One life is not enough

The girl never knew me and I never knew her, really.

It’s been 31 years since my birth,
more than 40 since she slipped back into the atmosphere.
She was my sister.
She is my sister.
We have been all over this God-blue earth together.
Laughing easily, smiling contagiously: living joyously.

When my parents named me, they gave her to me.
A wonderful gift I cherish every day.
There is Gina (here I am!), and there is Michele.

Still 6.
Still living.
Still smiling —

for me and with me, because of me and despite of me.

She is energy.
She is love.

And I know she is still brave (as much as a baby can be),
still strong (she knew nothing different),
and still faithful to her Self, even after my parents questioned it all.
How could there be a lesson in this?
How could they deserve to suffer like this,
to give up their joy, their precious, radiant joy?

But children belong to no one. Not then, not now.

But still, 40 years later, it roars.

After Michele died, my parents realized what we ought to know inherently,
but tend to store up and get to later just like everything else.
They saw the sun set as if it were their last,
watched the moon rise as the miracle that it is,
they drove in snowstorms to ski fresh powder
and took off to Hawaii when the economy was about to break …
for the most part, I was there to experience it all.
To live it up.

I had no idea we were so different from the Joneses.

Some things are lightning, some things are rainbows,
some are the sun, some are the moon.
We learned to relish the sunsets, the new moon, and the darkness, together.
We know: Lightning strikes again, the moon will return, the sun will shine.

Energy is always moving.

A life lived with energy and love moves.
Holding onto the past takes power and force.
Love and energy are boundless, and move through the fabric of dreams,
across continents, galaxies, miles, years, sunsets,
and permeate everything, always.
Power and force are trapped in the matter,
stagnant.

Just like today’s news becomes tomorrow’s toilet paper,
I feel like I am recycled, recreated and reconstituted.
I am bits and pieces of a brilliant painter, a writer, a comedian,
a lover and a muse, a shaman, a stoner, a wanderer, wonderer,
philosopher, slave, a blacksmith and a bird.

And, no doubt, a very precious little child.

In 1976 I emerged onto the planet.
Throughout the years I have become Gina Michele.

Life is a transformation.

I listen to whispers and strain to hear what is next,
I pay close attention to the children who are laughing,
in that there is the wisdom I gave up because I thought I knew better.
Lately, me and all my selves, are running blindly into the fire of life;
there is no other way.

When I was 18 I got a tattoo on my hip of an angel.
She tugs me here and there.
My parents hated that I “desecrated” my body.
When I was 18 I got another tattoo,
a symbol on my lower back that means “Joy.”
I inked myself not just to spite my parents, as many 18-year-olds do;
I did it to remember, every day, all day, my responsibility to live —
to follow that angel, to embody that symbol, to soar like a bird, paint like a poet,
write like a philosopher, think like a magician, feel like a shaman,
and,
most importantly,
to share the smile of that child.

Because one life is not enough.


“Whatever you can do, or dream, you can do. Begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.” — Goethe


(Gina Guarascio is a warrior poet and an Ea-gal [girl Eagle] who is sharpshooting her way into oblivion … on purpose. She is an astro-traveler who considers Carbondale “home base.” Her column appears monthly in The Valley Journal.)