The Office of Hearts
A random and personal collection of thoughts on life, death, and everyday insanity.
Sunday, January 1, 2023
Beginning
A new year
Sunshine after days of rain
Cold air and clear skies
Something washed away
Something beginning
And I take comfort in the fact
That the crows are still here
Monday, November 21, 2022
Now and Then
The smell of wet paint
On canvas
Greets me like an old friend
As I walk into my room
Remembering what I have forgotten
Forgetting what I no longer need
Letting go of expectations
Shedding the past
Hugging myself through sadness
Cradling my crazy brain
Like a warm, breathing jewel
That gives off bright sparks
Every now
And then
Sunday, May 22, 2022
Side by side
A crow
Is nesting in my chest
It is calling to me
Every morning
Rising with its mighty black wings
Spreading softly across my heart
At dusk
It gathers the remnants of my day
Strands of hair
Dry leaves
Dustballs and flakes of skin
Unfinished thoughts
And forgotten memories
To build its nest
A bed for my sorrow and my joy
To sleep side by side
Wednesday, May 4, 2022
Today
I need a blank canvas
an empty page
a song not yet written
I need nothingness and potential for everything
I need a rose and a cigarette and a new tattoo
I need crows and bourbon
Do not tell me anything
I do not want to listen
I need sun and flowers and dirt
I need new boots and
I need to know you are ok
I need the world to stop and never end
Do not set yourself on fire
I need to be a pebble at rest at the bottom of a river
I need black paint and a broad brush
Today I need
Another song
Another story
Another canvas
Wednesday, February 16, 2022
Chicago
While you were sleeping
In the warm rain
In the big city
That is now your home
I am just a stranger
Visiting from out of town
Walking your streets
In the warm rain
Friday, December 31, 2021
Grief Season (and what we can learn from fungi)
It’s grief season again.
In my family circle, the final days of the old year and the first days of the new year will forever be marked by profound loss. On January 1st, 2011, my best friend’s niece, Kate, was brutally attacked and mortally wounded, together with her fiance and several of his family members. She died on January 6th, 2 days after her fiance. She was 25. Five of her future family members died with her in that first week of the new year.
Towards the end of that same year, 2011, my coworker and dear friend, Corey, resigned from his job as my administrative assistant for a mental health agency, left town for an extended cross-country road trip, and jumped off the New River Gorge Bridge (a beautiful and extraordinarily high structure known as a popular suicide spot) in West Virginia on December 29th. I will forever remember the call from his aunt coming into our office, and the photograph of the bridge where he died displayed at his memorial. He was 33.
Flanked by murder and suicide, the transition time between the old and the new year has become heavy and contemplative for me. It’s already a natural time for inward reflection - the darkest days, the longest nights, cold weather and bare trees, the end of the lunar calendar year - and also, winter solstice, daylight slowly beginning to linger again, holiday celebrations - on Dia de los Muertos we honor our dead - and the anticipation of a fresh start into a new revolution around the sun.
In recent years, grief season has extended a bit. This may just be a normal side effect of getting older. Loss has a way of finding you, over and over again. A life-long friend of my husband’s died from cancer on December 15th, 2013, the same day as a young girl from our neighborhood who used to babysit for my daughter, succumbed to the disease. In 2020, my former brother-in-law died by suicide on January 29th, and lung cancer took my mother-in-law on November 29th.
The truth is, of course, that it’s grief season all year long. Death doesn’t keep a calendar or make appointments. We all experience many losses throughout our life. Sometimes it is a physical death, and sometimes it’s simply the end of something. It still hurts. Grief is not a competition - my loss isn’t bigger or smaller or more or less important than yours. All our losses add up, and they all matter. They continue to shape who we are, because it is true that love and loss are two sides of the same coin.
So I light a candle in the dark. I remember; I cry; I tell stories; I laugh; I celebrate. I listen to music. A lot. I do this alone and with my fellow humans, because we are all connected, through this mycelium network of grief, love, and loss. Like the mycelium, the awe-inspiring underground web of fungi, with its soft tendrils growing in the dark places, it heals and sustains us, breaks us down and transforms us, nurtured by our tears.
The word “mycelium” is derived from New Latin and Greek. It means “more than one”.
More than one. That’s us.
Monday, October 25, 2021
Sunday Morning
The sound of rain
Through an open window
And crows
Always crows
Shiny black feathers
Webbed with shimmering droplets
Like liquid diamonds
The hum of city streets
And freeways
Droning quietly
Like a giant amplifier
Shiny black tires
Hissing over wet asphalt
Where do crows go
When it rains?