishes in a tornado and dropped most of their branches in a large, interlocking spiral. We thought we had lost them, but in the end, their deep roots saved them. They taught me that we must be willing to root deeply and reach out to one another to have security; that others will shelter your broken, tender body with their own limbs.

Mother Mississippi is no doting mother. She exacts a hefty toll from each of us. The rivers… they go where they want. Tornadoes rake our land like animal claws. The sun is brutal, and Yazoo clay is a trickster spirit of its own. Let’s say Mother Mississippi challenges the concept of your ownership.

I have an elevator speech for the many people who ask me, “WHY MISSISSIPPI?”

I tell them i live on a dead volcano beside a living serpent of a river. I stay because of the black earth streaked with red clay and the blood of civil rights heroes; the impossible green of sweet potato vine; the fossilized epic log jam just outside the city; and the Ragnarok-levels of lightning breaking through the storm outside. Jackson, my slice of earth, is an elemental convergence.

But there is more. Mississippi is a great teacher. I stay because the heat reminds me to kindle my own blazing courage; I stay because the air reminds me to use my breath as fuel for the body and lasting change; I stay because the water reminds me that we ourselves are ever-changing, capable of changing course; and I stay because the earth reminds me that we who choose to stay are interwoven, inextricable… sovereign unto ourselves, but supported by so many.

Today is not Earth Day, but we celebrate it anyway. We can choose to celebrate it daily, to remind us we can make tiny changes in our lives to live more gently; that we can revel in the beauty even as we mourn the injustices done to our habitat and the souls of our neighbors; and that we can fall in love with a place that is prickly, harsh, and perhaps difficult to love…

It is a complicated relationship, and I cherish it.

May 27

Feminist Hulk is deep

 does not mean Yes, All Men. Thank you to the men who get that, and are standing in witness to women’s experiences.

I’ve been cooking down my feelings, and plain and simple, it goes like this. When confronted with unspeakable violence toward women (and a subsequent outpouring of women’s similar experiences), I wish our bros were more prone to think about how they would confront the next friend who started down a degrading path, rather than telling a woman they’re crazy/stupid/absurd for feeling threatened in their lives.

IF YOU AN ALLY, PROVE IT BY TRUSTING THAT  ARE NOT ATTACKING YOU, FOCUS INSTEAD ON MAN WHO GAVE EXPLICIT REASONS FOR HATING US.

It is far easier to say, HEY, I’M NOT THAT GUY, than to look around and think, Jesus, this was terrible. How can I make my corner of the world less tolerant of this societal cancer?

A dear friend observed that he can’t do anything about what happened at Isla Vista, but he could intervene when his clientele called women “bitches.”

I just wish I saw more “I really hope I’ve never done anything to wind up on #YesAllWomen, but if I have, I want to understand/fix it.”

May 22

Shedding My Skin

BirdOfParadox is a name I’ve used nearly everywhere for fourteen years. While I think it absolutely is relevant to the very nature of my art, I believe it no longer represents All My Parts.

In the spirit of that, I’ll be transferring the BlogOfParadox to another undisclosed location. I’m in no rush to vacate my digital nest: I’m currently working on a few very cool projects while I’m between full-time employment, including

  • unf&$%ing my life with Transmogrifier Rhiannon Llewellyn,
  • editing a dear friend’s book,
  • putting together a complete communications plan for the Unitarian Universalist Church of Jackson for a very interesting year,
  • mulling over going back to school,
  • mulling over whether the time is right to start working on a story I want to tell, and where I’d find an artist who could execute it,
  • catching up on my comics,
  • scheduling daily dance parties with thanks to this playlist based on a forthcoming comic book WHICH YOU SHOULD PRE-ORDER
  • approaching food preparation as The Hot Makeout attack.

 

May 10

Through the Thicket

For years, I have been waging war against wild, barren brambles that have overtaken a section of my yard. I yank them up, only to have then defiantly crop up again, hardier than ever.

For midsummer last year, I had the intention of uprooting them forever. I had grand plans to weave the strands into a wreath—no matter the bloodshed and discomfort. I was beginning strong boundary work, and thought it would be an excellent talisman.

I thought back to a name I call myself , and could not bear to pull them. I wasn’t ready.
thorns bear fruit

Last week, the time was right. I gathered utensils, and went to deal with them once and for all.

They were covered in flowers: given space, they were able to bear fruit.

It’s a metaphor for practice: everyone thinks that the work must be profound and moving, each time, or you aren’t doing it right. I have a long-standing friendship that mirrors this scenario: I can’t be mad at them for doing the same things they always do. The only thing I can do is decide how I want to deal with it. I’ve been an all-or-nothing girl for so long, a bridge burner. I realized that lately I have allowed fallow seasons for work, friends, and situations instead of scything them to the black earth. The best action can be a standstill or a pivot. I have begun my strong boundary work in earnest, and find inaction and observance as my unlikely talismans.

Sometimes, practice is about falling down on the job, too, and bearing witness to the snowy unfurling of unexpected sweetness.

Apr 30

Love Letter to Mother Mississippi

I am sharing with you the message I presented at the UU Church’s Earth Day celebration.

Dear Mississippi, how should I begin?

Water: In heavy rain, cats yowling, the lightning in the sky giving me a glimpse of the Chunky River’s churning. A sudden doom fell upon my shoulders: I was moving somewhere they would name a river Chunky without a trace of irony. Hot on the heels of a life-altering breakup, storm season in Mississippi was the perfect accompaniment to my unraveling. I moved here for love, a love lost 19 days before my entry to the state. I would stand in the rain or at the edge of the Reservoir howling, crying big fat tears, not yet realizing that I had freed myself.

A year later, the rains rolled in, and I was a different person: worn like riverstone, I stood in the deluge, trading kisses. While we adamantly told everyone we weren’t dating, we were slowly building a marriage.

 

Fire: I lived in Miami, where I would burn through long sleeve tee-shirts, I lived in the Dutch Oven of pollution that encapsulates Atlanta. Nothing prepared me for Mississippi’s summer swelter. I suddenly understood the concept of braising on a whole new level. I was able to truly appreciate my newfound friends’ investments in deep, covered porches. Fire: do any mosquitos burn quite like Mississippi?

Mississippi is where I took my anger and turned it into passion. I have always been outspoken, but Mississippi helped me to hone my candor into a useful tool. I have always been opinionated, but Mississippi made an advocate out of me. I had aways written, but Mississippi made a writer out of me.

I had carried so much anger within me, that proverbial hot stone, and in Mississippi,  the hottest part of the forge for so very many social struggles, I shaped that anger into an instrument for activism and growth.

 

Air: As a child, I would spread my arms wide and let the wind catch my whole body like a sail. I still do this. Everyone notices the wind in Mississippi: I think everyone holds deep gratitude for the breeze that slices through soupy August, just as we steel ourselves for the icy barrage that whips through January.

The lightning in Mississippi is superior to any other place I have seen: the way it splits the sky, that primal beauty, laden with wonder, awe, and fear. Unburdened by decades of old habits and reputations, I let the lightning split me, let the air move me, spiraling me deeper into my own self. I came to an accord with my intellect, embraced my nerdiness, and allowed the air to bear away the tatters of an old life long outlived.

 

Earth: I had grown plants, but never had a garden. I am still in no hurry: the trees in Mississippi are incredible. Jackson is an anomaly: after years of asphalt, limestone and pure red clay, to be able to have wild animals afoot, and sensory reassurance of happenstance nature around me in the middle of a city was overwhelming. During a nasty storm, a wild goose took refuge on my apartment porch: we weathered the storm together, he on one side of the glass, me on the other. I sighted a deer across the street from the mall. I have seen a living armadillo trundling alongside Pear Orchard Road.  In Fondren, there is a tomato plant that crawls out of a crack in the sidewalk each year, bearing fruit against all odds. I have seen a red-tailed hawk snatch a jay out of the sky, and a community of bluejays rise up to exact vengeance. All my life, I would listen to Stevie Nicks and sway: she made me feel like a gypsy, a stray cat. I wanted to be untethered, easy to transplant. I put down wide but shallow roots.

Suddenly, I had a home. When my love and I bought a house, we knew it was ours because of the massive grove of trees… the trees that bent nearly to the ground, but did not break in Katrina… but played dervishes in a tornado and dropped most of their branches in a large, interlocking spiral. We thought we had lost them, but in the end, their deep roots saved them. They taught me that we must be willing to root deeply and reach out to one another to have security; that others will shelter your broken, tender body with their own limbs.

 

Mother Mississippi is no doting mother. She exacts a hefty toll from each of us. The rivers… they go where they want. Tornadoes rake our land like animal claws. The sun is brutal, and Yazoo clay is a trickster spirit of its own. Let’s say Mother Mississippi challenges the concept of your ownership.

I have an elevator speech for the many people who ask me, “WHY MISSISSIPPI?”

I tell them i live on a dead volcano beside a living serpent of a river. I stay because of the black earth streaked with red clay and the blood of civil rights heroes; the impossible green of sweet potato vine; the fossilized epic log jam just outside the city; and the Ragnarok-levels of lightning breaking through the storm outside. Jackson, my slice of earth, is an elemental convergence.

But there is more. Mississippi is a great teacher. I stay because the heat reminds me to kindle my own blazing courage; I stay because the air reminds me to use my breath as fuel for the body and lasting change; I stay because the water reminds me that we ourselves are ever-changing, capable of changing course; and I stay because the earth reminds me that we who choose to stay are interwoven, inextricable… sovereign unto ourselves, but supported by so many.

Today is not Earth Day, but we celebrate it anyway. We can choose to celebrate it daily, to remind us we can make tiny changes in our lives to live more gently; that we can revel in the beauty even as we mourn the injustices done to our habitat and the souls of our neighbors; and that we can fall in love with a place that is prickly, harsh, and perhaps difficult to love…

It is a complicated relationship, and I cherish it.

Mar 30

Why Mississippi?

I live on a dead volcano beside a living serpent of a river. Because of the black earth streaked with red clay and the blood of civil rights heroes; the impossible green of sweet potato vine; the fossilized epic log jam just outside the city; and the Ragnarok-levels of lightning breaking through the storm outside.

I live in atop an elemental convergence, with the luxuries of fine dining. The weather is fickle, brutal: Mississippi expects steep toll to live here: your home, your trees… well, let’s say Mother Mississippi challenges the concept of your ownership.

It is not an easy place to live: there are bigger cities, more opportunities awaiting you. It is an uneasy place to live: people can be overwhelmingly THEMSELVES. It is a complicated relationship, and I cherish it.

Mar 18

Confessions of a Former Corporate Goth

I don’t wear a lot of solid black anymore. I got tired of being told I should wear black, because it minimizes… ALL OF THIS, or is flattering by turning you into a non-threatening sort of caftan wearer. When I purchased a professional wardrobe, I made a conscious decision to purchase color, and bright color at that. I’m wearing polka dots today. I wear coral, ocean blue, a palette of greens and occasional purples. I love to wear color and fully inhabit my size.

I feel like black clothing is often the institution built by designers as a place for fat girls to go to die. Or buy exercise wear. So, both. (I jest: I love a well constructed black dress, and also enjoy exercising.) So I’m enjoying the first Lane Bryant designer collection by Isabel Toledo. I’m loving the embroidered, foil and eyelet sets: so much gorgeous, body-conscious, timeless beauty going on here. And… the layered cocktail  and the cowl neck dresses are so elegant and shapely. It’s a great time to be a big girl!

 

Mar 14

Eye of the Storm

never have i been a calm blue sea
i have always been a storm — stevie nicks

I’ve been quieter than I like to be for a long time. It is unsettling to settle in. I have a home, and I’ve been in a relationship for eleven years. I’ve been in Mississippi for nearly the amount of time I spent in Atlanta.

I keep busy. I fall into depression easily if I don’t. Movement gives me the illusion I hold court in the eye in the storm. I cannot control the circumstances of the universe, but I can hold space for myself, choosing who and what I bring into my demesne.

My lessons have brought me to the practice of silence, and what I’ve found isn’t for you. It is mine, and my arsenal of words would fail the concept. You might ask, Why is she blogging, then? It’s hugging the midline: sharing a bit of my work while I still stand slightly apart from the world, listening. I am learning the power of strength held in silence.

I love you, darlings.