Leaning

 

Much more to it than meets the eye

© Mokihana Calizar

At first glance

it's a posture

Shunned

in the studio.

No rewards

for the man

spilling tears
in

his ale.

Much more to it the Lean

For its power

Is in the

Opposition.

And where's

The payload

If the other

moves?

Much more to it the Lean

I become your

Slanted Angle

You become

My "I" in

Isosceles,

Tipped.

Much more to it the Leaning

Tower in Italy

Due they say

To an unstable

Foundation?

A 4 degree

Lean

For centuries.

Much more to it the Leaning

On you

For I

am

at

least

4

degrees

Unstable.

And yet?

You 

stay.

***

Gray has settled onto the island, but not before the heavens called dramatically. Pueo the Owl knew as a big-eyed guardian will. Pete and I were already tucked under the covers last night when the first thunder sounded. Pollens have settled into me, so my sinuses and my ears are narrowed dealing with what my body suspects are invaders.

"Did you hear that?"
"No." I was drowsy in that between here and sleep state. There was something, but it might have been a big ass truck.
"Thunder."

Within seconds the flash came.
"Did you see that?"
"Was that lightening?"
"My old friend!" Pete has an intimate acquaintance with lightening.

Pueo made his announcement minutes before the Elementals lit and shook the sky. Letting out a long and chortling sound that in reflection was not unlike the call-and-response of the lightening and thunder, Pueo warned us. I felt soothed by Owl's presence; confirmed by the wildness of this place.  In spite of the bright security lights that tower along the gravel and dusty roads wound through the campground, the night's birds come.

A muted end to a busy week is a soft punctuation. We are being further initiated in the culture of campgrounds and the communal life that is more real than we could have imagined. In the weeks here we are learning so much about the people -- including us -- who live here. There are a dozen of us full-time campers housed in rigs on wheels aged or newly constructed, and a tent that accompanies a camper sans the truck.

On the weekend and most days during the week, but much later in the day, the sounds of children playing makes me settle into being here. We say "Good morning," to them when we're making breakfast from our steps as they walk with a parent to catch the school bus. We wave to them across the yard when they have set up their Books for Sale Table or when their long day is over and they pile out of their van. We are their audience when there are no other children to play with; the agile gymnast loves an audience. My astrological forecast for this year told of this possibility: being with children. I wondered how I could make that happen. It was not so much making it happen, as making a decision and finding life happening. Delighted. Softened. Reminded. Grateful. Life happens.

We greet and nod, chat and notice the routines of our neighbors. Some would rather maintain their solitude, there's room for that, too. A sense of solidarity exists when you live on wheels, pay the same nightly 'rent' and share the campground as common space. No ownership except for what you can drive away with. The welder grampa of the agile gymnast strolls toward us, calls out, "Hey Pete. You wouldn't have a piece of thin metal about yay wide by yay, would ya?" The birds (Swallows) were trying to build a nest in his kitchen vent.When a tinker like Pete is approached with a question like that? The coolest thing for a wife of such a tinker is figuring he does ... have a something yay wide by yay long. Fishing under the end of the wagon, Pete came up with just what the welder needed.

Neighborly leaning on is what both Pete and I remember from growing up in our respective childhoods. It's the sort of continuity that we find alive and spontaneous here like we have not found when we were trying to find it. Or swirling when we thought we had dependable support.Generations -- from Boomers, to Generation X, Y and Millenials make their presence known, if you are observant and notice. From the Airstream and its highly polished luxury to the Minnie Winnies, vans and old Pace Arrows with skull and cross bones flagging the doorway; the RV has become home and the folks come to be on the campground for a while or for a season. And always for a reason.

Life on the edges of settled society can be rough, one of the reasons we are here is because there was no other place to be. The small golden wagon perches on the rise, a ways away from the huddle of RVs parked close together. We took a chance that it would be okay for us to park this way. The standards are written at the Pay Station, and until you stay awhile there's no way to know how flexible or fixed those rules are. At $25 a night, this campground is 'cheap'; affordable for many, but barely within reach for equally as many. $750 a month for rent is something we can manage with creativity and a support system we have learned to lean on. And that is the point of this post: Leaning.


I've just read an essay that is creating a surprising calm to my too often unreliable foundation. The essay is called "Lean On" and comes from the collection of essays Hard to Love: Essays and Confessions written by Briallen Hopper. The essay excerpted here.The book itself is a world of disturbing and comforting sisterhood of contradiction; I relate to her.

"A declaration of dependence, excerpted from Briallen Hopper’s new essay collection," is the description used to introduce Hopper's piece. And it is that shivering sense of challenging the norm (Self-Sufficiency) which had me hooked -- being a long-time in recovery co-dependent. Could someone be writing the story that lives so deeply and anciently in my psoas?  
  

"Why does the psoas muscle get tight?

In addition to overuse (like athletic training) and limited movement (like sitting down all day), physical and emotional trauma have been linked to psoas tension.

Due to its location deep within the core of the body, the psoas muscle instinctively tightens up when we feel stress or fear. For some people, learning to let go of the tension in their psoas is an intense emotional process."

Briallen Hopper's opening paragraph of "Lean On" felt like being home.

"I like to lean. Too much of the time I have to hold myself up, so if an opportunity to swoon presents itself, I take it. When I’m getting a hair cut and the lady asks me to lean back into the basin for a shampoo, I let myself melt. My muscles go slack, my eyes fall shut, and there is nothing holding me except gravity and the chair and the water and her hands on my head. I feel my tears of bliss slide into the suds."

It has been far too many years since I 've been the lady in Hopper's essay; that feeling of melting-into-the-strong-hands of Mazuku washing my hair in Ka'imuki. That town I came to know as a woman returned after a lifetime away. Melting, into a memory now. A memory of having leaned on her.

Yesterday I was in a similar but totally different situation except that I was in the company and the strong hands and body of a woman who was telling me to lean on her. This woman is teaching me to come home to myself; to come home to my body. Together, this woman and I are sharing the lessons of somatics, and the work is deep, slow, and intimately tied to emotions.

For a woman who depends so much on my capacity to imagine and draw down images from my imagination, the work of coming home to my body is foreign. I am out of touch with the natural access of being comfortable, and at ease in my body.

To lean on others.
To lean on each other.
To lean on myself with power.
Why and when are these acts done with shame?

I read "Lean On" slow staying with my body, coaxing my mind to let go of her habit to leave. I pull my eyes out of the clouds, keep them open, and communicate "Stay." 'The body understands pictures, not words'. I wonder if I sent a picture of me leaning?

The sensations aroused in my mind by reading want to find their way to my leg bones who have tilted away from the strength of that big long one -- Tibia. All these years, the smaller leg bone has bore the weight of me. Oh, you Fibula, how I have rocked and rolled off my feet and cause such strain. I've leaned away from the strength in bone built for standing. But who knew? Not I, but now ... someone is telling me, "Lean on me." I feel the difference, and notice how foreign this territory is.

The essay and my lessons with somatics are offering me options to age in the place I am at. Now. Here. The reality of my life, here on a campground with dozens of bunnies (and more birthing all the time) and at least a dozen other campers causes me to to consider the value of leaning. An experience worth sticking around for. Leaning implies a culture that might allow for a little bit of slack without shame. The words of a writer pull the myth -- stories woven of imagines and words spoken -- out of Timelessness and I feel their message. Hopper cheers for the option of being a leaner who likes being dependent upon the other.

"I was raised to believe in the romance of leaning. My parents turned the tale of how they met into a bedtime story, and they told it to us until we had it memorized ...I was formed by this story, both as an aspiration and as a cautionary tale, and in my own youthful romances I leaned heavily. I was moody like my mom, plagued by sudden spells of panic, and depressed like my dad, susceptible to an undertow of doom, so I spent most of my twenties in long-term relationships with men who seemed so even-keeled that they couldn’t be capsized—so sunny and strong that they couldn’t possibly lapse into sadness for long."

This was true for me, too. I boarded a jet plane with a man who seemed so even-keeled that he couldn't be capsized. But I was young, the capsize came, and baling or treading water became instinctive. Could there be other ways to be? Could I, would I, would you, allow the romance of leaning after catastrophe?

Here's a woman with the voice, soul and commitment to leaning on and holding onto people living in the most meaningful of ways. Bonnie Raitt has helped me lean into life more times than I can remember. We are both old women believing in this living. She'd appreciate a tinker, a musician, a change-maker, a woman strong as an angel to hold onto.

How 'bout you? Is there a place for leaning in your world? I'd love to hear about it, and your comfort with leaning or being leaned upon.

If this post sang to you, or your psoas consider sending me a tip or a token of your appreciation. Just contact me here: mokihanacalizar@gmail.com and I will say, THANK YOU SO MUCH, and send you our snail mail address to receive your thanks.

Aloha nui,
Mokihana 



Thank you so much to Terri Windling for introducing me to Briallen Hopper, in her post "Ties that bind us."