Where The Lights Are Always On // An Essay For Gail & Stephen

Sometimes home isn’t where you grew up or spent longer than a weekend before three years ago. Sometimes it’s the walls and the people you lean upon, and cry into. Sometimes home becomes the space within arms that you learn to grow out of — spreading upward like a blooming plant, stretching towards sunlight, reaching with your whole self once again. It turns out that you just needed time, and patience, and a whole lot of love.

The house on Gladstone has remained a fixed point against the moving background of my memories. It has been the same for my whole life, in the best of familiar ways. There are roses planted in the front and along the sides of the house, the bushes much older than I am. They burst and they bloom in hues of pink, red, and jubilant yellow. And every summer their thorny hands extend across the porch, no matter the method of pruning, and catch on the clothes of all those who pay a visit.

When springtime comes, whether I’m doing alright, immersed in my grief, or heavy from heartache; I can look out the window and see the camellias, brushing up against the glass. There they are each year, variegated pink and white against the familiar wood stain of the house. They push up against its body like a hug, like a gentle hand, filling space with so much beauty. They are old friends — a transient gift of the seasons. Eventually, they’ll fade and fall, but they’ll be back again.

Because, this home is a living, breathing thing. And it has helped to grow other living, breathing things who seek out comfort here. When I arrive on balmy summer nights, crickets chirping at my back... hurry up the stairs in the spring rain, or rush from my car in the damp chill of the winter, the lights are always on.

You can see them when you’re standing on the street, a beckoning of warmth and movement. Familiarity and family. I am lucky to walk into this home with open arms. First, there’s barking, and a hug at the door. There’s nearly always someone sitting on the couch or in the corner chair, a needy white cat on their lap, smiling as I enter.

As a child, I played on that couch, coaxing a small snippy dog into my lap — the same couch I’ve since cried on, spilled on, and slept on, peacefully. Peacefully until someone with loud steps, and a heart so big he needs proper medication, tromps downstairs to make a morning bullet coffee. Big and small, I’ve been here, and in the patchwork of my life, there aren’t many spaces of which this fact is true.

I can close my eyes and I’m standing in the multicolored kitchen with its pink patina paint, chosen and then second-guessed, in a particular pattern on a cabinet — or two. There’s a shaker of cinnamon and sugar in the pantry, reserved for buttery toast, and I can’t count the number of elbow-leaning life updates that have taken place around the wooden island. There are nearly always fresh apples on the butcher board in the kitchen, or a leftover lemon slice — cut by beautiful hands that soothe sadness, and take their time with just about everything. As they should, no matter how many people complain.

The inner flame of the stovetop is almost always alight, to keep the kettle warm. Once, I found it burning without anyone home — and after I fed the mewling cat, I turned it off with quick dismay. I remember the first cake I tried to bake here... for three hours, before realizing the stove was never on at all. There’s a method to the madness, and the dial must be turned just so.

There’s the dining nook we rarely use, a home to plants, pet food, and fruit — and don’t forget the backup guava juice in bulk for when the fridge simply won’t expand. I love the shells on shelves and the flowers that remain in vases til they’ve shed. I love the echo of my mom that sings throughout this home, in times before I ever was. How strange it is to fill a space that she cannot. And yet how safe this space and these people have always made me feel.

Sometimes home isn’t where you grew up, but where you are simply loved, in whatever state you are. It’s a space you grow out of, and sometimes take for granted, but the moment you need it, it is there. I love this house, and I know that to be also true of so many others who see the lights from the street, and know they are home. Because all of us who visit, know that this house on Gladstone is alive, and that the people who live here, and love here, are kind.

A Mother’s Day Poem That is Not Really A Poem At All

By Mila Phelps Friedl, for Emy Phelps

When I was a little girl, wispy blonde braids and no concept of the laws of gravity, I would often I jump too high, without any fear of a disastrous landing —

You never told me not to jump too high, you simply reminded me, with a loving tone, to always be sure to land with both of my feet planted firmly, on the ground;
moving through this world intentionally and kindly.

I wanted to be just like you when I grew up, and I beamed with pride at each photograph where some distant relative declared the resemblance between the two of us to be “uncanny.”

While some little girls may have dressed up in their mother’s flowery blouses,
and applied clownish red lipstick across chubby cherub cheeks,
I never wore your clothing or dragged your too big heels across the hardwood floors of our home; because you never owned heels, and I refused to dress in anything other than tutus until the 2nd grade.

I did try on your red cowboy boots once —
but the leather was too stiff and I still didn’t really feel like you.

When you would leave for weekends on long music trips,
I would spritz a pair of freshly laundered socks with your sandalwood perfume,

and fall asleep next to the scent of you, imagining the curve of your arm at my back.

It was a smell filled with memories of your gentle singing, filling the house as you cooked, the way you appreciated each individual flower on the long walks we’d take in Lithia Park, and all of the times you’d catch me when I jumped too high, soothing blossoming bruises and the dented pride of your precocious little girl.

You always reminded me that I was capable of anything and everything on my own, but that it was never a bad thing to care for others or to open your heart up to a million possibilities,

if you could just find a way to believe that even one of them might lead you in the right direction.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve stopped trying to be exactly like you.
There was a moment when I realized that our voices followed different tunes, working together in harmony —
but absolutely different, regardless of what your younger pictures seemed to suggest.

I am uniquely me, because of you, and your many lessons.
Amidst our many fights and tears and years of change —
some things will always stay the same, even when I am all the way across the world.

I still carry a vial of sandalwood perfume when I travel,
because the smell reminds me of you,
and that you gave me everything so I could be my own person,
sing my own tune,

pick myself up when I undoubtedly fall.
And I will always be your daughter;
jumping high, even though I’ve learned how gravity works,
and remembering to land, open-hearted and with both my feet planted firmly on the ground.

AID ABET AUDREY

by Mila Phelps Friedl

My grandmother came to my shoulder in height, but if personalities could visibly stretch beyond the length of the person, hers blossomed at around 6’7”. She had a way of surprising you – the “small but mighty” descriptor perhaps little too on the nose and when I think of her now, I think of those moments and the residual joy that they bring. 

It is a weekday, the particulars of which are not important, and the hallways of her retirement home are stripped of their decor, newly painted a potent shade of taupe that she’s mentioned several times now as we make our way to back her room. She stops at the front door and looks up at me, an impish grin spreading from her ears to the bow of her lips and breaking into a smile. She launches into a story that begins with the aforementioned taupe-painted walls. 

It would seem while doing her laundry a week ago, my grandmother had come across a poster of Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s – which had previously hung in the hallway across from her room. 

It was my grandmother who first showed me Audrey Hepburn, and over the years it became a simple love language of ours to send cards and pictures, clippings and mentions of the charming Hollywood darling, back and forth and back and forth across the miles. The poster in question is a vivid shock of primary colors… the svelte Holly Golightly melting into the frame, Cat, the cat, perched upon her porcelain shoulders, the stem of her cigarette elegantly pointing upward to a smaller still of Audrey and love interest, Paul Varjak, kissing in the cartoon rain.

It is a wonderful poster — now apparently missing from The Home’s collection of artwork. My grandmother had speed-walked away with it, her getaway car a squeaking blue walker.

It is not out of the ordinary for my grandmother to step outside the lines of rule-following… she likes things done in her own particular ways. Imagine now that the poster is nearly as tall as she is, add in the logistics of one small woven laundry basket, two arthritic hands, and three long hallways between her room and the laundry room. Despite everything, she did it and here I stand, in awe.

She reveals the prized poster, hidden behind her bedroom door, and presents it to me with complete giddiness, quipping that she can easily sneak it back to the laundry room if I don’t want to take it. I already know I can’t let her grand theft be for nothing, so I kiss her on the cheek, and then proceed to fully aid and abet my grandmother in stealing a movie poster from a retirement home. 

I drape my oversized jean jacket over the front image, Audrey Hepburn says nothing, and we make our way through the newly painted, picture-less hallways. My grandmother stands watch at the exterior doors to the courtyard, I’ve been instructed to do a signal once I’ve gotten past the front desk.

Working to conceal total incredulity at what I am currently taking part in, I walk silently through the empty lobby, no trouble at all getting out to the main double doors. I turn and wave at my grandmother, who gives me a mischievous thumbs-up, blows a kiss, and then wheels out of sight. I put the large poster, jacket, and all into the back of my car, shut the door, and smile up into the evening clouds. 

My grandmother blurred a sweet boundary between impish and ever-thoughtful. That is my kind of love.

***

In my reckoning with grief, it is stories like this one that help me to understand the ways in which people stay with us long after they are gone. I would like to note that my grandmother’s retirement home was planning on donating the artwork they’d put into laundry-room storage, she just got to it first and I like her version of the story better, in part because of how much joy she got in getting away with the grand scheme of it all.

Here’s to my grandmother and to our Audrey Hepburn love language – to the love behind the funny things we do. 

WELCOME GHOSTS

by Mila Phelps Friedl

When I was a little girl, the holidays held this feeling I could never quite capture in words. It came through in moments — the calm just before the storm of expected (and unexpected) guests. A day full of cooking, meandering around the kitchen as the people who knew what to actually do, took charge and held course. When dusk fell and the conversations grew warm and hazy, gaze drifting and blurring the lights on the tree, a precious breath before the bustle of the morning.

That tug of anticipatory joy has been somewhat absent to me in the year & some months since grief entered the picture. A friend of mine said it best – during the holidays especially – there is an expectation of joy.

Yes, of course you have the “right” to be sad, but why can’t you also be joyous?

I fall prey to that question a lot these days, and I think it comes down to the fact that even joy is simply a different version of itself now that I have danced with my own understanding of loss and its defiant tune of finality.

This Thanksgiving, I was tripped by grief, many times. My mother’s handwriting on the cardamom label that I used to make her cranberry sauce, hidden in plain sight on a shelf of my father’s pantry. I exhaled sharply at the elegant swooping of letters, at the thought of the warm hand that had once bled ink across them.

My mother had the most beautiful handwriting, easily gracing the slightest “to-do list,” spice label, tax form and, of course, the letters she’d write to us always and often. I do like that she’s there. That my parent’s divorce didn’t erase her. That in death, there are traces of her in small places – in a house that she never lived in, on a spice jar I’m sure that she used, perhaps for the same reason I did.

Welcome ghosts can still leave you breathless.

* * *

“100 strokes.”

“100 strokes,” she’d say as she’d run a brush through my hair and I would whine and shrink away. In this routine she’d keep me hostage on my step-stool, threading thick strands of blonde hair into plaits down my back.

A genius ploy to give the rest of the house a little more time before Christmas morning began – torturous and mundane to a little girl with a self-determined timeframe for opening presents of any kind.

Present day, in the silence of the guest bathroom, I stand very still, hairbrush in hand. I let those moments swell around me and imagine, just for a moment, that it is my mom who is brushing my hair, the gentle pulse of her fingers braiding away – heartbeat to heartbeat.

When I open my eyes, I am standing alone in a bright yet windowless bathroom.

* * *

We drove to Cannon Beach, twelve days before she passed. It was gray and cold but beautiful. She seemed happy and strong – strong enough to hold our hands as we walked along the shoreline.

When she grew tired, we lay our coats down on the dunes and my brother and I ventured further up the coastline, scanning the shallows for tiny beautiful things. We found a sand-dollar half-buried in the grain and pulled it from the earth… presenting it to her in our meandering search for a whole and perfect circle.

She smiled sadly. Holding it in the palm of her hand, her long fingers moving across its surface, tracing each line of its flowered face. She handed it back to me and my brother, reminding us that she couldn’t take it with her.

I had never much thought about the things she couldn’t take with her – I was more focused on what she was leaving behind.

* * *

Not all ghosts are unwelcome. But a lot of them are hard, no matter how gently sweet, beautiful, heavy, or sad the form of them may be. Come Christmastime, I can’t help but think of the moments that bind these days to her and the last gift I tried to give. That sand dollar, which now stands sentinel on my dresser, feels as much a part of my grief as the unexpected reminders of the person who used to be.

The holidays make so much room for joy and giving, that perhaps it is easy to forget or discount the pain in the things that remain… those that were left behind, in whatever circumstance of loss that it may be.

If my point in writing this can only be to ask that whoever reads this now, will hold some space for whatever welcome or unwelcome ghosts are called in by the holidays… those of us who walk with those ghosts, will feel a little more at peace with our particular version of joy.

On that note, may it be a peaceful holiday and a new year that brings a lot of good.

xo

YELLOW IS

A piece by Mila Phelps-Friedl

| For my mama, the woman of many hats and strengths, who always reminds me how to love better in this lifetime | All my love to Denise & Deb for letting me write this too.

There is something so special in this moment, watching these three women — one who raised me, two who have nurtured my every whim of creativity, gathered around the print-making table.

My mother’s hair, only just growing back, gossamer and silver, barely traces the outline of her head. As she bends over freshly poured paint cans, you can see where the silvery strands meet at the nape of her neck into a strangely beautiful triangular crease. I settle nearby, scribbling notes to the tick of the clock. Clean blank sheets before them, a pointed spritz of water, and they begin.

She breathes in the studio around her, eyes pausing on her people and a slight smile slipping into the corners of her lips. She reaches first for yellow which, to me — is sunlight and lemonade and the feeling of contentedness.

It makes my heart stretch a bit to see her doing what, when I was a child in this very studio, came so naturally. Once she told me that if I didn’t learn to let my heart stretch out every now and again, that I wasn’t really living. Being back in this place, among the people and things that have always been there, I can see my mother’s heart glowing, while mine feels heavier. Heavier in the sense that it has stretched at least three sizes since everything changed back in March.

My mother brushes her fingertips against the top sheet of her first print, pulling at the corner to reveal spots of color and lengths of white. I imagine we all have white periods in our lives — times when color and purpose seem elusive and impossible. However, in the absence of paint, white gives the pattern space to breathe.

Despite the artwork on the walls, hospitals seem to drain color. Even the people there, turning a sallow kind of pale, doctor’s scrubs the same muted hues of garish mauve and off-tone blue. From the beginning, my mom resisted — wearing colorful yellow kerchiefs even, and maybe especially, when I know she didn’t feel the color yellow.

She’d lay in the garden, head on my lap, breathing in the air with the humming bees. Breathing in baby blue hyacinth and dusty pink roses. And then the chemotherapy alarm would sound, and she’d wistfully return to her room.

But here, among these powerful women who have known her, know her, and love her, even when there’s a bit of uncertainty to herself, she begins to smile easily. Around some people, we are just so absolutely ourselves.

To the soundtrack of gentle laughter, the whisk of paper, and the humming methodology of print-making, I can suddenly see a million little moments that the three of them have shared — unspoken and extending through the years.

* * *

Deb’s first memory of my mom is of her singing. At the live music bar of a funny little restaurant nestled in between two storefronts on 4th street in Ashland, Oregon. My only memory of that place is that the walls curved into the floors and provided some distraction in the form of attempting to slide down them, instead of watching the performance. It’s funny the things we remember.

My mom went on to be a teacher’s aide at a local elementary school where Deb would eventually hire her to sing for morning classes. Tears spring at the corners of Deb’s eyes as she recalls my mom’s rendition of “Here’s to Cheshire, Here’s to Cheese” and, like clockwork, the timbre of my mother’s voice quietly begins to sing in my head —

“here’s to the pears and the apple trees, and here’s to the lovely strawberries… ding, dang, dong go the wedding bells.”

She sang that song with a surety and a softened smile. I remember feeling incredibly proud and more than a little protective that it was my mother, who sang and made others want to sing like it was her goddamn job here on planet Earth. Crappy teachers’ pay be damned.

Denise had a similar first impression, in a different Ashland venue. The Key of C Coffee House and Bakery on Lithia Way had mediocre poppyseed muffins and iffy-at-best acoustics. Later on, my mother took an art class from Denise, eventually beginning to help in the studio in exchange for the use of the space herself. When I was born, she’d bring me along, and now 21 21-something years later, we’re all back here again.

* * *

The studio is filled with the smell of inky blues and heady reds, stamped with postcards and notecards, orderly cupboards of paper, and translucent jars of colored pencils in varying states of usefulness. In her pink dress and sun-faded tiara, a full-size cardboard cutout of Glinda the Good Witch watches us from the balcony above. She seemed much bigger when I was five.

They each take turns sweeping paint across the blank white pages. Talking gently as they work, they use combs and forks and the edges of gears to scrape out landscapes on the paper. Someone turns the radio on, instruments warble through the sunlit room. My mother laughs.

Deb’s paper swims with rust and joy and algae green, pink forming along the outline of the page as she stamps an old ink cartridge into the wallows of the paint.

Denise dusts a lusty blue sky across the page, so sure in her strokes that they seem to match her heartbeat. Wiping her palms across the thighs of her ink-dappled jeans, she looks to my mom and her gaze softens. In a well-practiced motion, she pulls back a paint-dampened stencil, revealing a black row of birds against that first stroke of blue sky. It is the same blue sky my mother drank in as she sat in the gardens of Stanford Hospital.

My mom uses broad marks with the brush, scuffing some turquoise into the white, leaving only a single strip devoid of color. Like a breath amidst it all. She presses down a stencil and lets out a deep sigh. I wonder, could she breathe when she didn’t feel any color? When she was too tired to sing or write or play the guitar? What does she think as she spreads a brackish purple over the layers of yellow? Covering up the light with dark.

Of all the versions of my mother I’d ever imagined her being, a world in which she couldn’t do the very things that made her feel like herself, wasn’t one of them. It made me wish for things to be as they were, instead of as they are.

But not even Glinda the Good Witch could work magic of that kind, unless there’s a different version of The Wizard of Oz. Glinda was really more of guide and Dorothy did most of the work. Hospitals, biopsies, chemo, oh my!

But when my mom pulls back the page, it’s yellow I see. Bright yellow birds are carved into the paint, perching against the dark background. Despite wishing that things could be different, I let my mind settle on the good of what is. I stop taking notes to remember this moment; my mother smiling and strong, Denise laughing with flecks of paint along her right cheekbone, and Deb, so intently focused on her print that she doesn’t notice her skirt steadily gathering color.

* * *

Time in this space is tender — and all too fleeting. Yet here they are, turning every second into art, creating without speaking. Just loving, and letting that fact breathe without the unnecessary reminders of “how much,” or “how long.”

The finished pieces are lined up against the windows, late August light filtering over snapshots of dust clouds spirals, mulchy autumn leaves, lime green pine forests, sunsets etched in pinks and blues, a raging fire in the depth of its embering, glowing on the once blank page.

My favorite step in the print-making process is what remains when they pull the print from the table. A blank spot ridged with color. Wet sponges dilute the reds to pinks, the pinks to rose, until the water runs clear, dancing in small streams that catch the sunlight as they drip. I imagine the cancer leaving my mother’s body in a similar fashion, hope diluting the darkness until only light remains. When I look back at the table, the outlines of color are gone, only white remains.

* * *

It has taken a few months now for certain pieces of her to learn how to be in and of the world again. Six months in and out of hospitals takes something from you. Cancer can take even more if you let it. Despite everything, you have to be willing to fight for it — to get whatever “it,” is back again. Nobody said it would be easy. Sometimes people don’t know what to say at all.

But, as a wise woman once said, if your heart isn’t stretching and growing, then you are not really living. We’ve all stretched a bit in the last six months. We’re likely to stretch a bit more.

* * *

Ursula the dog pads slowly over the faded blue floor, a blue that reminds me of hyacinths. The gentle giant curls to rest below my chair as I watch the quiet bustle in this version of home.

I look up at Glinda the Good Witch and wonder if she knew any of this was going to happen from her perch high above. But the notion of  “if’s,” can become all too powerful, especially when they have no real say in the state of the present.

This is our present, and maybe even very Good Witches can’t change the hard parts of life, because without those times we’d never appreciate the power of the people who know you, and love you, and remind you of that something good. A blank white space can hold the same intention, reminding us why, and when we need a little, or a lot, of color.

Once again my mother reaches for the yellow, and as I watch her enfolded in steadiness, emanating sureness, surrounded by her people, by our people… I decide. I decide that no matter what the future holds, after six months of uncertainty, certainty is the color yellow.

* * *

“I would describe our friendship as true. I see her, she sees me. We always take up where we left off the last time. We care deeply for each other in a kind chosen sister/friend kind of way. We trust each other. We are there for each other in a nonexpectation sort of way. I am grateful that we are friends and know we always will be, no matter what.”

“She is a trustworthy and caring friend and a good listener. Her perceptions are right on. I can tell her anything. We understand the creative spirit. We are kindred spirits and we were born in the same year. We view the world similarly. Emy is a truth-teller and seeker. She creates beauty. She is always kind. She understands me.  All of these things I love about her.”

“Constancy. Loving. Acceptance. Her sense of the world is something I love to be around. She just knows what’s important and I’ve always looked up to her for that. Seeing her after all of this time, it was like, ‘Oh! There she is in true life!’ Like seeing a sister after a long road that you didn’t get to be a part of.”

A ROOM FULL OF STRANGERS

By Mila Phelps Friedl

“We must listen to one another. We must respect one another’s habits and we must share the truth and the integrity that the voice of the poet so generously provides.”

These are the words of Miguel Algarín, a beat poet and professor of English at Rutgers University, who helped in the co-founding of The Nuyorican Poet’s Café which, in the present-day, is nestled among the nameless shop-faces of the Lower East Side.

A large mural of colorful faces threads across the brick facade of the building, and in front of the heavy metal doors, a cue begins to form — strangers alike, all waiting for the same thing.

In the months since coming to New York, I have been seeking out, more than perhaps anything else, these kinds of shared experiences. For all that New York offers in terms of pacing and excitement, you are also alone in your hurry.  I’ve used my newfound isolation as a form of observation, finding ways that, even from afar, I can be connected to the lives of other people, increasingly interested in the day-to-day interactions of the million and one kinds of individuals. 

Through the metal doors, once tickets are checked, the red velvet curtain opens to an auditorium-like room. With tall brick walls on each side, the space is invigorated with a kind of rustic warmth, an offset to the beat poet’s dream color scheme — black on black on black. The watchful eyes of painted faces stare down from three portraits on the far right wall, while a restless combination of listeners and performers spill over the main aisle, scavenging for seats and a spot in the night’s performance.

In the space behind the seats, wraps a peeling green staircase. This apparatus connects the first floor to a balcony and a heavily marked bathroom full of graffiti prose. Intended for a less lively audience, the passive bathroom user can read things like, “I’ve been here before,” and “As an integer, I’ve always felt sorry for the decimals.”

I may have arrived alone, but we filter in together, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, first-timers, self-defined poets and listeners alike. In the far left corner, the stage is set, a black curtain bathed in light, a single microphone standing with burning potential, ready to add to the echo of millions of words, movements of emotion and expression, reverberating through the historical space.

Some things, time cannot fade — even the silence here seems to be powerful, because it is intentional.

There is a steady hum to the audience around me, the readying performers standing out from the buzzing crowd only by the movement of their lips forming around the words that only they have heard aloud before. Everyone is waiting, anticipatory smiles and chatter gleaming across the nearby faces. It begins.

The stage lights up and the moderator strides out, a brilliant smile and booming voice.

“We need some judges, anyone here feeling judgmental?”

Since its grand opening in 1973, The Nuyorican Poet’s Café has had the tradition of picking random judges from the audience. Audience involvement is key. Tonight, three women “volunteer,” hands forced in the air by their nearby friends, one of her own volition. Spiral-bound books and scorecards are passed to each judge.

The moderator exclaims,

“All women! — that means don’t bring no misogynistic, patriarchal bullshit up here.”

Laughter ripples outward. The master setlist has been made, and so it begins.

Magenta and blue lights, pour from overhead, illuminating the space with colored dust particles, and just at the edge of the precipice, the moderator reinforces the significance of where we are sitting.

“Forty-plus years of an arts movement that could have very well been gentrified into a Starbucks.”

He sets the rules; a time limit of three minutes and twenty seconds, no props, no musical accompaniment, and “please keep your clothes ON.” Someone in the audience boos this final ruling. He goes on to explain there will also be no video recording and that yes, Snapchat does count as video recording,

“I don’t trust Snapchat and I don’t trust bubble tea, I don’t need my pictures disappearing and I don’t want to chew my drinks.”

The show hasn’t even begun, yet the entire room is in awe of this electric character.

He calls forward a “sacrificial poet,” for calibration judging and she marches to the stage.

* * *

ONE

One is bold, as her T-shirt proclaims, block letters quite literally spelling out the word as she readies herself and then looks up into the blinding spotlight. Starting slowly, slippery — a poem about the lost artists and the shame of the modern music industry, “I’ve seen them,” the real artists,“an they’re some kind of beautiful.”

She is sing-songing stories of slavery and oppression, the women who shaped her into the person she is today, who brought the rhythm and blues from their roots as they worked in the fields and built up this great nation.

She slides over the words, her tongue clicking against her teeth as her boldness grows, her words tumbling into one another, losing meaning alone for the sake of their unity.

The palms of her hands begin to lightly clap against her sternum, to the beat of her verse and the final line alights — “they had us singing in chains.”

Silence.

TWO

Two's elbows brace an invisible weight and his hands grasp the thin air around his head, stretching like wings, stretching his tongue around the harsh tale he spins, “she was beautiful but her fear and hate never let her believe it.”

He stilts and rocks as he tells of a life in which he was too black for some and not black enough, but, “this life is still here, this life is still strong, and that right there was my therapy song.”

His arms reach out, fanning away some horrible version of his own reality, a childhood of abuse, heartbreak, and healing, opening his soul to a room full of strangers.

THREE

Three is decked out in salmon pink jewelry — “Today is my birthday, I’m 60 years old, and my children surprised me with this.” She clasps her phone and fiddles with the salmon-colored gems at her throat.

She begins to read, “My eyes are filled with the thought of you leaving me.” She sinks into the poem, baring her teeth in a sexual fervor as she speaks of intimate love, deep love, soul-consuming love.

Her jaw loosens as she whispers throatily — “I need your love, come rest it down on me.”

She exits stage left and embraces her two grown children, the love in her words hangs in the air, that love is ringing.

FOUR

Four is from Egypt and will be performing this poem in Arabic, without any translation. In another language, the lilt of his tongue and the light of his eyes fill the room with the same meaning the other poets were able to channel in English.

While the foreign syllables jolt against listless eardrums, we are still transported somewhere else, a part of something much bigger than translation.

Meaning reaches out over understanding, the most basic of human emotions can, it seems, be captured with intonation and desperation alone.

He is in love with his words, they are a part of him — and for a moment, so are the rest of the strangers in the room.

When he is done, the moderator takes the stage once more, looks out, and says, “make sure your words are in the form you want them to be. Do not change your art form to make us feel more comfortable.”

FIVE

Five wears a dusty blue shirt and his poem is titled, “Dust” — 

“I’ve heard that  70 - 80% of dust is made of human skin, but I prefer the real thing… I want to reach into her head and hold her brain, not hostage, just in the hopes that some of her goodness will rub off on me… my love is not machine washable.”

Every girl in the audience melts into their chairs. He gets very high scores.

SIX

Six fills the stage, in personality and in literal space. He came to New York to be a famous Drag Queen, though he hears you can’t actually say you’re from New York until you’ve lived here for at least 7 years.

“I wanted to share some of my heart with you.”

His words seem to shimmy up his spine, his hands caressing the parts of his body that breathe and move to the rhythm and the rhyme of his own voice, building and breaking as he describes the universe inside of himself.

SEVEN

“I’m a trans-woman and next month will mark five months since I’ve allowed myself to start taking hormones.”

The crowd cheers.

Seven begins to ask how you’re supposed to convince your doctor that you know you are a woman, when you have to convince yourself and everyone around you as well.

Her body rocks to the breath and the beat and the breadth of her words, she expels, “my whole life I’ve known I was woman — do not speak in poetry, your doctor is not a poet.”

She is beautiful.

EIGHT

Entitled, “A POEM TO AMERICA FOR ALL THE FUCKED UP SHIT YOU’VE DONE.”       

When Eight looks up from the floor and speaks into the microphone she becomes a different person, chest forward, voice dropped.

“You were born out of death, stitched together by grief, nurtured by ignorance and ego… We admire your stolen beauty… they say you remember exactly where you are the moment disaster strikes — November 8th, 2016… You promised to be better.”

Chills.

She beats out the Dust poem by a margin of three points. Reality conquers sentimentality.

NINE

Nine wears a tropical button-down and a breezy attitude, his heart on his sleeve, a wide smile.

“1. We can’t get to each other. 2. There’s nothing to get to. 3. Nobody’s got it, get it?”

He looks as though he’s about to make love to the microphone and then, suddenly, a flood of velvety Italian phrases, lightning speed from his slightly parted lips. Sound waves weave through the open space, his left hand desperately gesticulating, reaching past the language barrier, spilling toward the audience.

He pauses, “the most important things in life are not things, the most important things in life die. In death we are silent… to live means to learn how to shut up.”

He smiles and walks off the stage.

TEN

This poem starts off quickly, a barrage of alliteration through the entire alphabet that also tells a story; a litany of the villainy of American colonialism and imperialistic structures.

A modern-day Dr. Seuss. 

ELEVEN

Eleven shuffles to the microphone, a thick cockney accent muting his “-er’s” for lengthened “e” sounds, the eradication of his “k” and “p,” sounds.

He explains that four years ago, he used to come to this place nearly every week. It was one of the worst periods of his life and this place saved him. The air is still and patient as he begins to deliver a rousing piece, detailing the work ethic of the traders on the streets of his hometown, the places that make a man stronger.

Judging by what he said about this place, it would seem the Nuyorican Poet’s Café helped to make this man strong enough to speak.

* * *

FIVE, SEVEN, EIGHT, and ELEVEN, progress to the second round which... will be held another night. 

Even as the spell begins to fade, I am struck by what remains, the echo of a lexicon, still imprinted in the space, across the people in this room.

For a single evening, I was a part of the lilting tongues, the bearing souls, and the striking power of words without boundaries.

Imagine what the world would look like if more people were willing to listen to the words of strangers, and even if they may not agree, to accept their contribution.

One month of looking for human connection in the soul-filled streets of New York City, two hours in The Nuyorican Poet’s Café and I found what I was looking for.

The night is over, the doors are closing. Midnight creeping ever-closer and I'm finding it incredibly hard to leave a room full of strangers who, suddenly, don’t feel so strange.

THE BEAUTY IN BEING ALONE

by Mila Phelps Friedl

There is a difference between being lonely and being alone. Loneliness can creep in at strange moments. Stagnant silence when you wish someone else was speaking. A kind of hollowness or projected feeling when you remember something or one that used to be.

Loneliness can be a point of comparison while aloneness is a state of being.

As human beings, we strive for community. The feeling of belonging is something we psychologically crave. And by no means is this a bad thing — if you’re happiest in a crowd of people, more power to you. However, that doesn’t mean that those who are alone, are doing something wrong.

The great writer Susan Orleans once wrote a piece centered around Saturday nights. What we do during them, why they’re important to us, and, perhaps most significantly, why we feel the need to be social on Saturdays out of all the days of the week. Since she wrote it impeccably better than I could ever paraphrase, ​

“Saturday night is when you do what you want to do and not what you have to do. In the extreme, this leads to what I think of as the Fun Imperative: the sensation that a Saturday night not devoted to having a good time is a major human failure and possible evidence of a character flaw.”

Orleans is perfectly highlighting the very human flaw of comparison, hammered into us since we were birthed as social beings.

While I lived in Paris, I tried desperately not to compare. But I also faced not belonging to the culture, not always understanding the language, and being a continent away from those I loved the most.

I lived in a tiny, one room apartment with ceiling-high windows and whispery curtains that breathed in French air. I lived on Boulevard de Reuilly, took the Métro line 8 to my classes each day, and despite being constantly surrounded by people — I spent a majority of my time, in varying states of aloneness.

At first it was out of circumstance, and for a while I was both alone and lonely — a combination that’s somehow dreadfully poetic with the cloudy skies and stoic landmarks in the city of lights and love.

However, what started out as circumstantial, slowly became preferential. Eventually, I reveled in the adventures I could savor on my own. With a mask of anonymity and only conversational French as my backup — I found myself in a place that didn’t judge me for taking the time to just be with myself.

I made a game of getting off at a different Métro stop each day. Once I found a castle at the end of a garden, the Seine lapping at my heels across the prettiest bridges.

I went to dinners alone and took myself out to the movies, a familiar kind of solo-activity.

Art museums in Paris provided hours of self-reflection, within inches of Degas' oil pastels — I consider myself incredibly lucky.

There was a moment, as I watched the rain trickle down a statue in the Jardin des Tuileries, that I realized I’d never really given myself the space to find out what I actually enjoyed about my life.

I’d always had stirrings of individuality, but I’d gotten used to feigning excitement over things I didn’t actually care about. And in those moments, I was lonely.

In a crowd of people, with someone I’d loved, even with the closest of friends. I was unhappy in places I might’ve been happy, if I’d just taken a breath, stepped back and looked to see if any of that was where or who I really wanted to be.

Based on the work of University of Chicago social neuroscientist, John T. Cacioppo and his ghost-writer William Patrick, there are three majors factors contributing to how lonely we actually may feel. First, the level of vulnerability we are already feeling, coupled with how socially connected, or disconnected we are from our peers.

The second aspect hinges on our ability to regulate and control our emotions surrounding the response to feeling lonely. If we are sad because we’re alone, do we find something that makes us happy? Or do we choose to wallow, allowing the feeling of rejection or hurt to cloud all impressions of the people or situations around us?

The third is a question of how we are able to reason or come to terms with whatever is making us feel so goddamn lonely in the first place.

According to Ph.D Karyn Hall of Psychology Today, “Feeling lonely does not mean you have deficient social skills, but apparently feeling lonely makes people less likely or able to use the skills they have.” And so Orlean’s “Fun Imperative,” resurfaces in the form of a self-destructive cycle.

We’ve overly associated being alone with being lonely, and learned to count both of them as negative and shameful things.

I’ve come to consider loneliness as an indicator that something may not be right with where I am, rather than that there’s something wrong with me. Because I’m comfortable in the moments I'm alone, I know that if I’m unhappy and I leave — it is unlikely I will be lonely. I trust myself to know what makes me feel like me. And in those moments, I am truly all I need.

A heart is still a heart when it’s not attached to someone else. A person is still whole when they don’t always share themselves with others.

We need to talk about the fact that being alone and being lonely are incredibly different things and we need to recognize that not everyone draws their joy from the constancy of others.

Being alone with yourself and accepting whatever you’ve got, is one of the the most powerful things that you can do — especially in a world that defines social interaction as a measure of maturity, likability and societal significance.

Originally featured on Passionprojectonline.org

The real story of Medusa, Disney princesses, and other Horrendous normalizations

By Mila Phelps Friedl

I grew up with fairytales. I listened to books on tape while falling asleep, devoured Grimm’s twisted stories as soon as I could read, and had a real fascination with the hero cycle of Greek Mythology. When I was about 6 years old, my mom first let me watch the “Clash of the Titans,” a masterpiece filled with green screen animation, a stop-motion beast and lots of horrible acting in togas. This particular cinematic feature told the tropic tale of Perseus, son of Zeus, as he quests to find a way to kill a beast called the Kraken, before it murders the helpless Grecian princess of Argos, for man’s defiance of the ancient Gods. After visiting the three Stygian witches who can see the future, Perseus ventures to the edge of the river Styx to find and kill Medusa, a woman cursed into a serpent-like beast, whose gaze turns any living thing to stone. Using her head, Perseus is able to defeat the Kraken and save the princess, the hero wins again and everyone is happy — except for Medusa and the Kraken, of course.

It is a tale of love and sacrifice, bravery and courage, with a steaming side of patriarchal bias that entirely warps the killing of an unfortunately cursed woman into some kind of happy ending. The hero cycle of Perseus is echoed in a million other versions of a million other stories, imitation being the finest form of flattery, it is quite common to draw on ancient myths to revamp, retool and rework old material into new stories for new generations. What’s the scary thing about the cyclical nature of traditional storytelling? It tends to normalize a lot of things that maybe shouldn’t have been alright in their original version, let alone a Disney, sugar-coated alternative.

Only quite recently did I look into the actual story behind the curse of Medusa, and the fact that Clash of the Titans was remade in 2010, with the same exact fate and almost zero sympathy for Medusa’s history, is worrisome — to say the least. Being raised in a family that encouraged most kinds of character analysis and always asking questions, I always liked Medusa and wondered if there wasn’t more to her story. In truth, she was one of the first scary and powerful female characters I’d come across that actually had a shot at beating the good guys. But as I watched her stop-motion movie version slain at the hands of the handsome Perseus, I realized Medusa would likely always get the fuzzy end of the lollipop, because once she’d played her role as an antagonist and her head was taken from her body, she was of no value to the story of Perseus and his journey to hero-dom. Medusa would never beat the men who came to try and kill her, and she could never break her curse — because that would ruin the cycle of heroes that has been ingrained into our literary heritage, all the way from the ancient Greek myths to modern fairytales. The ‘good guys’ win, again, and the evil stepmother, cursed woman combinations, and their very significant backstories are completely forgotten, overshadowed by the glorious light of victory.

Historically, Medusa was once a beautiful and powerful priestess to Athena, the Goddess of wisdom and warfare. Other stories paint Medusa as an ethereal beauty with numerous suitors — the title is not as important as what comes next for Medusa. In all of the traditional versions, her beauty tempted the God Poseidon and he took her, assaulting her on the floor of the temple of Athena. In the midst of her deflowering, Medusa began to pray to the Goddess Athena, and this is where the tale becomes a little murky. Some versions say Medusa had promised her celibacy to Athena, and so this little “incident,” with Poseidon angered the Goddess so, and that’s why she cursed Medusa. Other versions explain that Athena was merely disgusted that Medusa had somehow happened to be sexually assaulted in the Goddess’s sacred temple — that’s right, blame the victim, not the God.

Zeus, the head Honcho of the Greek Gods, was renowned for having his way with women and then turning them into animals once he was, quite literally, finished. Hephaestus, God of fire and metal, consistently approached his half-sister, Athena in an effort to have children of his own, and incest aside, Athena usually ended up bearing some kind of child, despite the fact that she had firmly told him no.

This kind of “unGodly,” behavior wasn’t only privy to the Greek Gods either — Indian culture has a widely celebrated epic entitled “Ramayana,” which tells the story of a woman named Sita who is kidnapped by the Demon King Ravana and separated from her husband and Lord, Ramayana, the prince of Ayodhya. After a great battle ensues and Sita is rescued, Ramayana fears that she has been unfaithful to him during her time with the Demon King and to prove her virginal status, she must walk through fire, which she does. As she does, the flames turn to flowers at the touch of her bare feet, she is proved to be innocent and the lovers are reunited. As iconic of a relationship as this one may be, it is clearly not one based on trust, otherwise, Ramayana might have been more worried for Sita’s well-being than the status of her virginity.

A common thread emerges when we examine all of these narratives through a modern lens; they possess numerous blaring red flags of patriarchal biases, indicators of a much larger problem that surely must have died along with the heroes and demons and beasts of ancient times. But therein lies the power of classic stories, they are called classics for good reason. Years have gone by and still, many modern storytellers continue to draw from their roots, without fully acknowledging, or understanding, the power of words to rationalize and normalize the culture of sexual exploitation and deceit, woven deep within these traditional folktales.

Think of the animated classics today, most of them are defined by a Disney revamp — a fluffed-out, pastel feature of a much darker fairytale. Three in particular come to mind; Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Beauty & the Beast. In the original telling of Snow White, before animated, sparkly birds got involved, the prince decided to carry off the comatose Snow White, taking her to his palace before waking her up with a kiss. As Bustle journalist Suzannah Weiss so succinctly puts it — “Snow White may have fallen in love with the prince when she woke up, but she most definitely did not consent to being there with him in the first place.” But how much damage can a fairytale really do, right? It was just a kiss, after all.

How about the original Sleeping Beauty where the king doesn’t actually wake her up with “true love’s kiss,” and instead impregnates her in her sleep? In one of the very first versions by an Italian man by the name of Giambattista Basile, after the king takes the Princess in her sleep, he just leaves her to gestate for another 9 months, until her newborn baby twins manage to suck the enchanted needlepoint from the tip of her finger and she awakens — a brand new mother without any idea when or how. The story continues to reveal that the king is already married to a woman eventually driven mad by her marriage to a cheating rapist. Fear not though, the tale ends with some version of happily ever after, and this line, taken directly from the Italian translated tale, “Those whom fortune favors, find good luck even in their sleep.” Excuse me?

Beauty and the Beast can best be described as, romance meets serious anger issues, and Stockholm syndrome to the “nth,” degree. What a cute story though; we should all fall in love with the cursed prince who traps a woman in his castle, where she is essentially an indentured servant and waits until she falls in love with him to become human again. Throw in a few songs, some talking candlesticks and all of the serious issues go away — except that they don’t.

It is almost as if, because we consider fairytales to be synonymous with the innocence of the children we tell them to, they are overlooked as conveyors of powerful and moving impressions about life and love and humanity. But the mere fact that these stories have been carried with different cultures, and belief systems, and people, for generations, shows that they have much more power than we may give them credit. What does it say about our culture of storytelling, that children are encouraged to revere and idolize animated princesses who are carried off, trapped away and all eventually fall in love with the man who is written the most “heroically?”

Fairy Tales, and stories in general, have always had the incredible ability to move us outside of ourselves, to shake us in our beliefs. They can deliver powerful messages about bravery and sacrifice and times long past — but they also need to be checked for the ways in which they normalize a very patriarchal narrative that was much more widely accepted at the time of their creation than it is, or should be, in the present. This dangerous kind of normalization is present throughout the traditional stories of Greece, India, England, America and numerous others, with the capitalization and popularity of entertainment outlets, like Disney, only further pushing these problematic tales more prominently into popular culture. And sometimes, when things are animated and shiny, right up in our faces — we don’t remember to take a step back and look at the bigger picture.

However, there is hope for the changing impression of fairy tales. Just the fact that there is space for articles like this, for stories of survival and movements founded on hashtags and community, is a prominent sign that narratives can shift. What we need is for the voices of the present to find a way to remain present in commenting on the stories of the past and the importance of changing our ways, speaking louder and more passionately than the very human tendency to cling unquestioningly to our literary histories.

The fact is, powerful men taking advantage of “less powerful” women is not an aspect of traditional storytelling that we need to keep in our literary museums, our reverence for the hero complex/cycle, or whatever antiquated tropes about love dynamics that we learn from the time that we are children. These stories will not go away, because like it or not, they do have a bearing on hundreds of years of human morality and the great quest for understanding. So what can be done? First of all, it is significant to understand that with the permanence of these stories, we can continue to tell them as long as there is room for serious discussion. In this way, we are able to remain connected to traditional fairy and folktales, without allowing their antiquated narratives to continue to shape our modern understanding of equality humanity, or consent. Because there are still so many stories to tell, and so many ways to learn how to become better listeners.

Originally written for Futures.Org, image credit to @e_anka