One For the Angels

Cataloging just a few of the many forms of kindness that have found me in the past few weeks — in gratitude.

A friend asks me for the truth and I take a breath and I say okay and it feels a little scary to be honest but then she says thank you, she says, yes girl thank you, you know me for real, thank you and it makes me want to be more honest with myself, too.

I am sitting in a cozy arm chair with a mic pulled up close to my face. I cross my legs and straighten my back.

John says, now sing to your beloved.

It isn’t hard to conjure the feeling. I’m not just singing, I am narrating a story I understand well. How if we are aware of the ultimate goal, the shared goal, we keep trying keep trying we keep trying keep trying keep trying to and then, there we go, got it, even if it’s slippery and hard to grab, ta da, we make it beautiful.

Or maybe that is just the story I’m bringing to it.

Either way, the hook loops and loops and from somewhere inside me that I haven’t been in touch with hardly ever these days — it is raw, how myself I feel, it is palpable, the sense of relief. I sing up from that place over and over.

When I open my eyes, John is wiping away his steady tears.

That last take was money.

But let’s do it one more time.

As Mahira says, this one is for the angels.

Boom box on the corner and no words shared, just a little dance, but you must picture it, like two homeboys two-stepping over to some invisible ladies, as I strolled by the hustlin’ homie. A good good laugh thrown backwards over my shoulder. I am not the only one dancing in public today! A ha!

My girl leaves me a series of voice memos whisper-laughing over my poems. Get a first reader like that. Get a friend like that. She better come in harsh with the red pen though because: loyalty.

In line for a doldrum midday lunch, I hear a familiar voice over the speakers.

Nah, probably isn’t.

But wait, is it?

Shazam indeed confirms, my old friend’s voice like an angel is coming to find me with a secret high five that reverberates ear to teeth.

Ah, then I remember this song of his I once sang on! And it is fun to listen back to.

The Jazz impromptu puts on BBC Earth and turns down the volume — all those beautiful sleek skinned dolphins swimming upwards towards light as if synchronized swimmers when bathing cap skins.

He pivots the screen towards me.

My headphones are on and the mic is close to my mouth.

I am about to hit record.

He squeezes my shoulder.

He gently closes the door.

I keep thinking about this memory that I have thought about many times before. It did not happen this week, but I did share the story aloud, and so, it counts.

It is a brief story about the power of a single Post-It written expressly for the five year old daughter of your friend (her dad), included in a package sent between adults:

“And a special hug to my good friend Caitlin.”

I saved that note, tacked it on my bulletin board, where it stayed until college.

To be seen as a person, autonomous as my own individual spirit and worthy of recognition as such by this grown up —

What a rush.

Elder poet, much wisdom, how annoyed are the people behind us in line to get their book signed as she bestows us with wisdom! I’m kidding, they are generous, they wait patiently.

I crouch to listen, keeping my distance behind the mask. I am especially tickled, and angered, by the story of the poet teaching a class in prison, and after calling the ancestors in with her signature clicks of the mouth and stomps of the feet, don’t you know she was written up for “trying to incite a riot!”

I want to think of myself as a special container for this story but I know better than to take it to my head. She’s just an open vessel in her tiny little frame, fragile but so strong, leaning on the bookshelf on stage.

The poet sobs and says that sometimes it’s just too hard to keep going. (I ache in recognition.)

But she always has. Even when the children grew too old to dance with her in the rain!

And so, I can too.

On the street my friend holds my hand and we cry together about our faults. We look at each other with open hearts. You’ve been among the people for so long, my friend says. Go up the mountain. It’s okay. It’s time.

You know the local sensory deprivation chamber in this town feels very much like a coffin, but somehow I manage to stay floating for 2 hours and repeatedly try to clean my mind. I try to lean into the feeling of being a particle in the universe, which I achieve for bite-sized moments. The point being: pushing past a bit of fear on the regular is a form of kindness to self.

In three big cardboard boxes, on my doorstop drop the remnants of an interactive art experience I staged at a Brooklyn poetry shop. That comic zine release was in February 2020, just days before the pandemic.

I toss most of the art — in ruins from hanging for two years in a closed up shop — but I save the panels I’d printed poster-sized from the zine’s pages and hung on the walls. The story is called “The Day We Turned into Rainbows,” and the fun part is that the comic is in black and white.

The day before the show opened, we tacked the posters on the wall and left out a box of markers with an invitation.

Now, colored only halfway in hideous but inventive color schemes, I hold them up above the dining table and I think about that image, when I walked into the venue early to prepare and lo and behold my little invitation had worked! Strangers, adults and children alike, were huddled together with their many hands scribbling away.

I slip the evidence into the cardboard until the day comes when I will frame and hang in some studio of my own.

I also save one little blue cloud.

Here is where it came from: I’d cut a bunch of cloud shapes out of card stock and invited guests to write a “pep talk for a rainy day,” then hang it on the wall under these janky 3D cloud — sculptures? —that I made from scraps of the random fabric I’d scavenged.

I save the one little blue cloud that makes me laugh out loud and tack it to the office door.

In small and messy handwriting, in the middle of the cloud it says:

At least you didn’t poop your pants today.

(And don’t you know, it continues to be true.)