Where I'm From

For the last month I have been participating in an amazing practice called Wild Writing, a writing approach developed by Laurie Wagner of 27 Powers. The practice involves listening to a poem, and using it as a jump off point to write, straight from the heart and soul, for 15 minutes, no editing, just, as she says, pen to paper, words to page. Today's prompt spoke to me, and so I am sharing a slightly edited version. I think I could write from this prompt for a very very long time.

Where I'm From

Where I'm from is the land of milk and honey, where blood runs in the streets and nation lifts up sword against nation, and all people know war forever more.

Where I'm from, fig trees blossom, waving their lazy hands to the whispering olive branches next door; the heat bakes the stone streets reflecting white and cool on bare feet in the shadow of laughing children.

Where I'm from, prayer is the language of love, sounding as the song of autumn leaves, crunching beneath feet and rising in a swirl of a rogue breeze.

I'm from far away lands of sun and sea, spices that tempt and seduce all the senses, alluring with beauty and fragrance. From the romantic zones of Spain and Turkey, to settle in villages with names that roll off the tongue: Poroszko, Rabatotfalu, others forgotten, finding eventually that these places too, like all the others, could not free themselves from the binding power of righteous singularity.

I'm from the climes of North Eastern Europe, Lithuania or Ukraine or Russia depending on the claimant of the era. I'm from shtetls turned ghettos where the wise ones, the ones who had foresight (but no foreskins) and those who intuited the grave future to come, found their way to foreign ships and foreign shores to make a new life and a new future.

Where I am from, a place to call home was always uncertain. Always welcomed, until we weren't, the option to comply and convert, subvert or flee. Perhaps, where I'm from, some chose to stay but those names and faces are lost to history.

I am from hard-working dreamers and stow aways, building new worlds, forever leaving behind their Hungarian accents, Yiddish language, and careers as doctors and dentists. I am from laundromat owners and linen supply companies, carpenters and basement dentists, and matriarchal home-makers. First-generation Jews in America, trying to find a balance between tradition and transformation, between all that was once known and all that could be dreamed.

I am from a pianist, born knowing that music was in her bones, only to be told by her Czech father that it didn't matter anyway; her future was set to be wife and mother. I'm from a piano teacher, now 80 years old, with a brood of 20 future musicians, teaching lessons on Skype, while holding down the 4-bedroom house I grew up in like a champ, alone, as a recent widow.

I am from a biochemist turned computer builder turned school board candidate (at age 80!), a folk dance teacher turned sailor turned master gardener who, til his dying day, believed he had no creative bone in his body.

Where I'm from day follows night, night follows day, in an undulating rhythm, eyes open as light touches lids, birds and brush call for songs and tending.

Where I'm from, humans might not be welcome, and that includes me. How this can be so is a peculiarity of psyche; a trick played on itself in an endless taunt that it never seems to tire of, much like the playground bully, or a dog with a bone.

Where I'm from, laughter is always desired but rarely found. And what I speak of is the full belly laugh, the roar of the internal tickle that starts with a chuckle and like a spark that bursts into flame, explodes into the cosmos and reverberates across universes.

Where I'm from, the rib cage cannot contain the fullness of expression ready to explode into the mystery of creation and so everyone walks around blooming from every pore, blossoms spilling forth for all to see. And where I'm from, it is only natural for those blossoms to wilt and dry and turn to seed, and this too is part of the reverence.