K-LOVE

When I was in high school, I listened to Kiss-108 FM. When I go back to Boston, Mattie in the Morning is still there, playing music. I get to dance in my car to songs I’ve never heard because I’m generally stuck in the 80s. Is there anything better than driving with the music up loud? YES! Driving with wild Boston drivers on 128 with the music up loud! 

 Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers knows this is true. 

Roadrunner, roadrunner
Going faster miles an hour
Gonna drive past the Stop & Shop
With the radio on

I'm in love with Massachusetts
And the neon when it's cold outside
And the highway when it's late at night
Got the radio on
I'm like the roadrunner

All right
I'm in love with modern moonlight
128 when it's dark outside
I'm in love with Massachusetts
I'm in love with the radio on

It helps me from being alone late at night
It helps me from being lonely late at night
I don't feel so bad now in the car
Don't feel so alone, got the radio on
Like the roadrunner, that's right

Said welcome to the spirit of 1956
Patient in the bushes next to '57
The highway is your girlfriend as you go by quick
Suburban trees, suburban speed
And it smells like heaven

I have been waking up at 5:30 every morning for the last couple of months to listen to Panache Desai’s Call to Calm meditations. The meditations themselves are 21 minutes long and start at 6 am PST, but Panache talks from about 5:30 until 6, and these talks have changed me. He started them as a way to support people during COVID. There are sessions during the day you can pay for, but these gems are FREE. (They are also all available on YouTube.)

The world gives you a virus and at the same time it gives you Panache. Oh! The paradox of life. Without COVID, I might not have tuned into K-LOVE. 

Panache says, over and over, You are not broken. There is nothing to fix.

I like that. 

This is what I am thinking about listening and listening and listening to Panache talk: I think my body/mind is like a radio, and I was created to tune into the frequency of love. What this means is that the universe is constantly feeding me, nurturing me because it operates at the level of life, and life gives. Everything else is story. If I am not feeling love, I am in story. 

Why do I believe this? Because my body responds when I think this thought. My body softens, sighs: yessssss.

If someone kicks me in my head, I can still walk away. I can still kick him back in the head in self defense, but if I’m at the top of my game, my bodymind will still be sighing yessssss. This, too.

Isn’t it funny that when I talk about love I almost immediately go to the thought that someone might kick me in the head? Scared little baby chick. The sky is so big. 

I have a friend who is afraid to drive across bridges. In order to get from point A (an unhappy marriage, perhaps) to point B (a life as a single person), you have to cross the bridge of unknowing. This can be terrifying! Recently I was wondering what it would be like to be blind, and so I tied a scarf around my eyes and walked around the house. I lasted for less than 90 seconds. There were so many things to walk into, so many ways to fall. I could not imagine going out into the world without my sight. Crossing a street?!

 I’d rather sit and do nothing than try to make it across the room without seeing where I’m going. 

And yet, blind people walk the streets of New York City, Delhi, Florence every day! How do they do it? How do they find the courage to walk into the dark? 

Because, I’m guessing, they want to go places. They want to live their lives. 

It takes so much courage to live our lives, blind or not! The road beneath our feet could collapse at any moment. Our hearts could quit beating. A meteor shower could take us out as we walk into Peet’s. The one we love the most could die, pack up their bags and leave us. We could turn on ourselves, quit our job when we meant to stay, do cocaine when we meant to stay sober. 

We tune into the voices that tell us all the things that could go wrong, the voices that tell us how we are not good enough, the voices that assure us they are keeping us safe.

These are not the voices of love. They confuse safety with immobility.

Love says yesssssss. 

When I think about my body and love, and can feel how my cells are restricted, little fists of fear filling the space I inhabit. I am a walking fist. Don’t even try to love me! You can’t get in! 

I’m so busy resisting love I can’t sleep at night! My sense of something is not right keeps me up. I’m paying attention to the wrong things: to the things that might happen, to the things that could happen, to the things that did happen. 

And all the while, Radio K-LOVE is playing, and I’m missing it because I’m too fisted to let the vibrations run through me. This is crazy!! It’s like I’m a violin insisting it’s a rock while someone tries to play it. I’ve got strings—a nervous system—I was meant to vibrate! It’s my nature!

 Can I wear out exclamation points?!!

You know what’s funny? Partly I’m afraid if I fall 100% in love with myself, with everything, you will hate me. You will attack me.

Where does this fear come from? Why would you do this? Why would I fear this?

Imagine if babies were born holding baseball mitts in front of their faces because they were afraid they were going to get kicked in the head? (Instead we smacked their butts!—I think we’ve evolved and those days are over, but we do all sorts of needle pricks and etc etc. Crazy us. Welcome to the world. Ouch.)  

Are we afraid to be gentle? Are we more afraid of love than we are of fear? 

What happens when we tune into K-LOVE and yesssss the days through? 

I have missed amazing opportunities because I stared into the face of love and said no. 

But I am changing.