The rushing Payette, gentle roar by the shore.
We sat on wide boulder,
low sandstone flat at our feet
displaying our black Rubbermaid plates, containers, bins of food,
brought out one at a time.
Mountain pines stretched all around.
The day in high 60s
but a breeze asked me to pull up my sweatshirt hood.

Pale sky, trace clouds.
Greens, strawberries, crackers with chevre,
a yellow cheese that bit back
and tinned oysters.
Blackberry bubbling drinks rested on river rocks unopened.
We watched the ants watching us,
pools of sugar sand circling round stones,
the sap and water scents infusing life in our bones.
Kayakers waved paddles by.

On mountaintop, grass dried underfoot.
I reached the height of one landing
and knew the climb continued far above.
I craved a hike deep into wilderness,
to walk on and on to forever.
Our red Prius pulled into a temporary spot.

Tiny saplings emerged on the ridges,
bright needly tips shot up just in time to greet us.
On one side, thick brambles of conifers, aspens, huckleberry shoots, reeds.
A rocky soft hill descended steep down the other.
And up above this plateau with fresh open land for wandering,
ATV treads dug in from beyond
leading up to fire pits, fresh burnt logs, still smoldering.
Across the road, another peak raised giant.
Cars motored past in quick succession, short bursts of quiet between.

Anytime we leave the house
it doesn't seem like anyone else is isolating.
Traffic doesn't die.
Lycaenidae and Pieridae flutter by too,
black with orange wing tips, white with blue specks,
damselflies with translucent pixie wings.
I step up on a log, a stump, aged, cracked,
to see what's below the surface wood,
leveraging out the spaces under crevices,
wanting to hole up inside.

Of course the leaves. The wind moving leaves. The burble in my stomach.
Breeze. Breath. Smiles. Footsteps. A soft creak. A chair adjusts.

Sink into this spring evening, waving like a syncopated drum.
Songs of silence and motorways.
A little finch pours in her child's lullaby.
Feel whispers of hope in high waters.
A river gushes, rushing fast bubbles that wash willow tree trunks.

We're all spiraling together.
The flagpole squeaks. Motorcycle revs.
And yes the air currents through lavender bushes, through maple, oak, aspen.
Everywhere singing birds in their own notes and keys.
Some steady, slow, some quick, high pitched.
Everything green. Everything vibrating. Everything the river.

Years ago, the river at its high point closed the greenbelt,
so I took a different route home from teaching on my birthday, on my bicycle,
and Dr. Alluri ran into me in his night blue sedan.
I wear a helmet now when I ride.
I look all ways with more caution, more of my dad's fighter pilot sense behind eyes.

A wavering melody creeps in:
violins, ragtime accordions, silent film pianos unseen,
as though some invisible composer
designed a cinematic soundscape for this moment.
Across the way, thundering booms hard to distinguish.
The traffic stops and starts in spurts, but constant.
Kids yell in a tunnel.

I tell myself hush. Tell worries quell.
Some bicycles creak, their spokes sputter. Some run clean and flow.
Footsteps on brick, on concrete, on wood steps.

My dad wasn't always a great listener but he was quiet most the time.
He allowed space. Didn't interrupt. Didn't not talk over me.
He waited, that patience that boiled my organs
when I wanted something now.

A whistler soothes me with her lips.

Alone time: scale rocks, run impossible sprints.
Write with all my senses, limbs.
With my own pace, clock, rhythm. Trust that.
Spend weeks, months, years lying in wait, envisioning my next feast from my cave.
Then it's time to act, to launch rocket in belly.
The taste of my craving. Locking sight on her there.
Embrace, attach, drag my target up cliff face to a spot safe from vultures, jackals.
Engorge, rest.
Resume slow.
Dream my next fierce outcome.
Stealth, quiet.
In silence, listen to the orchestra around us in this mountain land.
Tiptoe, keep clean, everything arranged as I like. Or I get ruffled.
Always watching, preparing the next big leap.
Waiting with whole-bodied attention.
Inside I growl and bellow -- and sometimes outside. Mostly I seem calm.
Hiding in splendor home, creating bizarre fantasies about all of you.
Examining differences between the world and me, measuring the limits.

Heart takes long trips across the frigid planes of winter
An explorer of underwater planets
A trickster bounding one way then doubling back
Heart trickles out dewdrops from lilac blossoms
An opening, a cave door
I see you and melt with a plate of buttered potatoes

Squishy heart of dancing Russian soldiers
Tiptoeing their way home at 3am
Departing the Ukrainian border
Sneaking back to bed with their wives
With their husbands
With friends and strangers
And all alone
A dream looking out the window

Sugar sticks across my lips and brows
A blood orange dripping from my hands
That tastes like dark chocolate
But a little smokey with forest fire
My heart on a plane to Belize

Oh you green and luscious
peat moss, fruit of my hips

hair in mouth
light in eyes

sink
my unaligned posture
form pressing me down

small breeze, nuthatch on elm

I'll one day stop making up for lost time
and the death of everyone I love

I threw up twice from the heat
and cookie dough ice cream

squeezed my eyes tight
into tomorrow
into home

A big emptying out
rotting cold astroturf
we slept in oceans of smoke
my upper half went numb

What is the color of sun?
A family escaping
overloaded raft made of scrap wood, piles

House on fire, they lost everything
Drifting apart into Pacific

A choke pulsed up
My heart sparks
me in their folds, their kingdom

Clouds pressed on through the wind
I hope inside you are bright

Once upon a time, I had a little rabbit.
I found it on the side of the road one winter night on my walk.
It didn’t move, munching on stiff grass, looking up at me as I approached.
I knelt close to its face and whispered hi.
Its eyes glowed red. Then flashed back again.
I watched a while and continued on.

Close to home I looked back. It was following me.
I knew it was just a rabbit but I walked faster
and even jogged my last blocks, ducking fast around two bends.

At my front lawn I turned and saw it still following, eyes flashing red to black.
I dashed in my front door and locked it,
scolding myself for how silly I was to run from a rabbit.

I decided to call her a she.
I decided it was a gift to see her out in my lawn munching grass.
I looked out my peephole and then out my window.
I saw how cute her hazel ears laid against her back.
Her eyes no longer red.
I decided I made up my fears.
I started to fall for her bushy tail, hunched walk, big back feet.

She caught me staring. I waved.
She returned to her dinner.
She had been on a long winding journey.
She lost three litters to poison.
She smelled something trustworthy on me
and decided to try trusting me for a while.

I needed to trust someone too.
I needed to feel trustworthy.
I needed someone to believe in me.
Every day had felt so alone that year.
I decided she was a good omen, the start of a lucky break.
In the previous year, I lost too many people.
Sometimes tragedy comes in threes.
For me that year it came in 30s. In 300s.
I couldn’t remember what it was like to not feel completely alone in the world.
Everyone leaves or dies.
This rabbit, let her stay.
Let me let her stay.

In the gracious benevolence of the gods,
I besought them with all wild display,
hands to air to ceiling,
mouth to lips and prayer of my heart,
I needed their boon now,
to look out for me and this creature.
Amen.

I decided to go out. Give her a proper greeting.
Out the front door, she looked up at me.
Her red and black eyes flashing again.
She looked more like an it now, not a she.
I kept my heart still. I had to trust it. I needed this.
I breathed and knelt down, my fingers to the earth, a gesture of welcome, coaxing.

She/it bounded slow toward me. Eyes transfixing me.
I heard her/its thoughts. Becoming my thoughts.
I heard instructions to pick her/it up, bring her/it inside.
To care for her/it.
To give her/it a home.
To shelter her/it.
To let her/it into my body.
To let her/it into my brain.
To let her/its spirit out of this rabbit and into my body.
I saw myself feel her/its power, soon to be her/my power.
I had no more willpower.
I soon would have no more me.
Her/its eyes and fur against my skin paralyzed me, broke me.
I picked her/it up, I no longer I.

On my bed we laid ourselves down, my no longer my.
I let her/it hold me, climb me, peeking head inside my mouth.
Between my teeth, through those red eyes,
she/it breathed her/its/my spirit,
consuming/becoming me, l
eaving this rabbit shell,
this body corpse on my/its/her/their bed.
The shell soon to be eaten, discarded,
as this human body would be, once we finished.
Another being taken,
our one-by-one assemblage for our mother planet,
as we consume this earth with our brainwaves.

Once upon a time, we had a little rabbit/little woman/little planet.

Happy. New. Year. (The more we say it, the more it's true?)

As challenging times continue for many/all(?) of us, I'm finding it even more important to reflect on wins, losses, missed opportunities and new connections. There are a lot more highlights than I expected from 2021 -- maybe if you look back, you'll find the same? I hope so. Here are some from my end:

Highlights:

• I taught three new-to-me classes at Boise State University, including playwriting
• Two of my poems were published by Magical Women magazine and one by Willow Creek Magazine
• My Climate Change Theatre Action-commissioned short play DreamSong was shown in Austria, Massachusetts, Michigan, China, British Columbia, the United Kingdom and Florida. DreamSong will come home to be shown at Treefort/Storyfort 2022 and published with the other commissioned plays through Applause Books
• My short play lift was published in the Smith & Kraus Best Ten Minute Plays collection of 2021
• lift was produced by Oregon Contemporary Theatre through their Northwest 10 Series. I got to feel fancy in a livestreamed Playwrights Roundtable  discussion before the festival's on-demand streaming began
• I got myself dental insurance thanks to Your Health Idaho
• My sister, our creative team and I held a virtual staged reading of our play Unwind: Hindsight is 2020 through Seattle's West of Lenin theatre
• Spark Creative Works showed virtual productions of my short plays lift and Somewhere on the Pacific
• My one act CloudMelt got a virtual production at Barnard College
• I participated in a national (worldwide?) event writing 10 25-word plays memorializing the life of Elijah McClain, led by Erik Ehn
• The Bechdel Group held an excerpt reading of my play see in the dark
• Moderna Vaccines! Booster shot! Even my under-12-year-old nephew is now fully vaccinated! It may not feel like it, but we are heading (crawling? limping?) in a healthier direction
• Surel's Place gave me a 10-day daytime residency, where I started two new plays for young audiences, Wolf/Girl and Ark, and shared excerpts of each through a livestreamed reading at the end of the residency
• Thanks to motivation from the Dramatists Guild End of Play program, I finished both TYA drafts in under a month
• I got married! A small and perfect ceremony and loving weekend with surprises from close friends and family, followed by a slightly larger picnic at a park. Thomas and I were then swept away to Moloka'i, Hawai'i where we spent two glorious weeks
• Though the virus continued and my sister and I still couldn't take our play Unwind: Hindsight to the RADA festival in London, I was able to instead spend my Alexa Rose Foundation grant money for that project replacing my computer, printer, phone and other supplies, materials and equipment that were sorely outdated  
• My (new) husband(!) and I collaborated on a song that was recorded and anthologized on a CD by the Wassmuth Center for Human Rights  
• I participated in a 30-day virtual silent playwriting retreat led by Erik Ehn and co-facilitated by Liz Duffy Adams. Sarah Ruhl was in our cohort!
• I started seeing plays in person again, starting with The Tempest at Idaho Shakespeare Festival, directed by Sara Bruner
• lift was a finalist in the Maxim Mazumdar New Play Competition
• see in the dark was a semi-finalist for Bay Area Playwrights Festival and the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center
• I paid off my student loans!
• I participated in Andrew Simonet's workshop: Sustaining in a Time of Change
• MING Studios produced my audio essay "Dirty Fingernails" as part of their My On Mondays podcast
• I read with Migration Theory at Storyfort
• I saw my sister perform in two plays as part of Cafe Nordo's Curiouser & Curiouser in Seattle, in one as the Queen of Hearts, in the other as the White Knight, where she ran upstairs and downstairs for both performances each night in a stellar feat of physical comedy
• I saw Hamilton for my second time live thanks to the Morrison Center offering $15 tickets to students, employees and staff at BSU on one matinee -- cancelling two of my final classes so my students could attend felt worth it
• I shared Thanksgiving and winter holidays with my out-of-state family, in person, with all of us healthy
  
• Finished a first-draft of a poetry chapbook, Drown to Resurface
  
• Updated my artist statement, both 500 and 250 word versions
  

I did make progress on my 2021/2022 goals, but I notice my goals for the next two years do look similar to last year's (and the year before). As Andrew Simonet encourages, I'm trying to think more in terms of decades now, rather than years or days, so that's okay. Progress is progress. These are big goals for me. These days still aren't usual. I'm grateful to be healthy, have work, have a home to live in, be able to afford groceries, rent, bills and small luxuries, and be *relatively* mentally stable.

3 Big Goals for the Next Two Years:

• Travel to 1-2 overseas countries
• Go to 2-3 in person silent meditation/silent writing retreats
• Get our household completely debt-free

As I've found it challenging to make bold steps in these days of continued uncertainty, finding myself occasionally paralyzed by the unknowns aided by past trauma festering in my ribs, I want to make this a year of more bravery, more stepping forward into what I know I need, letting go of what no longer serves me, more courageous joy, more openhearted rejuvenation, more grounding reflection. May 2022 be my year of claiming space for what I know I need.

As a playwright and writer across disciplines, I study the distance between us, seeking connection across differences.
 
Writing teaches me to trust my brain and get present in my body, two things I once thought impossible. I mine monsters that plagued me through child-and-early-adulthood (and still chase me down), amplifying them to mythic metaphors in locations loaded with personal history, so I can grapple with my mind as a human who lives in an absurd world, just like you. By revealing my most vulnerable secrets, I hope we can see each other more clearly.
 
In my work, tactile language, playful contradictions, kinetic imagery and haunted landscapes bridge spaces between words, between universes, between you and me. I uncover how my disorders, scars, terrors, regrets, curiosities, heartbeats, delights and wonders link with yours, the earth’s and the cosmos’. I cook our rawest parts together in hot lava stew.
 
By physicalizing my most difficult moments and mashing them with yours, along with surprising bursts of dazzling beauty and mystical forces, I hope laughter and meet-cute swoons can bubble alongside the brutality of reality. I want us to take more time to pay attention with intention, to see that the shadows inside us we can’t bear to acknowledge also overwhelm the stranger next to us, those too far away to comprehend, nonhuman persons and unrecognizable entities – and that we share intoxicating joys, dreams, desires, too.
 
Without shame, we can unveil, heal and embrace our weightiest, wildest places for love of interdependence between everything.

As a playwright and writer across disciplines, I examine the gaps dividing genres, people, perspectives and my own disjointed fragments. Studying the distance between us, I seek connection across differences. I write what terrifies me, juxtaposing the rough and the funny, the silken and sharp, the gorgeous and grotesque to catch a glimpse at what it means to exist on this planet.
 
Writing teaches me to trust my brain and get present in my body, two things I once thought impossible for me. Swimming through memories I can't believe happened, I mine monsters that plagued me through child-and-early-adulthood (and still chase me down), amplifying them to mythic metaphors in locations loaded with personal history, so I can grapple with my mind as a human who lives in an absurd world, just like you. By revealing my most vulnerable secrets, I hope we can see each other more clearly.
 
Sensory details spark mirror neurons that unite nervous systems. In my work, tactile language, playful contradictions, kinetic imagery and haunted landscapes bridge spaces between words, between universes, between you and me. As I exorcise my past, my peripheral vision widens. Disparate pathways coalesce. Through searching research, conversations, surveys and letters shared with me, I uncover how my disorders, scars, terrors, regrets, curiosities, heartbeats, delights and wonders link with yours, the earth’s and the cosmos’. I pour together collected stories, observations and devised collaborations in hot lava stew, cooking our rawest parts together. Cathartic release brings breath.
 
My play see in the dark: a new myth churns a recurring nightmare from my adolescence with our fears of the other and climate disaster. In a future Juneau, Alaska when all the glaciers have melted, the ice fields have vanished and nothing is recognizable, an isolated community of mutant outsiders must decide what to do with a newcomer: the young girl with a great power that threatens to destroy their village and everyone in it. This play collides environmental collapse, collectivism, poetry, a genocidal shadow beast, radical love and the value of compassion over suspicion.
 
By physicalizing my most difficult moments and mashing them with yours, along with surprising bursts of dazzling beauty flooding with waterfalls, oceans and mystical forces, I hope laughter and meet-cute swoons can bubble alongside the heartbreaking brutality of reality. It's hard being alive today. I want us to take more time to pay attention with intention, to see that the things inside us we can’t bear to acknowledge also overwhelm the stranger next to us, those too far away to comprehend, nonhuman persons and unrecognizable entities – and that we share intoxicating joys, dreams, desires, too. I want us to take stock of our hidden monstrosities. Without shame, we can unveil, heal and embrace our weightiest, wildest places for love of interdependence between everything. What if we held unconditional friendliness toward all citizens of the multiverse, ourselves included? I want to hold out a hand and sit with you through your struggle.
 
Together we can get through this thing called life.

Recently I enjoyed listening to this podcast episode "Lost Proof" by Dr. Cindy Shearer, my former professor and advisor in my MFA days, when I studied Creative Inquiry, Interdisciplinary Arts at California Institute of Integral Studies.

In response to Cindy's invitation at the end of the episode, I went on my own little trip and made a postcard out of the experience. I feel so-so about the results, but found the process awakening, so wanted to share her invitation with you:

I took a walk in the foothills near my neighborhood as I often do. What most struck me was the number of demolition sites in my path. A row of low-income rentals gone for future condos. An old building (perhaps related to the military site that used to be there) torn down in the dusty hills on my route, resulting in new fenced-off locations and detours. I was able to find a different way to my favorite spot -- a pond leading to a little marshy-land in the midst of high-desert surroundings -- but the circuitous directions kept me thinking about how much is continuously disappearing in our cities and natural landscapes. 

I think if I spent more time making the postcard, I might enjoy that element more, but going through this short process was a playful way to reenter a larger project I'm returning to this month. I forgot to look up etymologies, synonyms and definitions of words -- definitely something I'll do if I revisit this with another walk and text/image piece in the future. Maybe I will, down the road, or on a break/detour from my current project.

If you go on a journey and make a postcard, I'd love to hear about it. So would Cindy -- you can connect with her via Instagram as she invites at the end of the podcast.

A few images from my trip: