part 2: sacred silence

I am sitting drinking coffee in a sleek room with an obscure name that references the history of the building-small talk for those in the know.

These are my judgments. They have floated in my head for years. Listening to two young men talk about gentrification as if they can escape their whiteness by wearing enough black, and coating themselves in dirt. Uniformed by an unspoken shame.

My face is simply a luck of the draw. Mexican and Lebanese. Allowed into so many rooms. A voice shaped by its own broken shame. Fit into the hills, and tossed into the possibility of being anyone. The young man to my right is speaking about the lack of the local Food Not Bombs. Sprouting his opinion on the inability of the Portland scene to truly serve those in need. He knows service. He lived in Boston. That was an authentic Food Not Bombs. Not this hippified shit labeled in frivolity and play. I can’t speak. Does he know any of those people? Does he know about the seven plus years that they have showed week after week serving without pay? Does he know their names? Has he seen their homes?

Some of them don’t have homes. It’s self-chosen. They have seen poverty that exists in the most hidden spaces of our country. Yet, he sits here and judges them, and I sit and judge him. I want to scream. Did you step up when they asked for help? Did you volunteer to take their mission further? Did you take on those years of fortitude and sacrifice? In this moment, I want to silence him, but I don’t speak. Left in my own sacred silence. Unable to bring myself to the table. Too concerned with being polite. Imprisoned by my own shameful lack of faith.

Olive Stew Olympia

i once decided to move to portland while sitting in a grocery store parking lot in olympia.  the only person i ever truly loved agreed, and we drove to portland.  we broke up a few months later, and i quickly learned not to care.

we decided to live in portland, because we could easily piss and shit there.

that’s love.

ten years later.  it’s a saturday in olympia.  i’m standing in the basement of a house listening to a punk band, and typing: The world is going to end and there is nothing that I can do about it.  i’ve typed this statement since i was a teenager.  it’s something that just seems to make me smile.  i look over and tell this to J.  i have never told anyone about this habit.  i realize that he is recording the show.  it’s too late to take it back. i decide to end my silence with screaming surrounding me and candles burning.

he tells me a story about the guy who collected road kill, and stored it in a freezer out back but did not live in the house.  he never came back, and the freezer eventually broke.  they discovered the road kill.

i stare at the thrift store art on the walls.  the k records posters.  there is a zine library.  i pick one up randomly.  it’s about love.  on the front there is a torn out page from a dictionary.  rose of Sharon is listed.  we had been talking about rose of Sharon on the way to the show.  i point it out to J, and he smiles and nods his head.  me talkative.  him quiet.

i read about failed relationships and all the secret desires that we all seem to share.  wishing to say i love you, but claiming you only said olive stew.  i go to a mirror later and say olive stew over and over again.  there’s no risk involved.

seven years of the dreaming vegetable

we are late. having eaten artisanal food pantry rosemary bread, plucked salmon berries off the bushes, played in the nettle, stared with child like glee at the cleavers and chickweed. I don’t wish to leave, but we must go if we want to see them. we are late.

it’s been almost seven years, and we walk quietly into the cathedral room. listening to the flat drum, and the large taiko reverberate throughout. silver cranes on one side and gold on the other. their voices call through out Na Mu Myo Ho Ren Ge Kyo. daniel hands me the flat drum and lays down the pillow. I kneel with familiarity. I feel my body lean into this memory. I hear my voice become part of theirs. the drums and our voices rising into the rafters. seven years gone in seconds. my feet become numb. i shift. this hour.

Na Mu Myo Ho Ren Ge Kyo

we begin to read out of a book. sinji san reads first. a paragraph. gilberto san asks me to read. he does not recognize me. seven years. daniel tells him that he knows me. there is finally that surprised glimpse of recognition. sinji san immediately looks at me, and says that it can not be. i have not aged. seven years. we hug and look at each other with wonder. seven years gone.

sinji san cooks dinner. we drink green tea and talk to gilberto san about politics and activism. I vaguely remember the woman who felt so passionate about these ideas. she tries to rise out of these seven years. gilberto san asks me what i am working on. he knows i am a mother. i answer simply: herbalism. he understands this activism. he smiles at me. this is someone that i want to impress. he hears my voice that speaks softly of community. he knows this silent form of activism that settles into your everyday actions and becomes part of who you are; becomes part of everything you do. becomes your body in action, in walking, in voice, in living. being.

we laugh about jun-san stories. the nun who proclaims so boldly: “My name is Dangerous.” I laugh at the Bronx Monk who yells back, and tells Hard-core Environmental Cyclists to mind their own dam business.

i had forgotten what it was to be here.  i want to keep it.  i love seeing these three faces.  we eat together.  we talk about the fortune of our lives.  the world outside of this bubble is often times sad and horrific.  i hear the stories of activists hoping to make change.  i hear the failures, but there is hope.  they continue to walk.  gilberto san tells me about his next adventure.  going to mexico leaving the safety of this island.  bainbridge will not contain him.  he will push forward, and this is why i love these people.  they take risks.  they live with passion for those things that they believe in.  they are in my heart.  their chant has never left.  it has simply been silent, but it is within me.  waiting to come forward.

we eat together in silence.  it is getting dark, and we need to cycle home before the sun is gone.  i do not have lights on my bike.  gilberto san asks sinji san to sign a book for me.  he sits down and begins to brush the paper with beautiful calligraphy.  he finally turns towards me and shows me the page.  it is so gracefully writen: Na Mu Myo Ho Ren Ge Kyo and then there is my name moona san.  he has translated my name.  Moo Na  he has written two words beside the flowing characters: dream and vegitable (the spelling)

i am the dreaming vegetable.

i ride home thinking about my roots in the ground absorbing nutrients.  these roots that nourish and provide.  these roots digging deep, and sorting through the mysteries and beauty of life

through dreams.

old prayers

Note: i wrote this in 2009.  i love the sound of this prayer.  i can still hear the hand drums.  it seems like a dream now. i wonder if i should have walked to find peace for myself.

When I meet her, it is as if I have never seen a woman before; she absorbs everything with billowing, orange robes. We are ironically standing on Orange Avenue. Her voice carries easily over the traffic, and I am comforted by her simple chant: Na Mu Myo Ho Ren Ge Kyo. I wish to walk with her desperately, to bring peace through prayer, but I understand my obligations, and I bow out quietly. Before I leave Jun-san tells me: “Prayer will give you the answers you need.”

I go back to Oregon. I wonder what is compelling me. I act as if I understand my motivations and begin to look at houses. The first one takes me up a hill in Northeast Portland. It takes me to the beautiful, purple banner that called to me in Roanoke, Virginia. It takes me to Jun-san standing on the side of the road, beckoning me to pray. I do not question how it is I came to stand with her on a completely different coast without any prior knowledge. I instead pray, knowing that it will give me all the answers I need. I imagine the prayer becoming part of me, swirling up and into the deepest part of the cosmos, and becoming enmeshed in everything.

During the day, Jun-san stares straight ahead and walks with quick, assertive steps. She has such an essence of purpose. I wonder how people know their place in life. I pray desperately for my place. It consumes me in this gentle chant of peace and justice. If a God has ever heard my prayers, this is my ultimate prayer, the one that takes me over two hundred miles and two weeks following a purple banner and three orange billowing robes sailing in the wind; the one prayer that will eventually take me to a military base and send me to jail. This is the prayer that will be heard. God will finally understand that I am serious.

I have never imagine nuns like this. Jun-san is a petite woman with mischievous eyes; who standing in church tells us how she once danced. “They call them go-go girls, yes?” We laugh, “How did you become a nun Jun-san?” She replies, “Get on motorcycle and go fast as can. Then think: Is this all there is? I become nun.”

“Is this all there is?” I should become a nun. I leave the walk with this thought in my head, but nothing is as I think. I become pregnant. There is no father. The ghost of him is hanging in a basement; suspended in time and never witnessing the beauty that was to come. I am a mother who was not destine to have children. The doctor had drilled it into my head. In my darkest hours I do the only thing I know, I pray: Na Mu Myo Ho Ren Ge Kyo. Jun-san tells me to pray, it will give me the answers I need. I believe her.

mona, moona, and moynah

He is sleeping when i tell her. i wonder if his dreams tell him what i can not. we sit in the hot afternoon sun, and the car is running. parked beside the fire hydrant. expectations drop away. letting the most silent parts of myself escape into the thick air.

“i know you have not had an easy life moynah.” no one says my name like her. a life time of being someone completely different to another person.

i am heard. given something i never thought to have. breaking my heart. a stinging love come over me. everyday has been a day to cry, and this day is no different.

she tells me to pray to god. “i know you do not believe in god.” i tell her that i neither believe or disbelieve. there is not an argument that has swayed me. i will pray to simply pray-in case there is something i do not know.

i leave thinking what god leaves us to make these choices? i don’t know this god. i only know me.

in this moment I am just me. mona. moona. moynah-tied together through everything.

lessons from masanobu fukuoka, maggots, and mold

“I believe that a revolution can begin from this one strand of straw.  Seen at a glance, this rice straw may appear light and insignificant.  Hardly anyone would believe that it could start a revolution.  But I have come to realize the weight and power of this straw.  For me, this revolution is very real.” ~Masanobu Fukuoka

When I was 23 I read a book that changed the way I thought about life. The One Straw Revolution. I wanted to meet Masanobu Fukuoka. I wanted to walk beside him, and hear him speak about “Do Nothing Farming” and “the natural pattern” I didn’t have the money to travel to Japan. I needed a plan.  These wants were only going to get me so far.

What I did was take an AmeriCorps position in Westchester County, New York as a C.S.A. Assistant Manager. Which essentially translates to farm hand. The manager had a name that seemed to scream old wise farmer in the middle of no where lessons: Suehiko. The day I walked out into the field and saw the bright orange Kubota with a floppy hatted form riding; I thought I had found my Fukuoka. When he got off the tractor and turned around-I immediately realized my mistake. Suehiko was a beautiful young man of Asian and Jewish decent. I was floored. What the hell was he doing in the middle of this field? Where was my Fukuoka?

I will give Suehiko his credit. He is a very intelligent man. A wealth of knowledge, but the truth is; I had come not just to learn about growing organic, local food, but to find something about myself.  I wanted a really dam old man to tell me! It was not meant to be, and in the long run I think it was for the best. I instead stood in a field for a very long summer- by myself. I quickly discovered that I hated being by myself. It made my skin crawl. I was not certain that I liked what I saw when I stopped. I cried almost every day. There was no one but me to witness my gradual breakdown in Westchester New York.

I also ate lots of ice cream. Rode a bike more than I had ever before in my life, and realized that I would never be a farmer. I began to tentatively draw and paint. I made huge meals by myself. I collected all my trash for three months just to see how much I generated. I dumpster dived all sorts of odd things-that probably went to a landfill later. I saw the world as I had never seen it before.

The idea of Fukuoka had escaped me, but perhaps a part of me followed from a distance.  I left Westchester, and eventually went home to the west coast.  My heart would remember that field for a long time, and the struggle that had occurred, but I would not know, until much later, how much I needed to be still.  When I was finally still I would find myself-unlike anything I had ever imagined.  I discovered my “natural pattern” and in doing so, some parts of me would die.

The One Straw Revolution: “when I went up to the citrus orchard to practice what I then thought was natural farming I did no pruning, and left the orchard to itself.  The branches became tangled, the trees were attacked by insects and almost two acres of mandarin orange trees withered and died.  From that time on the question, “What is the natural pattern?” was always in my mind.  In the process of arriving at the answer, I wiped out another 400 trees.  Finally I felt I could say with certainty: “This is the natural pattern.”

Last month I had many strange moments that spoke to me.  They came as usual- in dreams and quiet breaths throughout the day.  Each moment shifting until it felt as if every instance might be a dream.  I felt drained by the end of the month.  I could contain no more.  I wished that everything would leave, and suddenly it was all gone, and I was left to myself.  Quietly, blessedly to myself.  I felt wrecked.  My body did not want to move, and I felt my chest tighten.  I could feel myself closing, and that it the instance that I simply stopped.

Stopped.

I didn’t move very much for a couple of days, and then I got up again.  I wanted my refrigerator gone.  I had thought about it for two months.  Thoughts could only take me so far.  I unplugged the refrigerator.  I cooked for two days, and suddenly realized that I could not save everything.  That part of this would be a failure, a mistake, an imperfection.  I would not lose over 400 trees, but I would let the freezer go.  I would try only to discover that the veggies had molded.  The broth had gone bad.  That maggots had found the bones.  It had all crawled out of my control, and did it really matter?  Nothing is permanent.  I could give my permission to the insane desire to get upset, or simply shrug my shoulders and think: “It happens.”  Death.  The maggots were the polite and disgusting reminder that it would continue no matter what I thought.  The “natural pattern” had found me in all my mistakes.  The mold would take back those vegetables.  I realized I was too tired to do anymore.  I threw it away.  Sick and disheartened by the things I could not bring myself to do.  It didn’t really matter.  It would all keep going.

Instead of practicing “Do Nothing Farming” I am practicing “Do Nothing Living.”  Do nothing living is not what you might imagine it to be.  Do nothing living grabs you, and sends you into action, but only the most necessary action.  Everything else is suddenly dropped away.  You can only expend that.  Your internal fire will allow for no more-no less.  This is the “natural pattern”

moona and the dream of flying

Call in your madness. Call in the death of the one that has built your limitations. Call in the fire of your passions, and live. For nothing is permanent. There will be a day when I can no longer hold you to my body. Please live as if these moments are fleeting, and nothing could keep you from flying.

peeling off layers

someone told me I was beautiful.  my mind had yet to see me in beauty.  i see the things that make me. i see the under-bite. the mouth that can’t decide to go up or down. choosing both.  i see the scars.  i see the tired breasts. one smaller and the other striped with stretch marks. pressed into me since i was fourteen. never a moment in which i felt vital and beautiful.

in my glory.

i am a map of me. each piece a story. i can remember the swelling of my breast when i was given the medicine that pushed them out beyond their boundaries. tagged. never young. just tired before my time. the scars cross me. staples struck across my belly. dot dot dot. unzipped from my ribs down. on my chest lives the reminder of a catheter.  cleaned out every night until i jumped into a river. tired of being everything i did not want to be. it got infected and they took it out. thank you river. perhaps these stretch marks are rivers into the sadness of those years. the quiet girl without the ability to say how stuck she felt. who grew a five pound tumor, and watched it leave over night. no children for you. just the imitation. marked by motherhood without life.

so when Beauty lays beside me and tells me i’m beautiful. i scoff.  let me peel these layers off, and show you everything that is not beautiful about me.  let them tell their story. let them cry silently. sending rivers into me.stretching these boundaries. leaving this map.

i wonder will you talk to me then?

you leave a mark that can’t be seen. when i look later. i question what i see.

what is beauty?

i touch my hips and feel the rough and smooth flow of each of those pale marks, and realize that i feel like no other. there is a wonder in this form

a body lived in might very well tell the story of Beauty

Two Dead Roosters

My kitchen has a strange smell settling over it.  

The afternoon seems surreal as I walk in and watch the large, foreign stockpot on the stove.   I live on a city block, in an apartment building.   There are two dead roosters in this small kitchen on Windsor Avenue.  One lays in the sink his feathery white body being plucked.  There is much confusion in this kitchen.  My son is running back and forth, and Raymond is standing by the sink holding the rooster by his feet.  “What is the best amount of time to scald a chicken for optimal plucking?”  We should be thinking seconds, not minutes.  This is something we realize later, but there is a first for everything.  The second rooster sits in a plastic honey bucket on the floor. 

I wonder aloud, “Did Ali watch them get killed?” 

 ”No.” 

I’m curious as to what he might have thought.  Ali walks into the kitchen and talks about the chickens.  What are we doing to the chickens and the continuous, regular question of “why”   He is almost four.  It’s to be expected. 

I watch curiously, realizing that the bird in the honey bucket is soon to be my afternoon project.  Raymond has to leave.  I try to gather all the information I need to pluck and clean a rooster.  It’s a quick fifteen minute tutorial that doesn’t quite seem adequate as I stand cautiously next to the limp rooster in the bucket.  The door closes behind Raymond, and I am left looking at the rooster and watching my son run about the kitchen screaming for me to give him blender parts so he can cook too.  I pull the rooster out of the bucket.  I dip him into the stockpot and watch his wings fan out.  I pull him out and stare in amazement at his body.  He lays in the sink and I pull at his thick white feathers and they come out in a full clump.  The skin comes along too.  I don’t know that the temperature of the water actually determines how easily the feathers come out, and if the skin comes off.  I dunk the rooster again.  It’s an odd, awkward process of me explaining to Ali that I’m cleaning the rooster so we can eat him.  I am wondering how in the world I will manage to eat something I don’t even understand how to clean.  I realize that once I have plucked the chicken I will have to cut the vent.  They make it seem so pleasant in the pictures.  I stand with my head tilted over the sink staring at the rear of this rooster with the most perplexed look.  I have a feeling many things could go wrong at this junction.  It seems my new Christmas boning knife is coming into action sooner than I had thought.  There is a moment when I consider not doing it.  I could just put the rooster in the fridge and let Raymond do it when he gets home. 

no.

So I pluck  feathers, and then I take my Christmas knife and discover the mistakes that can be made when cleaning your first rooster.  Thus, I am left with the funny smell in my kitchen.  It smells somewhat like what cleaning a rooster turns out to be for me.  Not quite pleasant, but not so unpleasant that I would leave. 

I look in my fridge.  I was vegetarian for ten years.   I never could have imagined being at this junction in my life.  Watching two dead roosters, and knowing that I would have to prepare one.  I am slowing going backwards in this process.  I know how to make chicken stock complete with chicken heads and feet.  Now I know how to pluck and clean a chicken.  Raymond says there are more roosters that will have to be killed.  This is part of my experience of understanding where my food comes from.  I will kill an animal for food.  He tells me it’s easier than one might think.   I stand there and wonder about that statement as my son runs around me screaming.  “Rock n’ Roll!  My heart is in my belly…..”