Pride and Love

Pride is a good time to talk about who we are “supposed” to love. Who we are “supposed” to have sex with. I love writing fantasy stories because you can talk about all sorts of things that are hard to talk about. Plus, when you start with a classic fairy tale, some of the framework is all set up. So if you’re telling a story about different kinds of magical creatures, it’s a little easier to say a Hunter shouldn’t be with a Lycan because that’s not as anchored in the “real world.” In fantasy and supernatural stories you can talk about things indirectly in a way that removes the real world politics that are already in place.

I do have a gay and a bisexual character in my Red August series and I hope that when readers who might not normally be open to that idea will see the parallels between saying one species of magical otherkin shouldn’t be with another  – or with a human – it begs the question: why does it matter? If you’re rooting for the wolf and the non-wolf to get together, maybe you should be rooting for love instead of being concerned about which gender loves which. How does it hurt you if a wolf falls in love with a shifter? How does it hurt you if a woman loves a woman? How does it hurt you if a person’s biological sex doesn’t fit the gender they choose? It doesn’t hurt you at all. It challenges some of your beliefs, sure. I get that. I didn’t always know or understand all of those things. I sometimes reacted badly to new information. But challenging your beliefs is not the same as it hurting you. Show some grace and let people live their lives. It is hard to take in new information, but once you do try and allow yourself to change your mind.

Once upon a time I got very defensive about my use of yoni (vulva) imagery in my artwork. I upset some people by trying to over-explain why it mattered to me and I didn’t mean anything bad by it. But I couldn’t grasp the deeper issue because I personally had never dealt with it. Through that experience I eventually came to realize the below image would have really helped me. Why didn’t I think of it right away on my own? Because I was being reactive. Feeling attacked. But I stepped into a conversation I really should have not stepped into so defensively to begin with. I should have stepped in with more curiosity and less defensiveness. One thing some people will eventually learn is that the older you get the more things you will have to adapt to if you want to grow as a person. Things change over time. Change can be hard. But if it makes the world a better place, it’s worth it.

This below image is one I found on Facebook. It doesn’t have a credit, so if you know who made it, please let me know! I feel like it’s a really good representation of what I’m talking about and it’s a great image to share. Thank you, whoever did it!

Quiet a Spectacle

I will hold you, quietly. I can be still long enough to listen to your pain. I’m not good at being still. You know this. You know. I think that’s why my embracing still moments mean so much to you … because you know.

I had an epiphany about myself yesterday. A realization. And it was such a simple answer, I was certain I must have realized it some time in the past. I thought about the times I’d been embraced by somebody, only for them to get close long enough to see my utter humaneness, and then walk away. I thought this meant I was bad at love. Now I realize it’s more about the ideal of me not matching up with the reality of me. And you never did that to me. You always understood. It’s amazing to be truly seen that way.

The essence of it all? You understand why the things that matter to me–matter to me. You also understand that I am an embodiment of celebration. Even my quietness can be a spectacle. I think that comes off like obsession, or possessiveness, to some people. And in all truth, I was possessive in my first marriage. I was jealous in that life I once led. I was a teenager when we met. And that was a difficult twenty years. I grew in that time, particularly starting around my early thirties. I know the difference between excitement and jealousy, between celebration and possession. I know it for myself, even if others don’t. And you know, maybe that’s why I can appreciate the abundant trust I am now the recipient of, because I know how rare it is.

I’m trying to get over that fear of being misunderstood. You really help with that, did you know? Because even though I’ve read that Anaïs Nin quote a million times, it really sunk in yesterday. It isn’t that my love is wrong, it’s that my love is viewed through the filter of others. It’s about the way they experience my love that makes it work, or not work. Its about their past relationships and what they learned.

Maybe at some point I can stop writing and vlogging about being afraid to be misunderstood, and that will be the measure of when I am cured of that concern.

 

Star-Crossed Dancers

You take my hand and we spin in close. Your arms around me, your breath on my neck. A few heartbeats, chests rise and fall … heat … then you spin away.

Juicy Peach

“They had apples. Honeycrisp. Some other kind, too…I forget what–well, they’re all new apples.”

I smiled. “Thanks.” It was the closest I would get to the market that day. I love choosing my fruit and veggies from the farmers who grew them. The dried mud on a mound of small potatoes, flaking off around the little crate that contained them. The weight of a fat tomato in my hand. The smell of a bundle of herbs. Feeling like a Duchess as I peer at each package, choosing which would serve me best. But I wasn’t feeling my best that day, so he went alone. He delivered, though–Honeycrisp is my favorite. Pink Lady, second.

“I got some peaches, too.”

“Ohhhh.” I tiptoed to the kitchen to peer inside the bag. There they were, three perfect peaches.

I selected my favorite, though they all looked lovely. I turned around and let water run over it, washing the fuzzy skin gently. I gave her a little rub with the dishtowel on the counter, to dry her off. I put the fruit to my nose and inhaled, to my satisfaction it was delightfully fragrant. I bit into the fruit, grabbing  a paper towel to catch the juices. Sweet, wet, divine–the last taste of summer.

“This peach is perfect. Come have a bite.”

He poked his head into the hallway, peering at me standing near the sink. Eyebrows up, “Well, alright.”

I watched him take the four paces to me. His light brown hair in want of a trim. His green tee making his eyes more green than ever. His eyes are magic that way, pulling green, light brown, or hazel–depending on the shirt.

I held the peach up, about breast high. He stood in front of me for a beat and looked at the peach, put both of his hands around my hand, cupping it from beneath and raised the peach to his mouth. He looked me in the eye as he bit into the flesh, I was transfixed. Any words that had begun their journey to my mouth were halted in their tracks as I watched him take another bite, his eyes locked with mine. Juice running down our hands. I forgot the paper towel in my other hand. I forgot that I could look away, if I wanted to.

He released my hand, smiled and chewed, still looking me in the eyes. I felt a chain of electrical tingles run down my spine, then back up again. He made a sound that indicated the peach was, indeed, as perfect as reported. He then turned and walked back into the bedroom to sort books, and fold laundry. I enjoyed watching the back of him as he went. I stared at the space where he stood as I finished the peach in four bites, then made my way to the bedroom as well.

Faith Lost and Won

If your temple tumbles into the insistent sea, and your faith feels lost and broken, keep your mantras close, and the memory of your worship sacred.

Build a new temple of trees and sky. Build a new faith of the shattered remains of you. Let the thick scars twist and bend and be a memory of faith lost and won again.

The Choice You Make – Sensual Sunday

I don’t know if I would undo it if I could. Your shirts are here. And your toothbrush with the fancy nubby side. I actually folded socks today (not my specialty). They weren’t mine. That’s how you know I care.

When you lift your head and put your feet on the cold hard floor, I swoop in and grab your favorite pillow, hook my arm around it and pull it in tight. I watch your naked back bend forward, the valley of your spine is perfect and I reach out and run a finger down.

You wipe the sleep and look over your shoulder, peeking through a mop of messy hair.

“I wish you didn’t have to go.”

“Me too.”

It doesn’t matter who said which, because we trade off these sentences, depending on what day it is.

I don’t know what force on this earth got to decide what love is or how it manifests, but I know what it is for me. Love is in the Don McLean song that crackles out the same line every morning, “The auctioneer saaaaaaaaid, I’m not through yet…” from your alarm clock. Love is around the edges of your iris, where light brown gives way to hazel. Love is in scrambled eggs and toast next to the window, on a single plate with two forks.

“I like ketchup on mine, do you?”

And now, even after what happened, we’re still here and maybe a little less sorry about it than the two years that followed, because love can also be an opportunity to choose somebody every day. We keep making that choice. I can’t undo it, so I will take solace in this.

 

 

Summer 1981

I miss waiting for “The Wizard of Oz” to come on once or twice a year. I miss the lead up to the end of the school year and the phenomenon of the summer blockbuster. I miss not understanding about bills and politics. I miss jump-rope and jacks and creeks with smooth stones. I miss that first kiss feeling, when you weren’t even sure how kissing worked. I miss grape soda and skinned knees, tire swings and climbing trees. I miss swimming all day for weeks in a row. I miss the coolness of a desert night, sitting in a concrete pipe with a friend talking about everything, after the rest of the neighborhood had gone to sleep.

How Love Grows

The tenderness that comes from the mercies we grant, and the pain we bear, and the wounds we salve, will make us more bonded for the trouble.

Fire Woman

I am not quiet change, river stones and lunar moths. I am ignition and fire. I am cracked earth and volcano. A wonder of hot magma throwing off heat and pain and beauty.

My Worth

There is a place. I am better there. Golden, and moonbeams shoot from my fingertips. I am right, but not the way you think I mean. Right like ocean waves. Right like an old book that hasn’t been opened in years. Right like ink-stained fingertips gripping and rubbing the linen until it’s perfect. There are truths in me that reveal themselves before I know their value. In anger, perhaps. Or fear. Today somebody wise said to me, “Pain is instructional.” And he is the center of that thought. He is the place I am right. From a pink hair on top of my head … or a grey one, to my heel, standing on a hard cold floor, waiting. And I will wait until the answers come. Until I know my worth. Until my voice is as loud as I need it to be to know that what I have done matters.