Things to remember before the journey

 In the spirit of Amy Krouse Rosenthal's work (Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, The Beckoning of Lovely), 16 bloggers set out to "Plant a Kiss" in the world on Sunday, April 29. We each did something we thought would spread a little extra joy, color, connection, poetry, or magic. Then we watched to see what would happen! Today each of us is posting about that experience. Click here to visit the main Plant a Kiss page where you can easily link to all participating bloggers. For every blog that you visit and comment on, your name will be tossed into a hat for a chance to win one of many amazing prizes - artwork, writing coaching, photography, a dream-building class, jewelry, and more. 
 

It begins when you begin. There is no such thing as too late. There is no such thing as too early. There is only right on time. You are always right on time.

Eat. Not just at mealtimes. Between and around and under them. Feed yourself with more than just what will suffice. Feed yourself with what will nourish.

Ask for help. Not in the way of apology or guilt or wantonness. Not in the way that contorts you into the shell of your own power. Not in the way that drills your guts into the ground. Not in the way that divorces you from boldness. Ask for help in the way that expands you, that blushes you awake to your own life. Ask because asking is another kind of love and another kind of faith and another kind of courage.

 Invite imperfection. Know that the missteps and mistakes will become amusing anecdotes eventually and perhaps even teach you something further down the line or sooner yet, and that the places of wrongness and upset ultimately come the underpinnings of transformation, and that even disappointment offers a cure for inertia. Let go of the outlandish expectation that "whole" means "unbroken" or that you are only good if you get there twice as fast as anyone thought you would. Know intimately the bald tire that bursts, without warning, on an uneventful road, the error in judgement that leads to a locked door, the desert mirage that doesn't shimmer into fortune. The raw material of your defeat is pure gold, the bones that build you back, the song that sings you home, again and again.

Believe in luck, in slim margins, in ludicrous hope, in the magical alignment of planets. Trust the pixie dust of stars, the winking moon, the magic hour that tilts sunlight into halo. Hear the soft prayer your body makes, waking to a snowfall, and how the rain leans you so close to yourself, you can feel your own heartbeat in your hands. The shiniest moments are hardly the only evidence that you were here, living your marvelous life. There are eddies of quiet, deep knowing that will gift you a thousand times more grace.

Remember the path is full of detours, places and reasons to get lost, narrow passageways that tempt with risk and long, wide fields of drowsy musing. No matter. The geographies that bridge you from here to there are flecked with breadcrumbs, small reminders of where you came from, river stones beneath the listless current, a muscle capable of so much flexion, your reach startles you sometimes, the way you carry leopard equally with lamb, your conviction latticed with mystery, and all at once, inside of you the same blood threading your veins, the same breath holding you fast to this earthly heaven, this heavenly earth.



Type Rider: Cycling the Great American Poem is set to officially hit the road May 5, 2012. Visit www.type-rider.com to learn more about why I'm cycling 1,300+ miles from Amherst, MA to Milwaukee, WI, toting a vintage Remington Ten Forty behind me, and how you can join in the journey.

know well the growing edge (after Howard Thurman, “For the Inward Journey,” with thanks to Amy Lee Czadzeck)

Know well the growing edge, the pregnant pause that intimates release. Know well the way the wind will beat you back and threaten the alignment of your bones and fling sand into the treads of your tires. Know well the crowded room, the waning light, defeat like a siren song, the wall of trophy failures taunting. Know well the slipshod latticework your life is resting on, the filmy, brief oases saving you from draught. Know well the sound of rain destroying your roof, the weight of old ice against a porch screen, the brass incongruity of a misblown trumpet, the deep horror of new love gone unanswered. Know well the broken keepsake, and the fallen arch, the army and retreat, the bud and the unbirthed bloom. Know well the accidental bull’s-eye, the bull in the china shop, the bullshit and the bulldog and the bullhorn. Know well the growing edge, the fireflies along the dark woods path, the burnt steak, the forgotten birthday, the unseen talent, the missed opportunity. Know well the singer from the song, the magician from his sleight of hand, the sower of seeds from the seeds he sows. Know well the betrayals of the body and the miracle of its daily resurrection. Know the butter knife and the honey spoon and the lemon slice and the soft towel after a hard-earned bath. Know well the score. Know well the game. Know well the loser and the loss. Know well the last sip and the vacant wash of regret. Know well the minutest textures of love, the circumference of a drop of sweat, the weight of want, the underpinnings of a moan. Know well how it begins and how it ends, where it matters and where you couldn’t care less. Know well the porthole of the no and the long, wide acreage of yes. Know well the distraction, the dilemma, the dissonance, the unseemly, unavoidable error. Know well the tollbooth and the teenager in the car behind. Know well the amulet, the augury, the prayer that saves you. Know well the unsanctioned curfew, the over-eager groping in the backseat, the stolen cigarette. Know well the sound of grief in the middle of the night, and the healing on a lost highway. Know well the belly laugh after a terrible mistake, the fumble after surety, the sweet relief after the argument, the touch, the touch, the touch after the still, interminable winter. Know well the faith required, the cliff, the dive, the distance. Know well the fork in the road and the final countdown and the trouble rippling through paradise. Know well the arc between “if” and “when” and the balance beam between there and here. Know well the now. Know well the breath. Know well the sound of knuckles on a shut door. Know well the first step in. Know well the unsung necessity of terror. Know well the tiniest courage. Know well what happens next, which is only the mystery whispering its story, syllable by excruciating syllable.

what it is to be awake enough

And the geese begin their wild and boisterous honking. It is not a warning. It is a welcome. And now you have arrived at the plateau of wildflowers and a grove of stick-straight trees and there are chairs, the good kind with arms and the backs at just the right angle and the sun is just the right kind of warmth where you know soon a glass of water will feel like a gift and nothing else will be more important than its coolness against the back of your throat and isn't it amazing how there are moments when you can unremember how hard you once worked to locate the smallest pocket of happiness. And now that you've arrived the geese have gone quiet and are lolling about looking like they have no idea what urgency is and you realize that what drives you away from the deep seat of your power is the memory of that ride at the amusement park when you were eight, how excited you were to get on, not realizing the ride was for toddlers, that the little plane only went up or down and how convinced you were there was some button inside you were going to press to make the ride more exciting but inside the carriage the buttons were just stickers and everything that you believed to be true about the little plane became suddenly untrue and you realized this too late, your safety belt already locked in place by the attendant, the track groaning awake and all the airplanes moving impossibly slow, slow and not speeding, the route so stubbornly flat, and the music coming from the loudspeakers overloud and saccharine, and you felt the cruel joke of it, and your foolishness, how your itchy trigger for adventure just got a little too itchy and how you had to sit there, embarrassed for yourself, for the eternity of that ride, and finally, as it came to a stop and your safety belt came off in a click, you bolted out of the carriage and flung yourself into your father's arms and wept into the heart of your shame and innocence. 

Not now. Not anymore. The geese are coming closer, pecking at the grass, the long tube of their neck widening their circumference, and there is barely a wind tilting the canopy and this is the moment you want to remember, and it's not about peace or stillness but what it is to be awake enough to recognize that the body leaning into the chair knows the chair, knows wildflowers, knows the heat that leads to water, knows the stretch of neck to widen the space for nourishment and the invitation to not have to say a word about it all and that a song is being sung just for you and that you are being called to listen.

This might have been it, the window seat, 14A, on the Delta flight to Atlanta with the man in 14B with the ruined left thumbnail and the woman beside him deep in the heart of romance novel. This might have been it, Palm Sunday and April Fool's, the cloud layer out of Hartford and the sky a perfectly perfect blue and the flight attendant with teh whitest teeth you've ever seen. Or this could have been it, the mashed-up front of your Toyota Echo on the back roads of Western Massachusetts in the middle of an eerily early snowstorm, with your friend beside you with the aunt who died on this same day 15 years ago thousands of feet over Nova Scotia. Or this: a tumor the size of an Easter egg hugging the top quadrant of your spinal cord, and the slow diminishment of your body before the surgeons took over. This might have been it, the Rogue River in Oregon when you were 25 and catapulted underneath and inside the great rapids in your tiny, inflatable kayak. Or this, like poor Reggie Lewis with the Boston Celtics, his young heart failing in the middle of practice some spring afternoon. Or this, just now: the labyrinth and the trio of horses and the tree that may or may not be a dogwood, and Southern birds singing their late afternoon song, and the white mug of strong coffee Celeste made to your right, and the sound of the wicker chair as you write in your near illegible cursive on this first Monday in April. All of it, interrupted by an unforeseen meteor or brain stem stroke like the one Deb's brother had which took away everything except his memory of math. This might have been it, the awkward confrontation with your mother, the long silence with your brother, the fall at the Embarcadero ice rink, the first time you knew you were making love with someone else, the panna cotta you made from scratch with whole vanilla bean, your kitchen morphing into Madagascar, the sunburn from that black sand beach in Barbados, the crossword puzzle you fought your sister for, the lightning storm on Skinner Mountain, the algebra test you barely passed, the knowing that swept you like a flood out the door with a single suitcase and a one-way ticket. This might have been it, but it wasn't. It wasn't. You weren't. You squirreled into a small patch of good luck. You blinked a sliver of light into the rooms of your dark house. You found the fingers of a hand that came out of nowhere to look for yours. You rose from your knees and lived.