Burnt Toast

When I was a kid, grandma would make toast–

Burnt toast. The only kind that grandma would,

The only kind that grandma could.

She’d butter it most days with Fleishman’s and jam,

From that big jar of raspberry goodness,

And sometimes with peanut butter, swirled atop the black crust.

Then cut it in half, and serve on a chipped blue onion plate,

The only kind that grandma had,

The only kind that grandma thought good enough for me.

And then she’d make another two slices,

And stack them, in halves, on the pile.

The kitchen smelled of old things and smoke.

And half by half, through the slow day we would

Chip at the toast, the bread of our life,

Just enough, darkened with love, sustaining and light.

For a friend

You came into my life
indirectly, the way a river finds
its path after years of cutting a course.

But you’ve stayed there as direct as the truthful force
of the waterfall whose passion knows only gravity’s pull.

Your eyes pierced through my
yearning soul and your tongue
asked the hard questions and
shared your authentic self.

Sometimes I cried
while you held me in your arms.
Sometimes you cried, when you
dared to see again, but differently.

You propped me up with your embrace, your spirit.

You fed my soul through the food we shared.

You voiced the words that could break my heart–open.

We danced among the spirits, and invited them in.

We celebrated thin space and uncovered
what gratefulness is, and could be.

We spoke, intimately, of what we thought
the soul is, and where it goes and when.

We sat, silently, in the comfort of chintzy
pillows, now the supple cracks of new leather,
resting, dreaming of peace.

We sang for the fallen and sang for the strong.
We cried for our journey and the presence
of something greater than all of us.

And now we rise:
Ever nearer, ever taller,
ever more grateful.

Falling forward to success

My college roommate used to say we should “fall forward to success.” I never really knew what he meant. We spend so much time trying not to fall. We struggle as children to first crawl, then walk, then run. And when we do fall, we get up, but often find ourselves battered or scraped–and many times upset. Falling, as we know, is part of the game of the mystery of being human. But, let’s face it, who wants to fail? Falling forward to success sounds noble enough, but honestly, how?

Good question.

Recently I learned to ski. On day one I found myself on the bunny hill, amid 7 and 8-year olds. They deftly glided by me, as my 33-year old body struggled to stay upright. I fell, often. I was twice their height and 1/50th their skill level. I grew tired, and bruised. My ego was challenged, too. My skis were crossed like pixie sticks and my legs tangled in the air. I wanted to stop, but I kept going. While I had given up learning to ski years ago when I was fourteen, this time something inside me–and my coach, Manu–helped me own each fall and continue down the gentle hill.

Manu smiled each time I fell. Not in a judgmental way, but in the way that a trusted advisor knows that falling is compulsory, a required part of the learning curve. He cheered me on and encouraged me to keep at it. My fear said I should turn around and climb back up the mountain. But I finally realized there was no going back up (the slope of the mountain made this next to impossible). And so my only choice was to figure out a way down toward the lodge. My options were limited, and so my mind had a choice to make: live in fear about the prospect of tumbling down the mountain, or embrace the idea of getting to the bottom. I chose the latter. Slowly, I began to understand the importance of leaning into the fall, leaning into the fear that we so often pool around our daily lives. So, gradually I abandoned my fear of leaning downhill (which is counterintuitive to us, especially those like me with a fear of heights!). I reached forward, bent my knees, and accepted this falling as a way to safety, to success.

Each day I continued to practice falling. And I challenged myself to stay present in each moment of the fall. The more I embraced the fall, the more I found I wasn’t falling at all, but swallowing any fear, facing it with fierce, courageous passion. I crouched forward, ate the snow with my skis, and kept my face forward, parallel with the face of the mountain. I was getting better! Slowly and surely the fear yielded to fun!

By the fifth day, Manu had helped me progress drastically. He brought me from the bunny hill, to–get this–a black diamond run, among the most difficult of ski runs on any mountain. Sure, I began to master the physicality of skiing, but that was just a speck of the gift I developed: Over my week of learning, of falling forward, I began to conquer fears inside me. I challenged that part of me that didn’t believe, that didn’t love. And suddenly, there I was, careening down the mountain, having grown and with a renewed sense of self. Living out of love, not fear. Living by falling, forward and unabashedly, accepting the way down was quite literally the way ‘up’.

I gave in that week, to my fear, to my ego’s desires of control, to learning to love in a new way that fostered growth and self-confidence. So next time you trip, realize you may really be falling forward. Let it happen. Doing this, you might just like the way success finds you.

Oliver’s “A Summer Story”

Four days from the official transition from Summer to Fall, and I am grateful for the lessons of this Season. Mary Oliver accurately captures my feeling of awe and gratitude.

A Summer Story

When the hummingbird
sinks its face
into the trumpet vine,
into the funnels

of the blossoms,
and the tongue
leaps out
and throbs,

I am scorched
to realize once again
how many small, available things
are in this world

that aren’t
pieces of gold
or power —
that nobody owns

or could buy even
for a hillside of money—
that just
float about the world,

or drift over the fields,
or into the gardens,
and into the tents of the vines,
and now here I am

spending my time,
as the saying goes,
watching until the watching turns into feeling,
so that I feel I am myself

a small bird
with a terrible hunger,
with a thin beak probing and dipping
and a heart that races so fast

it is only a heartbeat ahead of breaking—
and I am the hunger and the assuagement,
and also I am the leaves and the blossoms,
and, like them, I am full of delight, and shaking.

~Mary Oliver
from Red Bird, Beacon Press

The creative act

Last night I played the piano in my living room, for an audience of 1.5 (my partner Todd and my cat). Almost always, however, I start with no audience. Just me, pulling out the bench, sitting and contemplating for a flash before my fingers strike the keys. I play. The melody starts pensively and after a few minutes morphs into something else.

At this point I am still alone with the music, which is perfectly fine by me. My fix comes from the physical act of moving my hands, fingers and arms and knowing not necessarily where the song will go, but really knowing just before the key is played just how it will sound. Except for the first note, each note–each moment–thereafter is filled simultaneously with satisfaction and expectation. I play, I enjoy, I anticipate, over and over again.

Department of Redundancy Department

For the first time in a six years, I’m doing a show. Yes. I’m doing a play this fall. And in keeping with the title (also the headline of this post), I’ll tell you again: In September the show will play at the Bryant Lake Bowl in Minneapolis. It’s a sketch comedy, loosely tied together by all things repetitive. Rehearsals have begun, and in a few weeks the cast of The Recovery Party will be spinning on questions like the most effective way to come out of the closet, the difference between men and women (it’s really quite simple!) and what exactly is so moving about the Hawaiian War Chant.

I know you’ve been dying to know these things, so for now sit tight and know that we’re working on it. Come September I’ll remind you, again, that I’m in a show and that you should come.

Un-covering

This morning I woke up with the desire to garden. Of course, I’m sitting here typing instead, but surely thinking about creating a beautiful space in my yard. In order to do that, though, there’s a lot of stuff to get rid of: weeds, brush, old woodchips, the river rock the previous owners cast into the shady side yard. Then there’s the old deck which someone built on top of the dilapidated concrete steps. I know all this stuff is there, some of it visible, some of it not. But it exists, and a lot of it is in the way of my dream garden.

Now, I want thriving perennials rich with new growth, abundant hostas and a few choice plants. But first, I’ve got to uncover all that other stuff and do something with it. That takes work and isn’t necessarily the fun part. I envision a few days of scouring the ground with a spade. Maybe renting that jack hammer to remove the old steps. It sounds like a ton of work, just to create some space for the new stuff to thrive.

There’s a lot of this type of work in our world: stripping away the old to create space for the new. Sometimes it’s not even the ‘new’ we are uncovering. Just creating space for what is or could be. Who knows what I’ll discover during the weeding process?

One theory behind learning to be a great singer is to strip away all the bad habits we’ve acquired over the  years. At 18, it’s amazing how many ‘things’ were covering up the natural voice within me. Stress, exams, all that book knowledge, homesickness, recollections of old Saturday Night Live sketches. Some of this good, some of this not so useful. These ideas manifested themselves in layers of tension on my vocal chords. But, like gardening, the deconstructive process of removing these layers and reorganizing them made good, unencumbered space for growth and freedom. Chipping away at it lesson by lesson slowly uncovered the singular voice within me. It’s a never ending process, too–finding the right place for all that stuff, especially as it keeps accumulating.

Somewhere deep within our overgrown world lies that beautiful song or fantastic garden. Are you willing to uncover the rich authenticity and create the space for it to grow?

Morning Pages

A few years ago I started working through Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, a week-by-week program to discover and recover the creative self in anyone with an artistic dream. One of the best components of the program is the writing of “morning pages” — three longhand pages of whatever comes to mind, first thing each day. At the time I thought this was a silly exercise, and that my writings had to be perfect and distinguished. How would I fill three pages of thoughts, my thoughts, which I tend to carefully turn over and over before they find voice?

After a few days of this I realized I was suddenly creating a volume of ‘work.’ I created lists, poems, stories about my grandfather, jokes and even doodles. My mind started to open up and I felt a sense of freedom, like something had to get out, and once it did, I could go on with my day. And of course, the best part was that it was okay that some of it (if not a most of it) made no real sense. It was just fine…and fun to write.

I’ve gone in and out of phases of writing morning pages, but in times of not writing feel called to get back at it. Now we’ve entered the blog world. Typed words this time, perhaps a video instead of a doodle, but who knows. And this time for you to see, instantly.

When I go back to my pages, whether they’re typed or scribbled, I find the real treasure: a journey from one idea to the next, connected day after day. It’s an exciting re-discovery.

Keep writing.

Thank you

I’d like to start by saying thank you. Not that you’ve done anything thus far, other than visit my blog…but even so, I am grateful for you and your taking the time to visit. Even though it’s several months away, Thanksgiving is something we should celebrate every day: the spirit of gratefulness, for having enough, for the ability to converse and share and laugh. And so, thank you…and welcome to my blog.