2023, so far

monday bleeds into tuesday and then I wake to find it’s thursday. Sloshing through the fog of days, anger seeping through my pores like sweat without the healthy glistening glow. I throw back my head and squint, searching for the sunshine that I have heard is above the clouds. I wonder if the United passengers can enjoy its’ rays despite the entitled asshole yelling racist threats at the flight attendant. No one cares and yet everyone is hurting. “What the fuck” is the most appropriate sentence we hear all day. Hate spreads like covid and human beings continue to get sick and die slowly from both. We have run out of bullshit answers to our children’s desperate questions. There is no explanation worthy of their suffering. We mask with smiles and keep taking zoom calls so we can pay our bills.

Half Awake

It may seem obvious in retrospect, but a moment is not an increment of time.  Living through some moments is a slow ride through a long tunnel. Maybe you are moving closer to the distant light or maybe it is heading towards you.  Your hope, infused with terror – or maybe your terror infused with hope,  keeps edging forward anyway.  In this moment you think you have only two choices.  Eyes wide open or self-induced blindness.  However, there is a third, middle ground option, resulting in never fully living inside or outside of the experience.  If I can’t feel it, I can’t name it.  Sleeping with one eye open, you remain half awake.  Despite it’s popularity, I don’t recommend this option. There is a false safety in in the fog.

There is no cliche more accurate than inexplicable love.  The etherial science of off-balance magnet hearts that draws individuals together.  You hear percussion pumping through your veins loud enough to drown out the squealing breaks in your mind.  Dramatic, I know.  But akin to spooky music in a scary movie, love has that effect.  Our response to the pull of love depends on the specific echoes that reverberate within our own chest.  Some hearts are locked vaults.  Some hearts are a thirsty sponge.  And some hearts, surrounded by barbed wire and dandelions, wait trepidatiously for that wandering soul who will approach the fence, unafraid and unarmed.  When confronted with this kind of openness I find myself torn between wanting to love them, wanting to be them, or certain that their grounded demeanor is a coverup for a truly malicious ego.  Trusting someone with your heart comes with a side order of risk.  Every time.   

In that moment in the tunnel when blindness seems to be sort-of, kind-of the best option, I have found one thing to be clear.  Leading with hope shortens the duration of any moment; for good or for bad.  The awe-filled moments are gone in a blink. With fear in the lead, that moment you wanted to evade with ambiguousness – that moment of darkness lingers.  And keeps you, at least, half asleep. 

-jrb

Ellen and the Machine

“Leave Ellen alone!  I don’t even want to know this shit anymore,” I yelled at my phone.

My reaction to the news that Ellen may, in opposition to all appearances, be a behind the scenes asshole fostering an emotionally abusive workplace was immediate and visceral. My response surprised me.   I am not a huge Ellen fan; I actually find her upbeat silly approach kind of annoying.  My words were not cerebral or thought-out.  It was an instinctive response from my brainstem rooted inner mama-bear. Ellen makes my daughter happy.  The possibility of the downfall of yet another in a long list of supposed role-models for my kids’ generation immediately flooded me with dread and exhaustion.

My 13-year-old deep thinking, kind, not-so-little-anymore girl finds uplifting humor in the Youtube clips of Ellens’s antics,  sweet interviews, and generally wholesome approach to entertainment. I sometimes look up from my computer to find my girl laughing out loud, i-pad & earbuds in place,  glancing over at me as if I was sharing the humor. Jokes that can be openly shared between teenagers and parents are hard to find these days. There is a lot of humor that is not quite funny because it still needs explanation, (“Mom, what does FOMO mean?”)  There is a lot of sexual or sarcastic humor that is a bit too uncomfortable, or ostensibly mean,  to be funny.  And, 80’s movies, that we Gen-X’ers enjoyed during our teen years, have been deemed “kind of offensive and rapey, Mom” by my 17-year-old. So, Ellen fits my younger sensitive girl’s  PG, bordering on PG-13, comfort level.  Of course, Ellen also embodies the out-and-proud-and-don’t-fuck-with-me vibe that is inspiring to Gen-Z’s inclusionary mindset. I love this.

The words that escaped my mouth upon reading the Ellen news felt unfamiliar and uncomfortable to me observing my own reaction.  At heart, I am a liberal, tzedakah-driven believer in “reap what you sow,” of “be kind but take no shit,” and always taking down the oppressor.  I know that we need to hear the horror stories in order to acknowledge their reality and to take steps to initiate positive change.  But this time, my natural response was 100% ostrich and “LA-LA-LA!” not hear the news. Next, I said some bullshit about there being too much pressure on someone in her position and that she can’t be responsible for all her employees’ behavior or an occasional over-the-top bad mood.  But of course thats all bullshit. Of course, she is responsible for all of it when it’s her show.  The benefits come with responsibility.  Even for a woman.  Especially for a woman.  And I knew all this even while I spewed the false narratives.  And yet, my feelings overpowered my brain.  Even as I observed the incongruity. 

This event left me feeling edgy over the next few days.  Why, with the crap-ton of unbelievably horrendous local, national and international news currently flooding our lives was this the thing I couldn’t shake from my mind?  

My favorite part of being an educational therapist is the aspect of consistent learning.  The dynamic of educator/pupil is hierarchical and linear in concept. But the truth is, there is a lot of give & take; a lot of learning available to us both. Dystopian novels have increasingly been assigned reading for my students over the last few years.  In nearly all grades, teachers see the need to warn kids of what is ironically(?) taking place in front of their eyes.  Somedays I am sure that we have given up the possibility of fixing our damaged world and placing the baggage of our failures onto their shoulders, albeit metaphorically.  

One of my 11th-grade student’s assigned summer reading is George Orwell’s 1984.  A classic; and by no means, the most alarming of the dystopian literature on students’ summer reading lists. Another student and I have been diving into Macbeth.  Inside the same week, I absorbed some of the great literary analyses on the impact of abuse of power.

“Thou wouldst be great, Art not without ambition, but without the illness should attend it,” Lady Macbeth tells her husband. Basically saying, “You want to be powerful, and you don’t lack ambition—but you don’t have the nastiness required to truly go for it.”  In other words, “Get some balls and destroy anything in your way, you wimp of a man.”

Along with: 

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” (Which I embarrassingly(?) associated with Rage Against the Machine instead of George Orwell.)  

And then, inside my own mind, I heard “Absolute power corrupts absolutely”. (Which I could not attribute to anyone.  But as it turns out it was the 19th-century British politician Lord Acton who borrowed the idea from several other writers who had previously expressed the same thought in different words. All of which tells me that this problem has been going on far too long to call our own.) 

Eventually, my mind returned to Ellen.  And I began to piece together our society’s current collective emotive state of “Enough!” with institutionalized emotional (and every other form of) abuse. And how, despite the fight against it, Big Brother continues to reinvent itself over and over in small, medium, and extra-large configurations.  My response to the news about Ellen was a plea for a personal defense mechanism to shield myself, and my daughter, against the pain of it all.  The feeling of powerlessness, fear of hired guns turned oppressors, and an overwhelming desire, simply, for a hero. – Or at least someone with the basic skill of human decency that we try to instill in our children despite the dearth of public role models.   

And yet, after all the heaviness, my strongest takeaway from this recent Ellen-centered, thought-consuming, and seemingly pointless perseveration is optimism.  I can find hope in my immediate and lingering need to observe my own response that simultaneously felt right and yet felt wrong.  And I can explain my process to my daughters with the hope that they too, can emotionally survive in the thick murkiness of the personal, and yet, politically fused world we share. 

~with love, jrb

 

magic is not illusion

You will be amazed at how things fall magically
into place once you let go of the illusion of control. 

This I believe.
 I’ve seen it’s truth in action.
We make decisions based on “certainties”
only to eventually witness the stone shed, and then disintegrate into sand
dripping through the hourglass we call life.

I am struggling with how choice fits into the equation.
The ways in which we make choices of action and how those choices
create ripples in the surrounding waters.
Flowing out into the world.
But this is not control.  

Sometimes we are accused of losing control
or needing control.
Perhaps those judgmental assumptions are based on a false narrative
that control exists.

So what about magic?  
How can we accept magic but easily dismiss illusion?  
For me it’s simple.
I can hold on to what I do not know.  
But not what I know is not. 

‘Magically falling into place’ suggests potentially perfect possibilities
While control, an act of fearful human illusion,
is the stone trying to float
in the water’s ripples.

 

~with love, jrb

 

Tick Tock

Ghosts arrive before we can see them

to warn us that they are coming.  

No one wants to be annoyed by the tick tock.  

So children can no longer tell time

in real time.

The ball drops in silence.

And here we are, only listening for the music

that will drown out the implosion.

I just want to dance through the apocalypse.

~jrb

 

drenched

Our grieving, raging wounds
lie awake
in shallow graves.

Unless we dig deep
and bury them
by hand
in soil rich with surrendered expectations

And create rhythm in the drenching storms
that transform our pain

into new life.

~jrb

 

What the haal?

In many Muslim cultures, when you want to ask them how they’re doing, you ask: in Arabic, Kayf haal-ik? or, in Persian, Haal-e shomaa chetoreh? How is your haal? What is this haal that you inquire about? It is the transient state of one’s heart. In reality, we ask, “How is your heart doing at this very moment, at this breath?” When I ask, “How are you?” that is really what I want to know. ~ http://www.onbeing.org/blog/the-disease-of-being-busy/7023

Its easy to ask.  It’s hard to answer.  Like most people, I often ask “How are you?” as a common courtesy to friends, acquaintances, strangers even.  But sometimes, on occasion when I am feeling calm and slow and thoughtful, I really want to know. I ask, and wait.  The typical response is quick and deflective. Its easy to be curious.  Its hard to answer with clarity.  

To reframe the question in regard to this very moment, this millisecond, this breath opens up the question in a way I find helpful.  It acknowledges the natural flux of the human experience.  We are moody.  We are ever-changing.  We make attempts to alter our moods as we deem necessary.   Trying to mold our experience into understandable bite-sized terms or what we think it should be.

I woke this morning feeling antsy yet lazy. Not a good combination for well being.  I sense and immediately hate my own internal conflict.  Why is its even there is unclear.  There is a  push and pull of opposite desires that fills my heart. On many fronts.  I pause.  I can actually feel the pressure in my chest.  Something in me wants to cry while my mind races to remind me that life is good.  And it is.  It’s really good.  So why?  Why does sadness knock when we are trying to slip out the door?  Or maybe the question is, why do I try to slip out the door when sadness is knocking?   

The transient state of ones heart. It bowls us over.  It keeps us from that solid feeling that looks so good in the busy world. We want to feel we got this.  We want people to see us and know we got this.  We want to be strong. And yet…  strength may be misunderstood.  Maybe there are as many types of strength as there are Eskimo words for snow. There is strength in holding on and there is strength in letting go.  There is strength in pushing through and there is strength in  allowing unwelcome emotions to wash over you.

“There is no crying in baseball” echoes inside us.  It’s easy to say.  It’s hard to live by when tears are burning your eyes.  Is it strength that pushes those tears back inside?  Or is it fear?  Is it strength to let them roll while you continue the game – even if you lose?  Or is that weakness?  And I have to wonder, whats so bad about weakness?  Some of my most deeply bonding moments in life happened when I felt weak, and someone simply let me.  Hating myself every minute of it while confusingly and simultaneously feeling grateful, so very grateful that I could just be weak. 

The transient state of ones heart deserves some acknowledgement, some respect.  For its importance, its necessity, its normalcy in our ever-changing, moment-by-moment, life-is-long-but-too-short, Im-so-busy, but-I-got-this, life.  

So, how the haal are you?

~With strength, JRB

Prolepsis sees you coming

Every language shares the gift of allowing us to insult one another.   I was recently taught a nasty, degrading Armenian term. Yet, as a non-Armenian speaking person, I have no idea which member of your family I would be insulting.   So, essentially, it’s pointless to even try.  Learning a new word is valueless without ownership of it’s meaning.

In my ADD-infused half-read article fashion, I stumbled across a word that caught my attention.  It was new to me.  But I wanted it.  Prolepses is a figure of speech meaning “‘the representation or assumption of a future act or development as if already exists,” as in: “he was a dead man when he entered.” It is used in literature to direct the story.  It is used in trial law to pre-empt a counter argument. In daily life, the word illustrates how we humans like to believe we know what’s about to happen.  We crave the illusion of knowing how every moment will turn out.  It makes us feel powerful.  “I knew that was going to happen!”  We smile and pat ourselves on the back for calling out the foreshadowing in our lives.  I, for one, know some real proleptic mother fuckers. 

There are times when two words just should not live next to one another. Like moving in next to your in-laws, it will color the relationship a dirty shade of gray.  The term “Renegotiating support” hits hard in this capacity.  

SUPPORT: to bear all or part of the weight of; hold up. 

Columns, walls, and foundations are the obvious support systems in an architectural structure. Also, a beam can support another beam. So, to renegotiate support here could be preemptive of watching something fall and crumble. The prolepsis seems naked and clear.  

And yet, the assumption of meaning really depends on whether you are the one needing or giving the support.  The column can stand alone.  But the structure needs support to stand.  For her, there is a dependence and need of support for survival.   Until, that is, she can balance and stand on her own. 

Language can be used to educate, to connect, to heal, to wound. Being proleptic isn’t all bad.  In fact there can be beauty in anticipating how it will all play out.  And yet, like Alice through the looking glass, we need to determine if we are the narrator of our experience, or the creator.

~JRB

Your hatred of me is disappointing.

Your hatred of me is disappointing.  I thought you could be better than this.  I thought you could take your balled up broken heart and walk it home.  I thought you’d want to be true to your true desires and find the you you really are.  The free you.  The fire sign I read about in the magazines.  Why did I think you’d be that guy?  If you were, you wouldn’t be the guy I used to love.  Somehow I thought you’d be the man I wanted after I left.  How fucked up is that?  If you had found that self, the self you needed to love and have loved, then you would finally be able to stop throwing anger at me.  But you dont want that do you?  You want to control with your rage.  And it worked for a moment today.  I finally raged back.  And I think I heard you smile over the phone, staring at your computer, and thinking that you got this.

Your hatred of me is disappointing.  With your emblematic skinny jeans and Abbot Kinney shoes.  And your 5 minute wife who makes sure your life looks spotless.  She means well.  I know.  And yet my world is in your hands when my babies are in your house.  Don’t you see?  To hate me is poison to them.  To want me to hate you back is a trickle of hot blood that stains their skin.  Asking them to endure hatred boiling from the source of their love is unconscionable.  I dont blame you if you want to believe my disappointment is meaningless.  And my disappointment in you may make you hate me. Still, I can hear the voices they can only whisper and I know, without a doubt, that they need us to bring love like a fog into their world.  

I know why he barks

Ben wants to please.  He really does.  Even as he barks – and just so you know, his bark is some kind of pitchy piercing octave that is ultra and immediately  annoying to me, so my patience when he barks does not match my depth of understanding – even as he barks he looks at me with apologetic eyes and downturned head,  knowing mama is not pleased with his behavior.  

If he had the ability to make a rational choice, Ben would choose to look out the window with a neighborhood-watch disposition, like a  proud and protective homeowner; leaning cautiously towards the glass as he pulls back the curtain with fingertips; trying to see the world without being seen.  Thats how Ben would choose to keep watch over his home and loved ones.  But he has no fingertips and, sadly, no ability to make rational choice.  So, he barks.  He barks suddenly and loudly making us all jump unexpectedly.  

Oddly, human auto-response to surprise is anger.  Immediate and intense.  And even though I have the benefit of rational thought, and the ability to recognize my own behavior, I screech back at him without missing a beat.  Then I feel bad for yelling. I wonder if my shouting annoys him.  I wonder if it makes him feel worse about disappointing mama.  I wonder if he knows why I bark.

🐶

jrb

Saying “I’m Divorced” is like saying “I’m Fat”

I’ve been without much emotion throughout the divorce process. And I thought that was telling.  Telling me that I had moved on long ago and that the years spent working on the marriage eventually led us here, to this place of separation.  I thought I had very little to mourn anymore.  I’ve been solid, strong, bountiful, happy.  “Divorce looks good on you,” I was told.  All signs to me that life’s path, though unpredictable, leads you if you follow.  And yet, despite all the positives, I knew there was something missing in my unemotional demeanor.  I seemed off somehow.  Like I was forgetting something.

The papers are nearly ready to be signed now.  And though I printed out the most recent draft, they sit on my desk untouched.  I can’t bear to look at them.  And when I try, my brain rearranges the words into sentences that dont make sense.  I forget what I was fighting for in our last mediation.  Something that was a really important addition to the finality of us.

Its no coincidence that my back pain has returned.  That I am now, for two days straight, laying on the floor, hardly able to take my dogs outside. I have had to cancel my rush-rush schedule and soak in my pain.  The body reminds us to feel when our brain pretends to forget.  The doctors ask, “Did you do anything that led to the pain? Did you lift something too heavy or twist in an awkward way?”  How can I be truthful?  How can I say that I feel like I’ve been carrying too much weight, on my shoulders, for much of my life.  But that I can’t name what exactly is so heavy?  Or why I can’t seem to just put it down?  How can I explain that my pain is my fault, and yet, it’s not?  Do I tell them that I have twisted myself into roles, and jobs, and belief systems that, while well intentioned, have helped me find my way to here.  To this burning ache, in my lower back.  The same place that provided unbearable insight during two unmedicated childbirths.  “Support my back!” I screamed at my doula.  “My back is hurting the most!”  In the end, oxygen was what I needed to work through the pain.

And now I am trying to come to terms with that heavy word.  Divorce.  Is it ugly just based on syllabic intonation, or does the meaning make it so?  I’ve been trying on the word in conversations.  “We are divorcing,”  “I am in the process of divorce,”  “I am a divorced mom working on raising my daughters to be true to themselves.”  Somehow, that word always sounds ugly.  Saying I’m divorced is like admitting I’m fat. Out loud.  It brings feelings of shame and self blame.  It’s a word that my childhood taught me to stuff away and talk around as if having a large vocabulary could make it better.

There are metaphysical reasons for why we each have personally specific reoccurring pain.  When I investigated lower back pain I learned that it’s often sparked by the fear of lack of financial support, it’s the fear of your own survival that amplifies the pain.
Bam.
Yes.
The truth somehow hurts and heals all at once.

Today, on day 3 of pain, I woke up and  finally listened.
I heard my body saying – “You will not work today.  You will not have business as usual today.  Today you will hurt.”
And I heard my brain say, “Write.” And I open my blog and begin spilling my words through my fingers.
And I looked at my calendar and saw that it is erev Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish holiday celebrating a new year ahead, new opportunities to do better, to be better, to choose to see more clearly, to recognize oneself and one’s blessings.  This is a time of reflection, to recognize our failings and our strengths.  To be sorry for pain you may have caused to others, to yourself. A time to embrace your pain in order to actually let it go.

So here I am.  Flat on my aching back.  Dogs at my side.  Tears on my cheeks.  Recognizing that it hurts more to run from the pain than it does to embrace it.  And as I write, my phone rings, and I hear a dear friend invite me and my children to dinner for the holiday.  And I say, yes please. And I remember the saying, “New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings.”  And I recognize that they are actually one and the same.

~L’shanah tovah, jrb

Unexpected Expectations

Unexpected moments come, well,
unexpectedly.
You walk confidently, thinking your path is just a continuation of some other moment.
Peripherally though, something is amiss.
It takes a time-lapsed millisecond for your brain to notify your eyes.
You  look
and recognize the familiar terrain is somehow unfamiliar.
There is a fog you can’t see.
But it smells dark.
Your heart ramps up to beat in triple time;
in the way you know is panic, but are sure is death.
The triggers hide in the shadows, laughing at you.
Begging to be caught and beaten down.
Like the child who defies with a smile.
The same child you admire as you punish.
And, in that moment, you realize
that the unexpected moments
have actually been your own expectations
the whole time.

~jrb

Tell Mama

I thought I had this mama thing down.  Isn’t 12 years enough to get the hang of it?  But I’m finding that I can never know enough.  Once you feel you know something about parenting, the rules somehow get changed.  The game goes into overtime.  And I am left wondering what it is I need to know.

The goal now is to release my grip,  just enough, to let go of knowing.  Of needing to know. Of the thought that I truly know anything.  I think its time to listen for a while.  Be brave Mama and keep my heart open.  Listen to my feelings.  Listen to their words.  Listen for their hearts to speak to me.  Let my heart feel, so we can heal. Its up to Mama.  “Tell Mama…”

There are rare moments in life when my title, Mama, feels too big to fill.  This is that moment. Their eyes look to me with questions I cannot answer.  And desires I can not fill.  And safety I cannot assure.  And predictions I can not promise.  And despite the tunneled in struggles, I wouldn’t change my title for anything in the world.

All I can do is be true, to the best I know how.  Without being too true.  Isn’t this what parenting is?  Teaching them about all there is to fear in the world, while simultaneously hoping they believe you when you say the world is a safe place?  And yet, both truths are real.

I look around for guidance through this moment.  But there are no answers.  Because there is no real knowing.  Ironically, I know this now.  There is only now, and now, and now.  On her best days, Mama leads with courage.  For today my courage can be found in two words, “Tell Mama…”

~jrb

PRESS PLAY:

It took a while to understand…

All wrapped up into one petite package.
I’m a mother.
A woman.
Sister.
Daughter.
Friend.
Aunt.
Teacher.
Lover.
All these descriptors are never changing.
I am.  All these things.  
But, am I a wife?
When I say “we are separated” have I already lost this title?
When do we stop being what we are?

There’s no mercy in a live wire
No rest in freedom at all.

Am I me, whoever that is, separate from 22 years, 2 children, 10 nieces and nephews, 5 cats, 11 years of parenting, 4 graduations,  and 6 homes?
Maybe its easy.  Maybe I’m the old me.
Maybe I’m the new me.
Maybe there is no me at all.

Of the choices we are given it’s no choice at all.
The proof is in the fire
You touch before it moves away.
But you must always know how long to stay and when to go.

When change is all thats left to count on
and talking becomes just stupid words of pride
It can take a while to understand…
the beauty of just letting go.
I’m gonna let me fly.

~jrb

PRESS PLAY:

Let Him Fly, Patty Griffin
Ain’t no talkin to this man
Ain’t no pretty other side
Ain’t no way to understand the stupid words of pride
It would take an acrobat, and I already tried all that so
I’m gonna let him fly
Things can move at such a pace
The second hand just waved goodbye
You know the light has left his face
But you can’t recall just where or why
So there was really nothing to it
I just went and cut right through it
I said I’m gonna let him flyThere’s no mercy in a live wire
No rest at all in freedom
Of the choices we are given it’s no choice at all
The proof is in the fire
You touch before it moves away
But you must always know how long to stay and when to go

And there ain’t no talkin to this man
He’s been tryin to tell me so
It took awhile to understand the beauty of just letting go
Cause it would take an acrobat, I already tried all that
I’m gonna let him fly
I’m gonna let him fly
I’m gonna let him fly

Break the window

PRESS PLAY:

When your own voice tells you its time to destroy
something
you gotta listen.

The others will tell you violence was unnecessary.
They will say you could have taken 3 deep breaths
and fixed the problem.
They will shake their heads and tisk-tisk.
But when your own voice knows, she knows.

If it’s coloring your view, 
If it’s clouding your senses, 
If it’s noise in your ears, 
It’s already broken.

You gotta listen and
Know, you done the right thing.  

~jrb

 

 

Window , Fiona Apple

I was staring out the window
The whole time he was talking to me
It was a filthy pane of glass
I couldn’t get a clear view
And as he went on and on
It wasn’t the outside world I could see
Just the filthy pane that I was looking through

So I had to break the window
It just had to be
Better that I break the window
Than him or her or me

I was never focused on just one thing
My eyes got fixed when my mind got soft
It may look like I’m concentrated on
A very clear view
But I’m as good as asleep
I bet you didn’t know
It takes a lot of it away
If you do

I had to break the window
It just had to be
Better that I break the window
Than him or her or me

I had to break the window
It just had to be
It was in my way
Better that I break the window
Than forget what I had to say
Or miss what I should see

Because the fact being that
Whatever’s in front of me
Is covering my view
So I can’t see what I’m seeing in fact
I only see what I’m looking through

So again I done the right thing
I was never worried about that
The answer’s always been in clear view
But even when the window was cleaned
I still can’t see for the fact
That it’s so clear I can’t tell what I’m looking through

So I had to break the window
It just had to be
It was in my way
Better that I break the window
Than him or her or me

I had to break the window
It just had to be
Better that I break the window
Than miss what I should see

I had to break the window
It just had to be
It was in my way
Better that I break the window
Than forget what I had to say
Or miss what I should see
Or break him her or me
Especially me

Just Breathe

There’s something powerful about focusing on breath when the world feels like it is spinning out of control.  The simplicity of what actually keeps us alive. Even when we feel like living is squeezing the life out of us.  Just breathe.  

Sometimes, though, its the focus on breathing that can make us feel like there is no more breath to be had.  We panic as if we are going under, grasping at fistfuls of water.   Still, there is nothing left to do, but just breathe, as if it’s working.

There’s a light at each end of this tunnel.  And I’ve heard it’s no mirage.  But perhaps the tunnel is.  Its the light we breathe in.  If we know that it’s there. 

It’s 2 am and I can’t think of who to call.  Maybe if I could catch my breath.  Or remember who last called me in darkness, gasping for clarity.  Instead, I just lay still, on hot sheets, listening for a loving voice.  Reminding me of all I need to know.  Just breathe, Jenny.  Just breathe.

~jrb

PRESS PLAY:

Breathe, Anna Nalick

2 AM and she calls me ’cause I’m still awake,
“Can you help me unravel my latest mistake?
I don’t love him. Winter just wasn’t my season”
Yeah we walk through the doors, so accusing their eyes
Like they have any right at all to criticize,
Hypocrites. You’re all here for the very same reason’Cause you can’t jump the track, we’re like cars on a cable

And life’s like an hourglass, glued to the table
No one can find the rewind button, girl.
So cradle your head in your hands
And breathe… just breathe,
Oh breathe, just breathe

May he turned 21 on the base at Fort Bliss
“Just a day” he said down to the flask in his fist,
“Ain’t been sober, since maybe October of last year.”
Here in town you can tell he’s been down for a while,
But, my God, it’s so beautiful when the boy smiles,
Wanna hold him. Maybe I’ll just sing about it.

Cause you can’t jump the track, we’re like cars on a cable,
And life’s like an hourglass, glued to the table.
No one can find the rewind button, boys,
So cradle your head in your hands,
And breathe… just breathe,
Oh breathe, just breathe

There’s a light at each end of this tunnel,
You shout ’cause you’re just as far in as you’ll ever be out
And these mistakes you’ve made, you’ll just make them again
If you’d only try turning around.

2 AM and I’m still awake, writing a song
If I get it all down on paper, it’s no longer inside of me,
Threatening the life it belongs to
And I feel like I’m naked in front of the crowd
Cause these words are my diary, screaming out loud
And I know that you’ll use them, however you want to

But you can’t jump the track, we’re like cars on a cable,
And life’s like an hourglass, glued to the table
No one can find the rewind button now
Sing it if you understand.
and breathe, just breathe

Proof of Love

It’s not enough to be human, you know.
Being human leads to disappointment and pain,
to wounding ourselves
and the people who are brave enough to risk loving us.
Being human leads to devastation and longing.
But it’s all we got.
And love is pretty good.

As if humans are capable of proving anything important,
people ask for proof that god exists.
Show me proof that love exists.
Or jealousy.
Or the all-encompasing electric energy that invisibly entwines unexpected lovers.
Or the nearly-tangible forcefield we encircle around our children.
But, it’s better to feel pain than nothing at all.
Simply, because we are human.

So keep your head up
keep your love
Keep your head up
my love
Keep your head up
keep your love

It’s not enough to love, you know.
To love requires deep, nourishing inhales
and complete, liberating exhales.
To love requires bravery without medals.
Love requires a letting-go that simultaneously carves and heals your heart
And a lonely knowing that there is no proof of the scars that hold you together.
But, it’s better to feel pain than nothing at all.
Simply, because love is what keeps us human.

~ jrb 

PRESS PLAY:

 

Stubborn Love, The Lumineers
She’ll lie and steal, and cheat, and beg you from her knees
Make you think she means it this time
She’ll tear a hole in you, the one you can’t repair
But I still love her, I don’t really care

When we were young, oh, oh, we did enough
When it got cold, ooh, ooh, we bundled up
I can’t be told, ah, ah, it can’t be done

It’s better to feel pain, than nothing at all
The opposite of love’s indifference
So pay attention now, I’m standing on your porch screaming out
And I won’t leave until you come downstairs

So keep your head up, keep your love
Keep your head up, my love
Keep your head up, keep your love

And I don’t blame you dear for running like you did all these years
I would do the same, you’d best believe
And the highway signs say we’re close but I don’t read those things anymore
I never trusted my own eyes

When we were young oh, oh, we did enough
When it got cold, ooh, ooh we bundled up
I can’t be told, ah, ah, it can’t be done

So keep your head up, keep your love
Keep your head up, my love
Keep your head up, keep your love
Head up, love

the blues has a way with women like me

PRESS HERE FOR THE BLUES

Maybe it’s because I already had more than my share of saki at dinner
Maybe it’s because the bartender gave me a heavy pour of gin, with a wink.
Or maybe it’s because, oh baby, the blues has has a way with women like me.

I let go.  
I let go of the creases around my eyes that squint into the future.
I let go of the heaviness in my hips as they remembered their groove.
I let go of the tears that cloud my sight
I closed my eyes and saw the music.

Maybe it’s because, between sets, the drummer
saw me
and asked if I’m a drummer too.  When I said “I used to be,” he said,
“No.  You still are.  Have a good night, drummer girl.”
Maybe it’s because my partner in crime smiled at me as I let myself go.
Or maybe it’s because, oh baby, the blues has has a way with women like me.

~jrb

 

Giving in

PRESS PLAY:

I’m letting the undertow take me.
I’ve been fighting it
with fear
for so long.
I’m going under.
But I’m not giving up.
I’m just giving in.

All that fighting never kept me from being pulled under anyway.

Now I can see that the undertow is predictable
and will only take me to the ocean
where my fears will either drown
or float away.

There is a voice inside 
reminding me to hear the rhythm
of everything.

The deeper I go
the quieter the waves become
when they break
over me.

~jrb

Never Let Me Go, Florence + the Machine

Looking up from underneath

Fractured moonlight on the sea
Reflections still look the same to me
As before I went underAnd it’s peaceful in the deep
Cathedral where you cannot breathe
No need to pray, no need to speak
Now I am under all

And it’s breaking over me
A thousand miles down to the sea bed
Found the place to rest my head
Never let me go
Never let me go
Never let me go
Never let me go

And the arms of the ocean are carrying me
And all this devotion was rushing out of me
In the crushes of heaven for a sinner like me
But the arms of the ocean delivered me

Though the pressure’s hard to take
It’s the only way I can escape
It seems a heavy choice to make
And now I am under all

And it’s breaking over me
A thousand miles down to the sea bed
Found the place to rest my head
Never let me go
Never let me go
Never let me go
Never let me go

And the arms of the ocean are carrying me
And all this devotion was rushing out of me
In the crushes of heaven for a sinner like me
But the arms of the ocean delivered me

And it’s over
And I’m going under
But I’m not giving up
I’m just giving in

I’m slipping underneath
So cold and so sweet

And the arms of the ocean so sweet and so cold
And all this devotion I never knew at all
In the crushes of heaven for a sinner released
And the arms of the ocean delivered me
Never let me go

Deliver me

And it’s over

And I’m going under

But I’m not giving up

I’m just giving in

I’m slipping underneath

So cold and so sweet

 

Born

Tilt-o-wheel, spinning off its axis.  Watch it roll.
Bouncy house, death-bound assent into the sky.  Watch it fly.
And all we can do is sing along.

La la la la la…

Like Bob Marley, I was born to bring the love into the living room.
I can feel it sweating through my skin.
Born to seek out illuminated soul fissures that sideways glances don’t notice.
I can see them with eyes closed.

Heart break ruptures slowly.
While sensuous smiles tease like evaporating water.
Flavors never meant to mix
swirl together like leaves in a wind tunnel.

Even with feet encased in dried mud, I try to move.
And yet…
It takes my own tears to melt the stones.

~jrb

 

Born, Over the Rhine

I was born to laugh
I learned to laugh through my tears
I was born to love
I’m gonna learn to love without fear

Pour me a glass of wine
Talk deep into the night
Who knows what we’ll find

Intuition, deja vu
The Holy Ghost haunting you
Whatever you got
I don’t mind

Put your elbows on the table
I’ll listen long as I am able
There’s nowhere I’d rather be

Secret fears, the supernatural
Thank God for this new laughter
Thank God the joke’s on me

We’ve seen the landfill rainbow
We’ve seen the junkyard of love
Baby it’s no place for you and me

I was born to laugh
I learned to laugh through my tears
I was born to love
I’m gonna learn to love without fear