mark sings goody, goody for rachael, last night when we welcomed rachael and brian into our urban family
I’m sitting in my kitchen, writing and listening to music with the hum of commune all around me. For my whole adult life, my front door has been a revolving door of happiness with all manner of people coming and going, my couch a perpetual way station, my dining room table, a final destination for stories waiting to be told.
All this faded rather quickly with the end of my marriage a year ago this time. For the years leading up to that separation, I told myself over and over again that we’d all be okay, as long as that commune stayed, that collection of friends and feast that kept my house buzzing and alive in certain ways. But then almost overnight, that thing completely disappeared. People stopped coming over and when there was a chance to be altogether, I often begged off. It was too painful to have people in the same space where we had once been a sweet urban family without so many splinters or fractures. I didn’t want to feel anything, and it was easier to just shut down and let that kind of connectedness slip away.
But not living in community has had a really big toll on me and my kids especially. We’ve never functioned as a single family unit. We have no rhythms for that really. It’s not really us, to sit just three at a table. It seems like there’s about five to eight people missing at least, and it feels strange. We’ve coped by retreating to all of our screens. And I went back to my pre-family and baby/toddler days where I stayed up all night and cat-napped during the day–night felt so much easier than being up and around in a quiet house.
Two weeks ago, our sweet friends Brian and Rachael moved in, making our third floor their landing spot after a seven month bike tour of the United States. Almost immediately, the kids and I looked at each other like we’d just won the lottery. Instant commune. Brian and Rachael are serious community people, they know how to cook together, how to move in and around a house with the kind of ease reserved for people who feel deep down that together is always better. I immediately felt exhausted, my whole body kind of letting down after steeling myself against how quiet it’s been and how sad we’ve all been to not live in the midst of a busy urban family. I realize all the ways I’ve been holding space and all the ways I let the space go, because it was just too hard to do it alone.
There’s a different feeling to this urban family, too, one that feels really old and familiar to me, like my childhood in some ways, so I’m absorbing that. How odd it is to be seen all the time and received in a particular way that reminds me of who I am and who I was before I made so many hard decisions.
My faith has been so tested these last few years…I’ve had to give up so many things I believed in so I could sit with nothing and be okay somehow with the great Void. It’s felt really dark and really hopeless at times, and I have been taken down to my core in ways that really rattled me and made me worry I was losing my mind. But today, with the sounds of family in my house and my front door starting to open again with friends, old and new, I’m remembering I have something to believe in, and that it’s okay to let down and let myself feel just how hard it’s been to wonder if there was nothing to believe in after all.
I couldn’t have said this before, but I can tell you now.
Nothing lasts forever.
Before I would have said things like love lasts forever or family lasts forever or commitment lasts forever or friendship lasts forever, but the truth is everything changes, everything fades, nothing stays, not a single thing.
Before I would have cried if you had told me that, I would have pleaded, I would have said, no, don’t say that, that’s not true, I’m with you, we are together, we’ll always be together, maybe not like this but in some way, I hate it when you talk like that.
But not now.
Now I know that you are leaving and that I am leaving and that we are forever moving in directions strange and mysterious, that neither one of us can control or predict, no matter how wise or connected or knowing we are about this and everything else.
Before I had glimpses of this and so I mourned, how I mourned. Every second you were with me, I was grieving your going, imagining the last day, the last kiss, the last moment just in case I missed it when the time came, just in case I didn’t see it coming and you caught me by surprise.
Before I went over every scene, every sentence, every word. I examined each one for clues like a detective. Are you leaving now? How about now? And now? I missed every second you were here wondering when you would make your exit, but I don’t do that anymore.
No.
Now, I soak you in like sunshine, now I listen to every word like it’s a poem and I might joke about what the words mean, but the truth is those words, they wash over me like music, and I let them hold me and nourish me and delight me, I don’t worry one bit, because you’re here, right now, right this second and I know if that cannot be enough for me, there is no love in me, no hope, nothing worth saving at all, except this odd collection of doubts and fears that wreck me before I even start.
No, now I see another way, a way without definition, without explanation, a way where I stand completely still without expectation and I let things be what they are. I let I say, passing over the foolishness of the word, because I still think I’m the one in charge of keeping the sun on its axis. Because I still think this is a choice I have, instead of a truth I must live in, the rest a strange and torturing dream that always keeps me under.
Before that dream was my reality, an ever present nightmare, the illusion that I could shape and shift the planets at my will, bringing you closer here, sending you further away from my center there, but I know now that’s not true. I know you turn on your own trajectory, that sometimes we pass close and other times we pass far, but that the sun is its own entity and that we are merely pulled and pushed in circles around her, as we spin, spin, spin.
This is what I tell myself now, now that I don’t know the answers to anything. Now that I lost everything because I thought I had it. Now that I found my voice because I could never explain anything. Now that I am sitting here writing this letter that you will never read because I never sent it, because I didn’t want you to know that I ever wanted you to stay in the first place, that you might not even come after all, that you might never have even been here the way I imagined, except in the goodness of my mind–the only place I can always have you–a reminder that I am not as lost as I think I am, that I have made for myself without my even knowing–my heart, a humble home.
a private space devoted to my stories, secrets and wisdom from a life unexpected. seeking fellow travelers, wanderers and souls hungry for courage, transformation and growth. register for $55 here, open for six weeks from november 13 until december 31, 2011.
I’m happy to announce today that I’m opening registration to Wild Precious Life: Love Letters from a Hopeful Girl, a private space dedicated to personal stories, secrets, images and wisdom from the last three years of an unexpected adventure. Over the last few months, I’ve been feeling more and more compelled to tell the stories of what has happened in my life behind the scenes of this blog. I knew I needed a safe space, a private space–somewhere I could let my hair down, so to speak, and tell the truth about what it’s meant for me to become alive in my heart, my mind, my spirit and my body. I also knew I needed a space to share the deeper wisdom of this journey, somewhere I could be sure that people were really listening for the sake of their own path and not just watching from the sidelines.
Wild Precious Life is the answer to that need–a private, password protected space where I can write for a community of friends and allies who are working their own stories of transformation, discovering their own wisdom, one tiny brave step at a time.
This is for you if…
you love what you’re reading here
want to know more about what happened in my personal life over the last few years
are hungry for homegrown wisdom
are going through a time of transition
have more questions than answers
are curious about coming into your skin and honoring your body
are drawn to rituals, little ceremonies and other sacred ways of finding your path
you love a good story
don’t mind being surprised
love mystery, myth, meaning and magic
need inspiration to be brave with your own wild, precious life
You can expect…
Two entries a week at a minimum (I anticipate posting much more)
Intimate self-portraits
How-to rituals for navigating your own transitions, doubts and wonder
Sneak peaks at my memoir and other experiments in writing, poetry and prose
A warm, inviting place to listen, learn and reflect on your own longings and dreams
How it works…
Register here and you get access to Wild Precious Life from now until December 31. This is an experiment for me in creating a safe private space, and I’d love you to join me.
Why this? Why now?
Over the last few months, I’ve been feeling a strong draw to be more boundaried about my personal journey, especially in the online space. I also wanted to tell more stories from certain chapters of my life that are best shared in in a more cozy setting. I imagined a space that had a definite entry point, where I could know that everyone in that room was there on purpose and hadn’t arrived randomly for this reason or that. Wild Precious Life is my answer to that.
What happens to this blog?
jenlemen.com will remain with images and a weekly post, but from now til the end of the year, I’ll be putting lots of heart and soul into Wild Precious Life. If you’re feeling any tug to not miss a thing and your gut tells you this is for you, this is a big risk for me, and I’d be so thrilled for you to join me on this six week adventure!
Go ahead, let the ball swing, it’s time for everything to be gone now. The old ways, the old dreams, the old structures you propped up with your impossible will and foolish, stubborn determination. Your insistence is no longer needed. The same goes for your visions, your delusions filled with other worlds, other realities, other lives that only exist in the beauty of your untamed feral mind. Do not mourn, and by all means, do not cry, for this destruction is not for the purpose of suffering or pain or even the difficulties of dying, but for a clearing, a wide open space where something new and amazing can be grown instead of built. Building was never your strong suit, try as you did to adapt to this or that mode of construction. You are more like a sower, than an architect, as anyone who has seen the drawings on your napkins could have already told you, not to mention your half-completed buildings.
When did your mind ever conceive of anything in straight lines? Do you ever remember a time? When did you ever take into account the building codes or the classifications of certain materials?
That’s what I thought.
No, you have always been more of an artist, wandering around in the woods behind the houses, picking dandelions that could be woven into crowns for unsuspecting kings and queens who never really wanted to reign in your kingdom. No, you have always been more of a naturalist, examining mud for the properties required for sculpture. No, you have always been more of an adventurer, culling through unnamed and unknown fruits and vegetables at open air markets where you know deep in your heart, the ingredients are waiting for a fine and unforgettable stew.
Doesn’t that sound right?
Good thing for you, everyone already knows, though no one ever thought it would come to this. That wrecking ball thing? Most of the time, you just leave the building, before anyone knows you’ve slipped out the back door into the garden. But, no, now, things will be different. You will make announcements. You will say with your very own mouth the answer is no. Not this. Not now. Not ever.
Let the ball go. Let the rubble pile.
You are lighting a match, you are letting it drop and with that fire you will burn every old and stubborn thing in you that wanted to bend the world to your liking. You will burn every impulse you had to mold when the best thing would have been to break and let the pieces fall where they may. You will burn the part of you that insists on knowing, on seeing, of shaping when the deepest truth is that no one knows how a seed grows or what happens in the dark earth hidden from light.
This destruction is necessary and holy and beautiful, so let the wrecking ball come. There are stories waiting to be born in you. There are gardens waiting to be planted. There are the unruly curls of your own wild head that will happily bend to receive that crown of dandelions and in doing so you will feel no shame or embarrassment. Yellow was always your color.
The ones meant for you will come close to your side, you will not even need to call their names or sing them, the way you always do in the car when you think they aren’t listening or caring as much as you do. They will come close to you, the way your heart always felt close to them and you will accept your togetherness in whatever form is best for lovers, friends, family of the sort that feel as familiar and mysterious to you as the bright night sky. You will have an easy companionship, in the quiet spaces, and no one will say one word about that wrecking ball, they knew all along, your blueprints always looked more like storybooks, you were always meant for more unwieldy forms of creation.
So stand back, let it all go.
Don’t be afraid.
You cannot lose anything that was always meant to be yours.
You cannot have something when the only person who ever wanted it was you.
A new world is waiting underneath all that rubble and when you see the land underneath, you won’t regret being brave and you will know it wasn’t foolish after all, to let yourself be seen for who you really are.
This blog gets a major overhaul this week, as does most of my online work. So if the lines look crooked or this blog explodes in midair this week and disappears into oblivion, that’s why. Excited.
Just minutes til I have to run…at Camp Shutter Sisters with Trace and Myriam (and now Ria!). But I’m in a process of letting go of the reasons I create for why I was born, the ones that burden me and weigh me down. Here’s my new working list…feel free to add your own in the comments below.
To see and to be seen
To listen and to be heard
To touch, to taste, to feel
beautiful and rare on the earth
To travel, to wander, to seek
To discover, to explore, to believe
To arrive just in time
at home and belonging to those I love
To laugh, to sing, to dance
To feast, to kiss, to make love
To cry, to pray, to release
To heal, to calm, to sleep
To weep
To forget
To remember
To hope
To dream
To wake up
to love.
I’m in a faraway land at the moment becoming an oracle.
Just kidding. I meant to say a mystic.
Okay, kidding again. But something is happening, goddammit. Or I least I that was what I was hoping when I wrote this next paragraph a week or so ago…
My heart, the inside part of me that just got its hard outer shell, smashed into a kajilion little pieces, evidently has a real live girl living inside, and she is tiny and wise and tender and she knows otherworldly things that she knows now are best not to say outloud. So she keeps secrets and she hides in invisible places and lets her eyes reflect truths and she’ll lean her ear in to hear you say them when your eyes say you’re ready and you don’t want to hide anymore. And when you say them, her eyes shine and you realize you knew it all along and that maybe you were braver and more alive than you ever dared to think. After that it’s all up to you, because it always was from the beginning, but she walks with you anyway on windy paths, and lies down next to you in your dreams. And it is in that dream space that she hears her own voice waking her up to the soul of the world which speaks to you, too, and every other astonished soul just waking from a long and dreadful sleep. This is how she is and she hopes you don’t mind if it means she cries so much, life is so strange and unruly and impossible, she’s still learning how to let it flow through her, hands open, no grasping.
So that’s what’s happening right now.
In case you were wondering.
Light candles. Say prayers. Share songs. Send poems.
Well, if there were a Tiffany’s within walking distance, I’d go there, too. Right before closing when you can hear all the change jingling in the drawers as it’s being counted. Still, with or without Tiffany’s, the Holly GoLightly in me knows the Mean Reds through and through. They usually show up when my heart’s in new territory, and it’s always terrifying. My demons skulk around the house, smoking cigarettes, kicking over my confidence, and leaving me flattened on the couch, face down, wondering what to do.
Of course, there’s nothing to do, except acknowledge that fear is at the bottom of it, and whenever I’m afraid it’s always this phrase running through my head. Perfect love casts out all fear. This always comforts me, because I know that while ordinary human love is often hard to come by, a strange infinite kind seems ever available. I feel it when I lie down in the grass, when I let the water run over my feet in bath, when I exchange knowing glances with little babies in strollers on the street, when I go to Mark and Meryl’s and realize they need me to do one of my famous (horrifyingly bad) dances across the living room floor.
If this phrase comes to me, it’s almost always okay and when it’s not, there’s this song, which I would like you to know has been played 116 times in my iTunes library. I share it with you, as an offering today, in case you know something about the Mean Reds, and you, like me, aren’t within walking distance of Tiffany’s.
I’m always thinking I saw a light shine.
Which is funny because if you put a gun to my head and said, Jen Lemen, do you believe in God? I would probably hesitate a second too late, but if it wasn’t life or death and you could wait to pull the trigger a minute longer, I would have to say, I did a couple of times, in a good way, and it was so beautiful.
Most of the time I don’t associate the idea of God with grace. I think of God more as a provocateur, taunting me, teasing me into another way of being, a way that makes me wild and fully alive, dangerous and unfit for consumption. Which makes me resent him (or her) horribly because all I ever wanted to be, despite my homeless wandering ways, is to be fit for consumption.
To be..
a bowl of yellow soup made over a crappy makeshift stove
a warm slice of fresh baked bread, the kind that makes butter melt
a clean crisp apple that cracks with sweetness when you bite into it
Is that so much to ask?
But God makes me more like the rush of whiskey, the snap of dark chocolate, the kind that you check the wrapper to see just how dark, the olives that you have no idea how they will taste and they’re just a little bit too much but you eat them anyway. You can’t help yourself. You always wanted, at least once, to taste an olive like that.
Am I complaining?
No.
Because for all the horrible things the idea of God does to me, there is still those damn flashes of light that I can never stop seeing and the tiny sliver of strength that remains in me convincing me that somehow in some strange way I can never make peace with or understand that I am part of something beautiful.
I’m always telling myself that everything is shit and there’s no light over there, that I just made it up and I’m sure that’s true and that I did, but that’s what people do when their eyes grow too accustomed to darkness. I’m that girl walking on the path up to Asteria’s house with the two little girls holding her hands because she couldn’t see a blessed thing the night was so black. The girl who somehow never thought to look up where all the stars are. And I didn’t mind because those tiny hands made up for any lack of God in my heart.
I hope today that you know the truth inside you from the start and that if you can’t see it or find that kind of faith, that you’ll find the strength to know you really are part of something beautiful.
What flash of light have you seen these days out of the corner of your eye? Tell me. Tell me everything…Or better yet (this will be even better) tell me what you are in the smorgasbord of life.
And the winner of the fortune teller is…Brian Gregory! BG, send me your address, I’ll put this darling in the mail to you today. I even have an envelope and a stamp, so it’s actually going to happen.
For reasons I don’t quite understand, I’ve been making grownup fortune tellers all summer and now into fall. I don’t know why, but I think there’s some part of us that still tries to find the answers to our most primitive conflicts through childish means. We want to think there’s an answer to anger, for example. I mean, seriously, what if you could lift a little flap and have the answer to sorrow to be waiting right there?
At the same time, I also think underneath these young impulses, that we already DO know the answer to what ails us, we were just hoping it wasn’t that and was something else instead. For example, I really don’t want to think that I feel like shit sometimes because I gave my power away, I’d rather think it was something more like the other person doesn’t really respect me or like me or approve of me. Same thing, but one perspective gives me back myself and the other sends the real me sailing.
My fortune tellers help me recapture my smallest, truest wisdom and help me understand that sometimes it’s just that simple. I can get the magic marker out and just write the right answer under the flap and then act surprised when I by some stroke of good fortune, arrive back at the answer I knew all along. It’s another way in and it doesn’t offend me. It gives me a little bit of light to follow that doesn’t leave me heavy or scared. It puts a hopeful twist on something that might have me all tangled up inside.
I think fortune tellers are in the realm of the intuitive, so it’s hard to explain why they delight or even why they work, but I know in some sweet strange way they do. Because in so many ways our hearts are always eight, at least mine is. Maybe yours is, too.
What fortunes are you telling yourself these days? I’d love to know.
*here’s more info on fortune tellers if you’re curious/interested. if you decide to make one, let me know!
When I was in Rwanda the first time, I went so many days without English that after awhile I stopped thinking entirely and just let the landscape and the sounds and the words I didn’t know wash over me. I didn’t worry about time or where I was or where I had come from, I just went where I was lead and followed the motions, doing my best with what I was told. I remember being very much at peace without knowing, and also bewildered that everything could feel so natural when my surroundings were so strange. In that wordless state, I often felt like a baby being passed from hand to hand.
The only cohesive words I had were little bits and phrases of poems and old Bible verses that I had memorized as a child. These fragments would pop out of my head out of nowhere–just one line of a verse and it would make no sense. I wish now I had written them all down because at the time there were at least a dozen, but here are the ones I still remember…
It wasn’t until I came home and looked each of them up that I was able to see the roadmap of my heart and begin to understand the places my soul had traveled. I believe in this kind of orientation. I believe that our poems can act as signposts, letting us know where we are and how to find our way when we feel lost or uncertain. I’m not usually consciously thinking of things in this way, but sometimes it’s comforting to know that something deeper, something darker is carrying me in a current, that some hidden part of me knows exactly what’s happening, even if my conscious mind can barely stand to know.
Right now I’m letting old and new poems swirl around in my brain, so my subconscious can bring me to a new surface in my yet to be realized future. I’m musing mostly about all the ways I hold back and about happiness and about home and and love and courage and about light and the gods and the different ways we define the words to get down to the root of our meaning.
Here are my poems that are floating in and out of my mind these days…
Feel free to tell me what lines are running through your head these days. These are your signposts and you can trust them to carry you to what the deepest parts of you already know.
My name is Jen Lemen. I'm messy, hopeful,
enthusiastic and helplessly in love with the idea
that stories can change you and me forever.