Category: community

community, memory, neighborhood, Purpose, Relationships, spirit

Anniversaries are Dates on Steroids

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I overhear a woman outside chatting with two neighbors. She says, “Twenty-four years ago today, I lost my brother.” She slow-shakes her head. “It’s hard to believe, 24 years.”

One neighbor asks, “What are you noticing? What do you miss the most?”

“Having someone who cares.”

A year ago Thursday was the first day I kept my son home, one day ahead of the county-wide school lockdown. The previous evening, a Wednesday, we went out to our favorite Vietnamese place and sat down for bowls of pho. We knew something was coming to an end and that this could be our last time in a restaurant. For a year, now longer? I could never have imagined. Like the woman outside, I am slow-shaking my head. 

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Art, body, community, Creativity, Fitness, Music

Fan Dancer

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Back in March, we knew it would be a little while. Night clubs shuttered along with gyms, studios, and all the rest of public life. No contra dancing at the Glen Echo Park Spanish Ballroom on Friday nights. No proximity to my absolutely favorite Zumba teacher at the rec center on Saturday mornings. We’d have to figure something out. For this old gal, keeping the spirit intact means movement. Dance is as much a necessity as toilet paper and reliable wifi.

The irony was clear from the beginning: the businesses keeping their doors open were not ones I wanted to support. A few of my more savvy Zumba instructors went virtual, offering Zoom workouts at no cost a couple days a week. It was oddly comforting to catch a  glimpse into the kitchens and living rooms of people I’d only seen at the gym. I felt less alone in my own mess, swinging my hips in the tiny rectangle of space carved out in a condo which absorbed schoolroom, office, and the entire universe of entertainment options on two days notice last March.

That little while stretched into weeks. Then months.

I was definitely going to need new ways to dance.

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community, Friends, Love, neighborhood, Outdoors, Relationships, spirit

Through This, Together

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The weeping willow tree stands alone at the edge of the parking lot. In spring and summer, its feathered branches play with light. Now, in the cold, it sways its head of bare tresses.

In the Beforetimes, the willow held my morning. Waiting for the 466 bus to the metro, queuing commuters angled their bodies towards the stop sign up the block where the bus would eventually appear. We do this without realizing it, don’t we? Pin our attention on some absence we want filled by something beyond our control? It eventually occurred to me that fixating on that stop sign was a tragic waste of a few wide-open morning minutes. Holding my packed lunch and metro card, I turned to look across the street instead. The willow. Right there. It gave my gaze a bite of intrigue, some sustenance to carry me through the workday.

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community, Fitness, Mindfulness, neighborhood, Parenting, spirit

This Bubble, Spinning and Viscous

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world-edwin-hooper

Our governor gave us the stay-at-home order yesterday. With presumptive positives surpassing 1000 in the state, it’s a wise directive. That said, judging by the volume on I-66 right outside my condo, only a handful of my fellow Virginians are complying. And no, they still have not finished replacing the sound wall as they ravage the land around us for new express lanes. Which means even as spring explodes from the tulip poplar and cherry trees all around the complex, my balcony door stays sealed tight.

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body, community, Fitness, gender

Boxed Out

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alora-griffiths-strength

Unfolding from a plank on a mat, I see his sneakers approaching.

“Are you done with your workout?”

“I’m not sure.” I pull back into a child’s pose and then flop over.

“You look like you’re done. Did you do your weights?” A dark heart of sweat blooms across his chest.

“A few. I just don’t like it here tonight.”

He looks around. Our gym. The place we come almost every free Tuesday evening after he picks me up from the metro. “You don’t like it here?”

“Not tonight,” I say.

“Okay,” he shrugs. “We can go home anytime. Let me know when you’re ready.”

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Art, community, Relationships, spirit, Take Action

Creative Sanctuary

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Woodruff Girl Skipping Rope
Hale Woodruff (1900-1980), “Untitled (Girl Skipping Rope)” (c. 1959-60)
Photo: Joyner/Giuffrida Collection

When you open the news, do you find yourself tensing up? Or feel a pull to retreat to some warm, gentle space to catch your breath? Maybe it all would be more manageable if you could just get a hug. Or give one. Or a thousand of them.

This hunger for warmth has to be something more than a simple need for comfort. Yes, we need that too, especially when we carry real trauma. But it seems this urge to connect and catch breath has to do with knowing what’s at stake. We feel something turning. We sense what is roiling under there, the fury and sorrow and maybe even some kind of power that’s awakening under the surface. Something terrible, something very big.

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Art, community, Creativity, growth, Purpose, spirit

Let the World Spin

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Farrell Eye Mural

The enemy does not live in you.

Your life is not your foe. Not your wounds or mistakes, not even the hurt you caused.

Not your temper. Not your failures. Not the paths you taken or those you’ve passed on, not your reckless love or your absent god.

The enemy does not occupy your mind. The enemy does not govern your chemical imbalance. The enemy never existed inside you. You didn’t let it infiltrate, storm the gates. You are innocent of that, if not of everything.

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community, Friends, Letting Go, memory, Music, Relationships

Eric Panegyric: No Outer Limits

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Page Heart

In the story we tell of our family, the Fall 2019 chapter will be entitled “Haunted by Tragedy.” Three people close to us died unexpectedly in the span of four weeks. The past few months have been consumed with sorting belongings, planning memorials, and dealing with the aftermath of loss.

This weekend, we held a joyous and moving celebration for my friend Eric Dixon at one of the pubs where he played many winning games of trivia. This marks the last of the tangible tasks left to the living. The heart carries on with the intangibles. Here is what I shared at Eric’s service.

It is the music that finally does it. Sylvan Esso, “Funeral Singers.” It’s not the song’s particular connection that splits me open. It’s the fact of the music. That I can hear so much better, that I have learned to taste, appreciate and eventually love music that would have never existed for me if not for Eric. I’m guessing this is true for many of us here. How many of us can say — show of hands — that it’s because of Eric that we know King Crimson? I bet we all have lists of things we call our own now because Eric’s enthusiasm infected us. For me? It’s Galactic. Janelle Monáe. The author Katherine Dunn. The mathematician Martin Gardner… and that’s just the start of my list.

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