English is not the best language to share our story, but due to popular demand, I’ve agreed to take on this monumental task: translating our experience into a tongue that cannot fully capture it. Thank you for your grace in knowing there are stories I simply cannot tell—stories you will have to dance along to experience, instead of read. With that, I begin, not at the beginning, but before that, in death.

I was born Ujuli (oo-HOO-lee), one who both is and carries the day sun and night sun. Always opposed and always in sync.

Every dawn I am reborn. Every nightfall I die. On the full night sun, I rise even as I fall. I carry and am the responsibility of two suns. I must shine so brightly as to illuminate everything without exhausting before it is time to exhaust. Some nights I carry yet am no moon at all. I needn’t hold space for my light and am afforded sweet, momentary rest. People wonder why I cannot be as consistent as a single day sun, but I am two and must both light and carry the night sun, so I do not wonder. Though I am constantly wandering.

To stay still would be to throw off the rhythms of the milkweed and willows, the waters and bison, the clams and acorns, the winds and fire. To stay still would be to die before I am meant to die.

Before I was born Ujuli, I am possibility nestled inside of my womb mother, they themself possibility nestled inside of their womb mother, my ma’mama. I dream in a language I can’t yet speak of swirling colors and murmurred emotions. I feel the rhythms of the moons and the heartbeats of the Earth, a symphony of cacophonies that reverberate my solitary cell. Already, I sense I’m a vessel for something far beyond the ordinary.

Before then, I am possibility—vast and unseen by our earth eyes, trembling at the edge of existence. I have chosen my womb mother, suspended between being and not-being, nearly formless and likely to dissolve before becoming more than a phantom of sensation. My existence a spiritual darkness vaster than all of creation with a melancholy that aches beneath what we can hear, beneath bones, in the ether of ancient grizzly bear monstres.

I do not know what comes after this death that comes before I couple into ONE, but I already know fear that swallows little ones like me whole. This is all of what I know of being possibility inside of possibility.

I do not know the day my womb mother separated from their womb mother. Elders will later tell me how the fireflies lit a galaxy above the fire as the moon was dying. This, they will tell me, is why mother’s father named them the equivalent of Bright New Moon. And with this, they will swoon over how ma’dada’s eyes sparkled brighter than two Awakened Suns.

What I do know: this is when I learn yearn. I am now one less possibility closer to being. As vast as fear, yearn is all I can contain. Always, I am at risk of bursting through my edges and ceasing to exist. Always, I yearn to exist beyond possibility.  I yearned for myself to couple, to feel satiated, to feel expansion, to feel a new kind of whole, to feel relief from the monotony of this compulsion, to experience something new, to revel in the newness of ONEness. For six and six and two Suns, I know only yearn.

Somewhere in the ecstatic stillness of time and quiet frenzy of possibility, a collision will assign me a father and a creation assignment. Future kin will tell me that a choice was made by me. I will do my best to believe them, as I have no recollection of choice. I can only tell you about fear and yearn and my obsession and single-focus to become more than possibility. I am only a QeeQeeQee falcon in its spiral stoop, where time suspends as I fly faster than the wheel and see only my “prey”—my other self. I’ve been in this loop for my forever, I can hardly contain myself when it’s interrupted. In fact, I can’t contain myself. I burst. I die my first death. My first familiar finds me and our yearns unite—and it’s simply too much for either of us on our own. We unite to expand, trying to contain this thundering ONEness and ecstatic relief from a forever of yearn.

I was whole until I realized I wasn’t, and then I was whole again—this is what I’ll come to learn of death.

And still, I’m only a part of my mother. Still, I’m only possibility, but now I am possibility backed by the strength of creation: I am a wellspring of eternal cell creation. I am growing, or at least I will be within a moon’s whisper—it takes a moment to recover and reorganize as my new self.

It’s said that when we unite inside of our womb mother, that we are re-uniting from a split we cannot remember. A part of us, complete on its own, chooses our mother. And another part of us, complete on its own, chooses our father. We cannot fully know what we are choosing, but it is our first lesson in commitment, one that, frankly, I’m still learning. This is the choice my future kin will remind me of later, as I threaten our social structure.

Before I know words, I know sounds, light, taste, and a fierce interoception as to the daily stretching of my forming bones, lungs, heart, liver, skin. A rise in elongation of the distance between waves and a drop from the valleys to the peaks of sounds slow the cadence of my heart; my hands unfurl; and I forget for the luxurious moments inside of a split second what had been preoccupying me. Before I know words, I know sounds.

I soak in the gentle tones of my mother’s musical voice, the melodies of my father’s songs, the echos of my heartbeat harmonizing with mama’s. I revel in the choir of birds greeting light and the hush of silence saturating darkness. I learn the rhythms of touch and of dance and of rocking. All these sounds, I learn, are love.

I’m saturated with curiosity inside the newness of every moment, every moment inviting me into expansive exploration. What am I becoming? What do I do with all that I’m creating? When will enough become enough? What will feeling complete feel like? And what happens then? I am me, yet I am still a part of my mama. Are my questions theirs? I know nothing constant until I’ve run out of room to grow, at the forgotten but familiar precipice of yearn.

Mama tells me they can no longer contain me. My possibility has finally outgrown them. Mama will burst and we (who is singular and both mama and me) will die.

And so, it’s here that I die my second death. Here, I take my first breath in our breathing life in the year of the extra moon, Sanajara. Named for the guardian of fire, Sanajara’s moon brings ravenous flames more fierce as any our elders have known, and they are the keepers of our ancestors’ tales. Mama Bright New Moon says I carried us to safety through fire and birth. And so, the first name I earn is Ujuli—one who both is and carries the sun and moon.

If a name is a prophecy, a blessing and a burden, I do not yet know mine. The elders say that children born in the year of Sanajara carry fire in their blood, destined to transform everything we touch. But what transforms can also destroy.

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In this workshop we’ll explore the magic of naming, what is gained and what is lost when the unsayable becomes the said. You can expect example poems and discussions, some short readings on craft, and etymology and linguistic theory-inspired thought experiments and writing prompts, all designed to inspire you to explore the landscape of all that lives named and unnamed in you.

We read from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s essay, The Grammar of Animacy, now included in her book, Braiding Sweetgrass which a sweet friend recommended to me last year. In the excerpt, we’re challenged to think of nouns as verbs. The following is an excerpt from my morning’s reflection after taking a walk and reading a Sabrina Orah Mark’s column in the Paris Review with the teaser “I’m mourning something nameless that has vanished into thin air.”

When starting the class, Sam asked us all to introduce ourselves: our name, our access needs, our pronouns, where we are at with our writing and what we want from this class. I took some quick notes as I eagerly wanted to focus on and listen to the other students. I grew nervous on the spot, frozen as if I’d never talked in front of a group before, regressed to anxiety over being seen. How do I want to be seen? Who am I? What am I doing here? Is my curiosity not enough? Could I not share that I’m exhausted, still, and struggling with my identity at 41, yearning to put a name not only to who I am, what I do, why I do, why I matter? That it’s time for me to focus on myself and I’m the only one who can grant myself permission, forgive myself for ever thinking I didn’t matter. That I’m suddenly struck with urgency and craving to be water (I’m already water), connected to a body larger than myself, yet myself has only the boundaries I’ve set. From what I can visually see, I exist in the frame of a body bound mostly by skin with the exception of my eyes and a hole running from my mouth to my anus which, as I think on it, is also bound by “skin”. From what I can feel, I exist further beyond the physical, sometimes reaching to my mom, to the moon, a fraction of space beyond my skin. I exist in a multiverse, in multiple timelines, in the ever-changing, never static “now” and moments that have passed and have yet to pass. I exist with my ancestors. I will bear no children, yet I exist in others, in memories, photographs.

To Jewel is to shine as a reading lamp, carefully placed for intimate illusion, sometimes seen from the night through a window framed by plants and fractal shadows. To Jewel is to yearn for more wattage, only to burn out when lighting a stage, to remember that individual lighters (and now, cell phone lamps) collectively can light a crowd. To create greater / global change by creating safe, challenging, comforting spaces for individuals to discover their contradictory yet not invalidating truths, to illuminate all our truths.

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When I was young and should have been watching “You Can’t Do That on Television” while at grandma’s, I’d instead watch “The Sound of Music.” We didn’t have a VCR at home, so watching a movie on this contraption was exciting. As far as I knew, grandma only owned one VHS tape and I didn’t mind watching it over and over and over.  At her funeral, we played The Sound of Music soundtrack and as we were huddled in the frosty rain around the lowering of her casket, one of her daughters suggests we sing. We Mlnariks, the Von Traps. How’s that one go? Where the kids line up and bid farewell at the end of a dignified dinner party? The littlest one yuans and gets carried away by her sister, Maria? Despite having watched that movie hundreds of times, we couldn’t remember the words either, but we sang it never-the-less.

Maria fascinates me. Both the eldest sister of the Von Traps and this woman who poses besides me. They’re both singers.

It’s Easter. I’ve only been on the road one week, after leaving my career, home, cats, and friends. No cop escort. No strangling. No bruises. No broken guitar. Not yet. I’m living somewhere between my previous life and what’s to come, adjusting to my new life on tour, driving from city to town to country side, talking to strangers.

Would you mind if I take your photo?

The girls pose politely and pull chairs up to my table. We’ll be best friends for an hour, or maybe two, depending on how long these drinks do their magic. I’ll look back at their photos a year from now, inhale the crisp air, and remember the sun setting behind the twitching neon of the Hotel Congress. Maria matches the landscape. Magnifies the landscape.

In two days I’ll discover the saguaro, with its flowers that only bloom once. Maria blooms tonight. Her sillohette a promise that beauty transcends fashion. She doesn’t sing for us, though her soul’s song is a sweet one, embracing me, a stranger, comforting me in my dying. Her song is one of the country, one of the desert.

Woman feels safe alone with nature, for nature hasn’t harmed woman, hasn’t shamed woman, hasn’t forced itself on woman… In the desert, it’s easy to feel alone, see for vast miles, and know she is alone.

Maria’s soul’s song evoking the desert brings me back to life in every timeline. 

Now, a year later and twelve years later, Maria’s story is a fabrication: a foray into the magical time suspended between moon rise and sunset; a distant fragrance that instigates memory when memory won’t come; that sensation that you’ve been here before, that this moment is not unique. But I’m jumping ahead of myself again. My thoughts are so easily scrambled these days, it’s easy to forget how timelines intertwine.

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Dec 10, 2011. Remember when we pulled those flowers out of the dumpster?

July 4, 2012. My dream house. Remember when we used to host tea parties in grandma and grandpa’s tree house? None of the adults ever drank tea as it was much more of a coffee community … but we had tea parties.

Aug 5, 2012. Remember when we played with erector sets all day? I’m talking tinker toys here kids. Lincoln logs. Whatever we had and whatever we called them. Those. Remember when we built houses and forts and the army men would invade?

Aug 19, 2012. When I was in 5th grade (and double digits), all I wanted for my summer birthday was a pool and the promise of proud and prancing friends who wouldn’t even notice the lack of TV, internet and video game entertainment.

Aug 31, 2012. And we sat like this, hands over eyes, for what must have been seconds that each lasted a day. I don’t think he caught me peeking, but there were times I really had my eyes closed so I couldn’t tell if he ever peeked. Sometimes I liked to pretend I could feel it, like when I close my eyes at a stop light and practice my skills at knowing when the light turns green. His eyes were green like the stop lights and they begged me to keep going. To keep playing. We must have played peek-a-boo for years where every year lasted a second.

Sept 26, 2012. Remember when we built forts that invented urban sprawl and turned our house into Adventure land?

Sept 27, 2012. Remember when we pulled the dressers and beds away from the walls so we had long hallways to get lost in? Now we spend our time creating worlds with no walls, living in front of everyone.

Sept 29, 2012. Remember when we burned all of our furniture, trying to get smoke signals to heaven? We had mighty tasty s’mores that mom would not have approved of were she still alive.

Oct 5, 2012. Remember when the world disappeared at the edge of town? We chased UFO’s through the dust of racing on gravel and drank with the ghosts, roasting marshmallows in a bonfire at the center of the burnt down school house. I’m surprised we ever managed to make it out of the mud long before cell service and ever made it back to this world at all. These edges, they’re endangered. And I’m worried that we’re going to lose them forever … and find ourselves trapped in a world we’ll wake up in one day wanting to escape.

Oct 27, 2012. My secret garden wasn’t hidden behind a brick wall swallowed by ivy. Or tucked away in a snow globe in a trunk from somewhere in the world I hadn’t yet traveled. My secret was in plain sight and only took a quiet daydream to visit. I wish I could have figured out how to fly in my day dreams. Only in my night dreams could I pump my arms to soar above the houses.

April 5, 2013. Remember when you used to sneak us into the drive-in by having us play sleep in the back seats? You’d throw a blanket on us to play it safe. We’d play sleep again when you wanted to stay for the second, scary, feature. I watched most of the Poltergeist peeking through space of the headrest that your boyfriend would have blocked had he not been holding you. Today the river beckoned me to drive-in and I found myself watching wide awake.

July 23, 2013. Remember when I’d wear my sister’s jeans, my only pair of boots which just happened to be “combat boots,” paired with a non pressed, unbuttoned, white shirt? I typically had a black tank underneath and absolutely perfected the “I don’t give a shit” look which in turn was polished by the Marlboro Reds I’d tote around. Those boots went fishing, drove mains, stomped through fields, moshed at festivals. I conquered the world in those boots.

October 28, 2013. Remember when Tobor was inducted into the automata hall of fame? Ze was shocked, as were we all, for it’d been nearly a century since ze was discovered at Really Good Stuff in Portland, Oregon.

November 6, 2013. Remember when we’d build forts in our beds to keep our reading lights from reaching the crack between the door and the floor … we never suspected ma knew we weren’t sleeping since the forts also hushed our giggles. on the weekends, we’d re-arrange our room into a city. I still rearrange every room in my house once a season and find comfort in building forts?

December 8, 2013. Lucky was born Lucky Larus, unfortunately named after a duck though she was a superior, “ravenous sea bird.” Her moms named her, knowing the chance of their offspring hatching were low. She wears her non mating plumage to ward off the pesky males during the winter season when she must keep her focus on foraging from the dump and stealing what she can from the cormorants. They deserve it, she once squawked, sharing how they trick young gulls into accepting human treats. What the young gulls don’t know (and the cormorants knowingly don’t share) is that human food is addicting and unreliable. The humans must dispense it and once they stop, they don’t care for being pestered … and will kill the gulls. For this reason, she sees herself as a Robin Hood, stealing to keep the young gulls safe.

November 14, 2014. Remember when we’d stay up late, writing letters under our covers, hoping our parents wouldn’t notice the glow of flashlight emanating from our beds. sometimes our letters would be to each other, and we’d exchange them via a postage stamped envelope, doodled to depict our dream travels that week. other times, they’d be to our fictional best friends, our journals who’d never turn a deaf ear or tattle on our evil desires or embarrass us for our youthful lack of emotional control.

Dec 9, 2017. Remember when you’d wake before dawn and swaddle us in our blankets and carry us to the car and to the sitter where we’d wake and get ready for school? Those were the years you worked at the meat packing plant and we must have grown inches from toddlers to tiny adults starting half days of school. Those were the years I’d lose myself in the fictional history of the town we’d wonder through to and from school. The year my kindergarten teacher insisted that my bringing a pine cone to show and tell was the start of what future teachers would call authority problems. I’d really hoped to catch a toad that morning and like many mornings, I pretended to be asleep so as to be carried, so as not to disturb the universe and the adults in orbit.

When I was little, I’d look for the pink schoolhouse along the hwy to Schuyler as that’s where we’d turn to get to mom’s. I don’t remember the trailer well, though I remember concentrating on the mustard stove as I tried to whistle and the tiny bathroom sink where I washed the soap suds out of my mouth.

January 3, 2019. Remember when grandpa would pull out all his puzzles, none of which laid flat on a table. And that ship in a bottle? Life was filled with countless mysteries, all of which made adulthood feel like a destination worth striving for – when mysteries would solve themselves and we’d have new children to tease.

March 5, 2019. Zap. // Remember when we woke up and Wally was gone? His door was open but only a few green feathers in sight. He remained a mystery all morning until our brother spotted him in Chemistry class, caw cawing beyond the window. The only free parrot in Nebraska.

October 20, 2019. Autumn has always been a nostalgic season for me, ever since I used to take long drives from college in Nebraska to visit my brothers in Missouri. The interstate dragged on and tiny state highways meandered around fields and streams and eventually, I’d find myself in a timeless college town where Friday and Saturday nights competed for football, bright lights and underage drinkers. Having no school affiliations, I’d walk aimlessly with my grade school brothers, oblivious to the strife, poverty and drugs running through the city’s veins. After a weekend, I’d drive back along the lonely, rolling hills and highways and slip into college nights as if I’d never been away. The first crisp note of autumn always sends me back. To this time between times. When it stopped still, suspended in Midwestern mist. Between orphaned holidays. When friends had families and I had both none and too many. And I’d hang my head in the frosty air to stay awake, not wanting to wake up in oncoming traffic. It’s possible to both long for and despise a sliver / splinter of time. Because amidst all the turmoil that was and was to come, we smiled. Effortlessly.

June 21, 2020. Remember when we hiked for days, lost in the quiet of our day dreams, desires and looping lyrics narrating our biopic in the making? We foraged for fun, taking time to rub our wrists, watching for poison and allergies to show, kissing non reactive berries and devouring that which passed our tests like a long awaited and awakened love affair. You harvested mushrooms and sang silly songs to the winds whispering through the trees, sailing around currents careening through canyons. And the forest floor smiled up at us. 

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Ecstatic not because it’s great, but because of the memories. I was going to be an interactive artist. I wanted to use the web to make a new kind of art. Hence I shipped myself off to art school instead of mechanical engineering. Without further ado, a non-interactive write-up of an ode to HTML and webpages … including tags that have long since been deprecated.

first, you must
conceive
the idea,

          passion, 
          reason,

and watch it swell

In college, I took a poetry class and decided to share this ‘oldie’ with the group to which I received some interesting feedback including this one which made me laugh. From 1999:

“This makes me think about all those abandoned (out-of-date) web pages out there … like ORPHANS. Lord.”

There were abandoned pages in 1999? If only I could go back in time and show them the state of the web today. Lord.

Extra: Today is Day 19/20, Post 17 of my 30 day blog challenge. Click ‘Follow’ at the bottom of the page to receive weekly updates in your inbox or follow me on Tumblr if that’s your scene.

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VOLUME 1 #1: “MY BELOVED”

Jan 27, 2012: In 2010 I began a photographic novella, Wanderlust Wanderlove Vignettes, and subsequently began sharing my photography under the common moniker. I’m very excited to have finished the first issue, 40 pages, with the help of many inspirations, collaborators, heart break, music festivals, ok cupid, my childhood daydreams, an overactive imagination and dark, winter nights. I’m currently working on printing and binding the edition and continuing onto the second to further examine the overlap and bending of time, intimacy and wonder.

Check out WanderlovePhoto.com for a sneak peek at the novella, other projects and photo fun. (2020 Update: archiving Wanderlove Photo)

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you’re a skater who loved to be hated, wanted to be a lover
and lusted after life. you’d nollie so high, you’d clear three moons
in one night. shit, you ate three pies to prove your eyes don’t shine
brighter than your belly- like the the world.
your eyes used to shine.

wanderlust
turned you into vagabond. fear
into vagrant. a vacant
soul your parking lot
you ride
concrete
til heat is eaten by night.

saturn gonna bring
you back.
from vacant.
vagrant.
vagabond. wanderlust.
wunderkind
lover.

ain’t no one going to tell you anything you don’t already know.

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when i was 8 i wanted braces – i’d make my own with paper clips.

when i was 10 i wanted contacts – i’d suck on ice and put it in my eyes.

when i was 12 i wanted to be an alcoholic – and get caught, and have someone to fight with me, for me, love me, save me, hold me. instead i hid a bottle of whisky in the basement and counted bug bites and scars with my sister – we each wanted to have it worse off than the other.

at 12 i started smoking – under the bridge under a church, and cried when we got caught and lost our limousine ride.

at 12 i wanted, finally, boys instead of to be one, a boy – i wore showy clothes until a sketchy man followed us on a bus for days: she has a sweet ass. until we rode with mom who talked of target practice and our black belt tests and he never followed us again.

when i was 14 i wanted something to stand for: no war – beads in my hair, hacky sack circles, pot, green beret, red and blue lennon glasses. i’d smoke on the roof of the school and write my own basketball diaries.

when i was 16 i wanted to die, i lied. i wanted someone to discover me and find me worth loving, saving, holding, helping and tell me life would be ok. instead i found my sister and fought for my brothers.

at 28 i’m a perfectionist at 12 times 4 and want time to fu¢k up, with someone, a safety net, to catch me.

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if i’d have known you as a Saguero, i’d have hunted for your flowers at night: suckled stamina, swam in scents, and kissed each sweetly good night – before they close in morning (for eternity?)

if i’d have known you as a Vampire, i’d have been seduced into the quagmire of dead love – dived from the tallest sky ledge: a gyring peregrine to battle blind bat – no blood required for a beatless heart.

if i’d known you as a Gladiator, i’d have given you an iron mask to bask in the crowd’s glory before watching you die.

if i’d known you as a Man, i’d have held your hand, your body and your mind: loved you in every particle and antiparticle, vast as sand and rings of saturn – and let go.

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