The Way of Juice Concentrate

New Moon of January: Posture Prompt

Hybrid Poem for You

Spoken out loud into my phone on an icy sunny midday walk with my dogs. Revised and played with at night by the light of the wood stove while eating spoonfuls of honey and listening to the hamster run on his wheel.

I want to be as concentrated as this juice I made: red beets, carrots, apples and GINGER!!!

Is it me?

Is it you?

Or…

is it the environment? One of the pervasive spells we are under is that it is the individual. I’m all for self-accountability but, damn, we’ve been lulled to believe that any charge we feel within us is separate from the whole and therefore solely in us, our own, our solitary problem. So it goes: Something is wrong with me, what the hell is wrong with me or with you, individualize it, patronize it, make it only about these particular cells, not the cell.

Friends call me to say they have recently been diagnosed ADHD.

Maybe.

I’m not here to refute anyone’s story.

Yes and… is it you, or is it the crush rush modern world? I was the schoolgirl who could focus, train her eye on the math problem, the sentence, the request, the exact way the teacher’s eyebrow lifted to the left. Now, even as I pay attention to my attention, even as my phone is not my god, my focus is somehow still limp, flaccid, diverted, weak, dilute, a blunt pencil great at smudging but hopeless at a sharp line.

My daughters want to show me something and where am I? Why am I not there? I look like I’m there; I say the words of a person who is there. But more and more I notice that I am not there. Is it the mentally athletic pivot between laundry, dogs, dishes, children, work, exercise, three different shared calendars? Is it just that—being an adult with responsibility? No, not that. Is it having to negotiate for space all of the time? Is it being an entrepreneur? Maybe that’s it! No, not completely. Is it the seeping in of all the go-go-go around me even when I don’t buy into it? Is it the endless stampede of information coming at me through my phone even when I resist? I have been an adaptable and resilient human my whole life. I can move to any country, make friends with anyone who doesn’t speak my language, look like me, act like me, or share religion, culture, race, gender, any of it? I know how to blend in and stand out and listen and squeeze and finesse my way through tricky situations. But this new-everyday-human-tech-speed-always-available-attention-grabbing thing? I’m having trouble trouble trouble adapting to it. I can’t figure it out. What is wrong with me? Why does my chest squeeze in on itself when my beloved daughter asks me to watch her play the piano song 42 times in a row?

Is it because everything else is pressing in?

I am tired of my own No’s.

But oh how I have loved a good No.

No social media platform. No to the plethora of daily after-school activities. No to the stuff. No to the plastic. No to the constant doing. No to that event. No to rushing. No, no, no.

I’ve used my No’s—like 1,000 shielded soldiers—to protect me, to make space for breathing.

Everything and everyone and all the unseen is hungry and grasping toward me.

Everything and everyone is grasping toward everyone.

Back away.

I needed those No’s.

No this and no that so that so that so that I can be there when she plays piano for me.

No this and no that so that my menstrual blood doesn’t flood.

So that I can remember to eat.

So that I can know my own Yes.

So that I can water the plants and feel the cold floor under my feet.

Is it me?

Am I too delicate?

Is it me?

Now, with the wider space my No’s have made for me, I am curious about more Yes.

I never set out to be a No Woman all the time.

It wasn’t my blueprint.

I want to be Juice Concentrate.

I want my attention thick and focused and potent and long-lashed and dark beet red, unmissable, un-missing, not missing anything. Locked eyes. Ears that hear. Back-body alive. Tell me. Let me tell you.

That can only happen if the constant buzzing greedy tidal wave is held back.

My body has an outline.

A friend sent me a parable about people emerging from the bush saying, “I am here” as a greeting as the other responds “I see you.” THAT. Right there.

I am here.

I am where I am. Fully.

Ice is water that froze because it responded to the temperature of its environment.

I don’t want to be constantly mildly disassociated in order to bear this modern pace.

I want to feel safe to be present to what is around me.

Can I let my 1,000 shielded soldiers rest?

I don’t know.

I want to be here.

Is it me?

Is it you?

Are we supposed to adapt to this?

Posture Prompt

Choose a 1-hour block of time in your day to notice when you leave your body. Can you track it? Write it down. Be curious about what was happening around you: people, place, conversations, information.

If that’s fruitful, try it again in a different setting.

Gather some new knowing about yourself.

Consider making decisions accordingly.

Love to all,