Monday, June 08, 2009

Adoption Talk

I am against adoption, as it was done when I was born--baby gone, mother sent home, closed records, everyone move on.

I spoke with a woman about my feelings on this subject and her response was shock and defensiveness. Rather than asking why I felt the way I did, she moved swiftly towards offering unsolicited advice--as if I needed to be re-educated. I am sure this is because she knows people who have adopted children, friends of hers who are much closer to her than I am, and she doesn't believe adoption is anything but good, benevolent, righteous.

In her quick response to my comment, the way she was so threatened and reactive, I saw, first hand, what lies ahead should I publish my memoir about being adopted, finding my birth mother and the ensuing reunion that took place.

Adoption remains our dirty little secret. It's the horror of horrors we all pretend didn't happen and yet, it continues to happen all the time--every day--still.

I wanted to tell this woman that I do not need to be re-educated about adoption. She does. We all do.

I was adopted. I know, first hand, the hell of being in exile from my being. I didn't have a say in my placement with another family, or in being taken from my mother. I had my identity stripped away and was forced to assume another identity, which wasn't my own. As I quest to heal, can I at least, at the very least, have the freedom to my hard earned opinion? Or is this such a tender wound of our time that it cannot be included in the story we are telling ourselves about the goodness of adoption?

I don't know.

But I still beleive what I beleive. Adoption is unmerciful. It leaves ruin in its wake.

Does open adoption work? Is that going better for children? I don't know, yet. This is not my specialty, nor should it be at this time. I speak for the children of my generation, given up in the 60's, I call for us to heal. Most of all, I strive to heal myself.

It's slow going.

Books I Recommend:

Journey of the Adopted Self by Betty Jean Lifton

Love's Hidden Symmetry by Bert Hellinger

Primal Wound by Nancy Verrier

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Saturday, June 06, 2009

What's Going On?

The latest news is that a new memoir about the finding of my birth mother, as well as our reunion nd her reaction to my life experiences, is with my agent and with any luck, will find a home in 2009.

I am also teaching exclusively for Fairfield University, in Mystic, Connecticut, as faculty for the MFA creative writing program. Here in Portland, I offer one on one teachings, on a limited basis.

Your letters keep coming. One, two, up to three a day. Thank you! I read them all, although responding is quite a challenge due to time constraints. It means a great deal to hear from you and to know the work has touched your lives.

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Tuesday, January 20, 2009

The Mantra of New Day-O BAM AH




















His name, Obama, holds the seed syllable of BAM as well as AH.

BAM is the sound associated with the Buddha family in Tibetan Buddhism. AH is the sound of all that has yet to be born. We are largely, as a culture, understanding what OM means. So now, we have inadvertently--via this election--come into contact with two more sounds that are essential teachings as well.

A million people, in DC, spoke it as a mantra as well. Did they know?

O
BAM
AH

On this day, in a state beyond awe, I am honored to be alive to see what was inconceivable a few months ago. With plans to leave the country, ASAP, with my children already saying their goodbyes and my own bags packed, I had no idea this man, Obama, could take office.

He has made many wonderful speeches too.

But I am still stung. After all, words are words and we have heard plenty. As the Dali Lama said, two years ago in Canada, after being made a citizen of that country, "this is the time of action."

Can Obama lead us to take action?
More importantly, can American's be inspired enough to take action even if he cannot?

This is the hope Obama and this day of his inauguration strikes in me. With my children, I can now stay in my country for a while longer. I can sit under a tree without fear and learn from the wind. I can even begin to hold my head up as a American, at least a little bit.

Let me see what comes next. I am hopeful--at the very least.

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Thursday, January 15, 2009

Breakfast Poem

(Ode to Oprah)

I am so sick of starving myself
counting points, I only get to
eat twenty three, writing them
in that Weight Watchers book
from that boring weekly meeting
I don’t go to anymore

The Buddha said, if
you are hungry—eat,
if tired—sleep

I am sick and tired
of worrying about
my weight. I’m hungry
for olive oil, butter and

bread.

Pumpkin

Muffin

Cheese

Chocolate

Biscuit

Gravy

Mushroom

Omelet

Potato

Cream

Cocoa

Enough!

I am going to eat.

*composition in progress

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Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Pearl

In This World

In this world
we walk on the roof of hell,
gazing at flowers.

- Kobayashi Issa







.

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Sunday, January 11, 2009

Pearl

America

Then one of the students with blue hair and a tongue stud
Says that America is for him a maximum-security prison

Whose walls are made of RadioShacks and Burger Kings, and MTV episodes
Where you can’t tell the show from the commercials,

And as I consider how to express how full of shit I think he is,
He says that even when he’s driving to the mall in his Isuzu

Trooper with a gang of his friends, letting rap music pour over them
Like a boiling Jacuzzi full of ballpeen hammers, even then he feels

Buried alive, captured and suffocated in the folds
Of the thick satin quilt of America

And I wonder if this is a legitimate category of pain,
or whether he is just spin doctoring a better grade,

And then I remember that when I stabbed my father in the dream last night,
It was not blood but money

That gushed out of him, bright green hundred-dollar bills
Spilling from his wounds, and—this is the weird part—,

He gasped “Thank god—those Ben Franklins were
Clogging up my heart—

And so I perish happily,
Freed from that which kept me from my liberty”—

Which was when I knew it was a dream, since my dad
Would never speak in rhymed couplets,

And I look at the student with his acne and cell phone and phony ghetto clothes
And I think, “I am asleep in America too,

And I don’t know how to wake myself either,”
And I remember what Marx said near the end of his life:

“I was listening to the cries of the past,
When I should have been listening to the cries of the future.”

But how could he have imagined 100 channels of 24-hour cable
Or what kind of nightmare it might be

When each day you watch rivers of bright merchandise run past you
And you are floating in your pleasure boat upon this river

Even while others are drowning underneath you
And you see their faces twisting in the surface of the waters

And yet it seems to be your own hand
Which turns the volume higher?

- Tony Hoagland

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Thursday, January 01, 2009

Baby Overboard

Newark Airport, Starbucks, a double latte, grande, something with whip.
The people line on their way somewhere
A long line, rows and rows of tables.
I-pods and cell phones.

There is a baby in a high stroller seat
Maybe 14 months old.
She sits like a queen, sees her world from on high.
Pink pajamas, golden hair.
She stands, unsteady, tumbles out,
and hits her head on the hard concrete floor.

There is crying, of course.
Shredded shrieks.
No one looks.

The father, waiting for his coffee,
does not speak the responsive language of empathy,
leaves her on the ground as if she is another’s child.

I am out of my seat, I'll take her,
reaching from my place many paces away.
I am too far to get to her though
and I am a coward too.

She is not mine.
I sit down, undone,
searching the family dynamic
in a panic. Do something!

Eventual even casual, a world of time later for a baby
the father picks up his daughter like a wadded up nothing
hoists her by a tiny bird wing arm,
tosses her back into the stroller with the loose, too high seat.

Unstable, the whole thing

As the little one continues her wounded cries
her pajama’d brother looks on, unsure.

Where is the mother?
I spot her there, placid, dare I say serene,
behind the bulk of her husband,
as if her child was never been part of her reality.

She waits for her coffee too.

And still, the cries carve away the blues audio track,
there is more anguish than I can bear,
I am crying from where I sit,
unable to do anything but be with her pain, my pain, our pain,
all of it is unexpressed but I can taste in the salt of my own tears.

The little one makes the words “ow, ow, ow-ey.”
Are they her first words?
Will they be her last?

Right by me, they pass, the baby whimpering now.
My eyes are a worried mother hen,
moving over her head, her neck, her back.
Is her body all right? Sprain? Concussion? Some blood vessel burst?

They are both so precise, measuring out their cream and sugar,
The mother still behind the father, two sugars, one dollop of the cream.

The baby, somewhat recovered, begins to move around.
The father warns her how it will happen again,
if she does not stay still this time.

The little boy, the brother, looks my way
my naked pain rolling down my face
we hold eyes for longer than usual,
he almost looks away.
But he does not.
He holds steady on me,
a stranger who sees him, his sister, his story, his fate.
We are one.

I want to invite him into my careful mother's embrace.
I have lots of room here,
He almost comes—breaks free to be with me
or is it me who breaks free to be with him?

And then he blinks and they are gone,
baby tettering on top of the stack, unsteady
they are all swallowed by the crowds
on their way to catch their flight.

*composition in progress

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