The Anatomy of a Heart

Paris. 2020.

What is the anatomy of the human heart? Chambers that fill with the blood of emotions and fugit thoughts. Contractions that pulse life to the extremities; fingers and toes are animated. A muscle that starts beating before birth and continues, day and night, for as long as breath is drawn.

Like an intricate safe, the heart's ventricles store memories, guarding them against the passage of time. Each memory, a precious treasure. Some smooth as opals, others sharp as diamonds.

I walk into the safe of my heart, and today I find it dimly lit. I am scared to be in here. Maybe it's the cold I am fighting, but maybe it is the heaviness of life's responsibilities pulling me down and sucking me in. I am so responsible -- for these people, and these things, and these animals, and the moments that have happened, and the moments that are still to pass. I look around the safe, feeling small, realizing that some of what's inside I brought in myself, other things were thrown at me and I have been storing them.

Today I am tired. I woke up tired from a week as long as a year full of Wednesdays. I have had hard conversations with people so afraid I could smell it on them through a phone call. Fear and sadness tainting the air like overripe apricots, the cyanide within the center whispering, "I'm here." I am scared too; there is so much unknown...

And yet, what are these troubles to the heart? What are these fears? This loneliness and angst? It is almost as if the heart knows that all this trouble will soon pass and become a dusty memory stored in a ventricle's corner—something to be looked at someday and used as an illustration of life experience.

This idea brings me comfort. It lights up the space I am in and gives hope while giving each challenge its own measure and size.

I take a deep breath, the first in many days, and smile. I rest my hand over my chest. And there it is. Beating. Beating. Beating. Beating despite everything. Beating to keep me alive. Beating strong and steady.

Hearts are stubborn things. And I am so grateful.

Poetic Distance

Bend, Oregon, 2022.

As a child, I learned early on about the merits of seeing the world happening around me and to me from a third-person perspective. [Julia goes to first grade and meets the parrot that eats her lunch.]

The space between the subject and the action has enough emotional silence to produce an observant mind. Making me the poet, and my muse, the distance. [Julia hides quietly in her room when she hears that her father has arrived from work. There is ice in her heart.]

Throughout my life and up to this very day, I have observed me observe things. Marveling at what brings joy and sadness and holding on to the understanding that this, all of this, shall pass. Sometimes I am more successful at swimming in that sacred space of quietness; other times, I am what is happening to me. Poet and muse, undistinguishable. The paper that cuts is the finger that bleeds. [Julia walks down the aisle, still a child; her dress is white, and all of her life is packed in two suitcases. She does not look back.]

I think things would be easier if time stopped accelerating. I remember so clearly the summer days in Brazil. An afternoon felt like a week. Lazy minutes suspended in the air like fruit flies buzzing around an overripe fruit. The sweetness of it all was almost too much to bear. A sticky hot perfume that smells like something isn’t right made people feel drunk and slow, walking through molasses is nothing when compared to walking through a hot Brazilian square in January. In fact, I have this theory that time runs slower in the lower half of the planet. Maybe the heat makes gray matter cook in its encasing; everything feels like a chore, so why bother? [Julia moves to the North, the most northern part of America. She sips mochas from Starbucks and wears a hand-me-down coat. Everything is fancy and new. She looks at the wooden houses as the rain falls for months on end. She feels the cold chill her unprepared bones. She speaks no English.]

And yet the hands of the clock keep on turning. Incessant little circles, ticking the blinks of eyes and the beats of hearts. Each minute has its allocated number of seconds, but one could swear that dark magic is at play, for yesterday was five years ago. [Julia names her child William. William names himself Will. Julia and Will learn to speak English. Julia and Will go to football games, picnics, emergency rooms, and movies. There are graduations. There are car accidents. There are recoveries. Tears, laughter. They grow closer, even closer from the time when he lived inside of her.]

At some point, growing up can no longer be delayed, and off to work one goes. Ten-hour days for years and years. Building and learning and expanding. Promising unearned experience and delivering grit. The kid hiding in her room now stands in plain sight. The inheritance of intelligence from the long-dead patriarch unfurls like a DNA strand, connecting opportunity to possibility to realization. [Julia accidentally becomes a business owner. She didn’t ask for it. It was the right place and the right time. It was a woman that opened the door. Julia walked through and started to build.]

How in the world are we already in the mid-forties? I don’t know. I have been heads down tending the things I have given birth to - the child, the work, the roses and peonies, the homes that have sprouted out of imagination, the love that has continuously flown from me to you and you and you. I realize that blood, sweat, and tears are not figurative; I feel the heat and the exhaustion, and I taste the iron (and the irony.) It seems like it is the right time to slow down a bit, read more books, perhaps sip a whiskey in the evening, and retrospect. I can’t. So I push forward. I reinvent and run and ride; I break plates and cups so I can eat and drink from new ones. [Julia races and climbs. She jumps on planes and goes far, even for only a day. She breaks bones. She laughs at the pain, and then she cries. It is the fire dragon within that needs to spread its wings.]

And now a pause. A pandemic. A world suspended by grief and disbelief. A world unprepared and ignorant. The things that seemed important are forgotten as the unimportant things they were. People lose people, and people find people. The world is both large and small in a way that feels freeing and constraining. This man turns back to his family and sees in them the treasure he thought was lost. This woman realizes time is wasted; she starts new, nothing but hope in her pocket. There are no rule books, and worse, there are no guidelines. Our best is all we can do. In the midst of all of this, I feel something re-emerging… I can’t quite put my finger on it, but then I realize I am again observing. Seeing me in the world and seeing the world do its beautiful thing. I am finding my muse again, getting comfortable in the silence, detaching a little from the mundane occurrences. The poetry of it all is humbling and overwhelming. Inspiring and scary. It uplifts me while also tossing me into uncharted waters. Where will it all lead? Only God knows. [Julia starts to write.]

Americana

Mississippi River, 2021.

Greeting a river is, in many ways, the same as greeting a person. 

“Oh, hello there, Mississippi, pleased to make your acquaintance,” I’d shyly say as I am intimidated by how dark its waters are. 

“Why, child, come on right by my shores. Nothing to worry about here but this awful summer heat that can kill a bird in mid-flight,” I imagine the river saying to me as I inch myself closer to the shore and smile at its grandeur. The river is large, wide, dark, and undisturbed. 

If the Mississippi were a woman, it would be a grand old lady dressed in her Sunday best. Hat with feathers, flowery dress blowing in the breeze, white leather pumps, and matching kid gloves, ready to walk the aisle to the choir line to praise the Lord. 

So much of the Mid-West is like that - ready for church, ready for a wedding, ready for a funeral. Never mind the blinding heat and the humidity that can be cut with a dull knife. Never mind the segregation and aggravation that crime and violence can deliver to the big city’s streets. Never mind the ‘bless your hearts and isn’t that precious’ that rolls off the local folks’ tongues. Never mind the gun shows, anti-abortion, and sex shop billboards that litter the side of highways, all targeting the same type of Joe. Never mind that they deep-fry ravioli and bake pepperoni/cheese casseroles and call it pizza. Honestly, Romans are rolling in their thousand-year-old graves at the thought of a Chicago Style pizza. 

And there is more, so much more. It is surprisingly humbling for a West-Coaster, world traveler, and immigrant from an exotic land to be charmed by the Mid-West. And yet, I am here to tell you - it can happen, even if the spell only lasts a couple of days; it can happen. 

Like pulling up a curtain and finding a world dressed in perfect Americana. 1960’s Americana, complete with red and white waxed table cloth covering a picnic table. Corn on the cob, barbeque, potato salad, cheap cold beer for the gents, strawberry wine for the ladies. Children are playing in a pool. Someone is cutting grass. Cicadas are screaming from the top of their little bug lungs, and then you can’t hear them anymore because you get used to it.

Little villages dotting the river’s shoreline are all the same and yet different. Some have grand plans to become a big city someday; others are small and fiercely proud of their minute measures. But there is always the church, the pub, the cemetery. The barber and the grocer. The police car parked under a tree, waiting for trouble to happen, but when it does, it is always the high school boys drunk in beer and spinning their cars in the back of the post office’s parking lot. 

The nostalgia of days gone by persists even after you squint at these little towns, untrusting their good nature. It is there in the eternal brick and mortar of the architecture that makes old and new houses look the same. It is there in the cottage gardens grown wild over the summer, buzzing with bees. It is there in the slow walk of the townspeople as they move from place to place. Here is the 8 am service, and now, here is coffee with the pastor, and now we shall all walk across the street for pancakes and bacon and that syrup that is not maple. By late afternoon, the local pub is crowded with people, drinks flowing while the baseball game flashes on old TVs hanging precariously above the bar. 

I am a visitor here, a guest that owns a business and works long and interminable hours.  I often eat lunch in front of a computer and exercise primarily due to the daily fear of what stress can do to my health. So, I am fascinated by these people in their hometowns. Are they consciously ignoring the speed at which the world moves, or have they tried to catch up and gave up with a heavy sigh of ‘well, darn it, we got all we need right here’? I don’t know. I think it is likely a combination of the two, and I marvel at the vast diversity of lives that make up this country I call home. 

There is so much beauty in the ordinary, so much unexpected goodness. As I drove from one tiny hometown to the next, I encountered the agricultural landscape that anchors farmers to the soil. Cornfields gone dry, golden and evoking the eeriness of Halloween; soybean shinning a blue-green so rich against the sun it looks as though one is looking at a lake; vast expanses of freshly cut hay, the barrels left here and there as if I am passing through a Van Gogh painting and not farmland in Illinois. I take everything in, studying the space around me and retaining the memories. 

Before heading home, I sat on a park bench dedicated to a man named Chuck, beloved by his wife and children and community, forever to be missed by them. I wondered about Chuck’s life and envisioned a broad-chested man wearing a dress shirt tucked neatly into his dark denim pants. Maybe suspenders to go with the comfortable old leather shoes. I imagine a kind smile as he looks at his wife and children and all the other people who found that missing him was hard enough; they needed a bench to sit on and grieve.  I imagine his love for his home, for this flat expanse of land covered in a mantle of vegetation so foreign to me. His love for his community, beating with a steady rhythm of blood, animating his heart.

 I sat there, on Chuck’s bench, in front of a lake with waters as mysterious as the Mississippi, and I imagined all the underground water channels that net the land together, sprouting a lake here, a river there, a creek elsewhere. I realized it is all the same water connecting these many communities, feeding their crops, bathing their children on a hot summer day. From East to West, it is also all the same people, gathering, melding, unifying, and turning us all into villagers of this enormous land. 

 As I got up, dizzy in the heat and eager to find shelter, and sent a quiet thank you to the Mississippi for meeting me and its midwestern way, making me feel at home. 

Seasons

She had been there before—the majestic and yet humble chambers of Sainte Chapelle. The experience, though repeated often enough, never changed. The going through security gates, since the chapel is located behind government walls, the ascending the circular and narrow concrete stairs, and finally, the walking across the threshold of the most beautiful little church ever imagined. 

For whatever reason, each visit always happened in the late afternoon, when the sun, gone mellow and gold and full of hours, shone through the walls of the chapel. Walls made entirely of stained glass with thousands of pieces carefully colored and molded together to tell stories. The stories of peasants carrying hay, children and sheep, flowers and apostles, and Mary and Jesus. 

Nothing short from extraordinary, she thought as she walked in, holding her breath as the light filtered through the glass and painted the floors a million bits of color. And tonight she was there for a concert. Live music in Sainte Chapelle. Better yet - live music in Sainte Chapelle for fewer than a hundred people and in the middle of a pandemic. If that did not spell out a miracle, she did not know what did. And yet, she did not know what music she would listen to as attendance at the concert was a gift and a surprise. 

Her chair, and every chair, was simple and wooden. Not too comfortable as if to demand you to sit up and pay attention. Here in this chamber, miraculous things happen. Do not miss it. 

Sitting quietly and small, she waited for the musicians to find their instruments carefully set for them on the front stage. Four violins, two cellos. Five men walked in, one woman. The room that a second before was inundated with sounds from the people moving their chairs, chatting and snapping pictures, suddenly fell into a profound and reverent silence. The master violist, without saying a word -- she imagines he spoke no words of greeting as not to disturb the silence that was the promise to what was to come -- raised his instrument and struck the first cord. 

La Primavera. How to explain what she felt the very second she realized what was happening and what was to come? Elation is the only word she could think of as the other musicians, meeting their leader, also started to play. Springtime exploded into the chapel as if flowers, vines, and bubbling brooks were coming alive on the colored walls. The music combined with the beauty of the space was so powerful that it was almost too much to take it all in at once. She closed her eyes and let the music tell her a story. A story of birth and innocence, of childhood that flies by too quickly, and days that are full of promise. Transported to the Springtime of her own life, she could see herself growing, learning, unfurling. Laugher like tiny bells across a field. A kite high above the sky. Swimming deeper and deeper into the ocean, her father nearby. Running after other children. Sleeping peacefully in her grandmother's bed. She could also see the marred and scarred things, the sharp edges that snag on your clothes and cut the skin. The too-soon-too-early awakenings dragging children from the moment of not understanding to understanding it all too well. She slipped into summer. 

L'estate. There was barely a moment's pause from the musicians and then the explosion of applause brought her back into the chapel. The sunlight somehow was shining brighter now and maybe hitting the windows just right with orange and reds. As quickly as the applause had started, it ultimately died down as the instruments were worked into a summer frenzy of sounds. The sounds, so full of energy, were giving life to the stained-glass walls, which were, in turn, emanating movement onto the people sitting below. Familiar with this section of the concert, she let herself be taken by the music, knowing that of the four seasons, this one is her present time. The summer season of one's life is a time to build, give birth to children and ideas, nurture the soil of minds and gardens. Plant the seeds. Plant the dreams. And that's what she has been doing - gardener and mother, builder of businesses and relationships, planter of her dreams in the fertile soil of her day-to-day life. As the music hits a crescendo, she sees the long hot days. The labor that is toil that is heavy that feels dry. The nights were without sleep with a child at her breast. The days were without rest with responsibilities that go beyond the care of just herself. Adulting is for summer. Looking for shade and finding none. But then, sometimes, with the breeze that blows warm on her face, she finds respite and fresh water in the hearts of the people she loves. Life is still so full of doors ready for opening. There are so many paths waiting for her feet to step on. There is still time. And in summer, there is also the miracle of the child she calls son; as for now, her sun shines at noon while her son's sky is still barely warmed by the morning light. For him, the bells in the field are still chiming.

L'autunno. Another burst of applause. This time people are standing. She looks around and sees faces that are as touched by the music as she is. Some are crying. Some are applauding with such vigor it is hard to believe there are less than a hundred of them in the room. Looking past the faces, she sees the light has changed; it is no longer bright, but rather the late orange-brown of October afternoons. Fall begins with the musicians telling the story that she can only imagine since Summer is still the season of her life. The music starts slow, late summer days becoming short, but picks up speed like the wind that needs to blow all the leaves from the trees. Without wanting to, she sees an apple ripened on a branch, a hand outstretched to collect it. A basket is full of fruit. Wheat grounded into flour. Wool turned into yarn. The woodpile is high and promises fires ahead. Underground the root cellar is full; above ground, the land prepares to sleep. The chill in the air brings a hint of fear and trepidation. She hopes the assured steps through the seasons will deliver what is hoped, what was secret in the heart. Nothing points to the passage of time as the transition into Winter. 

L'inverno. As the musicians ended L’autunno, the audience is tired. The very act of listening and gathering the meaning of the music feel like a harvest on its own. Some applaud, some wipes their eyes, others looking deeper inside. It is now, in Winter, that the story ends. We all know it. There is no avoiding it. She imagines that at the late winter hour of one's life, one can try to stop time, regret the things that were done or not done. Still, she knows that some greet the last song with open arms, welcoming the great unknown. Sainte Chapelle is now dark, except for the chandelier lights. The room is almost quiet, the music sounding like horses trotting the frozen ground. Even though it is July, an imaginary cold dance between the people, blowing invisible snow upon their shoulders. She thinks of a house standing still, quietness all around. The wolf may be at the door, but there is a lock and key. The people sitting before the fire hurdled together for more warmth. More than the light from the embers, there is a glow from each of them. For they know that after the longest winter night, as the morning light is breaking through, an angel blows his trumpet announcing that Springtime is new. 

[After I left the concert with my mask soaked in tears, and my heart both heavy and light, I read about Antonio Vivaldi. 

Antonio Lucio Vivaldi, born in 1678 in Venice, was a violist, teacher, impresario, and priest. The Four Seasons is his most famous piece, and sonnets accompany each season. He moved to Vienna, seeking royal support for this art. However, the emperor he was seeking sponsorship from died soon after he arrived in Vienna. Vivaldi himself then died a year later in poverty. 

Vivaldi, a music genius, died in poverty, but his seasons live on.] 

Drink From Their Cup

Someone’s house. Someone’s cup. 2021

I am trying to wake up. It’s 7 am here. 11 pm there. 2 am somewhere else.
Even with the pandemic, I’ve been on the road. A month in Mexico, another in Hawaii, back and forth to the little cabin in the woods. Montana. Utah. Wyoming. California. Missouri. Illinois. Washington. Now, a month across the great pond.

The wandering has decreased but I wander still. As I am able. There is more to come.

As I think of traveling and the urge to be in motion, I am drawn to the poetry of the word nomad as essential for those that need to feel the world small below them from an airplane, or see the images passing by in quick succession through a train’s window, or trying to drive a rental car in a foreign land where Google maps can’t pronounce the street names.

From Oxford, a nomad is a member of a people that travels from place to place to find fresh pasture for its animals and has no permanent home.

I don’t quite fit into the definition as I do have a home, a patch of land where the grass only grows if I water it. The place I miss while away and want to leave when I am there. However, it’s the traveling for green pasture that pulls me in and makes me a nomad of sorts.

The green vistas of new worlds and cultures. The foreignness of indecipherable languages. The tastes of foods that are only known to locals. The time zone changes, forever tiring and confusing. All the layers of experience that contract the cardiac muscle in a nomad’s chest, pumping life’s blood through the body.

I am writing this from someone’s house, rented for my stay. I pretend to live in houses that aren’t mine when traveling. I see their pictures on walls, judge their choices for mattresses. I drink from their cup and see the world through the windows their homes can afford me. I’m a nomad with many homes then, each committed to memory and to pictures.

In this familial way of sharing space with strangers, most of them vacating their houses so they make the extra that will help pay the bills, I have learned that no matter where you are in the world, the love and joy that binds people together are the same. It is all there for me, the welcome intruder, to witness in the shape of children’s pictures on walls, a wedding invitation left on a table, an old casserole pan in the kitchen cabinet, deep knife cuts into the enamel pointing to all the baking and food shared.

I walk lightly across these people’s floors, use their linens gently; respecting their space, leaving their private cabinets, foodstuff, and drawers alone. There is something vulnerable about entering their places, seeing the peeling of paint, the half-empty jar of strawberry jam, all alone in the fridge; the broken chair abandoned in a corner that for some reason it is still there, un-sat. It is all so very human.

And then I read their note to me. Here is the wifi, here is the wifi code (sometimes it takes me 3 tries to get it right, so confusing are the letters and numbers). The front door won’t open unless you turn the key just right. And here is a gift for you, some coffee, some chocolate. Here in Paris, a baguette. Here is a list of places you should go, grocery store, pharmacy, Italian restaurant, and Chinese. I read the note, make the coffee, don’t touch the bread.

Before I leave, I go through the place. Are the pillows in the right order on the sofa? Did I run the dishwasher? Grabbed my shampoo from the bathroom? Check. Check. Check. And then I take a moment to gather my surroundings so I won’t forget. I know some places will stay with me for a long time…

I don’t know how much more traveling I will do. What I do know is that if I decide to wander, if I give in to the nomad’s desire to find that green pasture of new experiences, I will also be looking for a house to visit, to live in for a while, and pretend that it is my own.

—jm

Nelli

Last Supper, by Plautilla Nelli, circa 1560s.

I’ve had many names. Even before my birth, my godmother assumed I’d carry her last and engraved it on a tiny gold medal that I wore for the first years of my life. As time passed, I picked up few names and shed other ones, having no regrets in my personal (and chosen) nomenclature.

One of the names left behind was Nelly - the second name of my first double name, like Mary Anne or Rose Mary. Brazilian names are a bit like dressing up in layers; no point in just picking up a solid warm coat and calling it a day. Instead, let’s pick up a name here, a name there; next thing we know, our names resemble the ones reserved for the British royals.

I digress…back to Nelly. I dropped it because I wanted a simpler name, fewer words to fill in forms, and I rarely think about it. But when the name shows up, I pay attention.

If you have been to Europe, or maybe you live here, you know that after a dozen or so cathedral visits, they start to blend in a bit. Was that painting here or there? Did that church have a stained-glass window that looks just like the one in Notre Dame? It’s a lot to absorb, but once in a while, there is a piece of art or a quiet place or a particular scent that leaves a mark and changes us in an imperceptible but essential way.

Yesterday that happened to me as I was visiting the Cathedral Santa Maria Novella. I had been there before, walking the floors, seeing the large paintings that were recently removed from the walls to expose the frescos they were meant to preserve. All very historically fascinating. What I had not done before was visit the museum that accompanies the cathedral - a once large monastery, now turned into huge empty hallways with a few pieces of art on display, and a quiet nun sweeping the floors here and there. The place, a maze of ‘turn left and right’, made me feel like I was walking in circles, but it finally delivered me to a dark room close to the exit. The room felt like an afterthought, ‘oh hey, before you go, check out these last bits of art we couldn’t fit in the main chambers’. And the visitors’ general attitude, dizzy from circling, ‘yeah sure, this is great, but I need to find some water; it’s 100 degrees here, why can’t churches have AC?’ So I ran my eyes across the heavily embroiled Cardinal robes, the wooden sculptures of Jesus nailed to the cross, looking so sad and skinny, a window filtering in some natural light and above it a large Last Supper oil on canvas.

I stopped on my tracks and gathered what I was seeing above the window, in the darkroom that begs visitors to just, please, leave. In impressive detail there it was: Jesus, eyes gently downcast, holds a woman, his hand touching her hair. The woman, leaning in, has her eyes closed. They are embracing, right there, sitting by the table; the other apostles watching the intimate moment with a mixture of reverence and love.
I have seen my share of Last Suppers, I’m not ashamed to confess. From museums all over Europe to grand depictions in the Vatican, to the images in my grandmother’s most beloved Bible. But this was different and you could feel it. There was just something extremely sweet and private about the image - it felt like walking into a couple looking into each other’s eyes and whispering something secret, or a mother breastfeeding her child on a park bench, or two friends in quiet conversation as you barge right in with your unwanted noise. You take the image in, feel the love there, and look away to respect the privacy of the moment.
The author of this piece, I soon found out through my friend The Poet, was Plautilla Nelli, a nun in the 1500s, and my namesake of sorts.
Nelli led a painters workshop at her nunnery and dedicated herself to painting the Last Supper and other works which were kept from public viewing for 450 years. Besides the fact that Nelli was a painter while also being a woman (the shame!), I believe that the other reason the Last Supper was especially left under covers is that the character Jesus so lovingly embraces could be no other than Mary of Magdalene, though publicly, it looks like they are saying it’s John. There is no way that’s John. Come on now.
So off I went into several hours of ‘Da Vinci Code’ search for more on Magdalene. I know, it’s cliché at this point to read about something that has been so truly covered (or uncovered), but I couldn’t help it. With every article read a fresh reminder of what I already knew — the Church’s quest to subdue and suffocate and subjugate women. Starting with Eve and her fruit choices, connecting the dots across the ‘scripture’ where females are portrayed as temptresses or houses for demons or mere objects to be given to males as trophies.
It all, however, culminates with Magdalene. Who was she really? A prostitute? A possessed body housing 7 demons? A rich woman carrying around expensive perfume in alabaster jars? A true Apostle and perhaps the closest person to Jesus? Let’s not sensationalize the nature of love, but perhaps yes, maybe Jesus loved Magdalene in a way that was quite different than the one he shared broadly across the land. I don’t profess to know. So much to unpack here, but I don’t like long blog posts, so I’ll leave it up to you to read as there are a gazillion scholarly papers on the subject. Each one begging the question: why are women following a church that has diminished them so?
However, this is fairly agreed upon across the written records — when Jesus resurrected, it was Mary of Magdalene that he appeared to first. And that means something. Something fundamentally extraordinary that points to how unique this woman was. Think about it. He could have shown up to anyone. Anyone. But it was Magdalene that rested eyes upon his miraculous return first. And he called her by her name. ‘Mary,’ he said.
Every dude who has read the Bible knows this. Nelli, painting the love between the two of them half a millennium ago just to have the picture hidden and later labeled as John, knew this. And this once-upon-a-time-Nelly, yours truly, knows it too.
—jm

Hugo

Victor Hugo. 1802 - 1885.

Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come, said Victor Hugo, and I listened and believed it to be true.

Many years ago, I was stuck in-between jobs. I am being literal here. I was stuck working three different jobs so I could help at home, pay the bills, buy the food, carry the weight, keep the lights on.

My work was repetitive in nature and there was some peace in that. I was working the front desk of a tiny marketing agency in Seattle and helping two families with cooking and cleaning because of debilitating health concerns. I would go from thing to thing, place to place, task to task, Monday to Friday; all the while looking for an opportunity to break through and deliver to myself the promise of what I knew I could do…

Fast forward 10 years and I am in a different place. Somehow, through hard work, perseverance, and being at the right place at the right time, I was able to build a career path that today I am so grateful for, and kind of amazed about it too. I feel like I will have more time to expand on my work later, but the reason for bringing this up is the fact that this week, at my job, I went through a personality profiling for team building. The Birkman Method.

I went in, as expected, skeptical. I am an enneagram fan and tend to be faithful to the tool. But I had to test in order to do the virtual face-to-face with the rest of the team… so sure, I’ll answer the questions and the algorithm will spit out a report with personality traits that are as accurate as a fortune cookie telling me I will do well in my ventures as long as I am astute. Honestly.

However, the test results were somewhat upsetting to me, pointing to a more intellectual and abstracting person than I give myself space to be. When compared across the multiple members of the team, I presented lonely and deep in the quadrant of “Design, Creativity, Strategy, and Working with Images and Stories” while my teammates were associated with qualifiers like — “Building, Solving, Promoting, Selling”.

‘Fascinating,’ I thought, and when I realized that my deep introspective and introverted persona was going to be shared with the team, ‘terrifying,’ was my reaction. And yet, the whole meeting was pleasant enough with people looking around and buying into some of the results while rejecting others. My direct supervisor, one of the kindest people I have come across in tech, said to me: ‘Julia, you are right where I need you to be. Refining ideas, planning, seeing things and connecting them. Creating the message and telling the stories.’

I needed to hear that, and the moment took me back to the beginning of my career path when I was leaping from the three jobs into one. The one that would retain and sustain my attention, and land me years later into the ‘thinker’ category of a personality test. What I was leaping into was the belief that ideas are powerful when we lean in at the right time to put them into action. The belief that somehow I could act upon my ideas.

So long ago, and yet, just yesterday. Ideas were formed, some worked, others didn’t. Time passes and the building blocks get stacked.

Now I find myself turning my attention to an idea that has been with me for a while. The idea of being a writer. Of becoming someone that expresses through the written word the things that before lived only in the ethereal scope of existence.

Writing and being read is naked stuff. Kinda raw and unprepared and a little painful, especially for the reticent. It feels a bit like a knife prying open the oyster shell, exposing the gooey and shapeless interior, but also bringing light to the tiny pearl. This website is the very tip of that knife, and I think after writing a few posts, I am ready to push it live - sunlight upon the opalescent sphere.

In doing this, I reflect on how very right Hugo was, ideas are powerful things when turned into action at the right time. Let’s see where this idea goes.

-jm

Winged Victory

Paris, France. 2021

I’ve been in Paris for a week now. Visiting the same places that have left deep impressions over the years within me, as well as new ones.

When I return to a place, after months or years away, I always stand on the same spot I stood before and I check-in — what has changed with this place? what has changed with me? I have been doing this for as long as I have been traveling to revisit places that I have fallen in love with.

So a few days ago I stood, in newfound awe and humility, in front of Winged Victory of Samothrace. Standing 18ft tall, at the prow of her marble ship, Victory awakens the feeling of triumph even in the most reluctant of hearts. I won’t deny it, I cried.

There I was once again, feeling small by the realization that this female warrior — created around 200 BC — still stands, the wind blowing her robes and exposing a firm stance that is both movement and stillness all in the same piece of carved stone. Movement and stillness.

I reflected on that as I stood by her, realizing the need for internal stillness in order to engage in a world of constant movement. The need to be surefooted when the winds of change are blowing all around, but also realizing that it is the slight bent of the knees that makes us flexible enough to remain standing. As I write this, I become aware that flexibility is the bridge between flowing in the movement of day-to-day life while maintaining a still mind, a calm heart.

I go back to my pictures of Victory and smile as I see that not only she has a bent knee, but she also has one foot in front of the other, as if ready to take flight with her outstretched wings. Oh yes, let me not forget, this is a winged woman, coming to announce the victory of our endeavors :)

And so, I checked in and realized that while Winged Victory remains very much the same from the last time I saw her, and likely very much the same for the past two thousand plus years, I am a completely new human being. Every cell shed and re-created; thoughts and concepts challenged and either kept or tossed away to make more room; new people held in my heart as dear treasures and guiding me through.

I will, undoubtedly, return and once again stand by Victory…who will I be then is yet to come.

-jm

Do What You Can

Cannon Beach, Oregon. 2021

It is an impossibility to write diary entries dressed up as blog posts and not dwell on the past year or so.

Life and times for all of us have been hard, transformative, punitive, pensive, and above all, long. Sadness and the pregnant wait for better days have a way of wearing one down. I could see it on the faces around me. At first, a large question mark signaling total lack of understanding - a pandemic? What does that even mean? To later, as the news of those impacted started to hit closer and closer to home, the question mark was transformed into the sobering lines of stress and fear around the eyes, into the pursed lips of chocked sobs. And finally, the numbness of ‘please dear God, dear scientists, dear whomever, please help and please help us fast’ settling in for months.

For me (and my little tribe), this has been a difficult time and while none of us have perished, we know people that have. Fathers and mothers of friends, co-workers overseas, people that are both strangers but familiar through the social media threads that weave us all. I remember reading an article from the New Yorker sharing the tremendously devastating story of the orphaned children in India. Babies and toddlers being found next to the bodies of their deceased parents days after their passing. A whole generation left to fend for themselves from cradle to the hope of a stable life somehow, somewhere. All so entirely damaging. The hand of time moving so painfully slow…

At home, some job opportunities were lost, others were found. We were never sick, though, through masked faces and fingers raw with so much sanitizer, we went into the world - a grocery store, a park, a friend’s backyard. Each human connection, a precious reminder of what we had and took for granted. I, due to the high level of invincibility (and stupidity) I carry with me, was never afraid of the virus; but I feared for my parents, locked in a small apartment in Brazil, my sister with her delicate health, and my son, a perfectly healthy young man that shares my propensity for invincibility.

Through it all, and the ‘through’ is still in full swing, all I could think about was - this is a chance to reinvent, Julia. The things that were carried but not needed may need to be put down. The things that were important may need to be tested to see if they are gold or just vermeil. Arms will need to stretch to hold more people. You will need to work harder and smarter. You will need to reinvent.

That is fundamentally one of the reasons why I am writing again. The ‘what ifs’ of this pandemic leaving me wanting to step up to the calling of doing what I can to do what I love. The urge to reinvent working as fuel to take me further.

I know each one of us has tried and coped with these times in different ways, as we were dealt different hands; and yet the underlying hope is still the same. The beginning of a better moment, sprouting out of the wet soil from our collective tears, can be seen and heard and felt if only we do what we can to do what we love.

-jm

My Skeleton Key

San Tiago, Spain. 2019.

It’s been a long time coming…this blog writing thing. In full transparency, blog writing is nothing but an excuse for me to actually write. And I have no grand aspirations to be read by many, only by the few that I know will take the time because they care for me as a person.

Many moons ago, when I didn’t have an actual job but owned a pink Dell laptop, I spent many an hour perched on coffee shop bar benches, tapping on my keyboard, busy being a writer. Those were perhaps the happiest and loneliest days of my life. The whole thing lasted a whole year and as a result, I wrote a book of sorts. A full-length novel that I had two or three friends of mine suffer through as they fixed my acronyms and prepositions. Prepositions being the hardest for me, even after twenty-some years in the States and actually being paid now to write marketing things.

The book — a fabulation of childhood memories, my deep-rooted Christian upbringing, and some simple fiction — never really saw the light of day, but the act of writing did work as a skeleton key for me to suddenly open doors to better understanding myself and the world around me.

Writing is powerful stuff, even if you are the only one reading it. It serves as a catalyst for experiences to gather their flavors and colors, and it imprints lived life in a way that cannot be replicated. A song, before being a song, was just an idea, and then it became words on paper. A film, before being a film, was perhaps a story floating on air, and then it became pages of script. Even paintings and sculptures have their pre-birth as notes on an artist’s diary. Words are powerful stuff.

But life sometimes takes its own course and what is important, essential even, gets forgotten as fires of daily crisis burn our attention into exhaustion. As children come into this world and demand your attention. As work rings its incessant bell in your computer and phone. As relationships, much like the ocean, push their way into the shores of you day to day, permeating your ground until it is saturated. And so I am not alone in the fact that life took over and I have not until very recently, started to write again - skeleton key, dusty with lack of use, had to be rescued from the depths of my own busyness, procrastination, and excuses.

I don’t have a specific goal in terms of how much I can and will write. I don’t even have the aspiration to write well; honestly, typos are a thing that just happens to me. And yet, I think any effort, given the neck-breaking speed in which I often move, is a good effort.

So this is a start. Starting this site is an actual big step. It is all the things I am not comfortable with - public, open, in-real time, and vulnerable. It is also many things that I love and makes my heart sing - a time for introspection, an opportunity to share, and a chance to read from myself so I can know myself better.

I can feel the key turning. A new door opening.

-jm