words & art by shé

bookshelf

listening to love

  • Essay #41: support

    I am taking an aerial dance class. It’s very difficult, engaging muscles I don’t use every day. How often do you pull yourself up on a long piece of silk and flip upside down? My favorite so far is the dance trapeze. It’s easier to get into than the sling, which is just a loop…

  • Essay #40: duty or delight?

    “If you feel a sense of delight, you know you’re on the right track. Delight is a marker for the soul’s truth — it’s never wrong.” ~Kathy Freston, Expect a Miracle Amen, cousin. Who would you rather be around: someone who’s delighted to be here or someone who thinks she should be? Don’t do us…

  • Essay #39: rolling through fear

    Before Thanksgiving I stopped at Bike ‘n’ Bike to see if I could find some wheels for the winter. Volunteer run, housed behind a thrift store, here you can avail yourself of donated tools and used parts to build a bike or fix one. Volunteer Elise found me a bike with a good frame, and…

  • Essay #38: signify

    Step into a world where you matter. What does it look like? Who populates it? What’s it like to be cared for? cared about? Imagine: you are heard … acknowledged … visible. Do you have to fight for space? for food? for approval? for love? religion? Do you have to gird your loins and strap…

  • Essay #37: thanks

    My friend Anger came to call and I finally let her in. Turns out Shame had been shrouding her like a dense fog, blurring her edges, slurring her words. She was almost invisible. Acknowledge my feelings, said Anger, loud and clear now that Shame has evaporated. When I am ashamed to be angry, I cannot…

  • Essay #36: patagonia

    My father is going to Patagonia tomorrow, to build a bridge. Just like old times. When I was a kid, he worked for the federal Bureau of Public Roads, building bridges and roads in the mountains. I remember riding shotgun in a yellow-orange government truck, somewhere in California or Oregon or Washington. I remember evergreens…

  • Essay #35: bat qol

    “If it bothered Avery, it can’t continue.” –letter from a mother to Dear Abby about her daughter and possible sexual abuse, published 10/21/2011 Another mask smashed to the ground yesterday, taking a bottle of holy water with it. I made it a few years ago, after Emmett died – a white wolf-dog face with an…

  • Essay #34: security

    I never thought it was necessary – security. I thought it was a mirage, an impossibility. Amused and bemused when others thought it possible with locks and alarms and stocks and bonds. I was wrong. Here are some definitions, courtesy of msWord: the state or feeling of being safe and protected freedom from worries of…

  • Essay #33: perspective

    “What your father sees and hears is not what you see and hear.” –Terry Pratchett, Mort And vice versa. Consider the physical perspective: Dad is taller, so his eye-level is higher. We see different berries on the bush. Wheelchair-user Nancy Mairs wrote Waist-High in the World, which explores this very thing. Experience also molds perspective,…

  • Essay #32: masks

    Last October, I drove to Arcata, where my brother was living, to rendezvous with my father. I hadn’t seen him in 11 years. While I was gone, someone burgled my loft. They dumped out a duffel bag and filled it with art supplies, jewelry findings, and a wooden sewing box containing a rose-gold bracelet my…