The Path.

something about me that will both surprise and probably mostly not surprise at all is this:
i LOVE recommending books to people. ask me and i will put together a long, long list of books, of all different types, that you just have to read.
also, i almost never read anything that anyone recommends to me. it's the very recommendation that almost always poisons it for me. i'll read books that are universally accepted to be worth reading (a heartbreaking work of staggering genius, love in the time of cholera, roots, etc.) but the thrill of discovery and my own personal yearning to read is what makes reading worthwhile to me, and there is something about someone else doing the discovering for me that kinda deflates me.
it's so typically me. do as i say. period. i am not interested in what you have to say. just do as i say.
so, as i have realized this trait about myself, and in my endless pursuit for refining myself into the best possible version of myself that i can be, i have starting reading books that are recommended to me. a little bit. not all the time, and often it is with reluctance, but i have done it before, and i will do it again.
and, or course, often it's totally wonderful, and i am grateful to have been offered the opportunity to share something so special and transformative with someone i care about.
books i have read at the recommendation of other people:
-the secret life of bees
-east of eden
-sho-gun
-jonathan lethem, in general
-the wind-up bird chronicle
and now, the newest addition to the list...
-eat pray love.
lu recommended it to me, while i was going through my stuff with mom. she brought it up, gently but repeatedly, mentioning it in conversation, slipping me little bits of information about it.
with ill grace, i bought it from a little bookstore in ukiah, a week or so before mom died. i didn't particularly *want* to read it, but, because i am trying to not be the person who doesn't take suggestions, i bought it.
i brought it with me, from redwood valley to fairfax, and then from fairfax to petaluma.
i read about 15 books before-hand, but a few days ago i said, alright, kira, enough is enough. just read it.
so, i did.
you guys, it was just so lovely.
it gave me a glimpse of what reading my blog must be like to people who don't know me personally. following the journey of someone who you don't know but are rooting for whole-heartedly, as the struggle and strut their way through both happy and sad times. i only hope i am a smidgen as likeable as elizabeth gilbert (the author.)
i laughed many times, i cried many times, and i was just filled with a commitment and determination to make sure i always, always, always get back in the saddle, no matter how unceremoniously i am ejected from it, and how tired i am of it.
this book might not be for everyone, but ladies and gentlemen on the path, it is fucking wonderful.
as does anyone who will read the book, i felt such a kinship with the author. substitute her terrible divorce and ensuing messy romance for my own life from december 2006 and 2007, and we are like soul mates. bossy, friendly, funny, desperately trying to find peace and maybe even God in the midst of our darkest times.
i was terribly inspired by her book.
*i* want an indian guru.
*i* want to spend months in italy (or maybe france) eating amazing food and speaking a language i love.
*i* want to ride my bike around bali, hanging out with a wrinkly old medicine man.
she spends a large portion of the book (like, all of it) trying to get closer to God. talking to him, praying, meditating, journaling, eating, humping - everything is trying to closer to the core of who she is, and thus closer to God.
i am afraid i'll never feel close to God again, and it'll just be me and my skeptical, proud, bossy brain, trying to be Right all the time, forever.
on some level, i feel like maybe God knows what i'm going through and is just giving me space to do my thing, knowing i'll be back when i am ready.
but i just felt so abandoned by God, and my entire sense of spirit, when mom got sick, and in the state of emergency, i just chucked the whole thing and relied on myself, not something outside of myself, to handle everything.
i am afraid of being disappointed again.
as i am sure i will, because life is the way it is, full of disappointments for every surprising success.
i think i am sulking, is the honest truth.
i am mad at God and i am maybe not ready to talk to him again yet.
how could my God, the God that i thought i knew, let this happen to us? how could he take mom from me, the way he took her mom from her? how could he shower me with ease, cradle me so tenderly for 28 years, and then just drop me?
the only thing that made sense at the time was that there is no God, there's just me and my grief and my situation, and i need to save the questions for another time. at the time, answers didn't matter. what mattered was, in the eloquent words of larry the cable guy, getting 'er done.
so, in the eloquent words of a baby announcement shannon received, i 'got 'er done.'
but here i am now, the proverbial 'er has been gotten done, and i have nothing but time now to float around in my emotions - emotions i realize now i have only barely dealt with as i went through everything. i mean, duh, i cried my guts out, but i never got mad and anyone or anything except my poor mom, and i only allowed myself to really be broken for little bits of time, and then always grudgingly. and i always pull myself back together as soon as humanly possible.
i am afraid of all this emotion, and all my neediness for the past year, and all my confusion and not-knowingness. i am afraid of the future, and of letting go of missing mom and of letting go of hating allen, and of school and babies and homeownership and money and housekeeping. i am just full of fear over my situation right now. well, *right now* i am full of fear.
a couple of days ago i was pretty stoked about the vast horizons of my charred and blackened life, but today it just feels like it's too much for me.

this is a poem i have carried around with me for roughly 10 years. it's by david whyte. i think about it really a lot, especially lately.

THE JOURNEY

Above the mountains
the geese turn into
the light again

painting their
black silhouettes
on an open sky.

Sometimes everything
has to be
enscribed across
the heavens

so you can find
the one line
already written
inside you.

Sometimes it takes
a great sky
to find that

small, bright
and indescribable
wedge of freedom
in your own heart.

Sometimes with
the bones of the black
sticks left when the fire
has gone out

someone has written
something new
in the ashes
of your life.

You are not leaving
you are arriving.


so, i am looking at the ashes of my life, and trying to see what's written for me.
and i am arriving at my new life, not leaving my old life.
but it's still a lot for one person, even a big-inside person like me, to manage alone.
and i don't mean alone, like without loved ones, because i positively buffeted and carried and in all ways supported by the loves of my life.
but i mean alone, like, without God or anything.
i have said quite a few times, to quite a few people, that there has been only so far that my mental coping mechanisms can take me, and then there is the vast chasm that i can't cross without something outside myself. i can't think myself through this. i can't talk my way over this chasm. it's the kind of chasm you have to just close your eyes and step into, and have faith that something unseen will catch you.
and thus far i haven't been ready to do that, for fear that nothing will catch me, and i'll disappear into this canyon of pain that i'm not prepared to really get out of alone.
but if the whole idea of God is that you're never alone, and that all you have to do is ask for help and it's yours, and that every kind of support and love in the universe is available to you when you're ready to have it, then the only thing stopping me is my unreadiness to have it. and my fear of finding out that i am alone.

so, this is what i am thinking about, home alone on monday afternoon, in my pajamas.
and still, i am on The Path, because The Path only asks that you keep asking your questions, keep turning over the moldy old rocks inside yourself and be open to what you find. so, i turn my rocks over and try to greet my discoveries with love, even when they are slimy and smelly.