Hope A 2/5/16 Hope A 2/5/16

Luck Schmuck

Written for my sister, Kim, for her 37th birthday, and read at the Lucky & zine reading ,both on January 7th 2016.

Today is my sister's 37th birthday. My favorite number. My favorite sister (though also the only sister I grew up with). 37: Prime number. Odd and indivisible.

My sister was born January 7th 1979, the thirteenth day of Christmas--unlucky day of clearing the plates, taking down the tree, sweeping up after the wise men and getting back to work. Unlucky birthday of too close to Christmas, and extra unlucky if you care about football, playoff season and your 7th birthday party (here we go again) was held on the same day as the New England Patriots AFC playoff game versus the Miami Dolphins. Its bad enough to have your birthday smushed up against Christmas but then a tailgating themed party? Our 8 year old neighbor Josh Ross was almost sent home for wearing Dolphins colors in a strictly New England Patriots household. They tolerated my interest in the Minnesota vikings because it was never a contest and they all knew I just liked the purple and gold---ominous foretelling to my years at LSU live Purple bleed Gold.) Back to the party; we were an hour north of Boston, not Florida, you could tell by the snowdrifts, and the winner of the game was heading to the Superbowl against the Chicago Bears (and my birthday twin Walter Peyton) in New Orleans, my future home (this is too much!) but I was more interested in the Superbowl Shuffle. But who could blame an 8 year old boy with his lucky/unlucky red hair and freckles to choose the soft tropical turquoise and orange over the staunch red white and blue. It was just a game. The Patriots won the playoff game but then lost the Superbowl by a million, a few days after that the Challenger spaceship burst mid air on a million televisions. That was weeks later. On this day, my family relented and let Josh in for cake.

I was born mid-summer , July 25, 1977 so I've always believed in the number 7. Seventh month, 25th day , 77th year. The 25th is a good day too: Christmas, the day I got my braces off, an anniversary. Christmas in July. 2 plus 5 equals 7. Lucky 7. By the way, Walter Peyton, the aforementioned running back with my birthday was born in 1953 and wore uniform number 34. Thirty four: 3 plus 4 is seven. Also his nickname was “Sweetness” which is just about my favorite sports nickname I know.

There is a flaw to my 7 love. If you want to be strict about the rules of numerology--add all the digits of . 7th month, 25th day, 1977, 7 plus 2 plus 5 plus 1 plus 9 plus 7 plus7 equals 38-- so close! Add those digits: 3 plus 8 equals 11-- one plus one equals 2. Two! Such a solid, reliable number, firm like 2 feet, a relationship, but also a line, two endpoints. But what is religion without a little wiggle room, even science gets reformed according to needs sometimes. So ill take 7, soften the edges, no corners, a little lopsided, asymmetric, that sounds about right. I'm romanticizing numbers here but I will get back to my point. You're 37, sister. From here, you make your own luck.

Hope A 12/30/15 Hope A 12/30/15

Best Moments of 2015

Spoiler: they almost all involve crying

1. Reading from Light on Yoga at my teacher training graduation...Last January I began yoga teacher training unsure of where it might lead me. I attended classes, I read, I studied, I often felt like it wasn't making sense. Then, every once in a while, it would. At our graduation we were all offered a moment to read something, to share, to talk. Some people thanked our teachers. At least one Mary Oliver poem was read. And I read this, BKS Iyengar's instructions for headstand:

The best way to overcome fear is to face with equanimity the situation of which one is afraid. Then one gets the correct perspective, and one is not frightened anymore. To topple over while learning the head stand is not as terrible as we imagine. If one over balances, one should remember to loosen the interlocked fingers, relax, go limp and flex the knees. Then one will just roll over and smile.

Life lessons from Iygengar. Lighten up. It is not so scary. Roll over and smile.

2.Being in the same room with so many people I haven't seen together in so long, if ever, for the best/worst reason...Travis' death in August was unexpected in its form and timing. I felt like I had missed so much to not understand how he could have arrived at that end. In October I was able to fly to NY to meet up with some of my closest friends, including a few close friends who I had never seen together. I met new friends who I had somehow not yet met. We laughed about how uncomfortable Travis would have been with this gathering, this celebration of him. We cried too. I was mostly just teary eyed through out, damp in the corners, until the last moment when someone sweetly hugged me and it was terrible and comforting all at once.

3. Teaching my first yoga class...I was on my way to a friend's first class when she got into a minor car accident and asked me to cover. My first class wasn't supposed to be for a few days and so I should've been ready and I wasn't sure if I was but I did it. Not too many students and probably there were a few things I wish I hadn't said or done. Its been six months, at 2-3 classes per week and I still get nervous often enough but I still like it every time.

4.Every time I decide to keep going....I'm getting older and I am less impulsive about wanting to give up. I can see the long view more often. That doesn't mean I don't get frustrated with situations, people, work. But most of the time I decide it is worth the effort not to give up and find a way to make to work, as long as there is a way to make it work. And usually, so far, that has reaped unexpected results that I would have never know.

5. Meeting a friend and finding a very dark place...I have been living in Oakland for three years but only recently have I felt that I have friends I can just call up when I need to. One night, Andy was at work and I didn't want to be alone. I didn't have to explain. I felt lucky to have a friend to meet me, walk me to a very dark tiny park, talk for a bit and then go meet Andy at work to ride home with him. It was the most comfortable I have felt here in three years.

6.Hiking on a forever hike in shitty shoes but getting to the real story...August 2015 was the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. I went to the beach with other Louisiana friends. Quickly I realized my relationship to this experience was different. We played card games, drank on the beach I went for walks alone, wrote letters, missed my friends in New Orleans. The next day we went for a hike to a waterfall, underestimating the 5 mile hike and not bringing enough water. It was amazing to see the waterfall that spilled right onto the beach, despite our thirst. On the way back, finding ways to distract out selves from hunger and thirst we took turns telling stories. It was almost as good as the tall sweet can of sugary water I drank an hour later. My black glitter keds are still dusty from the hike.

7. My birthday. The whole day. Gin and tonic and pizza in a party dress, writing letters with friends at my art show, coming home. I don't think I cried though.

8. Swimming. Wait. Did I really not go swimming this year? We stayed in a cabin but it was too cold. We stayed at the beach but only walked in the sand. I went to Tennessee but the river was low and I wasn't sure we should swim in it. I napped on Glass Beach with the other members of subset as we contemplated buying a papermaking studio, but I was wearing a sweater. With Derek gone this summer did I really forget to go swimming? Maybe? Maybe not.Wait! Lake Anza: Me vs the Very Hot Sand (and the Threat of Swimmers Itch). Phew. ed. my dad wrote to me that I did go swimming in Tennessee. He brought us to a state park. We had a picnic. I stayed in the water most of the time though I tried to read too. Like when I was little and my dad would bring us to the pond in our hometown. Except my sister and I are nicer to each other now. Yay for swimming.

Ok, goal for 2016, more outside, more swimming. I think I have crying and friends down.

Hope A 10/29/15 Hope A 10/29/15

Yes!

Since I started my yoga teacher training last January, I have been thinking of ways to combine my two forms of work--yoga and letterpress. This month, I introduced my first asana postcard. Asana means pose. Yoga is made up of a few different steps on the path to truth and asana is just one of these steps. It is what you might be most familiar with and what you think of when you think of a yoga class. For my training I memorized about 50 asana in english and sanskrit. To help with my studies, I made flashcards with stick figure drawings. What made this way more fun than rote memorization was on Saturday mornings when Andy would read the English word from the card and I would tell him the sanskrit and then do my best to demonstrate the pose. If only I had acted out my Italian verb flashcards! Maybe that would have helped.

For this card, I chose a pose I did not have to memorize, that is not in any of my texts. Yesasana was the namemy teacher used when she showed us this pose in class. Stand with your feet slightly wider than your hips, stand tall lifting your arms over head. Say yes! It was shown to us with the idea that this pose makes you feel confident and powerful and that just by standing with confidence you may feel more confident as you go into a meeting, give a speech or take a test. In contrast, if you allow your shoulders to hunch in towards your chest, hand your head, it may be harder you to feel powerful and positive. I like to practice this pose when I am tired or not my plan is about to work or before a long day of printing. Try it! Next time you are dreading something, or are nervous or unsure.

This seemed like a great month to try out the mobile postbox. The studio where I teach and practice, Square One Yoga agreed to host the box so students could participate and share their favorite poses. The postbox is there through the end of the month and I have already been receiving responses in the mail. Yes!

Hope A 10/20/15 Hope A 10/20/15

I Still Belive Anita Hill

This is the story that I meant to write for Where You From number 4 but I am glad I waited. The day I finally wrote this I also found the following news headline. . Anita Hill's Testimony Could Resurface If Biden Runs Maybe a whole new generation will know her name.

Attending a large state university in my 30’s as an undergraduate, I was disillusioned by the conservatism of my school. I knew this college town and state capitol was more conservative than the city I came from only 80 miles away,but I thought the youth were with me. I thought they were looking ahead, and behind, with a perspective. But this college town is also a state capitol, in the south, still heavily segregated and largely denying it. At a diner downtown, the all-black kitchen staff made grits and eggs and pork chops and slid them through a small window to the all-white serving staff to be delivered to the tables of politicians and lawyers as the owner looked at the tattoos on my arms and shook her head “no”. I thought it was hilarious, somehow not getting a job in a diner in 2009 because of tattoos like I had somehow never escaped my small hometown.

The night of the 2008 presidential election, I walked across campus with a classmate, eager to get home to hear the results. A boy from our class waved to us and asked us who we voted for. “ I know you voted for McCain…” he said to my friend and i laughed. Oh the humor! But she had. She told me she would have voted for Bush if she had been old enough. I know this is over simplifying, to assume assume all college students, art students at least, refused the lies of the Bush era. They were lies, right? Can we agree on that? She told me that he did the best he could, considering they had Weapons of Mass Destruction. I tactfully reminded her that “they” actually did not. She shrugged.

This was my first semester of school. I had a roommate, a friend of a friend. She met me at the house after Obama's acceptance speech, in gleeful tears as she recounted that he referenced gay people being a part of the national fabric. I remember Reagan and the AIDS quilt. Now I was grateful for a friend, for someone who was as equally disheartened by politics in general but not so hardened as to not feel the electricity and promise of our first black president who acknowledged queer people as, well, people. I assumed that my classmates would feel the same, the excitement, the future! But old conservatives were once young conservatives and I was in school with them.

My roommate graduated and moved to the city. I listened to NPR alone in the house often as I cooked and cleaned and procrastinated my school work. I often yelled back at the news, threw my hands in the air. I was most surprised by the phrase “supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.” I had been away from media for a few years and hadn’t thought of him. He wasn’t doing anything newsworthy, but he was there, voting on things and occasionally his name would flicker across the room and I would get angry again.

I tried to explain to classmates. “I still can't believe he is still a justice. That his nomination was confirmed and here he is…” but they always looked blankly at me.

“Why?”

“You remember, Anita Hill?” More blank stares.

Oh no. I had been a freshman in high school at the time of the Clarence Thomas’ confirmation hearing. Most of my classmates would have been 1 or 2 years old, maybe 6 for the grad students. They don’t remember nightly news images of Anita Hill, seated a table opposite the committee investigating the allegartions of sexaul harassment , how she stated her story as evidence against the character of a potential supreme court justice and was herself seeming on trial . The commitee questioned her, having her spell out for them why a pubic hair on a coke can is unwelcome from a co-worker and might make someone feel uncomfortable at their job. They questioned her and doubted her as if she would make that shit up. News crews and senators, including Joe Biden, questions the existence of sexual harassment in the workplace. I remember the jokes, the disbelief, the refusal to believe this woman state things that many women already knew, and lived in their lives. I am sure that women at work had to explain to their male colleges: this shit is real and it is happening and trying to discredit her does not erase the existence of this behavior. Actually we still have to do that today. Except that today we have laws to protect against it, even though it is difficult to prosecute, even though some people still think it is a joke, an overreaction, a lie. Anita Hill told the whole country what was and still is perpetrated often men to women, queer and trans colleagues yet the harassers still become supreme court justices and the harasees... well in this case Anita Hill is a lawyer and professor of law and women’s studies at Brandeis. But my classmates didn't know her name. You might not know her name. But you probably understand the basics of what constitutes sexual harassment and that there are laws against it. After Hill’s testimony, despite all the backlash and doubting, President GHW Bush dropped his opposition to a bill that allowed people to sue for damages in sexual harassment cases. The bill passed. To be fair, I don’t think all my classmates knew the name Clarence Thomas either, unless they listened to NPR talk about his reticence on the court. I wonder if she’s glad he doesn't say much, if she is happy to never hear his arguments voiced by NIna Totenberg, or if, as I suspect she might be, is a better person than that, too busy teaching justice to future lawyers and maybe a future supreme ct justice. And maybe she can already see that her legacy is already deeper and more influential than his. Even if you didn't know her name.

Hope A 9/28/15 Hope A 9/28/15

Leaving Some Space

my side of the table and the empty desk area left by my missing tablemate

Boy howdy, I am starting off the season busy! Though there are tabling events all year, including three I signed up for and then missed, September is really the start for me. First the SF Zine Fest, then SFCB Roadworks, I start tabling just about every other week until, well, Christmas. I am not trying to get you all anxious about the holidays, and I still only have one holiday card design , but mid-November though late December becomes a blur of weekly events where crafty people and giant megastores alike, offer up their goods under the heading of holiday season. I don't participate in the big business gift frenzy, I usually make something for my family and friends. And I don't make anything especially holiday-like, (see that one card design above) but I do like making things and I like that people want to buy them. People are a little more into buying things in the fall and early winter. Last year I said yes to every tabling opportunity I was offered, and by the last show, I was tired, unable to see straight. I put away my stuff for a few months and focused on the postcard subscription and becoming a yoga teacher. In June, I thought I was ready for more. I wasn't. So this season I am being a little more choosy about which events I table, and am trying, like every year, to be a little more prepared. Andy G. is employed this season, which means more coffee and chocolates for me but more tabling by myself.

The thing is, I kind of like tabling. It is exhausting but also fun. You put all the stuff you love making on a table and see if the people are interested. It can be rough when it feels like no one is interested or it is loud or raining coal dust but I have been lucky that I still have another part-time job, that I am mostly going to events where I have been before, and I have good company.

That said, it is also a lot of work. No matter how I prepare, I always remember I need more labels last minute or I forgot to assemble zines or I bind just two more books. Or I have to print next month's postcard even though I won't be selling the cards. Because that is how it goes. I cleared off my work table two weeks ago only to be buried again before I left yesterday morning for SFCB Roadworks. I was leaving behind piles of zines and future books but I couldn't leave them on the floor since there seems to be some kind of superflea in our house feasting on my ankles and Andy kindly took care of it while I was out in the sun selling postcards.

We arrived fashionably on time, with time to get coffee and time to feel a little rushed as I had a new set-up thanks to a postcard rack I found on Market Street a few days ago. With a little spray paint and magnets,it changed my display but allowed me a little more room on my half table. I stacked, arranged, crowded, moved and was ready. I only reserve a half table and make do, which usually works out for me at this event. At eleven o'clock my table was craftily stacked, my coffee and donut were in my belly and I was almost forming full sentences without sounding crabby (my sleep schedule is changing which at the moment means Not Enough Sleep Ever. this is temporary. But unfun). The other half of my table remained empty.

11:30. Usually if one has not arrived 30 minutes after an event opens, it is acceptable to take over their space. However, the table was so blissfully bare, blonde pine shining in the sun. And I realized what is missing in my life.

Space.

So I kept my side stacked and organized, the cozy clutter I like in my life, my desk, my shelves of books and jars and photos and mementos and notes. It is not an unworkable aesthetic. But I kept the other half of the table clear, propped a chair behind it and opened my notebook. I took out three pens (three colors!) and without a plan, drew. It was as delicious as reading a book, something else I haven't done much of lately. I sat, and doodled, talked to strangers and postcard subscribers and a lady from Vermont who holds a grudge against New York State ( I am from NH and can relate a similar grudge against Massachusetts.) It was lovely. I drank more coffee, sold postcards and was home by five. I am not sure what I did until 9 but when I closed my eyes I slept and slept and slept. The piles are still on my desk this morning but I am ready.

Hope A 9/15/15 Hope A 9/15/15

Now There Are Only Words Left

http://www.beacon.org/New-and-Selected-Poems-Volume-One-P1082.aspx Mary Oliver reads her poem, "The Summer Day," Copyright 1990. "The Summer Day" first appeared in House of Light (Beacon Press, 1990), and has been reprinted in New and Selected Poems, Volume 1 (Beacon Press, 1992) and The Truro Bear and Other Adventures (Beacon Press, 2008).

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? ---Mary Oliver, The Summer Day

I know you've heard this one, I know you have heard this and maybe one other Mary Oliver poem, maybe a dozen times (depending on how many yoga classes and self-care workshops you've taken). But listen again. It is shared often for a reason.

There are cliches about death. About it making you reevaluate your life. It is a cliche because a death shakes up your life, your order. We don't talk about it enough, it is not a part of our cultural fabric, though it is so obviously the end of the cycle, the inescapable release from our bodies. Yet, the denial is strong, along with the anger and the other stages I am still working on.

In her the advice column Dear Sugar, Sugar tells a grieving man that her six year old son once told her: “We don’t know how many years we have for our lives. People die at all ages.” Meaning, we only have so many years. And then there are no more.

Sometimes when things were tough, and I didn't want to talk about the tough things anymore, I would write my friend a list of the good things, small things to appreciate that do not eliminate the difficult but make the hard times worthwhile.

So here is the good things list:

Responses to Keep Writing number 77, how to deal with sadness, how to stay useful. I designed this and printed this before Travis died, before i had received the letter that said he was having a hard time. This is a coincidence. The great part has been the extra comfort from friends and strangers, hearing more about all our struggles and how we cope.
Phone calls. I said I wanted to keep in touch with friend better since this happened. Sometimes I call. Not as frequent as I like, but there is at least one friend who I talk to more often and our conversations have been immensely comforting.
NY I have been wanting to return to New England in October, my favorite and when home felt more like home. I have friends in Philly and Boston and Maine I'd like to see. Instead I have 4 days in NY but I am grateful to grieve with friends, to walk streets with changing leaves and smell crisp air.
Poetry I haven't been reading as much poetry as I used to but I have been copying poems I like, with a typewriter and by hand, and collecting them, a small binder clip of words that speak to me. I like poetry because you have to slow down to read it, pay attention.
Slowing Down As in reading poetry too i have been paring down my life, slowing down. It might not look that way, I am still very active, but I try not to waste time, to take more walks, to work hard at the things I love.

That's it for now. The hard part about lists is the tendency to oversimplify. And though some of these things are a result of something tragic and difficult, I still grieve, I still wish my friend could write back. I am still not ready to know he will never write back.

Keep Writing number 78, text by Travis Fristoe

Hope A 8/1/15 Hope A 8/1/15

The Paths We Choose

It's funny to live so close to water and not see it often.

Nineteen years ago I was stuck on I-80, heading from Berkeley to San Fransisco, during my second visit to the Bay Area. I was amazed that even with the shitty traffic, the water was so close, shimmering. When I moved here, I discovered I could ride on a path between that traffic and the water, following the bay to work and then home. It is a greatly beautiful distant view of the city, of the hills of Marin, and of the expanse of water.

Some one offered to take me sailing the other day. it didn't work out but it reminded me how close I am to the water. I am terrible at taking a day off, even though I have been tired, my mind sluggish, my energy low. But I made sure to ride to the water, with an hour of nothing. I lay on my back, the same shitty traffic tucked out of view, just the bay and the waves and the waves and the clouds like looked like water.

Hope A 7/26/15 Hope A 7/26/15

38 (Thirty- Grateful)

I talk a lot about the weather here. After almost 3 years in Oakland, the endlessly dry, sunny days, never-hot-enough summers, the lack of seasons, the numerous perfectly temperate days still make me uneasy. There were a few days this week, finally warm enough to think of swimming, to feel the heat enveloping me even as a breeze brushed by. I say I miss sweating, swimming, staying inside because of a rainstorm, the dramatic skies that accompany a change in weather, but I also miss my friends in other places. The amenities of my Bay Area life are plentiful, but I would trade a dozen vegan doughnuts for lunch in Philadelphia once or twice a month. You can have a bay view sunset for a autumn evening in NH. In exchange for 2 days access to the print shop, could I spend one weekend a month in New Orleans? What would it take to be able to ride to a friends house in Portland, NY, Seattle, Tucson? But there is no such barter system. The down-side to a wonderfully adventurous and mobile 20's and a more stationary late 30's is that I you can't live in the same place as all the people you love. Or even half. Luckily, many people are charmed by the Bay Area and I had a few old friends here when I arrived. And I have met a few great people and I am grateful to have them as a part of my life now. It is a slow process, nothing like the instant friendships of late night adventures after a show, while on tour, or a penal turned date turned penal again. But it comes.

I complain a lot about California, about Bay Area drivers (if you are going to cede the right of way when it was yours, you don't have to feel smug about it). But slowly, a circle of friends and acquaintances build, layers, and I find myself talking about sequencing yoga classes and discoveries on our personal practice with other teachers. I meeting other printers for coffee and discuss business plans. I have friends who want to talk about art, and music, and even a few who will hear the stories I don't think they'd understudy because we are from different places, yet realizing our troubles--and our joys-- are more universal than that. And you are willing to come to my place on a Saturday night, meet my other friends from seemingly disparate places and situations and find some common ground. And eat cake. Thank's y'all for a very sweet birthday.

This was also published at Keep Breathing, a blog about yoga-related writing. Not just poses but living life too.