The Rose Between the Lion's Teeth

I’ve been thinking of tenderness as of late. The stories we hide within ourselves, and the love we extend to other people.

It takes a particular person to manage the balance between necessary brutality and necessary gentleness. Rare are the people who are able to be as brutal as fuck with one hand, while cradling the head of a grieving friend with the other. There are so many factors involved.

I’ve been thinking about how we are getting through our days - protests or not - knowing that there are people being murdered by the hundreds every day. How to navigate ones day when connecting with the compassion for the entire family of even one murdered member of their group.

Don’t numb out or turn your head.

There is so much at stake with every piece of it.

How does one balance compassion with overwhelm, action with stunned shock. We must keep moving, but we must stay connected as well.

What is the humanity mathematics of all of this?  How to look a stranger in the eyes as we walk by and offer compassion while our own worlds may be falling apart.

It’s what has been stuck within my head these days. This human ballerina leaping delicately on the edge of a circular and spinning blade.



be well; be loved.

k.


image credit: Miu Miu SS23- Shot by Teaghan Rohan & directed by Paris Mumpower

The Struggles That Are Worth It, and the Ones We Leave Behind

The other night, I read the description of the back of a person’s hands looking like "crumpled waxed paper" in a book I was reading.  It made me think of my mother.

I haven’t remembered the faces of my parents since I was a teenager. Only their hands. My father’s dull gold wedding ring, and the dark hairs sprouting out from below his knuckles.

(pause)

This season has been one of excavation.

The house is gone (not gone, but not “ours”), and there was only one box I chose to send to myself. I always imagined that I would fill boxes. But there was nothing remaining of me, and my parents had largely been strangers. 

In the end, it was a standard sized, singular moving box. 

Unjustifiably large. 

Its contents wobbling heavily back and forth within it.



be well; be loved,

k.


(photo: Head Lock, Luke Smalley, 1998)
(description of the back of a person’s hand is not an exact quote because I’m too lazy to look it up, but was from Rabbi Lawrence Kushner’s book, Kabbalah: A Love Story)