Me, Undone

  today my grand mother  asked for my burial plot   next to   her daughter   my mo ther and i obliged having lived in her womb once in my mother’s tiny ovaries   like wooden Russian dolls   we are finding our way back home

Am I crazy to live with such ferocious intensity--to love and to dance with reckless abandon? I've come to believe that living life to the fullest is like running down the road full speed with a purple blindfold tied tightly around your eyes. You know very well that somewhere along the way stands a brick wall. The question for me is will I smash in to the wall or will I break through?

Antioch is a little, white church on a hill. With aches and pains it welcomed us in every Sunday. It was a place for the weary—respite for tired hands and feet. My mother, unwed and with another baby growing in her belly, sat at the back of the church with her head slump down—me, sleeping peacefully in her lap. It was the pastor who finally called her to the front of the church and gave her a reason not to be ashamed. Old womens' arms and prayers held our little family together. During altar call, mommy would kneel on the stiff bench with tears in her eyes—praises flung up to the sky. At Antioch my brother and I grew and flourished. We were the darlings of the church—the fresh dreams and hopes of barren wombs... Years later, I returned to the little, white church on the hill. Antioch was still the same—but life had changed. This time, my brother was locked in a cage, and I was standing at the altar with my mother lying beside me in a wooden box. I stood there, in front of the chu...

100 Things To Do Before I Die: #28. See Michael Jackson in concert (posted May 22, 2008) Things break all the time. I recently moved to a new apartment and discovered that my toaster, printer, and microphone all expired in the process. What a strange phenomenon--me, running to Target to replace items that worked perfectly fine for years. It's almost as if they sensed change and decided that they were just too tired to go along for the ride. When I think of how fragile things are, possessions, I can't help but think of how equally frail human life is--it is a subtle miracle that you opened your eyes this morning. Take the toaster--not that complex, but when one part fails, let's say the lever or the heating mechanism, the toaster is well...toast. Our bodies are infinitely more complex than a malfunctioned toaster-- when we get sick, it dispatches agents on our behalf to fix, fight and repair. But sometimes, unfortunately sometimes, it cannot stop the war or jump sta...