prayer, unromantic

for twelve hours I drooled and I snoozed,
cozy in final rest.
I mean not the final rest,
but finally I rested,
and awoke pre-dawn to the most
clear and mesmerizing voice
calling all to prayer,
except me technically,
and yet it called to me,
a prayer.

the next morning,
his voice called me from my slumber, and
I was not as romantic about the whole thing,
which was in of itself perhaps,
a sort of prayer.

Hello Again, Jerusalem

my young relationship 
with the old city 
is changing as I grow,
buying tobacco to roll
myself, I'm a grown-up now
and this is how I roll -
shittily, mostly straight, and only socially,
only sometimes.

this place makes you want a cigarette.
I don't feel guilty about it.
I haven't had much success with guilt.

I go this way
and then that way
then up and down
and over and over again,
yet I am here again
only lost once,
like the maze is becoming a friend.

this time I see more soldiers
than before, on newly nested perches 
built so that the people look up to them,
whether or not they do.

but I see more soldiers
less than I did before.

the city of creatures 
is alive as ever,
and I notice things
for the first time amoung the stones.
like giant jade trees
more than the soldiers in number,
if you can believe it there are that many
jade trees
though the same colour as the young guns,
they are far prettier.
although, this is my first time noticing the jade trees,
because there are more distracting things
in Jerusalem than succulents.

I also see fun along the road of the enemy:
those who don't know me see 
different things than me,
or what I assume they see
when they see me.

it's like life moves anyway
while people are occupied,
except for those who've gone
since I last came,

and those I can't see
because someone made them
build a wall around their own families. 
fuckers.


I still see the wall though because 
it cannot be unseen.
not for all the jade trees or
the uprooted olive trees.
this is how I *rolls the tobacco leaves.*

oh, and also I don't see
those who aren't here because
they can't be
here like me, though they have more right
than I, if humans did what is right.


my navy blouse long-sleeved silk, 
waving sheer in my shadow,
is hot as I try modesty on - 
that and I'm not sure what to do with the
(lack of) colour of my own skin.
I want to take it all off
and just be here,
cool and comfortable.

but to be here is to be 
hot and uncomfortable.
at least it feels like that, again.

Some of them say,
"Please go,"
Some of them say,
"Please stay."
"Them," I say,
because we've told them
they are they,
and not us or we
and I am...
you can call me a colonizer 
or a sympathizer, 
because who am I
to say I'm neither.
I'm not sure.
But I'm here.
Hello again, old stones.

and again,
for me this is changing...
perhaps I care less,
perhaps it's the settling into privilege, or
perhaps it's the healthiest option -
survival with some self-diagnosed ignorance-is-bliss -

you know, those tricks I've learned from
the people who welcome me
to this land, and invite me
to laugh around their table sharing stories
about playing games with the guards,
(you know, to teach them how to laugh),
and being beaten by a 13-month-old,
(you know, learning non-violence from a toddler),
they put our morality to the test.

am I 
supposed to be here
allowed to be here
wanted or unwanted here
a colonizer here
abandoning there?
Hello again, Jerusalem, here
I am.

these are questions
that no longer fill my mind
the way they used to
along the maze,
the maze that is becoming my friend
full of enemies, the eccentric, 
the strangers, lovers, acquaintances.
I am just here.
Again, Jerusalem I am here.

I'm not as angry
as I once was,
though it's still there
amoungst the ramblings and
the finding my place in privilege, and when 
I get deja vu 
every time they spread the legs
of the young boys
again and again
oh it's not deja vu,
again Jerusalem,
I am here.
whether or not it matters.
deja vu.

I laugh, less angry with
those who taught me 
this the greatest lesson:
laughter is a practice
for the living.

but you have to practice.

and we do it
with wine in hand
tears in our eyes
and colours of skin
we cannot shed.


Hello Again, Jerusalem,
again, 
I am 
here.

- Charlie Gray

You Held Me When My Body Spasmed

"Breathe into me,"

she instructed me with a steady whisper.

---

It was day 6. You held me when my body spasmed, whispering into my ear between the sobs uncontrollable, “I have you, take my energy, let me ground you.”

---

My panic attack had been discreetly building over the week. Under the surface it rose slowly beneath my skin, which itself was weakening with each passing day from so many sun kisses. The elements wore me down to the moment when I exploded in a full-body reminder of the past. It was all a bubbling forth of trauma from years ago, reignited this week by an exhausted body set aflame by the spark of an unexpected fighter jet that awoke my resting PTSD, a beast I thought I'd put to sleep...

At Burning Man we don’t just check our shit at the literal line in the sand when we arrive. "Here's my baggage, good sir, now let me enter fantasy land - onward and upward!" Nope, bodies don’t work like that.  My panic attack was a stark reminder that this is real life, and that even in my fantasy, I’m not invincible.

Yet it's this that makes the dream so true - we're in it in the flesh that is ours in the real world. It's this that reminds me that perfection exists with pain, and not without. It's this that reminded me that the fantasy isn't a get-away-vaycay, but a get-to-it place to heal and relearn how to breathe.

It's like how the two sacred structures at the centre of Burning Man are constant visual reminders throughout the week: we can look to freedom and celebration in the structure of the man, and remember our depths and our pain held in the solemness of the temple. We hold space for a week to cry tears of joy and of pain, and then we let it all go, and go.

---

On day 2, days before the moment she took me in her healing arms, I was sitting with eight other friends in a giant silver swinging bowl, dressed in nothing but our sweat, and refreshed after having just shortly before swirled and laughed through our dust masks in the dustiest of dust storms. We had then landed at this desert form of a traditional Russian sauna, and were now relaxing afterwards to the sunset over the Black Rock Mountains, taking turns recalling highlights from the first two days of our Burn. 

So... beautiful moment, sunset, cleanliness, nice people... we settled into it...

But then, right as we were reflecting, the golden sky was suddenly filled with a sound so piercing it drowned our voices. In an instant we saw the screaming fighter jet take its first swoop overhead, and circle back. What the F - at Burning Man? Why?? I thought, while in a jump of excitement, one of our little naked bunch (who was sitting next to me), jumped up in pure unadulterated joy (which is an awkward thing to do and accomplish in a giant swinging bowl filled with clothes-less people and swinging bits) declaring “This is a gift - it’s a gift! How amazing the military would choose to do that for us!!” His puppy dog smile didn’t know my heart had stopped for a moment, and then proceeded to race at a speed that matched the zoom of the engine in the sky above.

The fighter jet zoomed off with a thunder that echoed behind it. It had made its presence known.

It took a few moments and several side glances while our friend calmed down his patriotic exuberance, and we were able to re-calibrate back to the glow of the sunset and normalizing nudity. We began again to share the moments that had blessed our lives in just the short time we had been at Burning Man… 

...when again with a deafening crack of a shock we were caught off-guard by the second and this time louder and lower swooping of the fighter jet.

With shear instinct, my upper body went into a loose fetal position over my knees, which wouldn't have been that clear to the rest of the group, as we were sitting squished on a circle bench already, still inside this giant swing. I knew in my mind that nothing was going to happen to us beyond a show of power, might and steel, but my nerves reacted out of fear for what they've experienced before.

My still naked neighbour friend resumed his ignorant shouting of "It's a gift! It's a gift!! Hahahaha!" So much boyish laughing. Fucking fuck. He clearly hadn't noticed my complete drought of enthusiasm or crippling body language. But it wasn't the time to explain to the group why this truly was the opposite of a gift to me - it was an instinctual reminder of death and destruction I’d seen in lands that felt then so far away, yet were strikingly clear all-of-a-sudden in my mind’s eye.  

He doesn’t know, he doesn't know. I told myself over and over again, in-between the thoughts of concern for anyone else of the 70,000-ish population currently in the Black Rock Desert at that time who’ve also encountered military action before, in settings not quite so splendid as this... I let my vulnerable and exposed body be silent until we were home - yet still shaking in my skin when we arrived back at our camp, a friend hugged me so as to calm the energy pulsing along my limbs. Burning Man revolves around a gift-giving culture. And this was a gift, when the chemistry of physiology neutralized into healing.

---

Back again to day 6, when the jet returned for the third time with a crack and a bang and its even lower speeding display of power streaming ever closer right over our heads - everything in me shook in response. In a split second my control was gone, the power was taken. Again my mind knew there was no danger, but my body could not cope. I was reminded of the real world in an impulse of visceral memory...

And then you caught me in your arms, strong and knowing. Your eyes had seen, discerned and aware with that genius lens of yours you saw my need as it happened before I collapsed.

You held me when my body spasmed, whispering into my ear between the sobs uncontrollable, “I have you, take my energy, let me ground you.”  

Another friend realized that it didn't help then to tell me there was no danger, and he joined from behind in an embrace that was truly medicinal. 

With grace I was passed to yet another friend who was in the dark back room of the RV, safe. "Just let yourself cry," she said, bringing me closer to her, "I'm here, you're safe."

I cried until I could breathe steadily again, grounded by the safety of people who saw me stripped of my power, and responded until I was whole again. They healed my body with their bodies.

Friends, you are my solid ground, and I thank you deeply.

---

This week I was seen. I was seen in my nakedness - both in physical form, and in the manifestation of my mind firing at a speed I couldn't control. The frustration of that incident was that it all happened out of my control, and that is a small symbol of the power and destruction of military action and occupation.  The frustration was that I had healed long before this week, and hadn't felt my anxiety that high in a long, long time.  Yet for it to surface again during Burning Man, a week where I had also experienced some of my highest highs in a long time, was a shining example of what makes the beauty that I experienced at Burning Man so striking...

I don't seek pity for my anxiety through my sharing of this post, but merely want to expose this stark example of how friendship has manifested itself in my life. How people heal each other. To be honest I am just so grateful. Like I'm re-discovering love all the time, and this was one of those times.

It is that cliche truth that we are beautiful in the ways we hold each other during the un-beautiful. The way I saw us together as people at Burning Man was a deep reminder of how love should be and is - when we see each other in our nakedness, and when we use our power to recognize, restore, and bring out the beauty in each other.

We do not only party our faces off in the desert because everything is perfect all the time - but it is from this grounding of friendship in the shit storm that we dance so free. 

It is from this shaking, and from your energy, why released I can dance so free.

---

She instructed me with a steady whisper,

"Breathe into me."

---

you held me when my body spasmed,

you admired my hips,

you saw my glow when I was distracted.

thanks for witnessing,

I see you.

the man

the temple 

Gifted in the Wacky Wild West

Giftedness.

Growing up I was told I was a small form of genius, or some variation thereof. Someone marked a few tests of mine when I was 9, and declared me to be "gifted." 

A kid approaching the double-digits, I was just starting to realize the world was a place that I had to find myself in. I remember being pulled out of class one day, along with a few other peers, and voicelessly walking in a line down the bright hallway of my elementary school, passed the gymnasium, the dragon mural wall, the main entrance, the principal's office, en route to the kindergarten room - colourful and distracting but empty after the little kids had left school for the day.  

I remember the distinct smells of every section of that journey. Our little crew was told to re-write a big daunting "test" we thought we had got done and over with eons before this pass-out-of-class. As I opened the first page of the re-test, I was sure I was there because I had failed the first one... self-confidence was developed much later in my wee gifted mind. What was wrong with me? I worried.

"Gifted" was what was wrong with me. Or what was different about me, I suppose, in the way they categorize people these days. It was the outcome of that second-time-round-test. That test where I had scribbled down responses somehow in-between the only thing I actually recall about it: being bigger than the teeny kindergartner chairs, knees not fitting under the table. I remember the distractions of wondering what Jeffery and Elliot were thinking while I was aware of their slumped backs and blank stares without even looking right at them, of Glen picking his nose, the smell of pee and plasticine and pencil crayon shavings and plastic cubbies that hold the lunch box smell long after lunches are eaten. I wondered about my former grade 1 teacher, now teaching in the classroom next door... she was diagnosed with cancer, and I thought about how she was doing. I remember being impressed by Kate, and wondering how the hell she could have also failed the test the first time round, for surely that's why we were there?  But she's so smart! My confidence in her was greater than in my own. I don't remember a single thing I answered on the test.

Maybe the adult-"they" who measured my giftedness that day did so by how well I could cope despite a really distracting room.

After that, they stamped it official: "gifted."

From the beginning I wondered what that meant or felt like to those who were anything but "gifted." What would the world look like if we were all recognized as such? What makes my gifts so much more "enhanced" than others?

I now know I was a smart 9-year-old.  But like I said, I developed confidence in my thoughts later.  I developed my confidence long after I left the gifted program behind.

So. I then spent 8 years of public school feeling like an idiot amoungst the math-ies, while being told I was superior to those whose fates only faired unimpressingly average and non-gifted by the important test marker with the magic pen of destiny.

This "giftedness" label was not a really gift.

Or... perhaps I'm ungrateful and quite possibly dramatic in my criticism. But hear me out... 

Okay, I got to do a few special projects. Which were honestly stellar. 

Like, I got to hang out one-on-one with a teacher in grade six and "publish" my first book. Looking back, it had a relatively feminist heroin. I got to write and produce my own school-wide play. I don't remember much about it, except for a lot of feelings. And they were mostly good, and challenging. I conducted workshops on Emotional Intelligence when I was 11. Despite my horrendous spelling, I can acknowledge that gifted or not, I had free education and that was a gift. I am white and middle-class Christianized privileged, and top that off with university educated (which the gifted program could probably be thanked for, simply due to the shear fact that I chose to start going to class again after almost skipping most of grade 9 and 10 because I hated feeling like an idiot in the gifted program, and much preferred the lessons of the life outside the classroom. If it wasn't for how much I loathed the gifted program, I wouldn't have spent so much time outside on the streets and in the malls of Brampton, which is ultimately what drove me back to class out of the realization that university was my ticket out of suburbia). So thanks, gifted program. 

Whine whine whine. Spoiled brat doesn't like her gift... but okay, let me wrestle with giftedness... Things were awesome. But they were never... where I felt I belonged, a part from "the others." By being gifted, I was literally taught that "others" weren't as special as we were.

I never was satisfied with being taught that others weren't gifted.  And I was never satisfied being taught that emotions, perception, social awareness, were lesser than the gifts that came in the form of algebraic words that I don't even remember because I simply don't care and my brain doesn't hold those concepts.

The main point of this ramble is that I was always critical of the program, even from an itty bitty age... and this word "gifted" arose for me again recently, and hovered at the forefront of my psyche almost entirely throughout my recent and fresh Burning Man experience. There are several reasons for this...

The second of Burning Man’s 10 principles is “Gifting.” 

I have digested this in multiple ways – in the form of a Frito-Lay taco, in the form of a full-body sunscreen rub-down from neighbours while sitting on a consenting stuffed horse, in the form of many downbeats that I simply reveled in, in the form of a circle of strangers joining together to learn about gender and negotiation, in the form of a friendly cuddle in a hammock with shade beneath a determined sun...

I had been given gifts all week of the Burn. Many that brought me pleasure, and many that aided in my physical, emotional, and mental survival and thrivival...

But I have also digested this word in a different way, for myself... in a way that heals the lack of self-confidence of that perceptive 9-year-old version of myself. In a way that affirms her gifts. In a way that confirms that she was right:

We are all gifted. We all have gifts to give. We all have a genius inside of us that simply only needs the foundation of freedom that says “do and be whatever the shizzle you please, so long as some sort of respect and safety is involved.” And we help each other in this. Giftedness is not for the privileged only, but it does depend on how you define the gift for yourself, and we define gift in each other.

The creativity, innovation, kindness, boldness, fun, and healing-weirdness will come. And it does, when we turn to each other and say "you are a gift."

We become the gifts that we are, when someone acknowledges us and names us so.

The giftedness I was often taught growing up had parameters, limits, rules, and fear attached to it. There were pros, but there were limits - like the many times I was called "stupid" by teachers whose small minds and jealousy for my gifts didn't like it when I was outside the box they reinforced as superior. 

The giftedness I was taught at Burning Man - flaws and criticisms and all - brings out the wacky wild in us. This giftedness has no bounds, accept for the fantastical world that unfolds before us, bright eyed. Especially when "Giftedness" comes in the context of Burning Man's number one rule:

"Radical Inclusion."

We are all gifted.
You are a gift.
What gifts do you bring 
(insert a little self-confidence in your answer)?

Here are some gifts you all were/brought to me at #BurningMan2017 #EYHO2017:

gifts... the way gifts come in many forms,
like when you spritzed me
with lavender when you
sensed my senses
craved the calm.

or when you served me kombucha 
on a giant red dragon
body thirsty for electrolytes
soaring through the heat of the desert city on fire,
like you knew all I needed was some healthy bacteria 
and a chance to dance to an electric violin 
that carried me to higher heights.
electric electrolytes,
you prescribed it fucking right.

like a kiss on the lips
and balm around my neck

like the gift of sharing
secrets with a stranger

like a bracelet that
matches my earrings
that you gave me,
you gave me wings
because friendship gives
us flight and I'm a heron

like the scraps of fabric
found to make my feathers

like our friendship ceremony,
calm in the palms
of each other's faces
declaring stability in the chaos,
hearts beating like our booties 
on the stage of slut garden,
we declare our love
through radical ritual

the risk of letting go 
of the need to plan
I am 
my dreams come true

the risk of actually falling
and being in love
with the unknown,
unknowing my core knowns,
rewriting what was written,

by risking being a writer
by being a wordsmith.

like when the fighter jet
returned with a shock wave 
of memory tearing through my skin
and you grabbed hold to ground me 
with your body,
I needed that.

like when I let the good ones into my life.

and love is changing the fabric of how my time on earth unfolds.

 - Charlie Gray, September 22 2017

*Usually the photos I post on here are mine, but some of these aren't.. I just wanted to show some of the gifts in the form of people that I love at Burning Man, and at home!