Tigerlily Logic

Dear Sextremely Repressed Republican Extremists

noreply@blogger.com (Diana Tigerlily) — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 13:59:00 +0000

Dear Sextremely Repressed Republican Extremists,

Please explain to me,
as you sit at your men-only table,
why you find it okay
for insurance to pay
for viagra but not birth control.
I'm sure your table of decision-makers
full of impotent, infertile old men
has little to do with it.

Please explain to me
why you have catapulted corporations
and fetuses to people-hood statuses,
while aggressively eroding women's status,
minimizing her to reproductive machinery, uterus-status,
a non-person, a uterus you don't want her to fully own,
a uterus that you hate
yet need
in your quest to own
all the means of production
and reproduction.

I mean, really,
just because you act like nothing more than a hard-headed penis
doesn't mean you can reduce me to nothing more than a uterus
nor do you have my permission to poke your junk into my business,
so get the fuck out, because I'm calling you out
Rapists
Trespassing
in Religious Cloaks.

Have you read Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale?
Oh, I forgot, you don't read because you're anti-intellectual.

So, then, you probably haven't read the latest study
that proved what we've always known:
Republicans have less intelligence
than everybody else. (http://pss.sagepub.com/content/23/2/187)

But who can really believe science anyway, right?

You likely won't want my advice
since I'm credible and credentialed

not rich and religious
like your financial friend Foster Friess
who doesn't realize sex is therapy,
and sex with aspirin between the knees
is every kind but missionary-- (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMVzaIMYuTY)

but consider this your lucky day.
I'm giving you free advice
because I'm just that nice
and here's how I want you to play:

Keep doing what you're doing. That's right.
Just keep moving to the right. That's right.
Keep moving to the right
until you're right
at the edge
of this big flat earth
and then,
take one giant step
for Mankind.

It will be evolutionary

and will make Humankind
(which includes women)
happy.

Now, don't worry. You won't really fall off the face of the earth,
you'll find that the earth is actually not flat

and this will be a shocking revelation
and you'll begin to question everything
you thought you once knew.
Your world will crumble beneath your feet.
You will feel unstable as
you experience a paradigm shift.

But then you will attain enlightenment
empathy
critical self-reflexivity
and you will apologize profusely
to everybody.

--by Diana Tigerlily

The Hawk, De-Mist-ified

noreply@blogger.com (Diana Tigerlily) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 14:33:00 +0000

A hawk sits at the top of the oak tree beside our little pond,

the one we call the mudhole.

Hawk’s back faces me; stiff tailfeathers fan in classic pose.

Fog mists heavily, cloaking the morning in thick dreams

or a backdrop of majesty. Out of the silent stillness,

suddenly, movement. Leaves flutter and the hawk’s wings

span open in a dive toward the water

where it snatches a bird flying low, drops it on the grass

and casually devours it, beaking it until its gone.

Then, quickly, briefly, wings span open just long enough

to propel the hawk to the lowest limb in the oak, more hop than flight,

where it now sits on the tree branch, facing me, puffed in pose,

waiting for its next snack. Many minutes of unmoving meditation, then

snatch. In the blink of an eye a leap down from the tree to clutch

a field mouse in its talons and soar away.

Magically, the mist has lifted, cleared itself away, unveiled itself as it revealed

one raw mystery of premeditated survival.

LGBT Rights are Human Rights: Hillary Rodham Clinton's Powerful Speech

noreply@blogger.com (Diana Tigerlily) — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 03:47:00 +0000

Hillary Clinton, addressing the United Nations in Geneva, tells the world that LGBT rights are Human Rights.

http://news.advocate.com/post/13844217337/watch-the-speech-youve-been-waiting-for

On Self-Empowerment: A Letter to Students

noreply@blogger.com (Diana Tigerlily) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 14:31:00 +0000

An insightful call to action by Jason Del Gandio, on creating a world that's better for everyone.
"Occupy Your Education"
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/dg161111.html

Mandala Gardens, October 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Diana Tigerlily) — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 19:29:00 +0000

The twin deer, hanging out at Mandala Gardens.

morning rose

monarch ambrosia

The goats, basking luxuriously on this sunny day.

young holly grove at Mandala Gardens

Bridge to Mother Oak

Tigerlily, Planted: a.k.a, Great Blue Heron and Oak Tree Speak to Me

noreply@blogger.com (Diana Tigerlily) — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 15:51:00 +0000

I’d been searching for homeplace for years and years, struggling with where I was meant to live.

After google-mapping every city of every job opening, after years of contemplating every potential location’s geography, topography, local ideology, ethnic diversity, creative opportunity, I had decided, with certainty, that the place I was meant to live and call home was New York City. Yes! New York City. I was ready for the gritty. I was ready for the city. It was time for a serious life shift.

And then springtime came to Southern Illinois. The lilacs intoxicated me with their fragrant cliché. The tulips screamed neon announcements that they survived the deer. A friend gave us truckloads of sandstone. I laid pathways, planted trees. Just when I thought I had successfully detached from our land, here I was with its very soil under my nails.

It was April 2010. I had recently completed my Ph.D., and I needed a job. The economy was in the thick of its notorious downturn, and the redbuds were in bloom. I walked the country roads where poverty and beauty collided. I loved the pasture with the old horse whose cockleburs I removed from its black mane. I loved the big Victorian with the sign out front that said “Haircuts.” I loved the trailer with the life-size statue of Kwan Yin standing beneath the tree guarded by the two lions.

I didn’t want to leave Southern Illinois! I realized it with a surge of passion. But how could I stay? How could I make a living here? My mind returned to an old vision I’d been refining in my imagination for years. Mandala Gardens. My idea for a creative retreat space where activists, artists, scholars, healers, people could come from all over and walk through my gardens and share inspiration. My heart quickened as I realized I could stay in Southern Illinois. I could make this work! I returned home from my walk, euphoric with my realization, and minutes later, my phone rang.

“Dr. Tigerlily? I’m calling from New York City. We received your application for the full-time tenure-track position. Are you still interested?”

I froze. “No,” I was about to say, but I caught myself in time to realize this was about a real job in New York City and that I had to say yes, “Yes.”

“Okay, that’s all we wanted to know. Thank you.” And she hung up!

I stood there shocked. My heart beat from the adrenaline surge and reality shift.

My thoughts quickly returned to my new ideas for Mandala Gardens, and later that day, I told Greg about how I wanted to make it work. But he just shook his head. “We don’t have the space for parking, and we really need another building.”

Undaunted, I went for another walk, and I saw a Notice of Foreclosure taped to the house next door. The house had been abandoned for a year. The couple had divorced and gone their separate ways. They must have stopped making payments. It felt clean to me that they chose simply to walk away from this symbol they no longer shared.

The Notice said the foreclosure became effective April 21. That was tomorrow!

The timing was serendipitous.

This wonderful house on three acres that attached to my gardens, this long driveway with ample parking, this huge vacant building—this is what I needed to make my vision come true!

I returned home, excited, and opened my laptop. Sitting in my inbox was an email that had just been sent from the college in New York City notifying me I had been selected for a phone interview for tomorrow or the day after that.

The house going into foreclosure at the same time as the New York City job interview was the mother of all convergences.

The phone interview went well. They told me they would contact me in the next few days to let me know either way about another interview.

I hung up the phone excited about this full-time tenure track position. To choose this job was to choose academia coupled with the world’s greatest city.

But…to choose this job was to reject Mandala Gardens, just when it was seeming like a real possibility.

I marveled at the truly coffee and granola moment this was for me: New York City or Mandala Gardens. It was the ultimate life-path-decision. Whichever I chose would be significantly life-defining, not just for me but for my family, too.

I told myself sternly, surely it would be lofty and unwise to turn down a real job with real benefits in the field of my training, in a city I love, to follow a vision I was only imagining. Right?

But I was getting ahead of myself. They might not even offer me the job.

I decided to put all of it out of my mind.

But in those next days, I found myself unable to stop thinking about all the new mandala gardens I would build on our new land. I was imagining a giant labyrinth, children’s gardens, heirloom gardens, a pumpkin patch, honeybees. I was picturing pathways lined with white stone that glowed in the moonlight and a hidden bench with a wooden box that contained binoculars and a butterfly identification book. I was thinking about creative retreats, conferences, workshops. I was imagining haven, enlightenment, sustainability.

I confided to Greg that I didn’t want to move to New York City, I didn’t want the job. I wanted to stay right here and buy this property and build Mandala Gardens. I felt that to choose Mandala Gardens was to choose the life I wanted.

Greg and I started crunching numbers. We didn’t have the cash for a down payment, the house was in serious disrepair, I only had one more guaranteed paycheck—and it was a half-paycheck, and I didn’t know if I would be re-hired. I felt fear and self-doubt creeping in. What if we found ourselves with a money pit and growing debt? What if I failed?

I went to the center of my spiral garden until I was rooted in centeredness. Then, I walked the land. At the very back corner was the giant old oak tree. I’d never stood beneath this tree, for it was fenced away on the neighbor’s property--the property that we were now thinking about buying. So I walked across the property line and stood beneath the old oak tree for the first time ever.

I placed my hand on the tree, and I heard a clear voice say, “This is where you live.”

The clarity and the truth of those words crashed over me, fast and unexpected. I was overcome with recognition. This was where I lived. This was my home, where my dreams had taken root. How could I have ever doubted?

I hurried back across the property line and ran up to my house to get my sage stick. I needed to protect this property from anybody making an offer on it. I needed to connect the two properties so they were sealed as one.

I walked the outside borders of the two properties to connect them. I reached the portion of our land I had designated as spirit sanctuary, and a rush of gratitude swept through me, as though the spirit was thanking me for giving it sanctuary.

Aloud I responded, “Thank you for all you’ve given me.”

And I exhaled a long exhale and said, “The two properties are now bound. May they forever be protected.”

As soon as I spoke the words, a bird squawked overhead. I looked up and a Great Blue Heron, symbol of self-determination and self-reliance, flew right over me and across both parcels of land, physically sealing them as one, while reminding me of my strength and ability to manifest this dream.

The Great Blue Heron and the Oak Tree affirmed for me that I had nothing to be afraid of. They answered the question I had been asking for years. I was on my life path.

We bought the house and land, and in the end, I never heard from the college. I was neither formally accepted nor formally rejected. Rather, I had made the decision on my own.

Months later when I sat down to write this story, I wrote the words, “Great Blue Heron and Oak Tree Speak to Me”—and just as I finished typing those nine words, something caught my eye. I looked and saw a great blue heron fly right outside my window, soar majestically, and then land near the top of the very oak tree of which I speak, and of which spoke to me.

Affirmation is everywhere, always.

And this Tigerlily is planted.

A Performance of Vulnerable Resistance

noreply@blogger.com (Diana Tigerlily) — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 14:23:00 +0000

We moved to a rural town and rented a small house. The house had an oppressive vibe. At first I thought it was the nasty carpeting that reeked of dog. But even after I steam-cleaned it multiple times, the vibe lingered. I felt as though I was being watched.
Within about three weeks of moving in, I decided we needed to do a house blessing to release any old energy that didn’t need to be there anymore.

We were new to the area, but we had a few close friends in a neighboring town and invited them over for the house blessing and dinner. We opened all the windows and lit all the candles. We revitalized the energy inside the house, going from room to room singing and cleaning with salt water and sage. Next, we went outside to create a protective circle around our home by walking the perimeter of the yard. Our friend joked that if anybody asks us what we’re doing, we should say that we’re rehearsing for a play. We all laughed and proceeded inside to share a meal.

As we were cleaning up after dinner, somebody knocked on the door, which was unexpected because we didn’t know anybody in town. Here was our very first visitor.

“Uhh. Hi,” said a woman about my age, shifting uncomfortably. Over her shoulder across the street I could see a gang of about a dozen kids crowded in her front yard, looking over. Another neighbor sat on her porch and stared at us. “Um, everybody in the neighborhood was wonderin’ what you was doing over here. They’re saying it’s witchcraft. Do witches live here?”

Well, so much for the neighborhood welcoming committees with fresh baked pies, I thought to myself. I had a small urge to cackle loudly with wild eyes, croon with lunacy, and swirl my hands, As a matter of fact, yes, witches doooo live here. But instead I smiled and said, “Actually, we were rehearsing for a play.”

“Oh,” she said.

That night as I was getting ready for bed, I noticed how much lighter the vibe in the house felt. Even Greg, who generally looks at the world from a scientific perspective, said, “You know, the house actually feels better now.” Months later we would learn that the house had been home to a string of successive tenants with violent tendencies, including the couple who lived there before us--they rammed their truck into the house during a fight and caught it on fire. I was glad we were able to transform the energy.

The next afternoon, somebody knocked on my door. Standing in my doorway was a girl, about nine years old, whom I’d never seen before. She blurted out, “My friends dared me to come knock on your door and ask you if you’re a witch.”

I said, “I’m a person who believes in love and tries to do good things in the world.”

“Oh,” she said, looking into my living room. “Well, even if you’re not a witch, your house is totally witchy cool.” She giggled and rejoined a small gang of girls waiting for her outside on the sidewalk.

About a half hour later, I was sitting on the front porch nursing my six-month old baby, when another neighbor, a middle-aged woman I’d seen around but hadn’t met, came striding over. She walked right up my porch steps and stood before me. She took a drag of her cigarette and blew the smoke directly into my face and onto my nursing baby. Then she drawled, “We’s wondering what you was all doin’ over here yesterday. Making noise and burning candles.” She looked over my head through my open living room door and saw the candles. “Everybody knows candles are a witch’s tool. People are saying that you’re Satanists.” She glared at me. “We sure don’t want no Satanists for neighbors.” She stole a glance at my plump, milk-fed baby, and continued, “The older kids was walking around your house last night and said they saw smoke coming from your chimney. They said you was burning babies.”

I felt severely violated. Trespassed against. These were violent accusations— and ridiculous. We didn’t even have a chimney. I could have reacted from the place of angry incredulity that was rising inside me. But mostly I was disappointed that I was so misunderstood. The house blessing was simply my form of prayer. I wanted to meet this woman in kindness. I began to speak, but she interrupted me.

“I was scared to come over here, but I prayed to Jesus. I prayed to Jesus to give me the strength I needed to come over here and talk to you. And I went to my preacher this morning and we prayed to Jesus together, and then my preacher told me the good Lord would protect me." She proclaimed triumphantly, "And so here I am." She took another drag off her cigarette and blew it, again, in my face. She lowered her face nearer to mine and said with conspiratorial intensity, “We don’t want no Satan-worshipers living on our street. We’ll run you out of the neighborhood. We’ll burn a cross in your yard if we have to.”

I’d never met anybody like this before in my life. I wanted to enter into dialogue with her but didn’t know how. I wanted to tell her we were simply blessing our house. I believed this woman was probably well-meaning, despite that she was extremely misguided. Apparently she associated what she assumed to be non-Christian prayer with propaganda still circulating from the witch-hunts. I recognized that she was operating from a place of fear and knew that my best response would be to meet this woman in compassion. I stayed centered in vulnerable resistance, continued sitting in place on my porch nursing my baby—in both a practical and a symbolic act of love—while this woman called me a Satan worshiper. As I continued to sit in love, she began to back away and take in the scene of my homeplace.

The neighbor was looking at my porch, which was lush with hanging plants, potted plants, a table full of plants, plants lining the steps, all of them thriving. She said, “Well, your plants are healthy. I thought a witch’s plants would all be dead.”

Just then my cat, Moonglow, sauntered by. Moonglow’s fur was completely white. The neighbor said, “I’m surprised to see that your cat is white and not black!”

I didn’t bother telling her that my black cat, Obsidian, was inside napping.

Clearly, the lush health of my plants, baby, and cat was in contrast to the narratives she had been taught about “Others” who did not share her religion. It was my steadfast vulnerable resistance that gave her the space she needed to see that my way of being was not threatening and thereby challenging her assumptions about “otherness”.

While vulnerable resistance is simple, it is not easy. While perhaps I had alleviated her fears, I still felt threatened.

That night I shut all the windows and blinds. The house blessing cleared my house of negativity on the inside, but now I felt that the world outside my house was condemning me. I felt trapped and dismal. I was angry at the failure of dialogue, her refusal to see me as human, her ignorant absolutism that her way of praying is the only way to pray, her misinformed assumptions about my way of being.

I felt marked--not as an earth-based spiritual activist but a “witch,” a “communist,” a “terrorist,” under surveillance, with no opportunity for voice and a fear of disappearing without a trace, like the witches before me: the healers, midwives, feminists, people of color, Quakers, queer folk, all of us on the fringe, burned if we say we’re a witch, burned if we won’t.

In three years the boy who lived at this woman’s house and prayed with her at her church, would, at age fifteen, be sentenced for life without parole for murdering a teenaged girl. In thirteen years, the boy across the street, next door to this woman’s house, would hang himself at age seventeen, escaping a combination of alcoholism and religious pressure from his parents. Meanwhile, our church-going neighbor down the street would continue to beat his wife and daughters and we’d hear yelling and screaming past midnight, doors slamming, siren lights swirling in through our bedroom window.

I enacted vulnerable resistance by standing in place and opening my door. These same daughters, and many other neighborhood kids, would come to my house everyday directly after school to tell me about their days, before going to their own homes. Nearly every day, I would have at least half a dozen neighbor kids just hanging out at my house. I provided a homeplace for them: food, safety, kindness, a listening ear. The kids would trust me, but the adults on the street would rarely make eye contact, and even then, only reluctantly.

But I no longer felt their hostility. I was able to remain open to loving in the face of hostility and resist against splitting apart from the force of fear. I realized that my spirituality, my everyday performances of making a home, a safe place—not just for me, but for my child and for the children in the neighborhood, was a transformative kind of love that would always protect me. I realized that it was with that intention of love I had drawn the protective circle around my home to create a symbolic safe space. What I understand now is that I was rehearsing for a play. I could name it “The ongoing performance of living in vulnerable resistance.”

To Live With Words

noreply@blogger.com (Diana Tigerlily) — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 22:27:00 +0000

I have nearly forgotten

what it means

to live with words.

You may wonder what I mean--

we live with words

everyday,

immersed in words,

submerged in streaming feeds of words,

status updates, breaking news, soundbytes, texts, tweets

Yes

This is what I mean.

Swept into the surge of this steady stream

I have nearly forgotten

what it means

to experience the slow

unfurling

of words

the soft uncurling

of the poem

the breath of an image tumbling

from a break in the line

and spilling into form

out of the shape of rain

in sunlight

slanting the goldenrod and grasses

like honey smoothing from the spoon

fresh as morning, savored

like a snow day, or a Saturday,

a slow kiss and a game of chess

The slow taste of words,

the growing shape of words,

thought-forms made manifest

out of the clutched fist

tight as fern’s fiddlehead

Then the open palm

The story seeds

The tender fronds

The quiet gift

of syllables,

scented illustrations

painted with the tongue.

I have nearly forgotten

what it means

to live with words

--Diana Tigerlily

Autumn Equinox, 2011

Mandala Gardens: The Day Before the First Day of Autumn

noreply@blogger.com (Diana Tigerlily) — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 23:02:00 +0000

Mandala Gardens: More September Sweetness

noreply@blogger.com (Diana Tigerlily) — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 00:56:00 +0000

Midnight, reading

noreply@blogger.com (Diana Tigerlily) — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 23:55:00 +0000

Mandala Gardens: September Sunflowers

noreply@blogger.com (Diana Tigerlily) — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 03:20:00 +0000

My Sweet Summer in Mandala Gardens

noreply@blogger.com (Diana Tigerlily) — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 21:44:00 +0000

Mandala Gardens: Wild Life, Mild Life

noreply@blogger.com (Diana Tigerlily) — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 16:39:00 +0000

First Tigerlily Bloom of the Year

noreply@blogger.com (Diana Tigerlily) — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 15:19:00 +0000

Taxpayers Do Not Pay Public Employee Pensions

noreply@blogger.com (Diana Tigerlily) — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 16:23:00 +0000

One of the arguments that Scott Walker et al asserts and that many believe is that taxpayers are paying for state employee pensions. The problem with that argument is that it is false. Taxpayers do not pay for state employees to retire. Rather, state employees defer their earned wages until retirement. This article breaks that and all the secondary arguments down very clearly.

http://blogs.forbes.com/rickungar/2011/02/25/the-wisconsin-lie-exposed-taxpayers-actually-contribute-nothing-to-public-employee-pensions/

Income Inequality in America

noreply@blogger.com (Diana Tigerlily) — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 16:15:00 +0000

Sometimes it's difficult to comprehend just how rich the super rich are. These graphs illustrate that wealth in a way that's easy to see and shocking to discover.

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph

Tax Breaks vs. Budget Cuts

noreply@blogger.com (Diana Tigerlily) — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 16:10:00 +0000

A very instructive breakdown:

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/02/tax_breaks_infographic.html

Leave me alone, Republicans

noreply@blogger.com (Diana Tigerlily) — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 17:13:00 +0000

I feel tired by repeated assaults fired
at me like bullets riddling my identity:
a woman, a union member, a democrat, a part-time employee with no health benefits and a Ph.D.

I feel tired

by the republican assault that just won't stop

by the sheer ignorance of so many people who identify as republican and think its okay that "sacrifices" are to be made by everybody except the super rich. When even people who are poor believe this, I am tired.

Here's the important story to know: If you're not super rich, you shouldn't be supporting the republican agenda. And if you are super rich, you should be using your privilege for the greater good, not to rip people's voices away, take away the money we've already worked to earn, and claim our uteruses as your property. Oh, and yes, you should pay your damn taxes.

The Republican Hate Narrative Against Public Employees and Unions

noreply@blogger.com (Diana Tigerlily) — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 18:58:00 +0000

The Republican Hate Narrative Against Public Employees and Unions

Blooming Crocus

noreply@blogger.com (Diana Tigerlily) — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 18:27:00 +0000

First Crocus of the Season

Tita's Hands

noreply@blogger.com (Diana Tigerlily) — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 04:13:00 +0000

I begin in the words of Marilou Awiakta:

“I offer you something so small

my thumb and forefinger almost cover it…

It’s ...more personal than poetry,

more ancient than words.

When you hold out your hand, I lay a deep red corn seed in your palm.

Seven thousand years of concentrated energy emanate from the seed…

Communications transpire

in the split second when

the red kernel and the tip of my finger touch your skin.

Energy to energy, life to life

create a spark.

And we make a quantum leap out of linear time..." (Selu, 18-19)

"Finally I know you writes Margaret Atwood

through your daughters,

my mother, her sisters,

and through myself"

“I wish I had more to tell of my grandmothers. It is terrible how much has been forgotten, which is why, I suppose, remembering seems a holy thing” (The Red Tent, Anita Diamant 1-3).

You are sinking down into

your own veins, fingers

folding back into the hand….”

(“Five Poems for Grandmothers,” Margaret Atwood “iii” lines 1-2, 33-36; “v” lines 1-6)

My own hand unfolds stories and folds them back into the hand of my grandmother, my Tita. My hands are the hands of my mother, of her mother’s and hers. I search for our stories we share in the texture of my hand, the terrain of my veins, crossroads of creases, lifelines. I want to know first-hand the texture of the soil in Lebanon, my mother’s mother’s Lebanon, Tita’s Lebanon, where she lived in the mountains, in a village named Aito, where she tended the handwork daily, until the day she was obligated to join her hand to another, in marriage arranged at age sixteen. That day, she left the only soil she’d ever known and came to America, where when she spoke, her hands faltered in the dance of new soils/new language as syllables crumbled like clay on her tongue.

I share these stories through my third-hand knowledge. I do not know Tita’s story of the day she first touched American soil, but I have held and studied my Tita’s hands and my mother’s hands like Tita’s have held and studied mine; and my hands, like my mother’s and hers, have held and studied the hands of my daughter. And like a seed held between thumb and forefinger, passed palm to palm and planted in soil, stories flourish and nourish. From the energy of potential held in the single kernel, stories live in the lines of the hand, grow in the soil of palms, are tasted by the tongues in the telling.

Slowly, I’m coming to know my hands as my native tongue.

Every palm is a poem

palm poem

the lines of a palm~ the lines of a poem

lines of a lifetime, lyrical in length,

enjambed, endstopped, caesuraed,

randomly rhymed,

patterned by time and

tongue-tips, fingertips

massaging inscriptions

articulating wrinkled pathways.

we poem palms and we palm poems

unfolding, holding

hearts of breathing hands

enfleshing parchment, parchment

enfleshed, palmed, poemed

According to family legend, hundreds of years ago, three brothers came upon Aito, Lebanon, and settled. Their names were Sleiman, Bshara, and Younes. They dug terraces in the limestone mountain and carried up soil from below to plant their food. This tradition was extended generation by generation for centuries. Terraces eventually wrapped and contoured the mountain, and trees generated a fiber silk that the women would spin and sell.

The mountainside of Aito is a rugged maze of limestone terraces and grey-green foliage of olive and apple trees, stone architecture with rooftops the color of pink sunsets looking out over the Mediterranean Sea. Several hundred people live in Aitoo today, and thousands of descendants of Aito—including me-- were born in Peoria, Illinois—and many more in Venezuela and Australia--where many Lebanese from Aito settled.

The bare sole of the foot touches the soul of the soil, and spirit of connection infuses through the sole, is the soul, and in this soul recognition between the earth body and human body, connection soul-idifies.

When Tita left Aito at age 16 to be married, she didn’t know she’d never see her mother again. But Tita’s mother died before Tita was ever able to return to Lebanon. ‘Goodbye’ was a whisper that rolled off her tongue like a tear, falling into the ocean between two soils.

I cannot know my grandmothers’ grandmothers’ family lines except through their fathers’ names. But, I’ve come to know my grandmothers store and story their lines in the palms of their hands like a seed.

Perhaps it is why we say sole of foot, but we don’t say sole of hand; we say palm.

We say palms of hands:

hands’ palms are a psalm, a song, a story shared.

I follow lines of palms of hands on the family tree in order to find my roots.

In Aito soil, Tita grew apricot and apple trees. In Illinois soil, Tita grew apricot and apple trees. I remember very specifically the apple tree. Tita gathered apples, dull baby yellow with black bug holes, from the tree outside her back steps, rolled them onto the kitchen table and sat with her knife in her right hand, peeled spiraling skins, offered me unblemished flesh. My own hands gathered bundles of mint and parsley from her backyard garden, and grapeleaves from her own vine and vines in the woods with my cousin while Tita pounded meat for kibbee and the burghol soaked.

I watched her hands drape sheets of handrolled phyllo dough, stretched thin as tissue membrane. I watched her stirring and stirring homemade yogurt, laban, at the stove, knowing when she dipped her pinky in the milky foam and could count to ten, she would mix the old laban with the new to begin a next generation.

I watched her hands mashing garlic in mortar with pestle, tossing in cinnamon, measuring pepper in palms, squeezing lemons’ last drops, her hands shiny with oil disappearing into the bowl, reemerging with a bouquet of endive greens dripping in lemon and oil blooming between thumb and forefingers feeding me, her fingers to my mouth, an offering of communion. My tongue recognizes home.

Perfect, I think, savoring with my eyes closed. Then she feeds herself and says with her mouth full, “Needs more lemon.”

Here in Tita’s kitchen, my mother’s kitchen, my own kitchen, I taste the smells of spices simmering, and the soil of Lebanon reaches my tongue as Tita holds the language of her Lebanon in the articulation of her hands. I watched her hands dance her stories as I watched her hands mix spiced rice and raw meat and roll the mixture into grape leaves, deftly, hands busy talking, and in this way Tita’s hands and my hands shared a native tongue. Around the table, all of us, Tita, Didi, Mimi, Terry, Rosie, Angie, Monica, Katie, Tina, all of us, cousins, sisters, aunts, talking with our hands, hands as tongues, as tools, terracing a history, rolling our stories into the future, into the grapeleaves, a culinary creation sustaining a heritage through a dance of soil, hand, and tongue, a cauldron of hands holding energy, expressing shape, stirring and feeding the stories, coring koosa, sealing shish barak, talking always talking, “Georgette’s pregnant,” folding spinach pies, chopping parsley, “Najeebe’s getting married” mashing garlic, squeezing lemon, “Bahkos is coming over from the Old Country,” mixing hummus, layering baklava, “Houllia’s been diagnosed with diabetes,” arranging kibbee, garnishing eggplant, stitching tripe, pinching tabbouli between flat bread, “Rizk has died.”

Food in hands and mouth, hands as tools for sharing, food as tools for celebration, food as tools for gossip, planning; hands as tools honoring birth and death. “This is the procession of old leathery mothers," writes Margaret Atwood, "mothers like worn gloves wrinkled to the shapes of their lives,

passing the work from hand to hand, mother to daughter, a long thread of red blood, not yet broken”

(“A Red Shirt”).

In my yard, a grapevine is growing.

The grapevine stems from a start from the grapevine of my mother’s yard.

Her grapevine stems as a start from the grapevine of her mother’s.

Tita’s grapevine stems from Lebanon.

Generations entwine, connect, reconnect time.

I plant apple trees in my yard and think of Tita.

Tita’s limestone mountains of Northern Lebanon

are my sandstone cliffs of Southern Illinois

Tita’s chalky soil is my wet clay.

our hands share the knowledge of soil alchemy,

our roots palm moist, rich soil.

Tita dug a hole and buried a language and a mother with her tongue.

I dig a hole and cover the transplanted roots with my palms of hands.

These roots, too, will make a home here.

These hands, too, root me to earth.

I thrust my hands, my roots, my tongue into the soil,

and lines of my palms,

terrain of my veins,

backs of my hands

disappear

boundaries explode into trees,

a terrain of veins and valleys

a maze of terraced limestone

Hands are my eyes

I feel my way through worlds

storying palm poems

--Diana Tigerlily

geoskinscriptions

noreply@blogger.com (Diana Tigerlily) — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 14:11:00 +0000

geoskinscriptions in skin kins inks

Flying over the southwest U.S. for the first time, I am riveted by the patterns

etched into the skin of the earth, erupting into plateaus of stone, repeating themselves

in fractals across acres. With my forehead pressed against the airplane window, I watch the landscape move beneath me unfolding slowly its patterned varieties of weathered bedrock, ancient lakebeds, volcanic fields and alluvial fans. Having been reading about fractal landscapes, seeing these fractals from the plane is an unexpected, glorious treat. The flat-topped stratified sedimented earth-sculptures patterned in clusters prompt my glee, “Those must be mesas!” my first-time seeing these iconic geo-cultural images and the conical structures I determine as buttes, ancient places of ritual, wide cones narrowing into slender clefts and yawning grooves.

Witnessing these immense landscapes from this grand scale is disorienting (Beardslee), as size is simultaneously tiny and massive, and I feel myself falling

through my plane of glass, falling into my field of view like Alice through the looking glass, my heart pounding behind my eyes scaling canyons narrowing into fossilized river beds veining like a calligraphy of fern leaves; sand windblown into scalloped shallow waves fluid as muddy water; desert-painted fractal swirls of dusty fuschia, terra cotta, sandstone green: a picture of melting rainbow sherbert gone macabre.

So much like a body’s skin, this gravel loam, sand, soil, stone stretched tight and thin, loose and gathered, leathered and layered, scarred, smoothed, pitted, blemished, even hairy with the coarse foliage of desert trees, while the Mojave River runs beneath the sand, like veins coursing beneath the surface of our skin.

In abstract ways I’ve thought about similarities of the skin of earth and skin of bodies, but seeing the particularities from this grand scale revealing itself to me like a literal motion picture, I am stunned by the tangible visibility of my kinship with this earth body beneath me, whose stories are written in stratified layers I read with my cellular memory, my heart-memory, requiring me to see differently in order to comprehend the geometric narrative of this fractal performativity. Stories are written into the valleys of the landscape as they are etched into the wrinkled lifelines of my hands as they are scratched onto the surface of the page. I name them geoskinscriptions, these stories inscribed into the terrains of earth, body, and page; inscripted into the skins of our geo kins: the soils, mountains, valleys, trees; skinscripted with the inks of our waters, our bloods, and our pens.

These geoskinscriptions emphasize for me the relationship between human bodies and earth bodies, embodied knowing, and performative writing. They reveal to me the fractal nature of bodies: Earth as a planetary body, a large scale version of a human body, a large scale version of life embodied on a page. At each particular scale of kins, skin, and inks, a universal story of relational dynamics unfolds, is told through geoskinscriptions, inscriptions etched and inked into the skins of bodies: earth, human, and page.

--Diana Tigerlily

Brick by Breath by Word

noreply@blogger.com (Diana Tigerlily) — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 16:22:00 +0000

The following story is about living and dying, about building and breathing. Nurturance and maintenance intersect through family and writing and integrate as fractal performativity of the spirit, a repetition of dying into life, the laboring process of breathing open the door that births us into the next world in a spiraling exiting entry of exhales. I am present during my Uncle’s last breaths. His last words to me were one of the greatest gifts he ever gave me.

Brick by Breath by Word

A gray tube snaked from the hole doctors drilled into his frontal lobe to drain fluid from his brain and relieve pressure created from an inoperable brain tumor. His skin stretched thin across a gray face that, until this moment, I had known only as hearty. Now everything about him had gray tones: his aura, his flesh and his strength matched the color of the liminal space into which he was suddenly slowly sinking.

From depths of morphine sleep, he raised open his eyes and gathered me into his focus. Amidst this grayness he had deep awareness of his need for economic dialogue. Distilling to the essence what he wanted to convey to me in his final words, he persuaded his dry mouth and fading voice to issue forth the question, “Are you still writing?”

These were Uncle Don’s first words to me in his last days. I cannot recall a time that we’ve ever shared a conversation about my writing. Yet, now, in this suspended moment bridging life and death, at our first seeing of one another in over a year, he greeted me not with ‘hello’ but with the subject of my core.

“Yes,” I replied.

With great effort he whispered, “Good” and closed his eyes.

Here, in his final moments, he was gifting me with the reminder of life’s impermanency to reaffirm for me the importance of following one’s passion.

An artist and a carpenter, Uncle Don spent his life following his own passion, creating homeplaces with his hands. It was his job, his life, his core. He built physical homes for people to live in, and he painted homes on canvas, all of them brick by brick. When I was a young child Uncle Don taught me how to lay bricks. I laid each brick carefully and pressed it into the densely moist cement. He showed me how to press just enough so the mortar oozed over but didn’t fall away. The ooze was meant to stay there and dry that way. This was the particular aesthetic for some houses, including the one I was learning on. That was how I learned about multiple aesthetics. For some brick houses, the aesthetic is to swipe clean and smooth the pressed out mortar, like the extra dough that remains around cookie cutters. I remember appreciating the brick aesthetic that kept the ooze.

When I was eight years old, he taught me how to mix sand into paint to create texture. This was before the days when you could go to a home improvement store and buy pre-manufactured paint textures. I watched him adding sand into the five-gallon bucket and stirring, adding sand and stirring, repeatedly until he reached the desired texture. I was fascinated by how much sand the bucket could hold, and by how much sand the paint could absorb. When I was twenty-eight years old, he taught me, over the phone, how to select the lumber to build support beams, how to install them, and how to jack up the roof of my house that was caving in. Greg and I together implemented his instructions, and to this day, especially after every heavy snow or icestorm, I’m grateful for my uncle’s guidance, as I can be confident the infrastructure of my house is strong and that my roof isn’t going to collapse.

“I love you, Uncle Don.”

And in a barely audible whisper with his eyes closed, he said, “Thank you.”

Those were his final words to me. Having just gifted me with affirmation as a writer in his eyes, he offered me a gift of thanks. Here at the end of his life, as in its duration, he gave offerings and gratitudes; he was passing through and from life in a giving mode, in an embodiment of vulnerable resistance.

I never again saw him with open eyes. I never again saw him with working hands. The painting he was working on was not yet finished, and so it remains eternally in process. It is a painting of his childhood home, the house he and my dad grew up in, my Sitdy’s and Grandpa’s house on Arago Street, the house with the steep wooden stairs leading to the dim sloping basement Grandpa dug with his hands, the basement I followed Sitdy into to watch her roll the dough for Lebanese bread, where I would roll the jar of wood-carved faded red and black checkers, colors swishing the black and grey checkered floor, cold beneath me, beside the ancient oven, hotter than modern, yielding loaves of unleavened bread.

Uncle Don had been painting this house on canvas, building it brick by brick, in an ongoing process of tinting paints to create the bricks’ exact colors. The frame of the house was fully sketched, with my grandparents sitting on the front steps, looking eerily just as they had always looked when they were living. The poetic fact of life’s incompletion, and simultaneous perpetuation, exists as the ghost of this unpainted house living unfinished on the canvas, a house whose physical existence lives only, and eternally, in the memories of my eight aunts and uncles who lived there, all heaped together into two bedrooms. The house lives on as a homeplace in my memories, and likely in the memories of my dozens and dozens of cousins, and the dozens of friends and strangers who sat at Sitdy’s kitchen table over those many years. Home is a process of creation and cocreation, in our minds and psyches, in the physical everyday maintenance, in the ongoing making and remaking. Homeplace is an event in as much as it is a place or a space, an event that creates moments of stability amidst its dynamics of perpetual motion. Uncle Don’s painting of incompletion captures the ephemerality of homeplace, of memory, of life’s passage day by day, captures this ephemerality ironically through the stability and finality of these unpainted bricks he’d been painting day by day, sketched like ghostings of the physical brick by brick, etched onto this canvas and built by his steady, working, maintaining hands.

The week after he and I shared our last words, he slipped into a coma. I exited directly from the interstate to the hospital and found my uncle’s room. He was taking his last breaths. I had heard the phrase ‘last breaths’ before, but I never knew until this moment that ‘last breaths’ was a specific phenomenon, not merely a euphemism for somebody nearing death. I’ve experienced a lot of death in my life, but this was the first time I was at the bedside of a person in transition. I was stunned at the amount of laboring he was doing. I came face to face with the similarity between birthing and dying. These breaths were loud and hollow. They sounded like clear gusts of wind, tunneling gusts with concise stops. Each breath had a beginning and an end, but they were the deepest breaths I’ve ever heard, and there was cleansing strength behind each and every inhale and exhale. The breaths did not sound human. They sounded as though they were coming through his body but not from his body. It was as though he was breathing every breath from the center of the earth to the outer reaches of the cosmos and back again. It sounded as though he was laboring to birth himself into his next life, to launch himself, to propel himself with the force of each breath. It occurred to me that birth and death are more than cycles, and death is not death but birth into birth, like a fractal--a repetition with a whole new field of particulars that might not have been seen in the previous pattern of living. There is so much life in death, so much living in dying. Maybe dying is just that—a process of dye-ing our life’s pattern with a whole new set of colors and seeing it differently the next time around.

I sat silently with my cousin Angie and Aunt Sue at the bedside of Uncle Don, listening to his breaths create the soundscape of the room. His body was turning cold. His face had transformed itself and his skin was perfectly smooth. He had not one wrinkle. I’ve never seen such serenity on an adult face. His appearance of peace was as otherworldly as his continual laboring and belied the efforts of his chest heaving up and down in steady, repetitive rhythm, keeping time with the fierce pulsing of the soundscape, breath by breath by breath.

Listening deep into my heart amidst the soundscape of his breathing, I began to feel very strongly that he would make it through the night and pass early in the morning. I knew I should not be there when he passed. This was too private a moment. Too sacred. The people or person meant to be there in that moment would be there, and for right now it was time for me to go. I helped Aunt Sue arrange her reclining chair so she could semi-sleep while being as close to her partner as she could possibly be. Aunt Sue and Uncle Don were the embodiment of homeplace manifested through relationship. They spent their life together literally building houses, building life with their hands, side by side in the bricks and the mud. Their partnership was their livelihood and their craft.

I turned to my cousin and we hugged and hugged and hugged, as though we could squeeze away the sadness, like blinking hard to hold back tears; but the sadness oozed from our pores like leaking eyes. I said my last words to my uncle. I drove in silence, with Uncle Don’s laboring soundscape whooshing through my ears.

Uncle Don died that next morning around eight a.m. Aunt Sue was there, alone with Uncle Don when he died. Aunt Sue told me he released one soft, beautifully long, final exhale.
--Diana Tigerlily

Louie Hill

noreply@blogger.com (Diana Tigerlily) — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 18:07:00 +0000

The following is a tribute to the man who lived in the house and land before us. Though I never had the opportunity to meet him, I appreciate him through our mutual connection to the land. As spring approaches and I turn to the soil, I see the tips of green poking through--bulbs planted long ago by Louie Hill. We have lived in this house now for nearly thirteen years, and I still find reminders of Louie. The story below is a true story and my way of saying Thank You.

Louie Hill

We bought a dead man’s house,

and the house was full of stuff

left behind, stuff nobody wanted,

stuff we had to clear away

to make his home our own.

It was hard emotional work

sifting through the remnants

of this old man’s life: closets

full of bed pans, underpads, transfer belts,

books on pain management.

It seemed he had suffered greatly,

this poor man, Louie Hill,

and it made me feel sad.

After about two months of daily heavy clearings,

I fell into a deep sleep, exhausted.

Suddenly my dream was interrupted

by the appearance of a man standing at the foot of my bed.

He was tall and robust,

about fifty years old,

and he was wearing this

hat (gesture my hands to frame my head)

We looked at each other for a moment

and then I said, “Oh, you’re Louie Hill!”

and he said something that made me laugh.

Then after a pause I said, “You’re a Virgo!”

The next morning I awoke,

overwhelmed by the palpability of this “dream visit.”

The energy lingered all around me and I couldn’t shake it.

I felt his presence everywhere throughout the day.

Was that really the man who used to live in this house?

Or was this just a dream? And if it was simply a dream,

then why was he fifty and healthy

when I’d been picturing him as a fading eighty-five--

--the age the realtor had told us he was when he’d died?

And where did that certainty about him being a Virgo come from?

I’d never seen any papers that may have revealed his date of birth,

nor had I seen any photos of him, for that matter.

Weeks passed, and his image had still not faded from my mind.

I was filled with this insistent desire to find his birthdate

to confirm whether or not he’s a Virgo,

to “prove” to myself the “truth” of my dream.

I called the courthouse.

But they would not reveal his personal information to me because I’m not a relative. So,

I asked them if they could give me the name of the cemetery he’s buried in, and they did. Impulsively, I grabbed my keys, gathered up Raynah, and drove straight to the cemetery.

The place was huge.

Acres and acres and acres of headstones, and I realized:

I have no idea where this man is buried.

So I drove around looking for a grave marker with the name “Hill”

and within minutes I saw it! Marveling at my good luck,

I jumped out of the car and ran over, but to my surprise, it didn’t say Louie Hill,

it was a different Hill. And that’s when it occurred to me:

“Hill” is a very common name.

I returned to my car and drove around the cemetery, Raynah riding in the backseat.

Every time I saw a marker labeled Hill, I’d jump out of my car and run over,

but none of them said “Louie.”

I repeated several times this process of jumping out and back into my car,

when suddenly

I was struck

by my absurdity

and wondered

if maybe

I was slightly

losing

my mind

Here I was

driving among acres of headstones

looking for the grave of a dead man I’d never met to see if he’s a Virgo

I stopped the car

and from behind my steering wheel I spoke out loud,

“Spirit of Louie Hill! If you can hear me, show me where to go!”

And I found myself driving toward an area of the cemetery I’d already been,

and feeling compelled to stop there.

“But this is crazy!” I argued with Louie out loud

“I’ve already looked here!” as I put my car in park.

Grumbling, I dragged myself out of the car,

unbuckled Raynah, plopped her not-yet-two-year-old body down by some plastic flowers, and started walking toward no particular destination.

I don’t know how much time lapsed, but suddenly I stopped walking.

Raynah was not at my side.

“Raynah!” I turned around.

She was in the same place I’d left her!

I had just walked a hundred yards in a total daze.

Shaking my head in bewilderment, my eyes

fixed directly on the gravestone to my immediate left.

I read the carved inscription,

gasped loudly and fell to my knees:

Louie Hill

September 16, 1911

“You are a Virgo…”

I whispered.

“It really was you in my dream…”

And then I understood why I was there,

why he called me there.

He had something to tell me,

and I had something to learn.

“What is it you want me to know?” I asked him.

“What are you trying to teach me?”

And in a rush it was clear to me:

he wanted to show me he’s not in pain;

he doesn’t want me to envision him as a bedridden eighty-five year old;

he wants me to remember him as he appeared to me:

at his prime, at his peak where he was happiest and most satisfied with his life;

He wanted to help me affirm for myself that

I am powerful psychically and I really need to trust that.

He wanted to teach me how to distinguish between

regular dreams and dream visits

because he must’ve known I’ve been struggling with that distinction my whole life.

He wanted to remind me that possibilities for communication and alliance are not limited to the sphere of living, enfleshed bodies. The spirit world, the dream world, the animal and totem world—these places hold life and his dream visit reminded me (in an even more personal way than Harjo, Silko, Gunn Allen, LaDuke and Awiakta remind me) of the importance to honor the mutuality we share with the beings living in these places. If we learn to listen, if we learn to trust, if we pay attention to the signs,

we can sustain connections across these worlds through vulnerable resistance.We can create homeplace through our relationships and alliances with the living beings that surround us in our immediate worlds.

Greg and I had been clearing the remains of Louie’s homeplace and

making it our own when Louie had come to visit me in that dream.

He wanted to thank us

for treating the physical remnants of his existence with respect.

He wanted to let us know that he helped us to find this land by drawing us there.

Through the dream visit I was able to realize that this land

wasn’t “his” land, and nor is it now “our” land, but that importantly we are of this land. (We bought the place late fall, when many plants were dormant.

To my abundant surprise, that next spring— our first spring on this land—

lilies of all kinds burst into bloom.)

I realized Louie told me he was a Virgo because he knew

that was the approach that would resonate with me, that was the sign I would read

that would give me a way to validate this dream experience.

Because evidently,

he also knew that despite all my performances of “ommm”

I’m often a total skeptic. I need ways to affirm these mystical experiences.

“Thank you, Louie Hill,” I whispered.

Some time later, I was outside on my driveway, and my neighbor Gina came over. She lived in the house next door, which had been her grandma’s house; so Gina had actually played at that house quite often when she was younger. I did the math in my head and figured out that when she was a kid, Louie would have been about the age he was in my dream. So, I casually asked her if she had known the man who used to live in my house.

“Oh Louie? Yeah! I remember Louie. Louie was always outside, working in his yard… I used to follow him around.”

“Really? Tell me about him. What did he look like?”

“Well, he was tall. He was a really big man--not fat, not thin. But strong. Really solid.”

I found myself thinking, robust, remembering my dream.

“Oh…yeah,” said Gina, lost in memory, “and he always wore this…hat,” and she gestured with her hands toward her head.

Later, Greg came in from working outside, saying,

“Hey, look what I found in the garage.”

He was holding the hat I saw Louie wearing in my dream.

--Diana Tigerlily