50 things of matter

Another list, another rhythm.

In order to sit down and write, you have to believe something matters. 

Of course this seems obvious, and easy, because a million things matter. But also, to a writer, we need it to matter in a way that pricks our skin. You feel the matter of your heart pressing into the cage of your rib. You feel the matter as actual matter, soil under nails, sand between toes, fingers on lower back, fist clenched, palm against grass. We we sit down wanting to make matters into actual matter. 

It must matter enough that you are willing to sit down and sing or smash or cry or move it out somehow. Life has to matter enough, somehow. You have to remember there is always matter to sense.

Sometimes so much matters, that it’s hard to parse, to separate, to pull apart the threads of matter. Because you realize, as you should, everything is connected, everything is a part of another’s matter.

Sometimes the grief and the pain, the confusion and depression are so thick that nothing matters more than distracting the entire being so that we cannot feel, touch, breathe, become with what (we think) matters. 

Sometimes the grief and the pain, the confusion and the depression are so thick nothing matters at all, but oftentimes, everything matters so much that the only way to remember the matter of all things, is to write. It is the way to change matter. For me at least. Writing is shifting matter.

I think of matter as something physical, something you can touch and feel. Something that makes something else.

I think of matter as something that touches us. 

I think of matter as something to discover, to be curious about, in essence, a moving our way down to the birth of the story. We seek the root of the matter. 

I think of matter as mater. The root of the word matter, is mater, “mother” — what everything, and everyone, is born of. 

Matter is of mater. 

And mater is of meter, time-keeping, rhythm.

So let’s just say that everything that matters has a rhythm. And is keeping time for us.  And writing is time keeper, rhythm, a partner with what matters. 

I turned 50 last week. OMG AND HOLY SHIT AND also, who gives a fuck. Really. 

There is so much emphasis on “this big one” and yes it is different and yes that first number went from 4 to 5 and the number 5, historically, is a rough number, in the tarot at least, but it’s a beautiful and horrendous learning moment in space | time. Five are lessons. 5s are struggles. 5s are half way there. To somewhere.

I feel really different and I also still feel 25. I know that things, as always, are changing. My skin is sagging, for one. For two, my eyelids no longer care to hold cat-eye liner. My blood comes twice a month now and is a ferocious river wanting to be seen and held and demands to keep me in bed or on my floor or in tears and shedding shedding the last bits of my old self.

My willingness to not give a fuck has expanded. 

As has my desire to not fuck around. 

Everything that used to matter either 1. Matters even more or 2.isn’t even a thought in my head.

I began jotting down in my notebook over the last 2 weeks the things of matter. Of the root. Of the material. Of the mother. What has mattered to me? What doesn’t really matter anymore? 

A practice in just allowing what wants to come through to come through.

So basically, another list of an essay that isn’t an essay at all. I wish there was a genre for lists.

I tried to keep each one short, so that you can actually read and take it all in. Bless you if you get through them all. 

1. I want my kids to look at me and think “look how strong our mom is”, just like I do with my mother. 

2. I don’t want my kids to look at me and think “wow look how weak our mom has been” - just like I do with my mother.

3. Elders? A living question. 

4. Arithmetic is not opinion. I saw this written in Italian at a local deli the other day, the day before my birthday actually. Also. History is not an opinion. You can have your opinions but your opinions should never ever form the basis of historical work. But can your opinions change your own personal history? Or is there non-variables? Free will oftentimes feels so tiring.

5. Let me go back to #3. Elders? Where are they? I have no answer to this matter. I have opinions. Where did they go? What happened to them? I love old people, I honor them, I care for them. But I do not find many to be elders. What is the root of this matter? What have we done? What is the history of their disappearance? Who did this to us? Left us floating on this planet without the grandmother’s crucial songs?

6. At fifty I realize I am not becoming what I have been looking for my whole life. And at 50 I realize I must become what I am looking for. At fifty I am opening up to receive the songs.

7. But yet, I still want my jeans to fit me. And I am not sorry about that. And I don’t want to buy a bigger size, and I am not sorry about that. And you can say I am fat shaming myself and I don’t give a shit, because I am not. This is part of the not giving a fuck and also part of the not fucking around. Part of being an elder is to say what you want and need, and then also let it go, entirely. My jeans won’t fit. I still will not buy new ones. The end. Things move so quickly now. Eldering means becoming a river. Let go at every turn of the rock. At every curve of the bed. Be ready to become the ocean.

8. Changing the shape of my body doesn’t matter to me. Changing the way my bones feel inside my skin matters to me. Marrow matters to me. Fascia matters. Connective tissues matter. What we hold on to matters, and is matter we may need to stop holding on to. What am I holding in the tender inflamed gut? What am I clinging to against the sides of my hip?

9. I have kept quiet publically for a long time. This is because the things I want to write about require so much attention, conversation and nuance. And then even more, it requires distilling. I have not had the time to create that space. Everything I have shared on here or social media is only dust matter. Dusty Matter. There are extremely hard and uncomfortable pieces of writing I want and need to write. Not fucking around about this.

10. But really. What isn’t dust matter? 

    

11. The practice of falling backwards has left many bruises for me this year. What I mean is— the feeling where you think you are getting up, climbing closer, almost there — you feel so close. So fucking close. And then boom, like lightning, like a slap across the face, you fall back on the ground, back to the beginning or what it feels like the beginning again. A huge let down. This happened over and over again this last year. It was my lesson to remain fluid, flexible, and patient. How utterly annoying. But the falling back was actually the falling within a container of saintly protection. I landed in the hands of my most high ancestors. Protection often looks like a huge let down. There is literally nothing more I can teach or say or learn then that. I am grateful down here on the ground. I refuse to fight it.

12. How fucking much do we want to trust ourselves and our lives and our gods and our guides? How much can we stay in temperance when we think everything has gone to shit? How much can we remember we are not here to fix ourselves, but to be and trust ourselves? The magic of what happens when Fire and Water make the most potent steam: the matter of that steam. That. That is my practice.

13. I lost a lot of playtime this year. I didn’t choose to play. I chose to either work my ass off and then numb out somehow (wine, tobacco, HBOMax — I am being hard on myself but also, it’s fine). But under that: what working class person has time to play? Let’s be real? But: There is time, always, I cannot even bullshit myself here. The peasants played while they worked. My contadini ancestors learned songs and dance that connected them to their work. The made time to be together to get drunk and dance and be foul mouthed and skinny dip in the waters. Playfulness is prayer. Play makes the jeans fit. Play makes the heart more feather-like and less lead weight like. The early morning matters are for play (play and practice with me here). The afternoon hours between between 4-6 are for play. We can play before bed. We can play in bed.

14. We can play in our dreams. Our dreams are the way of reminding us all it is all play. When we can play our dreams and allow our dreams to play us i think we have really gotten deep with god. I want that.

15. The Fool matters. Oh the fool, the fool in us matters so much. The fool is who says to us, begin. The fool is who reminds us to press head against the earth and then roll up to standing and shake and wind and step off the edge and begin. 

16. Everything, everything, everything ends and then begins again. This ending is matter and matters and may it be so, may this karmic cycle be done. Amen.

17. But this takes practice. It takes exorcizing the past from your body. It takes not looking forward. It takes being with your nervous system in uncomfortable ways. It takes a deep soil willingness to thoroughly love where you and and be devoted to being better, changing, evolving, but not exiling any part of yourself. 

18. Temperance. I also sucked at this. I always kind of suck at it. Healing practices that allow for energy adjustments are needed. Practice matters, OMG, practice is MATTER. is MATER. Is RHTYHM. I cannot express this enough and I have been so devoted to this in my past and this year, nope, but sometimes you have to let what matters go so that you can breathe a new dedication back into it. Nothing is gone. Everything ends. And we can all begin again(Practice with me).

19. On hope: There are still seeds being saved. There are still children teaching me so much. I still see shooting stars many nights a week.There are still poets making me weep like a baby before I go to sleep at night. There are still artists living their art. There are still exhausted people on the ground all over this beautiful world with love in their hearts, courage in their guts, surviving the worst nightmares, and also still dreaming for a better lineage to leave, like seeds.

    

20. I had a dream about my father the other night. It wasn’t a dream but it was a dream. He was standing behind a child in a restaurant. The child was sitting and eating. My father was behind him and I was the only one who could see my father. My father was waving his hands, doing some kind of movement, a dance, or somatic thing, and he was making all kinds of jibberish, silly, laughing kind of noises. Very trickster. and I said “dad, what are you doing??” And he looked at me and said “don’t worry, I am just helping him work some of his stuff out”

21. I think we all eventually get assigned some important jobs when we are dead. I think how we live definitely points us to the kind of jobs we have. 

22. I think my father is becoming an ancestor, slowly, but surely. I can feel this. It takes time, as anything else. Dead time moves differently, I am sure. 

23. Do be careful about who you are calling in for support (from the dead) and be very conscious about when you call someone in who may not be supportive you are ready and willing to work with that dead person to help them become an ancestor.

24. This work matters to me. 

25. This work takes decades to understand. 

26. It’s not for everyone. And it is. But really, it isn’t. 

27. There were times this year where my senses were utterly open, alive, and just…100% sensing… into everything. When was this? In Palermo, in the middle of the night, walking around, feeling the life that still pulses from under and even more under that. My sandals sticking to sea, city, sex briney ground. My thighs sticking together, chaffing, pulling at the tiny hairs. The sundress shifting. The shawl keeping my shoulders safe. My hair the exact curly it is meant to be, curled by the clinging spirits of place, the salt that moves through the air, the smoke that lifts and bends through the narrow alleyways. The city song massaged me. I never feel so alive than when I wander Palermo, an underworld city, a city of the the dead and dying. And also, when I was in the Mediterranean Sea. Being baptized by blue. By the oldest of ancestors. The salt. The exfoliating the surface of my entire being, rubbing me smooth, not raw, smoother than a baby. And then drenching my sensory system with mother water, water that matters, water that is a rhythm, water that is time. 

28. I did not laugh enough as a 49 year old. I also didn’t cry enough. There is something really upsetting to even write that and I don’t dwell there but this last year was brutal, and every shifting, changing, and yet staying the same in the hardest of ways. I didn’t laugh because I was so lonely. I didn’t cry because I was never alone. I didn’t write because I forgot how to feel. This is often what happens in the liminal space. This is where I trust myself, unconditionally, to return, and return again, back to myself. There are no wasted years. This past year, senza tears and laughter, may have brought the most change and medicine than I can ever know. 

29. Incorporating one of my sort-of ancestral languages (Italian- which isn’t what my grandparents spoke, but what they were forced to learn)  within my English is something I plan on doing more (note: senza above- which I didn’t even think or plan, it just came out, instead of “sans” my fingers typed “senza” — this is when language, in it’s alive-ness, in it’s wanting to return home to you, happens on it’s own. 

    

30. I wrote a poem like that back in October (I will share it as one of these 50). Poetry matters. It is matter. It is mother. It is rhythm. If it were not for the poets and the writers this year, in my year of not writing, I would have died, possibly, this is not an un-truth. Poetry keeps us alive, and remembering. The poetry of: 

31. Mahmoud Darwish

32. Naomi Shahib Nye

33. Tamim al-Barghouti 

34. Andrea Accadri

35. Gabriella Grasso

36. James Baldwin

37. Langston Hughes

38. Thru 40 will be the poem I wrote during October, November, December, a word here, a word there, titled: 

tempo dei mostri (is coming to an end). 

Veni ca 

hungry war monster

Veni ca 

Lay down

At our burning feet 

Do you feel the heat

Of our hope? 

Open your mouth 

Let us feed you 

Your gutless guts

Are growling  

blood and money 

Are not real good

For collective digestion

Even if you think

It’s from the body 

Of your Christ 

It’s rotten 

Mangia mangia 

Let me feed you 

something new

here are the seeds 

of my mother

They are warmed 

From the sun 

And gestated 

In the underworld 

(Where you will become food to her soon and become seeds to feed all those you starved)

Let me spit these seeds

In your mouth 

Mangia 

Let them take hold 

In your throat

Swallow 

wait  

grain will grow 

from your belly   

The mother will 

turn you 

inside out 

The mother is turning you

Inside out.

Here, take the grapes, here 

This is our life

from the vine. 

Infused with 

frantic ecstasi 

We are crazier than you

We know the blood

You will never know

the juice 

drips

from your mouth 

burns your skin

This is

our savior 

Our life

Pushed through 

To fruit of gods

To sex

To love

To blood

Of ecstacy

il succo della vite

 è la nostra acqua santa

This is who we are. 

you are not able to hold this life like we do

It’s too late 

For you 

May it burn 

Your genetic code 

May it ferment your DNA

May your body 

Become the fertile dust

Our mother needs

We still pray for you

May someday you remember

Nourishment 

Is of seeds 

Not bullets and bombs 

Nourishment is of soil

Not borders or banks

We Taranta Taranta

Around you 

Hysterical as we are

Wild as we are

so close 

To your demise  

In our hands

Castanets we click click 

Until they

Turn into petals.

Petal after petal 

Falling from our palms 

At our feet 

They are

The poem of 

dark mother  

Devouring mother

We lay them

On your tongue 

Like the host

Of Christ’s body

Oleandra Oleandra 

Take this 

And eat it 

May it become 

The poison

That is our medicine 

The poison that is the medicine

Mi dispiace 

Ma no 

This is how we alchemize 

Armi Santi, Armi Santi 

iò sugnu sula vui siti 

tanti pi la nostra 

orazioni livatimilla ‘sta cunfusioni.

We sprinkle soil 

On your check 

You look better 

Covered in dirt

Your neck

We pour over it

Salt water 

May it cleanse 

Your throat 

foul words

No longer live 

may you become

better food

For those

Truly hungry

decomposed 

You are decomposed

We dance on you no longer

we dance now for the seeds

To grow.

The earth

will grow 

A beautiful place 

For those of us

With burning feet 

Can you feel our hope? Can you feel our hope that pounds

A rhythm, a meter, a time keeper, a mother, against your old world?

Avemu la vita

A spell. 

41. Burning bay leaves in the fire with prayers to rid the ghosts from the space, from the cells. From my blood memory. Burning bay leaves and let the smoke move through the chimney into the sky, a pray to the gods, may we all be protected, may we all be free.

42. Breathing in the smoke, not just inviting the spirit into the space, but to breathe it in my nose, my mouth, take it in, swallow the smoke, inhale the spirit of bay, of rosemary, of mugwort — breathe in. Hold. Breath out.

43. Smoking my hair — leaning over the burning plant, and allowing the smoke to cling to each strand, to recalibrate the DNA, to dance down the history of the follicle. May my spiral strands of all that I am be kissed by the smoke, may my hair coil with the smoke, may things change.

44. Nature. Which is a word I contemplate, what is nature if not everything? The wild. The wild, the woods, the forest, the sea, everything you find outside the confines of walls and systems and everything that mirrors the inner world and workings of your own body, the wild.

45. End genocide everywhere. Why. Why. Why. This is my pleading. My begging. End. Please. End. Genocide is how haunting ancestral ghosts are made.

46. End all supremacy including human.  

47. Foot dragging (I will be writing on this soon) is a very effective way for working class, peasant class, rural class people to disrupt and create powerful change. What is foot dragging? Making small and accessible choices everyday to create chaos for the ruling class. It is choosing a simple oppositional act. Don’t buy this thing today.  Don’t buy into that idea tomorrow. Make your car break down in line at Starbucks causing a back-up for an hour and no orders can go through. Everyday take time to know your ancestral cultures and pull them into your daily life, in that way, your daily life will change systems. 

48. I hope that makes sense. I am here to really sense in, let words be the senses, and not make sense. What else can we do but practice sensing what might want to matter on this page. 

49. Trusting your art like art is god because art it is god. 

50.  I’m gonna love like it’s the end because it always is. 

I'm gonna love like it's almost all gone.

We are walking the edge of the end. The time of monsters. 

I’m gonna love like This Is It. Our last chance.

I’m gonna love like it’s the apocalypse. Because we are past that. I’m gonna love like the earth opening up and swallowing us whole. Devouring us. Like we taste so good. We taste like love. Let us be love food for the earth. 

XX MB

Oh! In the next couple days I will be posting a recording of fun and beautiful conversation I had with my new friend, Jokotifa Alaye- we talk about grief, and dying, and her stories of reclaiming and weaving her ancestral linages and spiritual practices. Looking forward to sharing:::

Jokotifa from Mourning Space

ps. Practice with me - donation basis - for 22 days - learn more here.

Pps. Come to Sicily for the magic. Learn more here.