tag:namolibrennet.com,2005:/blogs/hominy-rennet?p=1
Hominy Rennet
2020-08-28T15:55:56-05:00
Namoli Brennet
false
tag:namolibrennet.com,2005:Post/6419679
2020-08-28T15:55:56-05:00
2020-12-15T10:58:44-06:00
Grasshopper/Frog/Turtle
<p>8/28/2020</p>
<p> </p>
<p>One of the things I love about riding the bike trail is that throughout the summer each flower, bird and insect has it’s time. Early in the season it’s the red-winged blackbird whose cryptic, twirling cries announce the beginning of summer, and shortly thereafter the wildflowers start to show up one by one - Queen Anne’s lace, purple coneflower, day lilies, chicory, compass plant. It seems like every week brings something new, and even the insects have their hour - the helpful bee, the loathsome mosquito, the biting gnat and the exotic dragonfly. Right now it’s the grasshoppers, and I spend a fair amount of time trying avoid hitting them while also hoping they don’t fly in the general direction of my head. Because apparently it’s possible to care about something’s well being while still NOT WANTING IT TO TOUCH YOUR FACE WITH IT’S BUG-PARTS. </p>
<p>Yesterday I saw an unusually plump grasshopper in the middle of the trail, and as I passed I realized it’s short, dense stature was due to the fact that this particular grasshopper was actually a frog. I instinctively turned around and parked my bike thinking I would give it a little prodding and help it hop off the trail. <em>Can you get warts from touching these?</em> I wondered, <em>is that actually a thing?</em> This one looked extra gnarly and brown, and as I got closer I realized the reason for that was because this particular frog was actually a small turtle. Which made my rescue seem all the more timely because I thought, that thing is not getting out of the middle of the trail anytime soon. I picked up it’s small, leathery body - not much bigger than a large walnut - and placed it on the grass a few feet from the paved pathway. </p>
<p>I got back on my bike, rode a few feet and thought, that thing is going to turn around and crawl right back onto the trail because the asphalt is nice and warm on it’s cold belly. I executed my second u-turn, parked my bike and found the grasshopper/frog/turtle just a few inches from where I had left it. The river is just about 150 feet away through some tall grass, and I thought this little creature might be happier close to there. So I picked it up a second time, and now it started to struggle - probably thinking I had decided to come back and eat it after all. It’s small head was too big to retract into it’s shell, and looking at its tiny jaws I thought, <em>looks like we’ve got ourselves a little snapper here. </em></p>
<p>I talked to it on the way to the river, comforting it (I imagine) with my reassurances about how I was a friend to turtles, that it was in no danger, etc. When we got closer I put it on a little grassy patch where it could choose to either go toward or away from the water, whichever felt more instinctual. I don’t know a whole lot about turtles and didn’t want to just toss it in the river, inadvertently drowning it after “saving” its life. <em>Thanks for nothing, human! </em>The little turtle then scurried, if such a thing is possible, and fell end-over-end once before righting itself and heading down towards the water. <em>I guess the little fucker can swim after all!</em> I thought. </p>
<p>I turned and started to head back towards my bicycle, a purple Schwinn walk-through which was looking exceptionally stunning in the evening light. I told it so, because apparently I’m widening my circle of “things I talk to“ to include inanimate objects. I hopped back on and started riding, and thought, that tender thing you did back there, Namoli - what's that all about, why do you think you do that kind of stuff? Why would you stop and pick up a frog or turtle from the trail, or rescue a spider from a slippery porcelain sink they’ve fallen into? Some people would say it’s crazy or silly or a waste of time. The answer came quickly and forcefully, almost spoken aloud - <em>because I know what it’s like to feel small and unprotected. </em></p>
<p>And I also know what it feels like to be helped. </p>
<p>My good deed was done, but my imagination wasn’t and a few minutes later two other Very Compelling And Also Related Scenarios began to play themselves out in my head. The first was based around the questions, do turtles carry disease, and can you get sick from touching them? A quick google search revealed the answers to be <em>yes</em>, and <em>salmonella.</em> But no worries - due to other circumstances, I currently have no less than three bottles of hand sanitizer in the front seat of my car at any given time. Glass half full (of hand sanitizer.) </p>
<p>The second flight of fancy imagined a scenario 15 years later where I’m tubing down the Upper Iowa river with friends. Suddenly a hungry-looking snapping turtle emerges from the water eyeing my delicate, exposed toes like stuffed grape leaves on tapas plate. “Look out Namoli!” a fellow tuber would exclaim, “Look out!” as the turtle approached menacingly and began to open its powerful jaws. But then - a curious flicker of recognition in its reptilian eyes and an unheard, telepathic conversation between the two of us: </p>
<p>Turtle: “Bike lady?” </p>
<p>Me: “Little snapper?” </p>
<p>Turtle: “You helped me when I was small, and also scared the hell out of me.” </p>
<p>Me: "Sorry about that, it was supposed to be a rescue type of situation.” </p>
<p>Turtle: “I couldn’t tell if you were eating or saving me.” </p>
<p>Me: “I didn’t speak turtle, but I did mention it in English.” </p>
<p>Turtle: “Well anyway, I’m supposed to say this - <em>you were a friend to a turtle in need, now go in peace with all ten toes intact.</em>” </p>
<p>Me: “And also with you.” </p>
<p>Turtle: "What?” </p>
<p>Me: “Sorry, it’s a Catholic thing. It was supposed to be funny.” </p>
<p>Turtle: "Well anyway, I’m not going to eat your toes.” </p>
<p>Me: “Thanks, grasshopper.” </p>
<p>Turtle: “What’d you call me?” </p>
<p>Me: “Never mind.” </p>
<p>And so ends the tale of me saving three creatures in one, while also defeating a powerful bacteria using nothing but my wits and a pre-packaged, mass-produced, alcohol-based product I had laying around. Looking back, I think I saw a little of myself in grasshopper/frog/turtle - something that's easy to misidentify, anxious and defensive, and also something that's occasionally found standing in strange places looking slightly stunned and a little lost. Sometimes I feel like that in the <em>grocery </em>store these days. I guess we've got to try to look out for each other in the ways that we can, even if it means metaphorically risking having bug parts touch our faces or (metaphorically, of course) getting warts and salmonella. Yet one more reason to WASH THOSE HANDS (not metaphorically.) What on earth is the moral of this story? Maybe that for now we shouldn't stray too far from our natural habitat, lest we have to rely on some crazy person talking to their bicycle to rescue us. For example. </p>
<p>***THE END***</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
Namoli Brennet
tag:namolibrennet.com,2005:Post/6311296
2020-05-10T13:07:08-05:00
2022-05-10T14:25:19-05:00
The Green Machine: It's Mean. (A Mother's Day Tale)
<p> </p>
<p>May 10th, 2020.<br> </p>
<p>When I was maybe 9 or 10 years old, my family had just moved to a new neighborhood just outside of Toronto. We were riding Big Wheels (google it) down an asphalt path on a summer day and having a great time, when out of the blue came this kid on a Green Machine (google it) with trouble in his eyes. He T-Boned me, and I flew off and gouged my knee on something metal leaving a black-bean-sized scar that still exists to this day. </p>
<p>I ran home crying and probably with an alarming amount of blood dripping down my leg - but I barely had time to choke out my story through sobs before my mother grabbed me by the hand and off we went. Where? I wasn't sure, but there was a fire in her eyes and a sense of purpose that made me curious in spite of my throbbing knee. This was not walking, it was marching. We stopped abruptly in front of the door of the kid who ran into me, and I watched my mother rap on it and give his startled mother an Irish tongue-lashing the likes of which she had probably never experienced or seen coming. And do I vaguely remember her son mumbling a half-hearted apology? I wouldn't be surprised. </p>
<p>Fierce mama-love. I'm sure my mother did that or something like it a hundred times that I didn't remember or realize, but I sure am grateful for every one of them. When I came out to my mother as trans in my late twenties, she didn't blink an eye and became an instant ally. And I know that there have probably been times over the years where someone ran the verbal equivalent of a Green Machine (google it) into the Big Wheel of her trans daughter (poetic!) and my mother's Irish eyes flashed as she lashed into them for being less than tolerant. </p>
<p>I'm so grateful to have had a mother who stood up for me and taught me to be independent. We're both Irish, and likely inherited the tendency to keep our deepest feelings bottled up - but acts of love come in many forms. Sometimes in tender, vulnerable moments of sharing, and sometimes in pounding on the neighbor kid's door and delivering a tirade of Irish euphemisms that they may not fully understand but clearly get the gist of. </p>
<p>So thanks to my own mother, to all the mothers, and to those who embody the spirit of motherhood by mothering others. And thanks to Marx Toys for delivering untold hours of fun on a plastic bicycle that would probably never be sold in the present day due to a host of liability issues. Like you, I also just googled "Green Machine," and wasn't surprised to see that right there on the package it says "It's Mean" - practically encouraging one to use it aggressively. </p>
<p>Do so at your own peril, though - moments later you may find yourself sheepishly apologizing to a woman with a heavy Belfast accent, and a small child with blood tricking down their leg who is now sporting - is that? The tiniest of grins.</p>
Namoli Brennet
tag:namolibrennet.com,2005:Post/4667683
2017-04-12T12:13:32-05:00
2018-09-05T10:01:45-05:00
Mercy
<p>April 12, 2017<br><br>If death is certain, and the time of death is uncertain, what is important, If death is certain, and the time of death is uncertain, what is important, If death is certain, and the time of death is uncertain, what is important. </p>
<p>This is a quote from Pema Chödron that was going through my head today on some kind of tape loop. A friend of mind got some pretty bad news, the kind of news that’s hard to diffuse with a sarcastic joke or a quick, witty comment. She’s dealing pretty well with it - but when a doctor tells you, in no uncertain terms, that you might not have as long to live as you thought, that death is not vague and amorphous but instead something lurking on the horizon, possibly sooner than the renewal of your driver’s license - I think you'd be entitled to a meltdown. </p>
<p>If death is certain, and the time of death is uncertain, what is important. </p>
<p>I knew that what was important was to pick up the phone when she called. </p>
<p>What else, is it important to finish the song I was working on this morning, the other one I had just started. This is what moves me, what calls me, where I find meaning and purpose, what most of the time I think is the most valuable use of my time. </p>
<p>Is it? </p>
<p>I don’t know how to love well, I should have shared more, why didn’t I tell that person, why didn’t I try harder, why wasn’t I more vulnerable, why didn’t I let myself trust more, why didn’t I let myself believe that I was worthy of love and not spend my waking hours coming up with arguments to the contrary.<br><br>Why was I so hard on myself, why did I spend endless hours cataloguing my flaws, could I have changed that or avoided it, was it innate or did I nurture it into some terrible, ever-present observer, did I </p>
<p>If death is certain, and the time of death is uncertain, what is important. </p>
<p>Did I think too much, did I over-analyze, clearly yes, was I too selfish, did I miss opportunities, should I have been more giving, it seems like so many people are always thinking of others, why wasn’t I, why did I think so much of myself, why </p>
<p>Is this earthly life more precious and rare than I realized, did I blow it, did I miss my chance to be God experiencing God, was I so wrapped up in the things that don’t matter that I didn’t appreciate </p>
<p>The smell of hay, the almost-full moon on freshly tilled fields, the call of a distant and unrecognized bird in the woods, the almost indescribable loveliness of a breeze coming through my window when I’m just waking, the smell of woodsmoke on the last cool night in spring, the smells of timber, mown grass, the uncountable stars in the summer-darkened sky, the </p>
<p>If death is certain, and </p>
<p>I did, I did appreciate this world, I can't deny that but was it enough, was it, was it</p>
<p>Tonight at a concert, early Renaissance music, Josquin de Prez, Missa Pange Lingua, the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, the loveliness of pure vowels, the aching beauty of this music that still survives, and that 500 years later somehow manages to disrupt my obsessive train of<br><br>Should I have written<em> my </em>music down? Fuck. I blew it, it’s all going to disappear. </p>
<p>But the undulating voices, gentle and relentless, Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum, I await the resurrection of the dead, et vitam venturi saeculi, and the life of the world to come </p>
<p>The toxic melisma of my own thoughts, this world lives on after me, who am I, why am I, I wasted untold hours, days, weeks on f<em>acebook</em>, for God's sake, would I have acted differently had I known how much time I had, didn't have, would I have<br><br>It doesn’t matter, is what I heard - somewhere in the swirling cloud of polyphony and Catholic platitudes, a truth pierced my fervent, stubborn mind: it doesn’t matter. </p>
<p>In kinder language: it’s OK. </p>
<p>But what if I could have, didn’t, missed out on, might have, didn’t see, couldn’t grasp, wanted to, what if potentially I, what if done differently I would have been, could have been, what if I fell short, failed, didn’t manage to </p>
<p>It’s OK. </p>
<p>What is this kindness, what wondrous love is this. </p>
<p>You were here, you gave, you experienced, you loved, you gained understanding, you held ground in a complex world and you offered up what beauty you could, you took in the beauty that reached you. You smelled, you saw, you heard, you tasted and through your unique ears and skin and mouth and eyes you added to the ethereal list of What Is Possible. </p>
<p>But was it enough, did I, was it </p>
<p>It was, and is. </p>
<p>Sometimes with spirituality there’s this pressure to become our <em>ultimate selves</em>, the idea that we are all potentially fully enlightened and if death is certain but the time of death is uncertain, then what’s the best use of our time. I don’t know the answer to that question, but I’m pretty sure that the best use of our time isn’t wringing our hands and gnashing our teeth wondering if we made the best use of our time. Maybe the best use of our time is to try to learn and absorb the lesson that we don’t have to do anything, that our worth is inherent, that even before we start praying, singing, meditating, chanting, keening, wailing, dancing, genuflecting, that we are already enough. </p>
<p>Don’t forget to enjoy your life, seems to be the message, it’s a holy thing we do here. And that maybe holy doesn’t mean what we think, maybe holy is lazy, selfish, imperfect, critical, angry, bitter and all the good things too, maybe holy is just human, maybe holy is aware and maybe there’s holiness in the lack of awareness too. Maybe the point of it all is just to Lighten the Fuck Up and to cut ourselves some slack. </p>
<p>But if death is certain, and </p>
<p>OK, but </p>
<p>the time of death </p>
<p>It’s OK, don't </p>
<p>But what is important, what is important. </p>
<p>Maybe what’s important is to bless yourself with kindness, to shower yourself with forgiveness. And if you can’t do that, to forgive your inability to forgive, to pile mercy on top of mercy on top of mercy until you relent under the weight of it all and finally begin feel your own worth. <br><br>And grant yourself peace. </p>
Namoli Brennet
tag:namolibrennet.com,2005:Post/4577303
2017-02-05T11:17:16-06:00
2017-09-16T14:53:55-05:00
The Badger
<p>February 5, 2017. <br><br>Yesterday was one of those sunny winter days, just pushing 30 degrees, where you feel this gentle hope and the optimism to tackle things you’ve been putting off. Like vacuuming the car you took on tour back in November, parked in Chicago for the month of December and have been slowly emptying for the better part of January. I had taken my PA out of the trunk along with a handful of suitcases filled with cables, had put a box of CDs away and hauled in a bag of t-shirts. But the floor - for a few months the floor had been strewn with a mix of straw wrappers, gravel and Target receipts. </p>
<p>I actually really <em>like</em> to vacuum, and even as a kid I loved taking out our Electrolux© and running it over the living room carpet. The sound of things flying up the hose was so satisfying, click, clickity click, and the occasional barrette or penny with it's accompanying racket added a certain thrill. And then the softness of the carpet after, how your feet left tracks in it like fresh snow. </p>
<p>I pulled up to the car wash and immediately noticed the vacuum was a little pricey. Pretty much across the country car wash vacuums are universally priced at $1, and this one was boldly asking $1.50. It looked brand new, the corrugated hose was virtually unscathed and the paint barely registered a chip. I decided to spring for it, maybe subconsciously thinking the newness of this unit would equate to an unparalleled ability to suck up debris from my floor mats. </p>
<p>How right I was. </p>
<p>I started in on the front seats and everything went as expected. I noticed the nozzle was slightly askew and inflexible and this made it a little harder to control than I would have liked. But the suction was incredible, I mean, this thing could suck up a french fry from between the seat and the console <em>no problem</em>. Like Yoda said when referring to a young Luke Skywalker, the force is strong with this one. </p>
<p>The back seat was a little more problematic because there was more clutter, but I had thoughtfully piled it up on the seats away from the floor. It wasn’t much, just a few old posters, some bags and this cute wool </p>
<p>SCARF. The vacuum had caught the fringe and was sucking greedily at it, practically salivating at its catch. I grunted and wrested it free, a little ticked off at this monstrous thing with the misaligned suction tool. I mean, why don’t they just put it on right in the first place so you’re able to </p>
<p>POSTER! While I was having my moment of regret and contemplation this thing had seized hold of a poster and it was making a sound like the squealing of a cantankerous raven. Squee, squee! WANT! WANT! It seemed to say. I pulled the poster free and started to vacuum the floor again, back to the satisfying sound of gravel flying up the hose. That was going well until </p>
<p>JUTE! TWINE! Shit. I had forgotten that under my passenger seat was a 200-foot roll of twine that I had bought to tie rolled-up t-shirts. The creature had found the end and was slurping it up like an endless bowl of coarse spaghetti. It was about 30 feet in when I had the bright idea to wrap the string around the armrest while I tried to figure out what to do. Could it ingest the whole roll? It was certainly replaceable but not the best solution. Oh! I know - in my purse I have this tiny little swiss army knife with scissors that I use for knitting, I could </p>
<p>Damn you, beast! While I was thinking, it had been furiously hissing and sucking away at the string and had somehow pulled it loose from the armrest and ingested another 20 feet or so. I had to admire the strength and tenacity of this thing, and if I had the luxury of naming it I’d like to call it the BADGER 2000. “Badger? Why would you call a vacuum The Badger? That’s dumb.” </p>
<p>“You’ll see.” </p>
<p>I wrapped the jute back around the armrest, jumped in the front seat, grabbed my purse and rooted around for this little pink knife. In the background the vacuum was hissing and tugging angrily, and when I finally found the knife, pulled out the tiny scissors and cut the cord it slurped up the end of it like a tetchy, famine-angered snake. </p>
<p>But the crisis was averted, and I let out a sigh of relief. </p>
<p>I climbed back into the back seat and returned to vacuuming the floor. After about 10 seconds it shut itself off, and I couldn’t help but wonder - did I <em>really </em>run out of time already? Or was this a bitter Hoover™ exacting some kind of revenge for a meal denied. Were those fries between the seats not enough to sate your hunger? What of the cap of that pen, the unidentified business card, the receipt from T.J. Maxx that I might still have needed to return something for store credit? </p>
<p>Next time you stop to innocently vacuum out your car, take a good look at that cannister. Is it shiny, yellow and red, luring you in with the promise of military-grade suction? </p>
<p>Because the Badger is hungry, and the badger will feed. </p>
Namoli Brennet
tag:namolibrennet.com,2005:Post/4559559
2017-01-22T12:26:17-06:00
2017-04-22T23:26:47-05:00
January March
<p>January 22, 2017. <br><br>Like many of us, I had heard about the Women’s March on Washington this past weekend and about all the sister marches taking place simultaneously around the country. One of those sister marches was happening in the small town of Decorah where I live, population 8,127. People were getting together for weeks in advance, having parties, enthusiastically knitting up pink hats to wear in solidarity with the other marches. Someone asked me if I was going, to knit or to march, and I realized that for some reason I hadn’t made up my mind about either one yet. </p>
<p>But really, why <em>not</em> go? It would make a statement, a point, maybe be the start of something, a way to soothe some of the post-election hurt and lift my spirits. Days later I found myself still resisting, and after a little thinking and soul-searching I realized that there was a singular question at the heart of my doubt. </p>
<p><em>What’s the point.</em> </p>
<p>I don’t think I’m cynical by nature, but somehow this is where I’d arrived. Thinking, sure, we’ll put on pink hats and march through the streets and sing a few songs, but then what. What real difference is it going to make when no one is listening or when no one in power cares? Like back in 2003 when we protested the invasion of Iraq, had candlelight vigils on every corner, cities passed proclamations and they still went to war. No one was listening then and I’m not so sure they’re listening now. </p>
<p>In the meantime I had a slight change of heart and thought, I should at least just show up to say hey, we tried. What will it be in a town this size, 50, maybe 100 people, they could probably use an extra body. I parked my car by the co-op and started walking the 5 or 6 blocks to the park where people were gathering. As I walked through downtown I noticed other people walking in the same direction, some of them wearing pink hats, pink scarves. OK. </p>
<p>I got within a couple of blocks and could see a crowd was already forming, maybe as many as 100 people. As I got even closer I realized that I was only seeing the tip of the iceberg, that around the corner there were at least 300 other people, with more showing up by the minute. I found myself inexplicably welling up with tears, music was playing, Blackbird by the Beatles, and the strains of a lyric found me - You were only waiting for this moment to arrive. </p>
<p>I wanted so badly to join in, but every step closer also made me feel like I was on the verge of just completely<em> losing it</em>. Like if someone had so much as looked at me with a caring glance, I might have burst, overripe, into heaving sobs. Why. It was a little like that feeling when you think everyone’s forgotten your birthday and then you realize they’re throwing a surprise party. But why. </p>
<p>I inched closer and then I was inside the crowd. </p>
<p>Imagining going to a march and actually going to a march are not the same thing at all. In the swell of warm bodies my cynicism cracked, and I found myself in the arms of a community song leader where I could not stop crying. I switched shoulders and cried some more, two other people came in and joined the hug, and the why of it became more and more clear. That sometimes the world tells me and people like me that we’re worthless, and how sometimes I find myself agreeing if only to protect myself from being blindsided by hatred and bigotry. </p>
<p>As Shawn Colvin sang, You don’t have to drag me down; I descend. </p>
<p>We started marching down the main street, singing and chanting - by that time there were well over 500 of us and we were making a lot of noise. There were supportive onlookers and also a couple of businesses that didn’t look too happy either about the protest or what it represented. The woman next to me said, they don’t need to be upset, we won’t bother them for long. </p>
<p>And I had this epiphany, which was - maybe part of what got us into this mess was the inability to raise our voices, this trained submission that tells us it’s better to be polite, to not make waves, to not inconvenience people no matter what's at stake. </p>
<p>But you know what’s also inconvenient, is not having health insurance, not being able to visit your spouse of 20 years in the hospital, being systematically discriminated against, what’s inconvenient is having to worry about your family being deported, what’s inconvenient is poverty, violence, racism, having to worry about signing up for a registry because of the religion you practice, what’s inconvenient is having to live with the ramifications of ignoring climate change. </p>
<p>I half-think, and sometimes more than half, that this is what despots and tyrants hope for and want to foster in their populace, this feeling that softly murmurs, <em>What’s the point</em>. What’s the point in marching, in protesting, in writing letters, in phone calls, in Facebook posts, in any of it. <em>It’s not worth the trouble</em>. But there is a point, and part of that point is to find comfort in each other, to support each other, to begin to realize our empowerment together, to count our numbers, to practice raising our voices, our collective consciousness, to practice standing up, to practice pushing back in the ways we can, to practice action over inaction. </p>
<p>To practice until speaking out feels as natural as holding back once did. </p>
<p>I was proud to march today, proud to see my brothers and sisters and others around the nation and the world practicing, flexing our hearts, our intellects, our bodies, remembering who we are, raising our awareness, speaking up and speaking out and yes, inconveniencing the world for the sake of standing up against a multitude of grave injustices past, present and future. </p>
<p>Rumi once said, sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. I would add to that, sell your cynicism and buy the sweet, aching taste of disappointment. And know that the source of that ache is the sometimes vast space between what is, and what is possible. Is it possible. Can we. Are we able to. I find myself hesitating a little when I say, I am powerless, nothing makes any difference, what’s the point. </p>
<p>For now I feel content to let <em>that</em> be source of my doubt. </p>
<p>Chop wood, carry water. </p>
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Namoli Brennet
tag:namolibrennet.com,2005:Post/4483579
2016-11-28T05:30:25-06:00
2017-08-19T13:33:56-05:00
Do This In Memory of Me
<p>November 28, 2016.<br><br>My mother is from Belfast, and superstitious in the way that Irish Catholics can be - a belief in the supernatural that comes from the marriage of religion with a culture whose heritage is rich with mysticism and the power of things unseen. In my family there’s a story that’s been passed around in hushed tones that says when someone dies, there are three knocks at the door - my grandmother heard them, my mother heard them, and I’m pretty sure one of my sisters has too. So when my father passed away a week and a half ago, the day after the election - my mother waited for those knocks. A few days after his death she said that she sat in the living room and said, If you’re OK, if you’re in heaven, if you can hear me, give me a sign. </p>
<p>(On the roof of their mobile home: knock, knock, knock.) </p>
<p>My father and I weren’t what you would call close, but there wasn’t really any animosity between us either. Mostly I just wondered why it seemed like I never mattered that much to him, although I believe that I did. That belief was weighted equally with doubt and the timid hope that comes from years of small disappointments, sometimes larger ones. One time he called to let me know an Uncle had died, and for the first minute I thought he was a friend playing a joke; Come on, I had said - who is this really? Darren? Michael? He had only called one other time in the 26 years since I left home, it was not such a stretch for it to be unbelievable. <br><br>To his credit, when I floated the idea 15 years ago that it might be nice to get a birthday card, he sent one faithfully nearly every year. I wished he had wanted to do it without having to be asked, but I still appreciated that one small act of devotion. <br><br>Something to miss. <br><br>When I called, a few times a year, I usually talked to my mother and sometimes she would hand me over to him. We'd talk about the weather, simple things, 10 minutes punctuated by periods of awkward silence, the quiet that comes from having too much unsaid or unsayable. He was tender, kind and had a great sense of humor, but for the most part he kept his deepest thoughts and feelings hidden and when he died I had the sense of one mystery passing into another. </p>
<p>I was in Pittsburgh when I found out about his death, my mother left a message and I had a show to play 4 hours later at noon. We had gotten the news that he wasn’t doing well a few months ago; he rebounded, was given 6 months, and then it was whittled callously down to 2 weeks. My sister and I had both planned on being there that weekend to see him, to say goodbye and try to connect in some way one last time. </p>
<p>Two weeks became one day and he was gone. </p>
<p>My mother said that when the hospice worker told him he had less than 2 weeks left, he lost heart, his energy flagged, he stopped eating. Like he realized the fight was over and there was no point sticking around and trying to deny it. But my sister and I were on our way there, we would have been there in a couple of days, couldn’t that have been a reason, couldn’t that have been reason enough to wait, couldn’t he </p>
<p>No. </p>
<p>The next day I felt something here and there, small pangs of sadness, but no great wall broke until on the way to Florida a state trooper pulled me over and asked where I was going in such a hurry. I started crying so hard I couldn’t choke out the words, and although I’m sure he’s seen plenty people try to weep their way out of a ticket I think my display of emotion was genuinely alarming to him. He still wrote me a ticket but said he’d dismiss it if I sent him a copy of the death certificate. Was that kindness or distrust. </p>
<p>Two days later at the funeral my feelings went back underground and I felt sad and tender but also oddly controlled. When my niece and nephew burst into loud tears in the church, I felt embarrassed to be so distant, where were my tears, where was my grief. My sisters and I were singing before the service, the first time we had ever done that together, and maybe something reflexive about performing made it hard to be too emotional. The few times I welled up, it wasn’t even that hard to just push it away like a petulant child, not now, now’s not a good time. </p>
<p>At the end of the service, my father’s ashes in a wooden box, surprisingly heavy, on a table with some flowers. We’re sprinkling it with holy water from some kind of ceremonial scepter, I still feel so distant, it seems like such a strange ritual but it’s only one of many in a church filled with strange rituals. Cross yourself, cross your lips with your thumb before the gospel, genuflect before walking up to the altar, stand, sit, kneel, shake hands, confess, last rites. </p>
<p>My younger sister and I are there and I had forgotten how goofy we both can be, it’s probably a coping mechanism and death brings it out in spades. She joked later about how she missed the box when she sprinkled the water, none of use knew we’d have to do it and obviously didn’t have a lot of practice flinging water from a scepter onto a box from 6 feet. Sometimes we laugh until we cry and maybe that’s why we laugh in the first place. </p>
<p>The next day my brother and niece had disappeared on an early flight and my sister took a shuttle to Orlando at 8 a.m. I left mid-afternoon and drove to Marietta, GA on the way to Oak Ridge to finish my tour before flying out of Chicago a few days later. I checked into my hotel, and maybe it was that I was finally alone for the first time in days - but I sat on the bed, looked at the ceiling and said, If you can hear me, if you’re out there, give me some kind of sign. Three knocks. Something. Is silence a sign. </p>
<p>But our whole lives were silence. </p>
<p>Later that night I was feeling looser after a couple of drinks and I started journaling. I like to write down the things that happen, the things I feel, the things I remember, small details. Things came to me, sadness, regret, we were closer the past 5 weeks, I called more, he was easier to talk to, he became expansive and philosophical and even once referred to God in the feminine. At their mobile home his clothes already in a bag in the room where he spent his last two months, is it a gift or a curse that I never saw him there, like that. Mass cards on the counter, a 3-cornered flag from the time he spent in the navy. Brown mustard in the fridge, he liked that, chocolate ice cream in the freezer. </p>
<p>That last was what finally broke me open, and I felt myself crack like the heaving of frost in winter. </p>
<p>They had both been watching their sugar and it was an extravagance, and probably also an acknowledgment that things weren’t going to get better, that he should find his joys where he was able. My poor mother, she probably could have, would have given him anything he wanted, anything, but after 52 years of marriage they were still struggling from month to month. In the end she splurged on chocolate ice cream, the good kind, have as much as you want, the biggest bowl you could imagine, have so much, it’s all for you. </p>
<p>What else could anyone have given that would have meant more, by then everything is transient, nothing is graspable, what else would have meaning but something for that moment and that moment only. </p>
<p>He died a few days later - there was still 1/3 of it left in the freezer and it seemed so, so precious. What remained of something holy and sacramental, take this, eat. </p>
<p>I fixed myself a small bowl and ate it slowly in measured spoonfuls, all the while realizing this was one of the last things my father enjoyed, one of the last things he tasted in this life, something ordinary and yet pregnant with meaning and symbolism. Dark and complex, but also simple and sweet - like all the rest of it, like life. </p>
<p>A final instruction from my father, the Catholic, the mystery, a kind man who savored simple things and lived a difficult life uncomplainingly: remember me, think of me, know that at the end of my life I didn’t wish for wealth, fame or anything so lavish, just a beautiful bowl of chocolate ice cream from the woman I loved and was loved by for over half a century. </p>
<p>Do this in memory of me.<br><br>Support this Blog: <br> </p>
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Namoli Brennet
tag:namolibrennet.com,2005:Post/4461691
2016-11-10T23:38:36-06:00
2017-04-22T23:27:25-05:00
The Grief That Binds Us.
<p>November 10, 2016.<br><br>Yesterday, like many others, I woke up afraid. I was staying in a hotel 45 minutes outside of Pittsburgh and had seen a lot of Trump signs on the way there from Connecticut. I saw a woman hanging letters on a bridge, T, R, and I could guess what was coming next. TRISCUIT. I wish. I’d rather have a salted wheat cracker in the oval office than the current president elect. </p>
<p>The reason for my fear was, and is - I travel the country as a trans woman, and I live in constant fear that someone, somewhere will pick up on something - a slight adam’s apple, bone structure, a little too much muscle in the arm, slim hips - something that will clue them in to the fact that I’m not your average woman-born-woman. And there's this hard-to-ignore connection between the culture of ignorance and aggression and hatred of LGBT people. So there’s good reason to fear. Last year there were 271 reasons that we know of, and this year doesn’t look a whole lot better. </p>
<p>So I walked out into the world with the knowledge that these people now have a platform for their ignorance, and not only that, that it is legitimized and even glorified when the president elect of the most powerful country in the world has been endorsed by the head of the KKK. I stopped at a Dunkin Donuts for coffee and a big, gas-guzzling SUV with a Trump sticker pulled up next to me. Out stepped an enormous man, meaning tall, easily 6’6, and his wife, both caucasian. Did I imagine it, or was there a certain swagger in the way they walked, did they stand a little straighter as though they felt they had recently been restored to their rightful status in the world. </p>
<p>I was playing at the University of Pittsburgh that afternoon and drove into the city still thinking about all this. I was stuck at a crosswalk on campus while a sea of students in between classes crossed, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. I had forgotten how diverse the student body is at PITT, and I looked out my windshield at the faces of these young women and men from every imaginable racial and ethnic background. And I saw something there that I recognized: </p>
<p>Grief. </p>
<p>I had seen and felt something like that before, back in 2011 when I was living in Tucson and Jared Loughner opened fire at a Gabrielle Giffords rally. He killed 6 people, including a 9-year-old girl, Christina Taylor-Green. I don’t care who you are, how you identify or who you voted for - when something like that happens, we are all in agreement - this is the very definition of tragedy, this should not have happened, the sadness pours in, takes you over and you grieve. Collectively. </p>
<p>And this is what I saw this morning on campus - a shared, collective grief. We are all, or most of us, sad about the exact same thing. Something happened where a massive voting block sent a message that said we don’t want you, we don’t like you, you don’t belong here, you’re not welcome here. </p>
<p>You’re not safe here. </p>
<p>And then something surprising also happened. I bought a drink at Subway and said to the cashier, How’s your day going. She was a young black woman and she looked at me and said, not so great. And I said, I think a lot of us feel that way. We kind of laughed the way people laugh quietly at something that’s clearly fucked up. And then went on to have this conversation that was real and meaningful and I said, I don’t agree with what happened, this is not the country I want to live in. She said, I know, me neither. We really, really saw each other and looked into each other’s eyes and there was pain, warmth, humor, disappointment, hope. </p>
<p>This happened again a few hours later. I was at Target eating a hot dog and an older woman sat down at a table a little ways from me. She was wearing a hijab, and I can’t pinpoint her ethnicity but I bet there are plenty of people who think they can. As I was leaving I sat down across from her and said, Are you doing OK? She raised her hands palms slightly up and blew air out the side of her mouth, the universal language for - What Do YOU think. I told her that it was a terrible thing that happened today. And that there are plenty of people, including the person standing in front of her, that want her here, that she belongs here, that she has a place in this country. Her english was broken and she didn’t say much in return, but she smiled weakly and I put a hand on her shoulder. For one brief moment I just wanted to offer some small bit of comfort to this stranger, because I know she felt some version of the fear I felt when I woke up that morning. </p>
<p>And today I think - maybe this is the work, and this is what it looks like. So many of us have taken for granted that this nation is vaguely inclusive and just, far from perfect but ultimately moving towards something better. The long arc of moral justice. Today it’s very clear that that is not the case, and that our caring might need to become something more concrete than just some amorphous feeling of support for the marginalized. </p>
<p>I want to live in a world where people who are different don’t have to walk around fearing for their safety. I want a lot more than that for all of us, but it’s Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and none of us can thrive while we’re worrying about being assaulted or victimized. In the long term maybe it's possible to create that world through politics, elections, ballot measures, lobbying or voting. But I don't want to wait another 6 months or 2 years or 4 years, I want it now and I know that it's possible to experience it every day if I'm vigilant and caring. <br><br>Because when I see and am seen by someone, when I open my heart to a total stranger and their pain becomes mine, when I give of what I have whether it’s money, kindness, attention, time, caring - for one brief moment the world I want to live in <em>does </em>exist. There it was, is and ever shall be. </p>
<p>In the aftermath of this, let us realize that we’re sharing the same pain and that it’s a rare opportunity to reach out and connect. That there’s some strange alchemy at work that can turn even this to good, and already has - grief opens the heart in a way that few other things can. We’re a fractious group of marginalized people with good intentions, and that this might actually be the thing that binds us together. </p>
<p>Now get out there and be nice to someone.<br><br>Support this blog: <br> </p>
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Namoli Brennet
tag:namolibrennet.com,2005:Post/4449707
2016-11-04T10:29:58-05:00
2020-06-25T08:43:11-05:00
The Ghosts of Who We Were
<p>November 4, 2016.<br><br>I stopped at the Sheraton in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania the other night on the way from Cleveland to New Haven. It’s a hotel I’ve been to a few times and there’s something reassuring about knowing what the lobby looks like and where the elevators are. Maybe it's that the feeling of home lies in the familiar and comfortable. I checked in, went up to my room on the 7th floor which looked down on a large strip mall anchored by Target and JC Penney. It wasn't so terrible - even mundane things look surprisingly good from up high late at night, and retail signs cast a glow not unlike a state fair midway after dark. </p>
<p>I was hungry and thought about room service but I wasn’t desperate enough to justify the expense; the lure of a cosmopolitan and a less exorbitant menu finally won out over introversion and I grabbed my purse and headed downstairs to the bar. After 7 hours in a car my legs were pretty happy to be moving and I probably looked like I was headed somewhere important in a hurry. </p>
<p>I walked into the lounge, it was a quiet Sunday night, only 3 women at a table and one other person at the other end of the bar. I felt a little bit like a rock star, a little bit like an imposter and a little bit like a visitor from another planet. Three things I feel more often than you'd think. I ordered a drink and some food to go, and the bartender struck up a conversation - mostly small talk, where are you from, just passing through, what do you do. </p>
<p>And just like that, I was blindsided by this intense deja-vu. </p>
<p>Back in my early 20s while I was in college, I used to work in a bar at a restaurant - mostly pina coladas, strawberry daiquiris and frozen drinks in garish, tacky souvenir glasses. When I got offered a job at a bar in a 4-star hotel, I jumped at the chance - no more dirty beer cooler, no more psychotic boss watching us on cameras and listening in on our conversations with hidden microphones. Just making drinks in a quiet, semi-normal place. </p>
<p>I learned to make manhattans, martinis, Campari and soda, a Pimm’s cup, stuff people never ordered in a steakhouse that prided itself on large portions and a big salad bar. I learned how to work the dense and complex register, I learned how to charge bar tabs to a room number, where to sneak cigarettes (the loading dock.) But behind the scenes the hotel was going broke, and even their international beer selection began to shrink one bottle at a time. First the Tsingtao was gone, and then the Stella Artois. Even Heineken was on probationary status, and what used to be an impressive pyramid of beers from around the world was at one point down to 4 bottles. Two of which were domestic. </p>
<p>Business tapered off, and I spent a lot of quiet Sunday nights there wishing I could close up early and go home when a late check-in arrived and came down 15 minutes later looking for a turkey club and a stiff drink. So when I found myself sitting at the bar of the Sheraton a couple of weeks ago, it was like the space-time continuum had bent and folded and two realities had come to meet each other. The 22 year old me, making drinks and wondering about the future, and the 46 year old me who I don’t think that 22-year-old could ever have even come close to dreaming up. </p>
<p>My imagined future, at that time: You’re going to finish your Bachelor's degree, get a Master's in Choral Conducting, get a respectable job, maybe get married, buy a house and do a little writing and performing on the side. Beyond that - who knows? Maybe a dog and a couple more fish. </p>
<p>Reality: You’re going to finish your Bachelor’s degree, and then you’re going to move to Arizona and do a year of grad school before realizing it’s not right for you. You’re going to start playing in bar bands, you’re going to play in jazz and swing bands, but there’s going to be this nagging sense that you’re getting farther and farther off course. You’re going to begin to address the issue of being transgender, but it’s going to take a lot of time and a lot of thought and you’re going to have to wade through a shit-ton of anxiety. You’re going to pick up a guitar and start writing songs again, but it’s going take 4 or 5 years before you come up with anything that even feels like the beginning of what you want to say. </p>
<p>You’re going to call the beginning of what you want to say Boy in a Dress. </p>
<p>You’re going to start touring, you’re going to work at a church, you're going to staff an art gallery, you’re going to paint houses and in between you’re going to keep writing songs and tour a little more. You’re going to move out of your generic stuccoed apartment into something funkier and draftier in the artsy part of town. You’re going to start hormones, you’re going to start electrolysis and you’re going to question it every step of the way because your Catholic upbringing tells you that you don’t have the right to have agency over your own body. </p>
<p>You’re going to realize that the depression and anxiety you struggled with at 15 wasn’t just a fluke. </p>
<p>You’re going to change your name, you’re going to finish your transition as much as anyone can, for a long time you’re going to do nothing but write, record and tour because it’s the only way that you know how to try. You're going to be one of two trans women in a production of the Vagina Monologues, you're going to see RENT and it's going to change your life. You’re going to quit your side jobs and make a living playing music, you’re going to finish your 9th, 10th, 11th CD and at some point you’re going to move in with and become part of an unbelievably loving family in Iowa. You’re going to be invited to play in Germany, you’re going to go back enough times that it feels familiar and comfortable, another home. </p>
<p>Like the Sheraton in Harrisburg, where I find myself sitting at the bar drinking a cosmopolitan, listening to the clink of the glass against the granite of the bar as I set it down. My turkey club arrives in a styrofoam box, I pay the bill and leave a good tip because I know what it’s like to work a in a hotel on a slow night. I’ve been on both sides of that bar, and in both cases I have developed a profound appreciation for generosity. </p>
<p>Up in my room there’s a Law and Order marathon on (Chung-Chunk!), and the ubiquitous turkey club is actually pretty good. There’s some kind of pepper on the bacon, and maybe they used aioli instead of mayo. It’s a nice touch. The bartender made me another drink to take up to my room - he got it just right, and I sip it while thinking - what a weird fucking life. It’s good, it’s bittersweet, it’s lonely, it’s painfully beautiful. To see and experience the world through the eyes and ears of a songwriter and poet, to hold conflicting realities and possibilities, to feel that I am young, I am old, I am naive, I am world-wise, I am cavernously empty, I am fiercely content, I am completely disconnected, I am a part of everything. </p>
<p>On the 7th floor of this 3-star hotel, the red glow of a distant Target sign lights the window and I wonder where life will take me, and if that future reality will someday bend and distort to meet this one while I live a life then that is perhaps unimaginable to me now. </p>
<p>So many lives within a life, maybe even other lives before that with lives within them, phantoms, shadows, images, traces of the revenant and incorporeal, the truth of who we are, the ghosts of who we were.<br><br>Support this blog:<br> </p>
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Namoli Brennet
tag:namolibrennet.com,2005:Post/4419673
2016-10-14T14:47:30-05:00
2017-04-22T23:28:33-05:00
Trumping Trump
<p>October 4, 2016.<br><br>“Here we are, light unshown; <br>One round heart, one round home.” </p>
<p>- Apocalypse Lullaby, The Wailin’ Jennys </p>
<p>There’s been this controversy locally about the upcoming election. Shocking, I know. But there’s a pretty good mix of folks here in Iowa, everyone from hard-core hippies living off the grid to industrial farmers who have probably been working their land for generations. So while I and most of my friends will be voting for Hillary this November, there are also a pretty good handful of Trump signs around. Big signs. </p>
<p>One of these, surrounded by other, tinier signs, stood at the corner of a major intersection. Which in this little town actually means a four-way stop. But nevertheless a place with a lot of visibility and traffic. So when someone spray-painted over the “T” in Trump to make the sign read, “RUMP”, a lot of people saw that, it was pretty hard to miss. The owner of the sign then placed <em>another </em>sign atop the original that read something like, “How Liberal Democrats respect your rights.” </p>
<p>When I saw that second sign, I got a little bit angry - my first thought was, you don’t know it was a Democrat. It could have been a Libertarian, someone from the Green Party, even a disgruntled Republican. Or some drunk college kids. But even I had to reluctantly admit that Democrat was the likely choice. </p>
<p>The sign stood up there for another week, a pretty good illustration of the kind of divisive and bitter rhetoric that has marked this election cycle. And then last weekend, maybe after the second debate, maybe after Trump’s video came out - someone tore this 4' by 8' sign apart and left it in pieces on the ground. It sat there for a few more days and I wondered what would become of it, or if maybe this was the end. </p>
<p>Today I drove up to that same intersection and saw this man putting his sign back together, and something about it broke my heart. I found myself driving through the intersection, turning around, parking my car and walking over to him. He was kneeling on the ground and taping the pieces back together and he was about 90% there. And there was something about this picture that made me feel like, I know this pain. I know the pain of being hurt anonymously, I know the pain of being sucker-punched, I know the pain of being disrespected and misunderstood, I know the pain of being painted with a broad brush. </p>
<p>So I came up to him, told him I was a Democrat and that I was really sorry for what happened to his sign. Really sorry. That no matter who we vote for it’s so important that we try to be kind to each other. He said he had talked to the Democratic party, tried to get them to do some kind of talk on tolerance at the local college, something, without any luck. I get that it’s a hard sell but I could see his point. </p>
<p>We talked for a little bit and introduced ourselves, he seemed like a nice enough guy and I said so. He said the same of me. There could have been another conversation, what are your reasons for supporting Trump, what on earth, do these things bother you about him, what about him appeals to you, what about this video. But something in me felt like - no. Right now, this is just the time for me to apologize to him and let him know that in spite of our differences I see him as human being and I want to live in a world where people don’t rip other people’s signs apart and do hurtful things that they’ll never be accountable for. </p>
<p>I don’t think I could have convinced him to vote for Hillary any more than he could have convinced me to vote for Trump. But who cares. When the election is over we’ll still be neighbors and if my car gets stuck in the snow I bet he’d be as likely as anyone to pull over and help. Sometimes I think the media are all playing us for fools, constantly reminding us of everything that makes us think we’re so different from each other, painting caricatures of tax-and-spend Democrats and gun-toting Republicans. </p>
<p>Having this conversation with this man, I felt like - I don't know who's going to win in November, but today we both won. To hell with all the politicians and pundits, today a transgender woman who early-voted for Hillary yesterday shook hands with a man putting his Trump sign back together and to me that feels like progress. <br><br> If there’s a way forward, I know that kindness is a part of it. <br><br>Support this blog: <br> </p>
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Namoli Brennet
tag:namolibrennet.com,2005:Post/4379857
2016-09-19T21:38:17-05:00
2017-04-22T23:33:44-05:00
Find a Light
<p>September 19, 2016. <br><br>“Look at where you are. Look at where you started. The fact that you’re alive is a miracle, just stay alive - that would be enough.” </p>
<p>- Eliza Hamilton, That Would Be Enough (Hamilton) <br><br><br>I’ve never, ever been a stable person, but I hide it well. People who know me, even those who are close to me, would probably be shocked to know the depth of things that I feel and manage to keep hidden. There are names for it, but even the names don’t say enough - depression, body dysmorphia, anxiety, attachment disorder, borderline personality. To feel is a blessing and curse, to feel deeply even more so. </p>
<p>Last year after my driver’s license expired I went to the DMV to get another. I did my usual hair thing, put on some makeup and was able to pull of what I thought was an almost genuine smile for the picture. It took a few days for the envelope from the DMV to show up - I was on my way to Target to look for some new clothes, and I stopped at my P.O. Box on the way. I left the envelope sitting on the passenger seat. The reason for this is that I knew that what was inside would have the potential to either make or ruin my day. </p>
<p>I pulled over to get gas, my curiosity got the better of me. Or the worst of me. I opened the envelope slowly, looked at the photo and my heart sank. And sank. And sank. </p>
<p>I saw a small, shadowy picture of someone who looks tired and gaunt with angular, masculine features, dark circles under their eyes, an overbite, a face that to my mind reads as male in sharp contrast with the female gender marker that I had gone to such great lengths to change over 10 years ago. Great. Every time I check into a fucking hotel or take a flight I have to show them this and have them think, What Is It. </p>
<p>Mostly for me it confirmed, I am not in any way beautiful. And I don’t say this so it can be refuted, it’s just something very real that I feel and I feel it a lot. I can curate my image on Facebook or online, but in bad moments this feels like the real truth, what I see in my rearview mirror, what I see on bright, sunny days in the reflections of car windows, what I see in bad cell phone pictures taken from unforgiving angles in bad light. Someone old with bad skin, skin that has been through maybe 36 laser electrolysis treatments to get rid of the beard hair that still stubbornly refuses to completely go away. Pores, wrinkles, crevices, a growing list of imperfections that makes me feel like I’m worth less, and less, and less. Worthless. </p>
<p>And this is just my face. </p>
<p>I turned the car around and started driving home. The predominant thought I had was, fuck Target, fuck clothes - there’s nothing I can wear or buy that’s going to change the fact that my face is an ugly, shitty, horrible thing to look at and it’s only going to get worse. No wonder I’m alone, no wonder I can’t be with anyone, how could I ever want to let anyone get close enough to look at me. </p>
<p>On the 20 mile drive home I felt mostly just numb. Or dumb. Dumb in the way of kids who believe a fantasy, who are play-acting, dumb in the way of someone who was naive and got tricked into something because they were too trusting. </p>
<p>Did I transition? Did I actually think I passed as female? In my weaker moments, did I entertain the idea that I was passably attractive? Look at this face, look at these hands, look at this pathetic attempt to try to mimic something that any 17 year old girl wearing sweat pants and a flannel shirt could easily put to shame. Look at this neck, when I swallow it looks like my grandmother’s, I look 25 years older than I am. </p>
<p>Did I mention I have a touch of dysmorphia. </p>
<p>On the way home all I could think was, I have that vicodin left over from that root canal years ago, I could take a handful and just disappear for a day. People might wonder where I am and if I'm OK. Or maybe, they say 4000 mg of acetaminophen can fry your liver, maybe today is the day. Look at this sunlight, look at these clouds, feel that breeze through the open window, look at these rolling fields of corn, look at this world, this could be the last day if you want it to be. Maybe that’s it, maybe Today is The Day. The last one. Maybe this is part of the plan, maybe I’m supposed to self-destruct, maybe something good will come out of it, maybe this is the one idea that won't go away because it's what's meant to be. </p>
<p>I got home, walked upstairs, started googling, how much vicodin to kill yourself. In those search results are always links for suicide help and the number for the suicide hotline. I haven’t called it in years and I didn’t feel like calling it then either but after 20 minutes I thought, I <em>am</em> in a little bit of a crisis. Understatement. </p>
<p>I dialed the number and started talking to this young woman - she sounded like she was still in college, and she also sounded like she was reading from a form and neither of these things were exactly encouraging. I told her about my experience that day, told her that I was holding a bottle of vicodin in my hand. I told her I was trans and lived in a small town, I told her that I had been through the local behavioral health system with no luck, that I had to explain to someone with an MSW that surgery was not just “chopping it off.” </p>
<p>She said, what do you need to do to get some help. I said, I thought calling you was getting some help. She said, it sounds like you need a therapist, I said, I’m trying but my insurance doesn’t cover therapy. She said, just so you know, we’re not a therapy service, we’re a crisis line. I could hear the irritation in her voice, and I said - Do you actually even want to talk to me? It felt like she didn’t, it really felt like that. I said, what do you think I should do? And she said, I don’t know, it sounds like you’ve exhausted your options. </p>
<p>That was a little disappointing to hear. </p>
<p>I just sat there staring at the carpet for another 30 minutes, I was kind of stunned. And also more than a little bit angry. Maybe that was her secret strategy, to piss me off so much that my hopelessness turned into a white-hot laser beam of rage directed at this nameless twenty-something who was probably volunteering so she could put it on her CV when she applied for grad school. </p>
<p>After another twenty minutes I thought, I could call my friend Simon. And I did. I’m rarely honest with people about my mental health because I think that they might overreact and call 911 (if that’s overreacting.) Or else they might be overwhelmed and not know what to say. I worry that I might come across as too needy or ungrateful, I worry that after a couple of phone calls like this they might not pick up next time. </p>
<p>None of those things happened. We talked for an hour or so, I said, look - this is what I’m struggling with, I deal with this and a heap of other shit every day, some days it’s better, some days it’s worse, some days it’s a lot worse than worse. Some days it just hurts to be in a room with people who have eyes, it just hurts to be looked at. We talked, or mostly I talked, and he listened. I bitched about the suicide hotline, how it was unconscionable that this girl could treat me the way she did, that I could have hung up and killed myself, that I hung up feeling worse than when I called. He listened, and he agreed, she was a shitty volunteer. </p>
<p>Years ago I wrote a song called Find a Light - it’s about suicide, I don’t think there’s any mistaking that. There’s a line at the end that says, You were looking for a friend/Someone to listen/Someone to lend their ear/Someone who would really hear you, really hear you. </p>
<p>I felt like Simon really heard me, and in that hour I felt my resolve soften, and I started feeling like, it’s just one picture, there are other pictures, which ones are true, I don’t know. I don’t know. At some point, since we’re both Irish and neurotic, one or the other of us made a joke, I laughed a little bit, for one second I remembered that I have the capacity to take myself less seriously. What a gift that was. </p>
<p>This was a year ago - since then I have different insurance, I have a therapist, I have a great doctor and have been on and off different antidepressants trying to find something that helps. In spite of all that it’s still been a Hard Fucking Year. And not even the hardest, I lived through much worse in my twenties and thirties, much, much worse. And my life is good - I’m not ignorant of all the blessings I have, my health, my intellect, the resources to have transitioned, a talent, a gift, the luxury of travel, the ability to turn my pain into something beautiful. The small miracles that surround me every day, bird, sky, bee, cat, wind, grass, the impossibly beautiful world. </p>
<p>The struggle is still real and is still there and sometimes I deal with it constructively and sometimes not. Sometimes to be really heard by one person is enough, enough to plant the seed of doubt in our sinister plans for ourselves, enough to awaken a blessed uncertainty, maybe. Maybe we do matter. Maybe. </p>
<p>To all who struggle, hang in there. The tropes are all true, it’s a permanent solution to a temporary problem, but that doesn’t mean we’re not hurting and we don’t need help. On my list of favorite movies is Contact with Jodie Foster, and this is a quote from the end that always sticks with me. </p>
<p> “You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you’re not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we’ve found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other.” <br><br>Truth. </p>
<p><br>Some resources that made me feel less alone and actually helped: </p>
<p><a contents="http://lostallhope.com/" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="http://lostallhope.com/help-me">http://lostallhope.com/help-me </a></p>
<p><a contents="http://www.metanoia.org/suicide/&nbsp;" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="http://www.metanoia.org/suicide/">http://www.metanoia.org/suicide/ </a></p>
<p><a contents="https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/hello-cruel-world/id461012299?mt=11&nbsp;" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/hello-cruel-world/id461012299?mt=11">https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/hello-cruel-world/id461012299?mt=11 </a></p>
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5:46
Namoli Brennet
tag:namolibrennet.com,2005:Post/3808451
2015-08-07T15:31:57-05:00
2021-01-25T10:32:31-06:00
The River Runs Wide
‘River, river carry me on<br>Living river carry me on<br>River, river carry me on<br>To the place where I come from.’<br><br>- Peter Gabriel, Washing of the Water<br><br>Yesterday, Northern Wisconsin, I am loading a canoe on the back of a friend’s truck - on my to-do list for the summer, canoeing, kayaking, tubing, summer things. At heart I am a fall-winter-spring person, but I am learning to make the best of this season and in spite of or because of the heat there are small joys lurking everywhere: berries, popsicles, wildflowers, fireflies.<br><br>We drive to the launch and drop off our canoe. A group of teenagers is emptying out of a van into a half dozen canoes of their own, the shore echoes with their laughter. They sound carefree and happy, at a place where the unknown eclipses the known and possibility outweighs certainty.<br><br>8 miles further down the road we drop the truck off, drive my car back to the now-empty and quiet launch and push off into the river. I am more careful than I wish I were, afraid to get my sneakers wet, screaming when a dragonfly swoops in front of me. I am wearing a yellow life vest and I am worried that I look stupid, but I am also trying hard in general to get over my fear of looking stupid and that’s one reason I am doing something I don’t know how to do.<br><br>Watching someone paddle a canoe is peaceful and simple, paddling an actual canoe is much harder. Less an act of graceful floating and more the burning of shoulder blades, the rubbing birth of blisters, the aching of wrists, elbows. Slapping at the water seeking purchase and staring at the patch of river in front of me, it feels to me like if we do not pull ourselves forward then we will stay fixed and immobile. <br><br>How far to the landing, another way of saying Are We There Yet, we are not even close, just getting started, maybe 1/20th of the way. The river and it’s banks are beautiful and green with white pine, red pine, oak, aspen, grasses and wildflowers, the water is clear and we see fish as large as my forearm swimming along the bottom. Eagle and osprey and waxwing arc overhead and their cries echo from the tall trees. The journey is beautiful but unrelenting - going upstream is a futile and impossible choice, and we are parked fully 9 miles downstream. And so we do the only thing we can do, which is to keep paddling.<br><br>At one point I lay down in the front of the canoe and I am surprised to see how quickly the clouds stream overhead.<br><br>6 miles later we stop to rest and pull up on a sandy bank, I flop down at the top of some wooden stairs, my arms and hands and shoulders thank me for the reprieve. My friend is in the water above her knees and calls for me to come in too. I roll up my pants and step in, she says, try to walk upstream! I do and I realize it is almost impossible, the current is so strong that it is almost like flying into a strong wind. Even walking back to the shore sideways, our legs scissor comically in front of themselves and we wind up 6 feet south of where we planned, laughing, smiling, the forgetting of self a rare boon, in the midst of all this beauty a gift within a gift.<br><br>After a brief rest we are back on the water, the sun is lower in the sky but still high enough to give warmth and light in the kindest of proportions. As we move downstream I realize I am looking less at the water in front of me and more at the shore, at how quickly and constantly we glide past. The memory of the tugging current is still fresh, that massive but gentle strength and perseverance, was that underneath me all the while. <br><br>We are two-thirds of the way there, by now my impatience has dissolved and my tense, willful motions have softened into partnership both with my friend and with the river beneath us. An embarrassingly apt metaphor coalesces when I realize that guidance and patience alone would have eventually brought us to our landing place, that our self-effort works best when it is aligned and in concert with the known and unknown forces that direct and guide us to what in retrospect seemed inevitable.<br><br>I wish that lesson could sink in more deeply.<br><br>2 days later I am on my laptop booking shows, looking at a calendar that has me driving 10,000 miles in the next few months and then flying halfway across the world before the year is up. I take a break to make some coffee and see my reflection in a passing mirror, see the tiredness that sleep doesn’t seem to touch, feel the brief and penetrating sting of criticism, the slow erosion of worth. How I slap at those thoughts like mosquitos, how equally insidious and persistent they are, how much I yearn for some kind of constancy of mind and spirit, something to help make sense of the swirling eddy of confusion that I alternately occupy, create, observe, orbit. The seeking of peace some magnetic north, we are migrating geese, turning to face and find the earthly, ancestral echo of some heavenly answer, a ringing note muffled by the gossamer of worlds overlapping.<br><br>The memory of water, of current, the motion of clouds.<br><br><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/58859/b209448757869b3ccccf803eb16ab9c62ed4f839/original/img956248.jpg?1438980987" class="size_l justify_center border_" />
Namoli Brennet
tag:namolibrennet.com,2005:Post/3515921
2015-02-08T23:41:30-06:00
2017-03-10T22:47:51-06:00
Boy in a Dress: 12 years later.
<br>"Who am I to change my life? Who am I to fuck with form?" - from <em>A Guy Named Joe, </em><a contents="Joe Stevens" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="http://joestevensmusic.com/">Joe Stevens</a><br><br>12 years ago: my first CD, Boy in a Dress. It was the culmination of years of false starts and bargaining, of trying to be something, of trying to find some kind of satisfaction that would make me happy enough to continue to avoid and ignore the identity issues that had been chasing me for most of my life. <p>My story does not fit the typical trans narrative; I did not know I was a girl when I was 4, I didn’t know much of anything except to try to enjoy and make the best of what was given to me. I gravitated towards girls as friends, but was equally as happy playing with boys. I learned to crochet from my grandmother, liked to vacuum and also liked to wield a hammer and climb trees. At what point do these activities become gendered? I don’t know. I learned quickly and at a young age that some things were off limits to me, and that doing or saying certain things would bring trouble or ridicule or scorn. We moved a lot as kids, and most of my efforts were focused on fitting in, trying to make friends, wanting to be liked. I told jokes, I made origami rabbits, I did impersonations of teachers and TV commercials. </p>
<p>7th grade, halloween, I wore my sister’s girl scout uniform, was still young and undeveloped enough that people thought I was her. How happy that made me. </p>
<p>(Something in a tabloid, sex change, transsexual, what is that, is it me, the fear of being caught, my eyes lingering too long on the headline, the type, showing an interest in something that my Catholic upbringing would surely count among the weightier sins.) </p>
<p>High school, a year younger than everyone else, had skipped a grade somewhere between first and third. It never seemed like a big deal, but now - everything had changed, everyone was changing so quickly. Me, clueless, the only thing we had been taught about our bodies was that we shouldn’t touch them, didn’t understand boys, girls, puberty, bodies, anything. The teasing had already started in the locker room, there were boys in 9th grade that looked like men, the fear of being singled out, small, thin, waifish, a target. I tried to be quiet, to go unnoticed, invisible, when group showers became mandatory some of us would hide in the back, wet our hair in the sink, hope it looked convincing. </p>
<p>The ravages and confusion of puberty, at least it was a blessing to fit in, at least something was happening, muscles, hair, a camouflage, a subterfuge. Maybe I felt like I was playing for the wrong team but I lacked the language and the understanding to articulate that, let alone embrace it. </p>
<p>Graduating high school at 17, moving out at 18, living with friends, mostly girls, platonically, roommates, but still hanging out with boys, shooting pool, smoking cigarettes, it was OK, the feeling of belonging was a warm blanket. Falling in and out of love, peach schnapps, wine coolers, the beginnings of the anxiety that would harangue me for most my 20s and 30s, the underlying feeling that some of that anxiety had to do with what I loosely called my gender issues. </p>
<p>Trying out crossdressing but quickly realizing that it was trouble, because what I saw and felt was that this was a better expression of me than the one I was living. The end of a major relationship, a chance to try something different, a therapist, another, trying on identities like summer dresses, who am I. Am I who my body tells me I am from the outside? Things could be so much easier if that were true. It is not. </p>
<p>Comment from a friend, If you’re really supposed to be a woman then wouldn’t it be like God played some cruel joke? Because you just - you look so much like a man. </p>
<p>The beginnings, small things, makeup, a soft sweater. The agonizing debate over starting hormones, the Catholic gnashing of teeth, who am I to mess with what God created, who am I to have agency. The anxiety ratcheting up, up, the fear of rejection, of ridicule, realizing that I have never really risked these things because I have never shown anyone who I truly am. Finally some lightness, a friend, a confidante, a supporter, some sanity, why don’t you just let yourself try this, could you really be any unhappier than you already are. No. </p>
<p>Exhilaration, freedom, acceptance, terror, rejection, shame, hope, confusion, uncertainty. </p>
<p>Electrolysis, laser, 5, 10, 20 times, the snapping of a hot rubber band many times over, the sting of it, the surprise and joy of watching dark, black hairs come off in my fingertips when I rubbed my 3 day old stubble. </p>
<p>Giving up singing because it sounded too deep, too resonant, I thought that I was supposed to disappear, to be swallowed up by a new identity, one that would be compromised by a rich baritone. The internal struggle over that, the strong desire for complete self-expression that would not be contained in a soft falsetto or a strained alto. The willingness to step into a place of complete uncertainty, to be on the path towards something more female without holding fast to some preconceived idea of how that expression would ultimately manifest. To embrace the fact that I did not know, that all I had were questions and a desperate hunger to answer them, and the feeling that the ignoring of these questions would be the death of the best part of me. </p>
<p>And accompanying all of this, the simultaneous rebirth and discovery of creativity, words, songs, the pure love of sounds, the slow building of a quiet, shaky confidence. The joy and unleashing of something long held back, the flood of ideas, something simultaneously breaking and breaking through, who was I before this, how did I learn to hold back so much for so long, how did I not know that the best parts of me are adjacent to the most vulnerable parts. I made these choices with no understanding of what I was sacrificing: honesty, truth, directness, wholeness, a clear voice. </p>
<p>And what is transition - life is transition, we are all always changing, what does it mean to live 'full-time', I am always living full time as something, someone. Is it a process, is it a goal, does it bring happiness, is that happiness lasting, is it a carrot on a stick, and even if it is, does that carrot lead me somewhere more interesting than I would have been otherwise. Trapped in the wrong body was a narrative that never adequately described me, and yet finding my way into the right body has been so freeing that looking back I wonder if I didn’t feel trapped. </p>
<p>Or maybe less trapped, and more like: relentlessly moving towards a huge mistake unless I intervened.</p>
<p>I think about all these things and who I am and also think, who would I be if not this, the inevitability of it, like a verse into a chorus into a bridge, of course it happened that way, of course I became this person. That this transition has been in large part about stripping away the otherness and seeing what remains, a game where the universe places you far, far from yourself and says, see if you can find your way back. Try. And as you try, you will learn things about yourself, things you would never have known otherwise, you will undergo things that will deepen your experience of being human, things that teach you about the parts of yourself that are constant as everything else around them orbits in a swirling eddy of confusion. </p>
<p>This is the path by which I have come to know myself, and I now inhabit this body more gladly than ever before. <br> </p>
Namoli Brennet
tag:namolibrennet.com,2005:Post/3172299
2014-09-04T22:26:48-05:00
2014-09-07T07:56:00-05:00
Employee of the Month
<br><span class="font_regular"><span class="s1">It is only too true that a lot of artists are mentally ill - it is a life which, to put it mildly, makes one an outsider. I'm alright when I completely immerse myself in work, but I'll always remain half crazy." - Vincent Van Gogh</span></span>
<p><br><span class="font_regular">Across the street from this apartment in Omaha is what appears at first glance to be a public park or the campus of a small liberal arts college. Manicured, verdant lawns, abundant trees, charming brick buildings punctuated by the occasional fountain, all of it tastefully lit from below at dusk. Tucked within is a huge man-made lake encircled by a brick walkway, and at the center of this lake are plumes of water spraying majestically into the air, maybe as high as 50 feet or more.</span></p>
<p class="p2"><span class="font_regular">All of this is home to industrial foods giant Con Agra, maker and distributor of Marie Callendar© frozen dinners, Rosarita© refried beans, Hunt's© ketchup and an exhaustive list of brands that dot the shelves of nearly every major supermarket. In the late 1980s, the corporation razed several aging, historic warehouses to build their headquarters here - to quell the ensuing controversy, they agreed to transform it into something that was both beautiful and inviting to the public.</span></p>
<p class="p2"><span class="font_regular">I reluctantly admit that it actually *is* both of these things, and I love walking around here for the same reason I liked riding my bike around the campus at the University of Arizona at night. Basking in the golden light and strange quiet of an otherwise bustling place, I'm aware that beneath the placid calm there's a kind of lingering, thrumming energy. Maybe it's the residual hum of so much activity, of people frantically typing, revising, sending, checking watches, are we late, do we have time, the pressure of deadlines, schedules, expectations. There's something about being adjacent to that but not a part of it, a gliding observer, that feels almost ghost-like.</span></p>
<p class="p2"><span class="font_regular">Through lit windows I see the outlines of offices, cubicles, common spaces, meeting rooms, and in my mind's eye I place myself in the diorama, I am a Part of the Team. The job I imagine has a description or a title, and it is clear what is expected of me - a series of vague yet fulfilling tasks, collating papers, stapling, sorting into piles, filing, creating some sort of order out of disarray. I imagine being in meetings and occasionally offering a pithy insight into a problem and being commended for it. I imagine quarterly reviews which are mostly glowing but do point out a few areas where improvement is needed. I imagine inside jokes, birthdays, the annual employee Christmas party where I have a little too much to drink - just enough to be sillier than usual, to surprise people by cutting loose. In this dream I am efficient, dependable and eager to please, probably not cut out for upper management but content to do what I do, to be counted on. The dream becomes surprisingly elaborate and begins to include touches like pictures pinned to a corkboard, or in a frame on my desk - it is not clear if I am married, if these are my children, nieces, nephews, in-laws, friends, but in the dream they are important to me, they are my Loved Ones.</span></p>
<p class="p2"><span class="font_regular">Conveniently absent in the dream is the sense that I'm squandering my talents, ignoring my calling, living someone else's life, wasting precious time, trapped in a series of days that start to feel like the same day photocopied over and over. Conveniently absent is the small, insistent voice that tells me when I'm headed in the wrong direction, the voice that gets louder by degrees when I ignore it to pursue some tangent for the sake of security, when I think about going back to college, teaching, dream of a regular paycheck, personal days, benefits, a tax refund in April.</span></p>
<p class="p2"><span class="font_regular">There is a theme that has been cropping up in my life the past few years - comfortable with uncertainty. Embracing the fact that whether it's gender or spirituality or something else, that you can actually hold in your mind two ideas that ought to cancel each other out, but in fact don't. They just sit there staring like feral cats. It makes me feel like maybe life is not about arriving at some place of certainty and safety, that life is a lot more like the cluster of notes that sounds on a piano when you step on the sustain pedal and hit all the white keys with your forearm. Dissonant, complex, strangely beautiful, hard to describe, hard to pin down, ringing with major, minor, seventh, ninth, with barely audible overtones that hint at other remote but ever present possibilities, grandiose as Whitman or simple as William Carlos Williams' plums.</span></p>
<p class="p2"><span class="font_regular">We are vast dreamers, movers and shakers, thinkers, travelers, wanderers, gypsies, adventurers, yes, and we are also the simplest, the kindest, the best, the Employee of the Month.</span></p>
Namoli Brennet
tag:namolibrennet.com,2005:Post/3142953
2014-08-18T16:54:59-05:00
2014-09-02T09:46:51-05:00
The Inevitable Crash
<br><span class="s1">I have never in my entire life been someone who exercises regularly. In fact, I could probably been counted among the "proudly out of shape" who got winded going up a couple of flights of stairs and then made a joke about it. But for some reason a few months ago, part vanity, part something else, I started running a couple of miles in the morning and then, when things warmed up, I started biking the 11-mile trail around the town of Decorah. </span>
<p>If you're going to attempt this, you should know that yes, it is incredibly beautiful. The trail winds by the Upper Iowa River, making it's way through woods, cornfields, pastures, across bridges and then generously funneling you out adjacent to the parking lot of the Whippy Dip. One of the other things you should know about the trail is that it is NOT ENTIRELY FLAT - there are ways around that, but the first time I rode I literally sat spread-eagled by the side of a cornfield for 15 minutes staring at the sky and wheezing. </p>
<p class="p2">I have kept at it though, and the other night I decided to get a little closer to my end-of-summer goal of Riding The Trail Twice. One way to practice is by finishing the trail and then riding the fairly level 5-mile stretch to the fish hatchery and back, which is what I opted for. I was actually surprised by how hard it wasn't, if that makes sense. I made it all the way to the hatchery and then realized that dusk was quickly turning to dark and I should really get a move on - so I turned around and started riding back, feeling so incredibly warmed up and limber after 16 or 17 miles of riding. I was amazed at how much energy I had, and was also aware that it was getting very dark and that there were copious amounts of gnats, fireflies and mosquitos now clouding the humid air. </p>
<p class="p2">All of this inspired me to pedal more quickly. I was zipping along a long, straight stretch, singing loudly, lost in thought when I looked down and saw - it seemed involuntary - my left hand squeezing the front brake lever. I can't explain this - I'm right handed, I've been doing a lot of bike riding and I'm very familiar with the danger of applying the front brakes alone. I’m not sure what happened, but it happened very, very quickly - suddenly I was hurtling over the tangled sideways mess of my bicycle, both hearing and feeling the skin on my left arm and shoulder scraping the asphalt. Nanoseconds later my knee, the palm of my hand, my left cheekbone hitting that same asphalt, bouncing off. The confusion of it all, a woman pulling over to see if I was OK, me feeling my face for blood and not finding any but still feeling incredibly banged up. I said I thought I was OK, not so much because I thought I actually was but more because the taboo against inconveniencing other people is so deeply ingrained in me. I walked my bike for a few hundred feet and then gingerly climbed back on, feeling a strange mix of shock, bewilderment, something like sadness. </p>
<p class="p2">I started riding the last few miles of the trail, pitch dark by now except for the small light on my handlebars which were now skewed oddly to the right. I reached around to make sure that my red clip-on light was still blinking, the light I’ve had for nearly 10 years, the one I brought from Arizona to Iowa. The same light I wore when I went biking in 2008 after summer monsoons and drank black tea in a coffee shop while reading books and trying to forget that I was deep in the throes of horrible, incurable anxiety. I reached around to make sure this light was on, and that’s when I realized that it was gone, had fallen off in the impact. It was miles behind me and this more than anything was what made me start crying - there was no way I could go back for it, couldn’t imagine turning around and then turning around again. And so I kept riding, my legs slowly pumping up and down, tears dripping sideways down my wind-blown face, mourning the loss of this small, sentimental thing and maybe too mourning the loss of bigger things, safety, control, protection, security, stability. Things that I sometimes feel have stalked as much as eluded me for most of my life. </p>
<p class="p2">I came home to the realization that I was actually lucky in that I miraculously hadn’t broken anything, was just badly scraped up and nursing some large and tender bruises. New ones would show up the next day and the next, on my thigh, my stomach, below my rib cage, each one part of a mysterious story making me wonder, what happened? What did it look like, how did I fall, what hit where, what made this mark. </p>
<p class="p2">Tonight I had plans to get back on the bike trail - as I type this it’s started raining steadily outside and I realize I am reconsidering. If it stops, maybe, I could think about it - but there’s a part of my brain that now thinks about the slickness of wet pavement in a way that I didn’t a few days ago, a part that knows how tenuous my connection to the ground is and how quickly it can give way. </p>
<p class="p2">I will get back on the trail today or tomorrow or someday soon, and I will probably be a little more careful, reminded by the ache of a shoulder or the sting of still-healing wounds that my body is a tender, vulnerable and fragile vessel. The hurt will remind me of the injury, until it doesn’t, until it begins to heal and a new memory forms, a memory of a span of time without hurt, without trauma, without a jarring, violent interruption. This will feel like a beginning, and it will feel like forgetting; it will also feel inevitable as much as it will feel familiar. My mind has a thousand ideas and variations on the what and the when and the why of this life, but the body knows only one thing, one beautiful, redundant and singular idea:</p>
<p class="p2">Stay until we can’t. </p>
<p class="p2"> </p>
<p class="p2"> </p>
<p class="p2"> </p>
Namoli Brennet
tag:namolibrennet.com,2005:Post/2860718
2014-04-10T14:31:09-05:00
2014-04-10T15:04:44-05:00
Maple Syrup
<span class="s1">Made it back to Decorah just in time to catch maple syrup, tapping trees, the magic of that. Drinking sap out of the bucket, the wonder of it, right from inside the tree, something almost holy about it and maybe not even almost. A sacrament. The wondrous symphony of empty buckets, each ringing with its own note as the drops of sap fell and rung, the quiet chaos of rhythm and soft bells. The smell of the undergrowth, leaves, fertile things that have not seen the sun since December, hidden under the dense pack of snow until just a few weeks ago.<br><br>And the magnificent boil next door, carrying heavy 5-gallon buckets all the way down the hill, a long walk, arms aching, in the distance clouds of steam rising, the smell of woodsmoke, heat. Gathering around it, something sacred about that too, the alchemy of it all, distilling the lifeblood of trees into something more concentrated, dense. Dipping a tin cup into the boiling sap, again the feeling of a sacrament, communion wine, something - this is my blood, which is given up for you, do this in memory of me.<br><br>Then the meal afterwards, that rare feeling of an unexpected and holy supper prepared from simple and delicious ingredients, the feeling of being in the company of other spirits, family, connectedness, fulfillment, contentment. I came home that night feeling so, so, so <i>good, </i>so full in the best possible way, hard to explain except the warm glow of some satisfaction, comfort, deeply sated. </span>
<p> </p>
Namoli Brennet
tag:namolibrennet.com,2005:Post/2675532
2014-03-02T22:01:11-06:00
2018-09-15T12:39:27-05:00
Let This Be the Year
I am thinking of Limits, both visible and hidden, placed from birth or gleaned from experience, the underlying lie that we are undeserving, fear and the fear of fear, the anchor of depression, the plague of self-doubt, all of it inspiring the desperate wish to overcome, to surmount, to see and live into what we think and know is possible, to free ourselves and run laughing into an improbable year. Let this be the year. <br><br>And of Purpose, of things unfulfilled, destinies unlived and dreams still dormant, of seeds planted in the fertile ground of the soul before we were named, waiting for their time, their season, waiting for their chance to push up through the dark soil and reveal their resilient, unshakable resolve, waiting patiently for their year. Let this be the year. <br><br>And of Criticism: the endless cataloguing of faults, the harshness of judgment leveled at a blameless self, the pointless reckoning of an inherent worth, the fickleness of reflection and ever-shifting light, the churning noise of opinions both inside and out, the yearning for an unchanging value and immutable beauty, to be discovered in some distant year. Let this be the year. <br><br>The empty places, begging to be filled by some generous, ethereal hand in a far away, longed-for year. Let this be the year. <br><br>(Resentments, held tightly, tiny weights affixed to the heart, to be let go of, forgiven in some other, waiting year. Let this be the year.)<br><br>And the labyrinth of Thought, heaping complexity on the simple, layers of meaningless meaning, the useless chatter of questions, second, third, fourth guessing, birthing the stark longing for clarity, simplicity, directness, for yes, no, for certainty in what can be certain, to be awake for each of the days of a counted year. Let this be the year. <br><br>Years lived and yet-to-be lived, heavy laden with wishes, dreams, dry leaves on a crackling fire or water for a thirsty mouth, years pregnant with possibility and desire, all of it aching to be born, urged on and emboldened by an unceasing voice fervently whispering greatness! greatness! crying out to be amplified, heard, to be magnified, to be raised and shouted from the mountainous days, the glorious peaks of some magnificent year yet to come. <br><br>Let this be the year.
Namoli Brennet
tag:namolibrennet.com,2005:Post/940350
2013-06-14T04:40:33-05:00
2013-06-14T21:35:30-05:00
Space
“I inhale great draughts of space.” - Walt Whitman<br><br>
If you’ve ever attempted it, you know that divorcing yourself from your possessions is a strange and difficult process. Nearly two years ago, I got rid of a good part of what I had accumulated over the past 10 or 15 years; the idea of taking what remained and putting it in a 5x8 storage space was more terrifying than you would imagine. I would wake up panicky, edgy, wondering if I had done the wrong thing, as if I had somehow dishonored the few things I still owned by putting them in a place completely devoid of ceremony. A cavernous warehouse by the railroad tracks, rows and rows of red corrugated metal doors and padlocks, the only variation a stenciled blue number.<br><br>
My memory has a place for the things I kept and where I left them, and during long drives I sometimes find myself reaching back with a kind of bittersweet nostalgia to take inventory of that small room: My favorite red rug, rolled up and propped against a corner, the one whose earthy, woolen aroma will always remind me of doing yoga while struggling through a hard, hard year. Cobra, inhale, upward facing dog. My bicycle, a burgundy Schwinn cruiser circa 1980, the front basket decorated with a string of tiny red stars. An old dresser that I painted purple and red, the drawer pulls fashioned after delicate branches, once filled with socks, shirts, now host to a bizarre collection of odds and ends - clarinet, silverware, microphone, cast iron pan. <br><br>
Boxes full of clothing that felt important enough to keep but yet have not been worn in 22 months, boxes with a few carefully chosen books, CDs, small paintings. One box, by all measure the most precious - mementos, the ones I kept. A few photographs, stitching together an awkward, stilted, incomplete history. Birthday cards signed in my father’s flowing script, a rare extravagance. Precious things, made by others, irreplaceable - small gifts from people who meant more to me than I could ever say. A ring, a note, a scrap of fabric torn from a lover’s dress, encrusted with the salt of the endless tears I cried when the relationship came to it’s inevitable and devastating finish. <br><br>
These are the things I kept, these are the things I own, and these are the things that I have not visited since I was in Tucson almost 7 months ago. I think of them laying quietly behind the door, marking time, waiting while the yawning arc of the seasons passes. July, with its boastful, cumulous clouds birthing thunder, violent, pounding rain, creosote, all of this reluctantly but inevitably acquiescing to the relief of September, November, the restoration of cool desert nights, December, the rarity of frost. The strange, late falling of leaves in January, giving way to astonished green buds in February, the welcoming warmth of March, April foreshadowing the first 100-degree day in May. The sun, so clearly visible in the vast, cloudless desert sky, tracing its ancient ellipse from east to west, gilding the mountains as it sets, smoothing the jagged peaks into something softer, kinder. The tall shadows of mesquite trees, saguaros, stretching impossibly long across the flat, impenetrable earth. <br><br>
And I, a world away, in Minneapolis, Omaha, Iowa, inhaling the lush beauty of a summer thick with cut grass; a dense, fertile, growing season, replete with lakes, mosquitos, sunscreen, gardens, children, popsicles, the smell of charcoal, lingering daylight. I think about the things I have kept, the things I have given up, the things I own, the heaviness and lightness that they offer in equal measure. The myriad of ways that beauty manifests, in fullness, in emptiness, aloneness, togetherness, in stillness and in chaos. I close my eyes, breathe deeply, inhaling, the soft exhale giving rise to a feeling which at first I cannot name. Slowly, patiently it coalesces, finally surfacing and revealing itself to me as single, solitary word:<br><br>
Lucky.
Namoli Brennet
tag:namolibrennet.com,2005:Post/481477
2013-04-04T19:54:58-05:00
2013-04-04T19:54:58-05:00
Better to Grow
(Trinity): “Neo, no one has ever done anything like this.”
<br>
(Neo): “That's why it's going to work." <br>
- from <i>The Matrix</i><br><br>
7 weeks and almost 10,000 miles later I find myself back in the middle of the country, having driven all the way from Bellingham, WA to Yarmouth, ME before slingshotting back to the midwest. Sometimes, for amusement, I recite my stops while I drive just to see if I can remember where I’ve been - Bellingham, Boise, Salt Lake City, Denver, Colorado Springs, Salina, Omaha, Decorah, Chicago, Oil City, Philadelphia, DC, Shippensburg, Bethlehem, Milford, Albany, New London, Sharon, Syracuse, Becket, Boston, Yarmouth, Providence, Buffalo, Chicago and now back to Decorah. It’s possible that I forgot a few. Sometimes I also try to count how many months I’ve been living without an address - I think April will make it about 20 months, a little over a year and a half. And I wonder sometimes why it is that I’m living this particular way, if it’s necessary and if there’s any purpose to it. I can actually think of a few reasons why it’s a valuable and interesting experience - some relating to the practice of buddhism and groundlessness, and some related to the fact that for each and every one of us this life culminates in giving up every material thing we know, so why not get in a little practice while there’s still some free will involved. As interesting and spiritual as those are, I think the main reason I’m doing this is actually pretty simple: because I’ve never done it before. <br><br>
The idea that I’ve stumbled into this way of being that I didn’t plan on, let alone believe I was capable of carrying out, kind of makes me scratch my head with bemusement. I mean, for most of my 20s and 30s I could easily check off at least 10 or the 12 symptoms in the DSM IV under “generalized anxiety disorder.” I’ve gone through phases where things got inexplicably worse, and also inexplicably better, which seems to just be the nature of anxiety. You want to be able to nail it to something you did, ate, drank, thought - mostly with the idea that if you can consistently avoid that thing, you will never have to feel this awful feeling again. But trying to grasp the cause of anxiety is like trying to hold onto to a slippery fish - for all I know it might be linked to astrology, the tides of the moon, my saturn return, some formless nebulous idea, some cycle I’m not even tuned into, or - nothing. Random. That’s a hard one to come to terms with, but I swear the longer I live with this the more it fits. It just happens, and when it does you just have to have some ways to deal with it - meditating, chamomile tea, reading, xanax, yoga, whatever. I’ve found that it helps if you can find ways to lighten up, take yourself less seriously, learn that you don’t have to perform perfectly in every situation, soften, and try to be forgiving and compassionate with yourself. <br><br>
In many ways, because of this nervousness, I’m an incredibly unlikely candidate for the job of touring songwriter. Not so much the performing part, I don’t get quite as derailed by that as I used to - but the day to day stresses of negotiating different places, people, houses, kitchens, bathrooms, bedrooms, highways, hotels, the stress of just wanting to collapse into a familiar place and realizing that may not exist in your world right now. It’s this beautiful paradox, that the incredible and heightened sensitivity that makes it possible to see and experience the world in a way that translates into song and verse is the same sensitivity that makes lights too bright, voices too loud, normal situations overwhelming, that makes you exhausted and sets your mind to racing and churning out worst case scenarios while dumping copious amounts of adrenaline and who knows what else into your bloodstream. <br><br>
The weird thing is - after living without an address for this long, I actually feel better and less anxious than I have in years. Which is a total paradox, but in a way it makes sense in that there’s this weird thing about anxiety and worry - it tells you that if only you can just feel safe, if you can avoid the things that make you uncomfortable, that you will feel better. But in my experience, the opposite is true - the more you avoid these things, the larger they loom in your mind; and the more you avoid them, the less you believe that you have any ability to handle them. And while it’s true that my world is a little out of control these days, there are also things that feel more within my control than they used to. What I mean by that is that I’m not bound or tied to anyone or anyplace - I’m existing in the realm of the potential for a little while as I try to let my life unfold like the best of songs that have come to me, which is to say, with a minimum of self-effort, a connection to something greater, and a willingness to show up, listen and forgo my own plan in the service of the muse. <br><br>
So far so good.
Namoli Brennet
tag:namolibrennet.com,2005:Post/214224
2012-09-14T07:40:00-05:00
2012-09-14T07:40:00-05:00
Places
<br><br>
“All these places have their moments.” - The Beatles<br><br><br>
I grew up without grandfathers. My Mother’s father left them when they were young, unimaginable to me. He passed away a few years back, to the best of my knowledge unknown to any of his grandchildren. And probably barely known to his own children - I have never seen a picture of him and have no idea what he looks like. My father’s father died when he was younger, long before I was born, also leaving no evidence, at least none I have ever seen. I seem to come from a lineage of people who don’t stick around, one way or the other. <br><br>
My Irish grandmother, however, was a strong presence in my life. She and my Mother did not get along particularly well, but she still flew over from Ireland frequently and often lived with us for months on end. I remember her suitcases with the Aer Lingus tags on them, and her name stuck on in large, adhesive letters: MAC, short for MacMillan. Annie MacMillan, but we called her Nana. Her wind-up travel clock by the bedside, her strong, black tea with milk and sugar. I spent untold hours with her on the couch while she taught me to crochet - chain, single crochet, double, treble, granny square. I made pot holders, bookmarks, a pair of slippers. My mother later confessed to me that my grandmother once took her aside and said to her in private, “Ach*, he should have been born a girl.” I was seven years old. <br><br>
I am so like her, in every way. She was generous, witty, moody, funny, creative, argumentative, clever, adventurous, restless. I sometimes wonder if that’s why I’m not closer to my mother, because I am so much like this woman that she had such a difficult relationship with. A weird thing is that years after my transition, I saw a picture of my grandmother when she was in her late 20s - and the resemblance between us was uncanny. The way she wore her hair, her impish charm, her strength, her independence. We spend our whole lives thinking that we have choice and free will, and it’s astonishing that parts of us are just biologically and genetically programmed to be. <br><br>
I’ve been thinking about my grandmother a lot lately. She passed away when I was 14 or 15, I can’t remember exactly because there was too much chaos spinning around me at the time - another story. When she died we were living in Shelton, CT and I think she was in a nursing home in Toronto. It occurs to me now that’s the only home I knew her to have in all the time she was with us. <br><br>
For me, this September marks 13 months without any permanent address. Everything that is important to me is either in my suitcase or in the trunk of my car. Or in my heart, or my brain, one of which may or may not live on after I’m gone. Like my grandmother, I own little and I travel much, and I alternately crave and loathe security. There is a magic and a curse to living like this - when you lift the needle from the record of your life, you experience things differently. You experience a nowness that is beautiful and raw and poignant and lovely and lonely, that is deeply connected while rooted to nothing. <br><br>
In the end, we can not deny our nature. I am packing up my clothes, I am letting my curling iron cool before putting it in my suitcase, I am rolling up the cord on my blow dryer like I have done hundreds of times before. I am snapping shut a small, wind-up travel clock I keep by the side of my bed. I am closing and clicking the lock on another room, another apartment, another bed, another city - each has been beautiful in it’s way, and for a time each has been a home to me. <br><br>
In my life, I’ve loved them all. <br><br><br>
*An Irish expression that sounds kind of like “Ock”. <br>
Namoli Brennet
tag:namolibrennet.com,2005:Post/172373
2012-05-25T10:35:00-05:00
2018-07-06T07:31:18-05:00
Trying
I've been thinking a lot lately about value, and self-worth, and how we measure that for ourselves. Mostly because I have (by choice) been living without a permanent address since August last year, something that has been both liberating and subtly exhausting. It used to be a major transition to go on tour, a letting go of all the comforts of home and a return to digging through my suitcase like an archeologist in search of some artifact, in my case a matching sock. A bizarre game for me on tour used to be to unintentionally wake up in the middle of the night and try to figure out where I was. The first question was usually, "house or hotel", and then I would kind of narrow it down from there. That hasn't happened for a while, and I think my body and psyche have just gotten used to a state of groundlessness, where they just accept that where I am is where I am. It's funny how much your world changes when you don't have a point that it revolves around. <br><br>
The reason that I have been thinking about value is that I feel like the choice to live this way is taking a toll on me, in that when I look in the mirror I think I look a lot more tired than I used to. I see more lines on my face and a weariness that doesn't go away just from sleeping. As a practicing hypochondriac, I also can't fully rule out the idea that I have some undiagnosed terminal illness that is eating me from the inside out. These are the places I go, I can't help it. I think I have always placed a lot of value on looking younger than I am and being relatively attractive, and I feel like I can't count on either of those things the way I used to. What's terrible is the way it can steal joy from any situation - I find myself avoiding daylight and brightly lit spaces, and when I'm in them I can't help the feeling of pervasive self-consciousness that rises up in me like a destructive blush. <br><br>
So what is it that makes us valuable? I know a lot of people would say that we just inherently have value, or that our value comes from how we contribute or what we do for others. In my mind those are great concepts, but it's really hard to connect in meaningful way with the idea that we are loved simply for being. And what is love, anyway? I wonder. Is it just affection, is it the actions we take, or is it simply a feeling that if a person wasn’t alive that our world would be somehow diminished? Sometimes as a performer it’s hard to see the quantifiable worth in what I do - I know that it very likely does some good, helps people and adds meaning to the world. But the career trajectory of an independent singer/songwriter is fraught with ups and downs, and to base your worth on the quality of your last performance or your proximity to the elusive specter of success is to resign yourself to an existence where you have no center. <br><br>
As a performer I have developed an almost pathological instinct to try to win over people. Doing a show is like flying a plane, where you’re constantly making small adjustments to stay on course; you develop a kind of 6th sense about stages and rooms and people, where the show is going, where it needs to go, and where you would like it to go. Many times I don’t feel like I have a lot of say in all that - all I can really do is show up with what I have to offer, and hope that people are receptive. Mostly they are, but when they’re not it can hurt deeply in the way that having the best of you rejected hurts. <br><br>
In spite of all of this, I still feel this impossibly strong sense that this is what I was meant to do, and I have always felt that since I was old enough to wrap my fingers around the neck of a guitar. For better or worse, I do not have and have never had a plan B - the only plan I have ever had is to keep trying, and trying, and trying, and hope that when I look back that I came close to doing the right things. That I stayed true to a dream, that I steered my heart in the right direction when I could, and that I never gave up on that small but discernible voice inside stubbornly repeating it’s simple, persistent mantra: Don’t. Give. Up. Yet. <br><br>
Namoli Brennet
tag:namolibrennet.com,2005:Post/169941
2012-05-18T07:55:00-05:00
2012-05-18T07:55:00-05:00
Life, Death and Caca
"Everything is a miracle. It is a miracle that one does not dissolve in one's bath like a lump of sugar." - Pablo Picasso<br>
<br>
Yesterday I was driving on this seemingly interminable stretch of I-10 between Phoenix and LA while listening to a song called “One Of The Billions” by my friend John Elliot. John has this uncharacteristic knack for mixing obscure dialogue with music, and this song starts and ends with this anonymous guy waxing poetic about the nature of life and learning. Let me share a quote that stood out: “When you come to the end of the education rainbow....it’s just...caca. You can kick it out the door, because it’s just...it’s just...dried caca.” At the end of the song there’s this poignant mix of waning music underpinned by this same (incredibly stoned) guy talking about how we all started as cockroaches. It sounds crazy, but it’s actually very beautiful and it started to make me feel like I was in the middle of some bizarre, lovely, vast, unfathomable experiment called Life On Earth. <br><br>
I didn’t always have this sense of wonder and connectedness - I was raised Catholic, and that experience implanted in me a lingering sense of fear, doubt, guilt and trepidation, of walking on eggshells around an angry father with a quick temper. It also imbued me with the not-so-subtle sense that this earth is some sort of moral proving ground, with eternal damnation as our motivation to be kinder, gentler souls. I know that's not a new or original idea and that there are plenty of religions, both Eastern and Western, that characterize our time here as some sort of trial, or way-station, or a place to learn until we graduate to a more enlightened state. Whether it’s reincarnation or heaven, I think there’s this idea that we’re on our way to someplace better, that this Earth is not an end unto itself. What I’ve been thinking lately is - maybe it is, and that focusing our attention on some distant point might be obscuring a kind of heaven that is sitting right here in front us. And that it might also be inadvertently thumbing our nose at some of the creator’s best handiwork. <br><br>
Today I was at the beach and there were these tide pools, and each one was like it's own tiny world - anemones, fish, tiny plants, barnacles, crabs scurrying around. And I was just amazed by it all, by the color and variety and sheer miracle of the existence of anything and everything. The singing of the birds, the crashing of the waves, the wind, the color of the sky, the running of the tides. At this point you're probably thinking, "Wow, namoli, sounds like you got your hands on some great medical marijuana." Not the case, although I *was* offered a prescription on the boardwalk in Venice by a “doctor” wearing a bikini and a lab coat. But no, this is actually just one of my naturally occurring states, where I get completely absorbed in something - a lizard, a bird, a plant, where I feel like I can inhale the air and cherish it, where I can feel the sand between my toes or the grass under my feet and simply be glad to be alive on this spinning miracle of a planet. In that moment I think, what could heaven possibly be other than this? I see the sticky fingerprints of the creator all over this beautiful earth.<br><br>
Let me qualify all of this by saying this is a rare but much-appreciated state of mind for me, and that I don’t walk around feeling in awe of things 24/7. I frequently get mad in traffic, I get frustrated, I get angry, I get jealous, I get impatient, I act out of selfishness, I feel sad and I worry more than is healthy. But despite that, my world is punctuated by these moments of lucidity and contentment, and sometimes I think that might be what enlightenment is - just opening your mind and heart further and further and growing your sense of wonder until every atom becomes some small miracle - because really, isn't it? <br><br>
Or maybe it's just caca. <br><br><br><br><br>
Namoli Brennet
tag:namolibrennet.com,2005:Post/167262
2012-05-11T09:55:00-05:00
2022-01-07T10:37:52-06:00
California
California, you know I love you <br>
You know that I always will<br>
You taught me to sing, you taught me to love, you taught me to lose<br><br>
But you kicked me around, California<br>
You told me what I had to hear<br>
And it’s hard to be clear, and it’s hard to connect<br>
Sunglasses and chess, no apologies yet.<br><br>
- John Elliot, “The American West”<br><br>
Sometimes I think (Southern) California is a little like an abusive relationship - every time I make up my mind that I’m not going back, it does something nice that makes me think about giving it one more chance. Last night I drove in to LA from Tucson a day early to hear my friend <a target="_new" href="http://thehereafterishere.com/">John Elliot</a> perform - John and I met 5 or 6 years ago through a mutual friend and songwriter, <a target="_new" href="http://www.rainarose.com/">Raina Rose</a>, while we were in the Northwest. He is super funny and just an all around great person to hang out with; he is also an incredible, honest and brilliant musician. I once listened to a single song of his on repeat for <b>3 days straight </b>while driving from Iowa to Portland. (Note to John: File restraining order.) I have been listening to his new album, <i><a target="_new" href="http://thehereafterishere.com/backyards">Backyards</a></i>, a lot and it has been part of the soundtrack to what has been a Very Interesting Year. He has such an beautiful way with words and music, and often will repeat a seemingly innocuous phrase until it becomes like a mantra - and then you realize that these simple words are incredibly important and he really wants you to hear them in a profound and meaningful way. “It was nothing at all but a casual lie, nothing at all but a casual lie, nothing at all but a casual lie.”<br><br>
It was a brilliant show, at turns hilariously funny and deeply moving, and the crowd was the most attentive I’ve ever seen in LA - technically, Venice, and I guess that makes a big difference. The crowd was actually so quiet that the bartender stepped into the kitchen to make a drink that required shaking - *incredibly* thoughtful. The room was really well put together, lots of exposed brick and cool seating, great lighting, great PA and a grand piano on stage. The owner, Jeb, came up and introduced himself to me during John’s set and he was this genuinely kind and friendly guy, not pretentious, no artifice. All of these things are not necessarily what I associate with Southern California - my experiences playing music here have not been overtly positive, most of the venues are much more interested in how many people you can bring in than they are in you as a musician and performer. I know that business is business, but sometimes I get the feeling that a lot of the people in this city are just not that interested in being exposed to a meaningful experience. <br><br>
Last night kind of changed my mind about that though; after the show we were hanging out on the sidewalk and I met another friend of John’s, <a target="_new" href="http://www.laurameyer.net/">Laura Meyer</a>, also an incredibly talented touring songwriter. And we all just stood there on the sidewalk and talked and kind of just got lost in conversation, laughing and joking and commiserating about the ups and downs of being a touring musician and also connecting with each other in a Meaningful Way. In that moment I began to have a fuzzy realization at the edges of my consciousness, and I knew that I would give Southern California one more chance. That I will call Jeb at WitZend and try to book a show the next time I come through, and that I will ask 30 people to go, and I will hope that 5 of them actually show up. I don’t know if it’s foolishness, or hope, or just a relentless quest to connect the dots on the map in a way that makes sense - but I am taking you back, California. In all your crazy, congested, beautiful, superficial, paradoxical beauty, I am taking you back.<br><br><br>
Namoli Brennet