OK, seriously, it's just getting old now.

Tribe is so wonky that I don't even know what to do with myself. I can't decide whether I need to start paying to support 'em in fixing this mess or just drop off for a month so I can come back and it'll all be nice & neat.

Yeah right! I'm so hooked! I'm like a shivering junkie in the corner . . . "must . . . . . . have . . . . . . . . . .functional . . . . . . . tribe."

FUCKIN' DONUTS!

Arrrrgggghhh!!!!

Ramblings

If the universe is infinite, like science seems to indicate, then everything that is possible exists.

This is particularly mind-boggling when I consider how this near-certainty affects my life, my actions, and my decisions. I imagine an infinite number of Mammoths, doing everything and living in every which way possible.

One is thin, as she has devoted much more energy to exercise and fitness than this particular Mammoth here has. One is still with my ex-girlfriend. One had the baby I was knocked up with years ago. One took that tribe dude up on his offer to go visit him for the weekend. One lives in Spain. One went to Bogota, Colombia, from Mexico City a few years back, instead of moving back to the States. One never left Iran. One never left Toronto. One is a teacher, one is a physicist. One is a dancer, traveling the world, choreographing the most innovative, ground-breaking, earth-shattering dance the world has ever seen. One speaks seven languages. One is married to a Persian doctor, and has three of his children, and gets manicures every week. One killed herself when she was twelve years old.

One has webbed feet. One has a siamese twin. One is a vegan. One is a self-help inspirational speaker and life coach. One died of a cocaine overdose in Guatemala years ago.

How did I get here? Right now, this one moment, is truly the only thing I've got. I've known this, logically, for a long time. But to have that glimmer of understanding, that moment, that breath, when you truly realize it, exhaling, "This is it." Fuck.

I'll never know how much of my life was a result of my own choice, and how much of it was chosen for me, and how much of it just _happened_. It doesn't matter. Those ideas are just human constructs and it's all just a web of interconnected actions and bodies and thoughts and compost anyway. It's all just my dirty ballet slippers in the corner of the room. It's my cigarette butts and used tampons and the to go cup my milkshake came in a few days ago and that old avocado pit intermingling in the plastic bag in my dumpster. (When will this building start composting?)

It's the man with the ever changing facial expressions who pours glasses of wine that he never finishes and tells me he loves me and lives a two-hour drive away. It's his child, who refuses to beatbox for me over the phone.

How the hell am I supposed to concentrate on work right now?

There are much more important things to be thinking about. This is hard.

She

"There is a lot of Spirit Noise around you," said my mentor, as hot tears rolled down my cheeks.


I had just finished telling her about the woman in New Orleans who pulled me into a hug before we had exchanged any words. She had then pulled back, and holding my shoulders and staring into my eyes, said to me, "You've got a lot of work to do."

"I know. I know." It was all I could muster as I again sought solace in nuzzling back into her bright green dashiki, her matching headwrap bent over and holding my head firmly onto her shoulder.

Again, we pulled back, and face facing face, our souls spoke. The words were superfluous. I would have known what she was saying had I been deaf and blind. She told me about my ancestors, warriors, and how they all stand behind me now, supporting me. She was the voice of my great grandmother, previously inaccessible to me due to the dam that holds back the river of my relationship to my mother, she of the peasant mentality, and my maternal grandmother, she who loves me least of all of her grandchildren.

She was every *she* who had ever wanted to lift me and tell me to be great and make change and be love.

She was the other *she* who came to me months before, thin dreadlocks and bespectacled face and veiny hands that had farmed vegetables that fed unwed mothers and the children of unwed mothers who came to her home, her mother's home, for shelter. *She* asked me if I had sisters, and again my dam burst and I wept uncontrollably at another *she* close to me who does not know.

*She* is every woman who is and will be light and love and healing and music and motherhood and art and language. *She* is Mildred, She is Rachel, She is Alissa, She is Kristin. She is Shannon, She is Arize, She is Chandra.

She is Me.

Wanting it bad.

You know how sometimes you just want something really, really badly, and you know you're not going to get it for a while? You know it'll happen at some point, just not anytime soon. And you wish you could stop and bask in the deliciousness of waiting, but really, you grew up on MTV and fast food, and you want it NOW.

I wish I could take a breath and sink into the waiting. One of my biggest weaknesses is my lack of patience.