Learning to Live

A meandering essay in 10 small parts

Part 1:

Here’s the thing about new beginnings: they come at the price of an ending.

Even our most beginning-est beginning, our journey into this world, is marked by a goodbye. We leave the watery warmth and safety of the womb in order to make an appearance somewhere on the planet. We’re received into a stranger’s arms, ferried into the bright lights of this new life, the old one left behind.

And, perhaps if you’re like me, and you believe that we do in fact have a soul, before we are the seed of who we will become, we depart from Source. Another ending that marks a beginning; a new chance to human in a new way.

Over and over again we repeat these patterns. In order to be created anew, we close a door, or allow something to die.

In the middle of it all is the stew of uncertainty. The goo that the caterpillar becomes inside the chrysalis before it turns into a butterfly. The primordial ooze that becomes a vast ocean.

Today I am that ooze. I am that goo.

I’m in the midst of a project of disassembly, walking the tightrope of radical uncertainty. Each morning I wake up disoriented, disheveled, and a bit shocked to be here. I touch my arms as if to ground myself back into my body. I am 46 and ¾ years old. My limbs are covered with mosquito bites. There is a tree that looks like a heart outside my window. A dog is taking a shit on my neighbor’s lawn across the street. My chest is moving with my breath. I am here.

And then I ask myself: How might I live my life like a prayer? And I check my phone.

Part 2:

It is 9:00 on a Wednesday in July. From the open windows I can hear the ringing of bells. I am lucky to be here, sitting in this comfortable chair, a cup of coffee next to me, sunbeams cascading across the faded carpet at my feet.

Today is my 7th day of being at the apartment. This is the schedule: 7 days at home, 7 days in my monk’s garret. This room contains no objects or belongings that are mine. The refrigerator is empty save two jars of olives and a bag of produce that I’ve noted and rejected with tiny twinges of shame each time I open the door.

I wake without remembering my dreams, this morning. It is 6:30 am, and for that I am grateful. These days if I make it past 5am I feel a sense of accomplishment. I make a French press full of coffee and drink all of it on an empty stomach, despite knowing better. I stare out the window at the mackerel sky.

The apartment building is for sale. This will continue to be my temporary home until it sells. I’ll miss the ease of living in this beautiful liminal space. I’ve built a strange new world for myself here, one that is contained within a single duffel bag stuffed with wrinkled and marginally dirty clothes, a bluetooth speaker, two books, a statue of the Black Madonna, and a tangled ball of random cords I tote around just in case.

Here, I am anonymous. Here, I am a middle-aged woman stalking the streets with the eyes of the newly born. Here, no one knows that I am a gardener, or a mother, or a member of any community. Here, I dine alone.

Today I make myself a promise to sit down and write. To write anything. To let it stink and reek and simply be. And I still find ways to avoid and subvert. I read about Sophia. I read about the Eleusinian mysteries. I look at Zillow. I tell myself that writing is indulgence. That navel gazing is a sin. I drink more coffee.

I castigate myself: How could I take for granted a day with no responsibilities? What good fortune to be able to write. To be alive, with the possibility of a full belly and the whole world outside the door. And then to squander it. And so I check my email. I write a short paragraph about learning how to die.

Here it is:

I went back to the jungle to learn how to die. It turns out that was the easy part. It's learning how to live that I’m grappling with now.

I decide to take a shower. I shave my legs with a dull razor and Dr. Bronner’s Castile soap because it is the only soap in the shower. Cleo taught me that a sharp razor and shaving oil are the only way to go. But old, lazy habits die hard. I take note that I’ve given myself razor burn and a few nicks on my knees. Maybe someday I’ll learn how to follow the wisdom of the sages.

I feel a bead of sweat forming between my shoulder blades. The apartment seems to trap warm air, and like most old buildings in Portland, has no air conditioning. I pull out the box fan and let it blow directly into my face. My hair is suddenly kinetic, alive. I remember that famous Maxell tape ad, and consider taking some selfies. I take none.

Part 3:

On the 4th day in the jungle I go for a walk before my first morning class. The path is quiet and empty. The sound of my sandals crunching on the gravel mingles with the hum of insects and rustling of birds in the canopy. It’s not even 7am and already it’s oppressively hot, the air thick with humidity. I step around puddles from the pre-dawn rain. And then I am drenched. The effect is as startling as it is confusing. It’s as if I’m standing beneath a personal rain cloud. I look up. About 20 feet off the ground I see two monkeys shaking the branches of the tree above me. They are clearly delighted. I watch them for a while, inspired by their sense of play and naughtiness. Is this their routine? Do they wait for idiot humans, all wrapped up in our existential angst to walk by, dousing us with water to bring us back into the cosmic joke of the present?

Maybe that’s how you live life like a prayer.

Part 4:

This is the summer that doesn’t quite feel like summer. No camping trips. No backpacking. No family vacations. This is what happens when a family pulls apart at the seams. Things don’t get planned. Cycles of tradition fall by the wayside, reminders of what was, and what won’t continue to be.

I watch as my friends decamp for their summer trips, and I allow the little bits of grief to surface and mingle with the possibility of what comes next. I can’t summon the will or muster the energy to make it beyond a slow roll of the neighborhood on an old Schwinn cruiser with a leaky tire.

What kind of mother am I if I haven’t planned out the calendar? I’m haunted by the echoes of internet parenting: She’ll only be 14 once. These are the days to cherish; you’ll miss this time together when she’s “grown and flown”. Will it be enough that we ate corn on the cob and kicked a soccer ball around at the park? Will it be enough that she found a boombox and I gave her all my old cd’s and now we can sing De La Soul songs together? Will it be enough that she was bored, and wandered into the room while I was trying to work, and I tousled her hair, and smelled her sweet neck, and she was annoyed, but let me. Will that be enough?

Part 5:

I return to the internet. I look up the Council of Nicaea and read about Emperor Constantine labeling Mary Magdalene a whore as a way to vilify, exile, and undermine the sacred feminine. I think about this moment as the fortification of the patriarchy. I touch the pendant of the mystical Mary I wear around my neck.

That leads me back to a talk Audre Lorde delivered at Mount Holyoke College in August of 1978 called the “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power.”

In it she defines the erotic as:

“A source of power and information within our living... a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane.”

She goes on to say:

“When I speak of the erotic, then, I speak of it as an assertion of the lifeforce of women; of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives…

The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference.”

I wonder if this is the only way out of this giant mess: The sacred and the erotic. Clearly science and reason aren’t pulling their weight anymore.

Part 6:

This is how you fall in love with yourself:

First, put on your favorite dress (the one that elicits compliments from women you don’t know). Apply your best red lipstick. Create a playlist for yourself that follows the arc of your own brilliance: playful and light to more intense to downright sexy and back again to easy breezy. Queue it up so it’s ready to go the moment you walk out the door.

Take a small purse with your keys, phone, one credit card and your ID in it. Press play on the music as soon as your key is in the lock.

Leave with no agenda.

Wander the streets. Wander into galleries. Flirt with old ladies. Pet all the friendly dogs.

Buy yourself small, salty and sweet snacks and eat them leaning against brightly colored walls.

Duck into a bar that’s the right amount of dark and the right amount of divey. They’ll be playing Cate LeBon, so you can press pause on your playlist. Sit and drink a club soda with lime and bitters and watch 30 minutes of Kurosawa’s Yojimbo projected onto a screen at the back of the room. Smile at your good fortune. Praise the bartender for her excellent taste in music and movies, and tip her generously after she tries to give you the drink for free.

Sit in a park and watch the leaves of the big leafed maples tremble as your playlist builds in intensity. Re-apply your red lipstick.

Walk and walk and walk. Revel at the beauty of the broken world around you. Drink in the chaos, the noise, and decay.

When your stomach starts to growl, treat yourself to a bowl of pasta. Choose a small table outside on the sidewalk, and resist the urge to look at your phone while you dine. Make eye contact with the couples walking past.

Dare them to pity you, for you have already fallen in love.

Part 7:

I’ve been thinking a lot about the word resistance lately. What are you doing to resist fascism? How do you resist despair in times of ecological collapse? Resist, resist, resist.

Resistance reminds me of the force of a river meeting a dam. Some of the water will sluice over and through, and some will push against the dam endlessly. Much of that water will be propelled backwards, the flow interrupted, energy lost.

Resistance doesn’t feel like the way for me right now. Resistance brought me to my knees. Drained me of my will to be alive, creative, vital.

Instead, I imagine myself as a small tributary of that river. I acknowledge the dam ahead, yet I know that resistance is not the only path forward. I find a sideways route, a smaller, more meandering course that makes its way through the woods, or alongside a road, in order to reconnect with the large course of the flow downstream. It takes longer. It looks less like action, and more like a diversion. Maybe even bypass. And yet the final destination is still the ocean. A dream instead of a reaction. A creative path to collective liberation.

Part 8:

Cleo asks if we can watch Midsommar together. She’s been holding out on watching it because she knows it is one of my favorite movies and she wants to see it with me. She’s been diving deep into the genre for awhile now, and seems unbothered by gore or psychological terror. I’m generally too much of a weenie to watch horror movies, but this one is an exception. I find it terrifying, devastating, and exceedingly beautiful.

I make us popcorn and snuggle onto the couch next to her. Before the movie begins, she turns toward me with complete sincerity and says:

“This movie is basically about your life, mom. She joins a death cult, just like you joined a death cult.”

My mouth falls open. I stare at her, shocked. I shake my head and rebuke her statement from every possible angle. She seems unmoved by my arguments. I give up trying to convince her.

We watch the movie together. She loves it, but doesn’t think it should be considered a horror film. I’m still shaken.

Part 9:

I start a new writing project. It’s anonymous. The only place I can actually tell the whole truth. I wonder who, if anyone, will ever find it. I’m not sure I care if it will ever be read. It feels transgressive to simply write everything down. To say all the things. To have no concern for audience. To speak freely, unhindered by duty or allegiance.

This is why people call their writing fiction.

Part 10:

The city is coming alive again. I can feel the quickening of its pulse. There’s more live music and more bike riding and more public gathering. People are making eye contact again. It’s a revival of a certain wild energy that feels unique to this place.

I meet friends in parks and observe all the life being lived. Children running down the paths at Peninsula Park, stopping to smell roses, or jump into the fountain. Elderly couples laughing and dancing in groups. So much playfulness. I dare to hope that this, too, is an answer.

We moved to Portland 20 years ago this summer. It was the summer of Hurricane Katrina as well as the summer that I became besotted with this place. The vibe this summer feels like a total rejection of the poison of genocidal violence, cruelty, and nihilism.

I feel an upwelling of emotion thinking about the great privilege of it all. What a tragic waste of a life to not inhabit and embody any available joy and levity, when there is so much to mourn.

And that’s all for now, dear readers. As always, I’m so grateful that you take the time to read what I write, and for all the emotional and material support you’ve given me to keep this project going. Who knows what it is, or what it will be in the future, but I appreciate you all riding shotgun with me.

Sending so much love,

xo, Belle