How We Do

A Day at the Beach

Out My Window

My Friend Crow



Lunch with Teena

Ahhhhhh, Choptank...

yummmmmmmmmmm

god have mercy, i know i haven't posted in a while.

i haven't been right. tho by that i certainly dont mean i've been wrong.


just getting pure, by being in a dirty way. if that makes any kinda sense at all.


my homegrl katie is coming tomrw, hooray. and most of all i know i'm coming back to life for this reason: these jeans and how they made me go oooooooooooooooooooooo
or better, they make me go yuummmmmmmmmmmmmm. which is what my friend paul thought my yoga teacher was chanting once when he came to visit and we hit the wednesday nite free session she holds at the library in chestertown. it made him so happy.

yuummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

find them at bonadrag.com

and o yea, happy friggen new year people

katie and kel wolfmother fairyqueens

My Great List, cont

Today I am grateful for....
25. Friends who I can talk simple, profound spirituality with. Who believe in joy-following and making others feel good. Like my pal Cindy, who sent me this link

The Interview, which reminded me of

26. The book Conversations with God. Which is a life-changer. Word. This book dropped a complete but simple understanding of basic zen, of basic tao, on me in less than half a page. It took me three tries and the first thirty pages of eye-rolling to finally get in to it. Don't let the word God throw you off...


27. ESL and spanish speakers and speaking spanish. Getting the opportunity to meet different people and learn so much that is not commonly considered "our" culture. Expanding my values.


28. Ridiculously fly boots bought at 5:00am Black Friday morning. If I were really lame I'd write humunuh-humunuh write here.


29. My family, who choose to spend Saturday afternoons sitting around bonfires together.


30. Wise Women Wisdom. Knowing and learning rhythmically, cyclically, when to let go, when enough's enough, when to put me out there, and when to just sit quiet and listen to within.

Great Brainwashing EEE Gads it's effective

I had a friend tell me recently of the following story. It was some years ago, she was at a big concert, one of those dusty arena-style festivals with several bands lots of sun dirt and expensive beer. The kind that makes you want to almost believe that you are free and can go go go in this eternal moment and that indeed, this eternal moment is one of which you do not have to let go….Or maybe it was all the acid, which by the way was an essential part of her story….so anyhow here she was, tripping, and they—her and her guests in tow—had just settled down into their spot to start to indulge when the giant tower of sound in the middle of the arena before them suddenly cast on in a dismantled if not harrowing glow. A cartoon was being broadcasted on a screen that was part of the soundwall’s several-storied side. What astounded my friend, as she watched in glued seduction, was the way the crowd simultaneously reacted: heightened in senses as she was, she and her buddies slackjawed in awe watched as the entire mass of thousands in the field below literally all turned slow-motion style and as one, as if inextricably linked to the television sound, surrendered for just a moment all consciousness and motion and ability to let go.

It was a South Park episode on the screen, one of the first, and Jesus was standing there in his million-pixilated animated glory. The crowd was aghast and as One….worshipping that which brought them all surrendered, to a Pause, just for a moment. So powerfull was that great giant wall of sound.

It gets me to thinking. I don’t have TV of any kind, and haven’t for some time(ok at Anngar we did have three channels). It’s always funny to me to see the subtle reality-manipulation people willingly and daily submit themselves to when for example, like today, I end up in a place that’s under the influence of the giant dancing blue screen. I am writing right now from the car dealership where CNN is on go go go.

“Nothing that has been substantiated,” says this woman all grimfaced and poor-souled. She is talking about reports that a terrorist threat had come to NY’s subway in September of this year. Nothing has been substantiated. Nothing except a great giant dose of subconscious fear now, thanks Lady to you! And on the busiest travel day of the year!

Seriously!?!? Seriously do people give their power away to a freaking metal mechanism like this? To these pitiful spirit hungry talking heads? Awwww people, don’t you get it? What you focus on you create. And what you resist, especially, persists.

Awww, so be it than, Poor Americans. Poor poor consumers. No wonder we are so, in these moments, down-trodden. So be it then, I say. Maybe looking at the floor, looking so grim, will be what it takes to get you all to finally look within.

I shake my head.

Then say, Amen. If this is life, so be it. I, on the other hand, shall choose great-full exception.
Or, if done as choice, it's not exception, is it? Awareness, maybe. Or just luckiness I suppose?

Great List of Things to Be Grateful for cont.
23. My health, my perspective... Hands up outstretched heart open at the sun Thank you so much for the fine health of my spirit, for my creative health, my creative heart, my emotional health, my emotional peace, my mental health, my mental joy, my physical health, my physical blessings, my spirit full of clarity and all the gifts in this moment.....
24. The World which by virtue of its very existence (infinity people, remember infinity? so long as there's infinity there's absolute unlimited potential...your choice, how's it gonna be) is a world of gifts and miracles to me...Thank you so much for the gifts of this day, the gifts in this world, the many gifts and blessings of joy I experience this and everyday. Thank you so much for my harmony, my safety, my guidance, clarity and security. For my blessings and my worth and my heart and my soul I give thanks, I am thank-full-ness walking.....

More Great-full stuff for the list

Okay, add to the list of Great Things to be Grateful for:



22. The book Simple Abundance. Which reminded me this morning of affirmations. For example, the following: Thank you so much for the creative, emotional, physical and mental strength to joyfully and lovingly experience this holiday season. This was my morning meditation.
23. The fact that I know from experience that affirmations, when made in the warm light heartspace, work. Thank you so much for the creative, emotional, physical and mental strength to joyfully and lovingly experience this holiday season. Thank you so much....
24. Crazy old friends from Annapolis who always seem to know just when to call...



Thank you so much for the creative, emotional, physical and mental strength to joyfully and lovingly experience this holiday season. Thank you so much....

List 3 or Kelly's Great List of Things to be Grateful for

So, here's the thing. My living circumstances have changed. At least temporarily. And there is no internet service out here in the boonies on the Choptank river in Caroline County aka my new home. And, my computer is frozen on Windows Media after evidently not taking the movie I was watching out correctly or something. Blah blah blah. So I am on my work computer, thank-full thank-full thank-full for it, picking up wireless for the first time here at Choptank--so thank-full for that! And stoked bc I am in touch w so many great old smiles from the past on Facebook and the likes. I wanted to, have for several weeks now, post pics on here of various friends. But as said my computer is on the fritz sos no pics...

Instead, I am thinking...The timing is right...

I am going to start a list of things that I have gratitude for in my life right now. And i dont just mean areas that i am aware of my blessings. I mean, these are the things that move me to light and a warmth and overflow feeling of joy in my chest when I bow my head, reflect a moment, and give thanks with a smiling heart.

And, for you dear reader, a challenge--

Make your own list this week. Live them. LIve the light in your chest. Learn about it's reflexiveness, how it grows when you share it, how it automatically comes back at you, too, to double. Comment to me some of your gratitude list. Let me know about your warm heart full of joy, too...

Kelly's Great List of Things to be Grateful for:
1. Cuzin slumber parties! woooooo hooooo for my cousins, who define and delight me, who are always there for me, who keep me crazy and keep me sane, who remind me about love--the unconditional kind--and who will no doubt keep me up with dumb movies and whispers and stories all nite on Friday.
2. Teena! Who fed me and listened to me that first awful week. Who got home from work last night and rode a stuffed animal horse in to my bedroom whinnying and naying all the while. Really! Who then told me since a guy laughed at her for dancing in middle school she hasn't danced in public in 45 years. How is that possible? If you are open enough to ride a stuffed horse around then dancing like no one is watching's got to be the next plunge!
3. The River. How she breathes and sooths me.
4. Amy my baby, Madonna in concert, and growing so closely with someone that 7 years feels like no time at all. that sort of says it all
5. Fresh food. so you can still taste the light in it
6. Artists friends making new records and finding life again. Ldubb that means you.
Sisters.
7. Eddie's Place reunions. hell freaking yeah can you believe it, the man the myth the legend, my old dad Ed may he rest in peace and the motley crew of family he gathered in the kitchen of (and out back!) his pizza joint back in the early nineties are all coming together to re-unite. Holy holy 6 degrees to insanity, anybody?
8. Brandon who is warmth, and light
9. Katie who is a goddess angel and keeps reminding me to be the same. and who can make out my words through lots of sobs and tears now, who's had lots of practice at it...
10. Gretchen who i trust beyond all
11. My Quiet Space. my sacred sacred quiet spot in my new room and how lucky i am to know that, day after day, it is something that works again and again
12. Tim and the other people i dont know but do through their words who read and comment on my blog. it makes me feel so good. and that is what we are here on earth to help each other do...
13. Mom dad and Sean. god i love you and love you and love you
14. Grandma, Papaw, the Englars and McMullens Amen for tribes and again, i love you i love you i love you
15. Facebook and all the old heads....
16. Josh who knows me. And helps me know me better
17. The Eastern Shore of Maryland which is my home. wow it feels so good to be connected to a place
18. My poet instincts
19. Being clean and sober for 8 whole years.
20. My job, for getting to touch people the way i do
21. Grandma's cooking woooo hooo here i come!

and the list goes on and on....and if i am able, i will this week, in the spirit of Thanks-Giving, add more and more

May you be moved to do the same.....

Mourning Moon @ New Year

It has been a long year. It has been a long year and one that’s gone by way too quick.
Always, right?

This time last year I’d just started waiting tables at a white linen in town and was devoting most of my days to writing. I was finishing/editing my first collection of poetry and sending it off to different contests for unpublished poets.

And the conference for young people recovering from substance abuse—that was just getting underway, too.

A long, long year.

Last night’s full moon was a doozy, no? Emotional, a tugging, with some sorrows sprung deep. This is normal, as it should have been—and if you are reading this and nodding your head or having an aha moment: stop denying and understand your tribe…!

Us artists and soul-learners, us instinct-led craving a deeper experience of life, we dip and rise together, and I have found at least for myself that the old moons and earth holidays that folklore kept are good to grow and to learn better my own deep tune…

Yesterday was Lunar New Year, to that affect. Mourning Moon. Agricultural societies of old new it well: the final crops are down, time to take full count of your lot. And in that, inside of that knowledge of assessing your harvest, comes too the sight of that which you lost. Or maybe has yet to come to fruit at all. It is now that the seeds for next years bounty most especially stir there quiet just below in your soul. Same as the seeds for the spring now are planted, this last week or so gives you peek at what in the coming year you would like to grow. Look well, be kind and easy on your soul in whatever language it uses to communicate this to you. For soon the seeds too will slumber, take their rest and gather strength in the landscape of the underground. And it could be long, and dark that sleep, maybe disorienting or scary.

But so too will the spring, the roots, the new blossoms come again—

Now is the time for quiet and thanks-giving…

So this is what Patriotism feels like...

Amen. Amen amen oh god, amen.

The Avian Front for Democracy

photo by Walsh

To a Guy I'll Name Owl or WHY I'M VOTING TOMORROW

Okay. I've held out long and hard on this one--I mean really, for someone wordy as I, I've really managed to stay away. But...

Tomorrow, of course, is election day. And I've gotta say, there are lots of reasons I've purposefully stayed uninvolved this year. The main one is that I think we are a nation of corruption and dishonesty, in a system that's broken, and I prefer to work on the grass-roots level in the local municipalities to put change that I can see in to action. I am disheartened, and have been, at the greed and shameless self-interest that masquerades in the Western world as the American Dream; at the excess of consumerism that we value under the label of Freedom, at the mindless circle that this system has created and at the personal powerless that strikes me whenever I look bluntly at the truth: that I, too, live as part of this lifestyle. That I can't not.

We as a people for the first time ever have the economic, intellectual and technological resources to feed every person the world over, to cloth every one, to see children educated and housed. And yet we don't. This is astounding to me. Simply, quite bone-baring common-sensical dumbfoundedly simple: why don't we, as a basic human species, take care of each other? Period. There is absolutely no excuse not to. This is just common sense people. Ethical evolution, it's the final frontier, it's the only one that truly matters. It's what will save us. Or, if continued to lack, will finally break us.

The rest of it is just pundit powwow and bullshit.

This leads me to my opinion on tomorrow, and to why I am voting, even though I think it's all broken and the whole sick "free"-market pillaging that we call "free-trade" backed as it is by bought politicians backed by corporate-funded lobbyists is nothing but a big, eye-rolling joke and not worth my energy. (There is no such thing as limitless anything. It does not exist. It is a scientifically impossible principle. Right down to the atom: equal parts negative and positive charges are what fire life. Everything has its balance. Capless "wealth" comes at the expense then of it's opposite, insatiable ravaging that quite literally sucks opportunity from the lowest classes in the most bottom of places, making millions of human lives, that is valuing humanity at a literally less than even average status quo--setting the standard of what is livable--what is HUMAN--at ten cents a day in the factories overseas that finance our vainglory. It sucks, it is disgusting, and that I am a living part of it, if I think too much about it, MAKES ME SICK.) So yeah, though I think that operating within this heartless system is pointless, here is why I am going to vote tomorrow:

Martin Luther King. He was assassinated on April 4, 1968, and his death almost single-handedly stopped in its tracks the momentous roll of the Civil Rights Movement, on the public front. Here's the deal gang. We hear these phrases in this country, like "Black" History or The "Women's" Rights Movement and we take for granted that special interests or movements have all but taken care of themselves, that they are polarized subsets and exist in isolated bans that are far away from us. And so long as we think that, it is true. But the truth is this: Black History, Women's History, this is OUR history. If you are alive and a citizen of the US today then the history of black slavery and subjugation and of the slow and powerful rise of an entire community of Americans from this degraded state is a part of YOUR history too, as an American. If you are an American than the story of the suffragettes and the Equal Rights Amendment that guarantees women the same rights as men and that HAS NOT BEEN PASSED even though it has come up in every congress since 1920!! is a part OF YOUR HISTORY. Period. And if you believe in change, if you believe you can be the change, as King did, as his hero Ghandi taught, or as Lucretia Mott did, or Barack Obama, or Hillary Clinton, or Sarah Palin, each of whom are changing the myth of America by the action, judged good or bad who cares, that each of them are taking--then you are alive and there's hope, there's still a fighting chance out there. To be the change. And to continue to evolve this story of us Americans. Of how good we can be, one by one. These stories aren't over, black history or women's history or our history, all of us, as a Nation, divided but one because the very concept of equality inherently implies differences and thank god for that. I will vote because at the end of the day we all are very different. We all are varied and many in all our beliefs. But thank god we can fight to tell and continue to evolve our stories, our history. Thank god for the many of us still devoted to being the change and for the opportunity to talk about it, to try, if we choose, to live it a little out loud---

at least the hell I've still got the right to actively, and out loud, be that change. So I'll vote for the hope of it, for the power of it, for what I will continue in my heart to believe is right.

Good Eats

So here, thought i'd switch it up a little today cuz i am really in to eating and lately not too in to writing. which means i've been cooking a lot, channeling my creative energy last night in to, for example, chicken pot pie with a cornmeal lid, a recipe i got off operah and wasn't crazy about cuz of how thick and bready the crust turned out. the pot part with the thick del-ish-ous chicken and veg was sooo good and hearty tho

or, like last weekend, i did a whole slow-cooked goose (upside down bc this way the fat rolls in to and integrates and flavors the breast meat) in nice fresh apple cider, with fresh chopped honeycrisps in cinnamon and powdered red chili pepper, stuffed with diced celery, onions and more honeycrips, with a bit of salt, pepper and also honey drizzled all around. mmmmmmmm.

this is typical of me in the fall, usually a couple good recipes come out of my heart when the season turns cold and the day goes early to dark--it's the way i stay warm and also connected in heart and soul to the changing tides taking us

so i liked it when i was blog-rolling tonite and found the following on Confessions of a Young Woman--The Omnivore's Hundred. Originally it comes from Very Good Taste, a food blog out of the UK. From Very Good Taste:

"Below is a list of 100 things that I think every good omnivore should have tried at least once in their life. The list includes fine food, strange food, everyday food and even some pretty bad food - but a good omnivore should really try it all. Don’t worry if you haven’t, mind you; neither have I, though I’ll be sure to work on it. Don’t worry if you don’t recognise everything in the hundred, either; Wikipedia has the answers.

Here’s what I want you to do:

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.



So in the spirit of coziness and cooking for the season, I give you Kelly's version of The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:

1. Venison--though 25 years of grandma and papaw offering never budged me, a cute long-haired brown-eyed Eastern Shore boy got me to try it finally w-out a second guess. My favorite: Venison Osso Bucco, served wintertime at The Wild Orchid Cafe, Annapolis.
2. Nettle tea--this would be from a biodynamic permaculture women at Floyd Fest, Virginia. Too much cayene in hers made me sneeze
3. Huevos rancheros--Cali does it best
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile--also Cali, some restaraunt off the boards in Huntington Beach
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue--mmmmm
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari--actually the best ever was at Szabo's, that roadhouse bar/steak joint i waited and bartended in at Oregon
12. Pho--never even heard of
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart--mmm this i associate w manhattan's smell and being 13 and wearing too much make-up and dad taking me from his apartment for the weekend to see Cat's and the Macy's Day Parade
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle--did chef abby let me try these at the Hotel when i worked under her or am i making that up?
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes--apple. blueberry. pear. and does dandelion count?
19. Steamed pork buns--huh?
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries--grow wild all over our farm!
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans--which, according to Katie, I make the best
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters--hands down the best way is smoked in a fire that's keeping you and all your friends warm and at once bringing out the primal beast in you, prying apart the shells and sucking the hot juice while your hairs stand on end and you, you know, beat at your chest
29. Baklava--thoughts of mom and the Greek Fests at Lexington when we were kids
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut--yuck smells like old shoes
35. Root beer float--yummmm Downies at Chestertown makes the best
36. Cognac with a fat cigar--would you believe, an old favorite at Applehell when i used to work there way back when
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat--well, not curried. but slow-cooked over low heat for four days for Reyna's birthday celebration para su amor, Joel. and they had it fresh-slaughtered for the event.
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut--i mean come on i grew up minutes from the bakery in glen burnie, you haven'thad um til you've had um fresh out the oven...
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear--in tacos, in Santa Cruz, at Russel's favorite taco joint. my fave werethese unreal artichoke enchilladas
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal--believe it or not, never. though to this day i love their fries. still my favorite. i wont lie.
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini--MMMMMM mMMMm good ma fave, i mean, besides wine for medicinal purposes this is the drink i miss the most
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips--dont come close to the real thing. nothing like true, dark chocolate chips
61. S’mores--my aunt linda makes the best
62. Sweetbreads--blughghhgghgh i can't cross things out cuz i dont know how but this, these, are the only thing i would not eat. they smell so damn good but it all comes down to seeing them raw come out of the walk-in and watching Eugene one of the chefs at the Blue Heron seperate them. Ughghghg gross.
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake--naw-lins, right?
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho--okay, again with the Blue Heron, Jeff makes the best i've ever had
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill--maybe? depends on what Perry stocked our fridge with, I think that one deer he did in fact hit
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini--no too bad too late cuz they seem good
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky--do those American versions in the canister in the coffee aisle or candy aisle at the grocery store count?
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.--huh what does this mean?
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers--dandelion tea is extremely healing. drink regularly from your yard, if you dont spray!! in the springtime
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam--still associate this with Great Aunt Janet and Great Uncle Dave
92. Soft shell crab--dont really like, does that mean i am not a true marylander?
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish--my spicy fried recipe is the best around
95. Mole poblano--Reyna Reyna Reyna, all i can say
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

The Many, Many Masks...

It's almost Halloween

Feel it?

Get

weird.

Legends

I'm so lucky cuz for some reason Chestertown has this totally epic cult-like epicenter for crazy talented-ass musicians. I dont know why, or what it is that draws us all in our antic-questing to encounter and run in to each other out here in the middle of colonial drudgery under-your-thumb-imprinted-capitalistic-ruin perfect pinpoint micro image of the macro which is Chestertown out amid the middle of the farmfields, maybe it is as Tai-Chi way-out Wayne says there must be an aquafir or something...

But anyhow all the musicians at right are ones who wnadered past here, Kent County, good ol Eastern Shore. Some have stayed on if not for good at least for now and Marc Dykeman from Plans Plans is one of those cats. Turns out we used to not know each other but know those or know of those who knew each other back in my purple booted punk-rock riot grrrl days of dark firehalls garage bands and flannel shirts, outside Balitmore, USA.

He's kept that loud thing up. I sweat him for it. A hella lot. Also, his wife is a fairy princess and I think she's so rad and they throw the best parties, too.

Go check out his rock band Plans Plans tonite, in Baldamore, 1700 N Charles the Metro Gallery. It'll be worth it I know.

ps i just figured out how to copy soemthing off YouTube I stole that video above off of PlansPlans, I'm so proud of me!

Brandon

In the fall of 2002 this was what my life looked like. I was 25 and about to be two years sober. It was mid-October. I was four months a college grad, my mom was in the process of selling the house I grew up in from 12 on and my dad had just quit his corporate-American lifestyle, sold his condo in Ruston "Sillicon Valley of the East" Virginia and moved back to the beach, prompted all at once by the slow, then final loss of one of two of his best friends to cancer. Dad stood by, and took care of his friend Richard who he'd known from Brooklyn, Bmore, since they were in their twenties, every day those last months until August when they said goodbye. Richard died right about the time that it became clear that Chuck, Dad and Rich's other best friend from that same early-twenties hellion-time, was also going to die. Cancer took to him with a vengeance, too. A week after Richard died my dad completely left his own life. He went to the beach so he could, for a while, hide. And heal.

It was the most courageous thing I'd ever seen him do.

I mention this because I was there, at the beach, for part of that time. I was confused, caught in that horrible juxtaposition of blindness: complete inexperience at adulthood coupled with vague awareness of my glorious, terrifying Independence. It was far too real, and raw and wide-open, to really see! It took me 7 years to get through college and during that time I think my total monthly bills were, maybe, $400. Maybe. Suddenly I was a college grad, with a writing fricken degree?? Paying rent to a lovely girl in Chestertown for a room in her sweet Victorian house, and my student loans no longer covered my monthly needs. In fact, in addition to rent I now had to start to pay back my student loans! So I was barista-ing at the local coffee shop, waitering in a tux-button down at the local white linen, and the other three days a week I pulled double-shifts at a high-volume seafood joint on the Northern-most edge of Ocean City. And I watched my dad, during that time, emotionally fall down.

It sucked. For all of us, my mom selling our home, my lost and desolate dad who up til then had physically been absent for most of my "adult" life, and my brother Sean, who also had just graduated and who also was living at the beach waitering at the same seafood joint(which, during a lot of those day-shifts during that slow and sunny September meant keeping his eye on the fishing rod propped off the back deck of the restaurant and in to the Bay), it sucked. I think we were all in that place that us humans hate to be in: the in-between place. Or better, how I like to call it: Through. As in the only way out....

So yeah, I was working weekend days at the coffee shop, weekend nights at the Hotel in my button-down, and then driving to the beach to stay with dad, immobile on the couch, and go pull doubles in town. I had very little sense of what I wanted my future to be like. I knew one thing for sure, had decided it, just as sure as if I decided to drive to the post office or to make my bed, I was going to be a writer. I was on my bed in the lovely girl in Chestertown's Victorian home, the bed had high cold metal posts that were meant to look brass but the paint was thin and instead they were chipped white so they just looked old and even black in some places too, and I had scarves tied around them and blankets over the ornate curled cold metal at the foot and the head. And I was on the bed and I was writing in a journal and it was this very week six years ago because I was writing about my baby Amy who was just about to turn, back then, one-sober-year-old. (Happy 7 years Amy!) And the writing about/to her became very poetic and the candles and the incense that had prompted the boyfriend of the lovely girl in Chestertown in whose home I was living to think I was a witch were burning with the warm orange light and the warm orange smells and I all of a sudden, just like that, understood deep and real: I am going to be a writer. And I understood: this means nothing, nothing at all other than the commitment, unabashed and unafraid, to follow the inner impulse. To follow it, whenever, and to wherever, it meant to take me.

Oh, I was sad. I was sad, for my dad, my mom and her empty-nest, for my life that had no semblance or order to it, for my old life of partying that no more offered solace or an answer. The friends I had lost to all that. I was confused, disoriented, working like a dog, and, like I said, I was pretty damn sad. But mostly, cuz it was the best I could do, I was numb to all that sadness. And so I began to write. To write my way through....

And then not a week later, in he came. This young guy with these big, I mean big brown eyes. With these lashes that reminded me of honey. And this river, this river that he did to my heart.

Brandon worked at the coffee shop with me and I always used to flirt with him. Tell him if only he were old enough, how I'd rock his world. He was 20. A baby to me then! And so, so cute.

The lovely girl with the Victorian house also worked with me, she set us up after getting tired of seeing us swoon. She invited him over, made us dinner, her boyfriend built a fire, rented us a movie, and then together they quietly and with sneaky smiles and smarmy charm left us alone for the rest of the night...After that first night it felt like a linebacker socked in to my heart: I never knew it could open, and take flight, like that before. It's like I never even knew that love existed. And then, after just one moment, I suddenly did.

It is six years since, this week. We are, so to speak, going "through" some things right now. I know how now, I've learned better how to do it, the making your way through thing. But it's hard, it's not easy, it plain sucks. Especially cuz I still so love those precious honey eyes.

Season of change

The corn is down--as of Sunday--and the first frost came today.

And the farm's for sale. The agent was showing around an out-of-towner this morning.

With all this cold and early darkness I am falling to sleep at like 9 at night.

Lately I've been thinking about that old saying, how there is a season for everything.

And how when a season is upon you, you simply can't stop the change it brings.

The way you cant stop the river from flowing, or the dry earth from having cracks.

ahhh, so the season of quiet

and change

quiet change?

is here....

love

ZERO
By Diane diPrima

a blessing on your velvet shoes
and on your hair so free
and may the wind that bore you here
soon take you away from me

for you are the Fool, the holy man
who wanders ceaselessly
and the star you follow does not stop
for my door and my company

a blessing on your coat so green
all worked with magic signs
and on the light in your bright eyes
unlike the light in mine

for joy is calling in the wind
and the white sun beats down
and at the end of your long, bright path
Puck polishes your crown

he holds it out on the Ace of Swords
no easy gift gives he
and the Fool becomes the Hanged Man
for that bright company

so may your wallet e’er be full
with goodly bread and meat
and the white dog who follows you
dance lightly at your feet

and may you mate with faerie girls
all in their robes of white
your long hands pluck anemones
late in the purple night

you shall drink wine form the jeweled Cup
and be drunk eternally
and wash your face in the silver foam
thrown by the pale grey sea

and the crown you gather will not fade
though my tears will drop like leaves
and the wine you drink shall keep you warm
while all the northland grieves

for you are the Fool, and the Hanged Man
whose light shines endlessly
and that cruel wind that bore you here

bears you on eternally

"god bless you

real good "

The sky was so big the night you flew

So I struggle w my experience and how it relates to what goes on here. And by here I mean the Internet, and by the Internet I mean that pinhead of the pinnacle experience of what it means to be human: where culture-readily-creates-art and vice-versa, where art-creates-culture.

I've always hearkened more towards the art-creating-culture side. This is the rebel artist in me, the antic spirit that craves and comes alive at underground movements, at the change on the periphery edge that minutely, than wholly, affects society. The post punk-rock riot-grrrl in the eighties that preempted the nineties Decade of the Woman when I came of age; the Diane diPrima pre-beat fifties near the village and suffering outside San Francisco that grew Kerouac's poetic-expressive-BOOM; the black folks in country churches and a thousand nameless preachers who finally found their name in King and the movement of all movements that continues to this day; this experience, this movement through our words and our voices which is the force of Triumph, and all of the work that comes before the momentum is finally built and the people, thus Society, finally tips....The Underground stuff. The reason we keep the journey...

But I LOVE in a neurotic obsession kinda way the culture-creating-art thing, too. I mean let's be honest here and look at the art that we as dominant Western Society most venerate. It's easy found on TV--Access Hollywood, TMZ, Entertainment Tonight. I voyeur with my tongue hanging out, or contrastingly with my tongue tsking in judgment, but either way I cling on pop-culture's "edge" to the extreme. I may not go so far as to emulate superstars in my lifestyle choices, like who and how they vote or what their "crib" or "ride" looks like or if they are going green or whatnot but let me just tell you, my fashion-diva, that secret-hidden loud-car-singing inner-pop-superstar trapped inside me absolutely goes wild over the sexy fashions, the highlegged boots or lowback spaghetti straps that I see on TV or in the pages of the magazine...And I'm allright with this, I've learned how, in my adult life, to be loving of Kelly in all the different, if not funny and seemingly at times conflicting parts, that make me go....

What all this comes to is the fact that I want to be edgy here. On the Internet where I, like trillions, have something to say I want to be cool and looked at on this blog w the same eyes that look so lustily, either in judgment or covetousness, at pop-drama. I want you to come here and for me me to have the latest scoop on the flyest site for vintage fall mini-dresses and brand new wayout leather boots and I want to cue you in first cuz I'm the hippest to the best underground house that's on at all the Baltimore parties and throw a thing or two in there about how the same stuff is being touted right now in the lounges of Berlin where, by the way, suchandsuch is the best tapas food that they are currently eating... And Politics! I want to be smart and funny and savvy and one step ahead of the latest convictions to subscribe to and showing off what an activist's heart and intellectual mind I've got and also I want to be able to name drop and lead the way among the who's who with the what what from within the scene. I want my sassy redhot spirit seen and to be known!

But ahhh, I the Fool. I have to remind myself that the edgy choice I can make HERE is to be honest from the truest parts of me, and write about my Truth, about what I believe matters. And trust in my voice both gaining and giving strength to the Authentic Function of Things as we go on....

All that said, my friend Charlie died last night. I loved him. And he is done suffering now. Five years ago in the middle of a doghot summer I was all fucked-up one night cuz my holmes Mike had just committed suicide. This guy, Mike, he used to tell a story so good that it made you laugh out loud again later when you were looking back on and recapping the night. And his stories were always full with lies. So how could any of us have known that it was true what he said that he was facing real prison time for violating probation the second time he supposedly got caught w lots of drugs...Hell we thought the first time he supposedly got caught coming "through from Eugene with all those dirty hippy heads" was nothing but a juiced-up story anyhow! So Mike killed himself instead of prison. It took me years to get through that, survivor's guilt. By the time Mike died I'd been clean three years and was trying to learn the boundaries of good friendship while being protective of my sobriety, too. With him and I, at the time of his death, it wasn't going so well. So he died and I tortured myself and ran from that torture and hurt a whole lot. That same week as his suicide, this man Charlie who, while I was getting clean, had become like a grandfather-mentor to me, saw me out one night and took me aside and said here, I got this for you. Charlie didn't know about Mike's death but for some reason he called me over and tucked in my hand a little metal token that had an angel on one side and the following on the other: Guardian Angel Protect us all, Giving Strength When we might fall, Watching, guiding, Lighting the way, Thru the night, and every day. I couldn't cry yet when Charlie gave that to me cuz Mike's death was super fresh and I was still stunned and with shock and partly with the anger but later when I cried a ton I put that token in a medicine bag and hung it around the rearview mirror of Bran's truck and that's what guided our way when we went travelling, and I running, in 2004.

About a month ago, a little more, I found that token again when I was insanely cleaning my house and sweeping cobwebs with kittyfur from the hardwood floors and out of the corners under the beds in all our upstairs rooms. The token was under my bed. It was the same week that I had to accept that cancer was going to take Charlie, my wise and more, my wisecracking mentor and stable guide and friend.

I don't understand Life and what works and how it all goes and how life is life but life dies but also how Nature shows that all that dies, grows. What I do know is that grief breaks your heart but only so that your heart can grow even bigger where the hurt broke out. It's how we flesh out and become even more whole, even fuller versions of our self. My experience in this life is it's not what we say, or what we like, or even what we claim. It's how we be. And also, that there is this big force, not apart from me but of me and I of it, this force which is steady there and which also creates me and I it. Life. I believe in this force. I found some good words for it just today:

For moments I belong
to the pure and poison ocean;

I am powerful, and helpless….

by Kathryn Lomer from the poem The way the world sleeps

I love life. I love this sacred mundane experience, love it so much that I love it on TV, I love it in my friends, in hot fall boots that I shake and get all inside lusty over, I love it in working too many hours in a new job that never seems to end. I love it in the corn getting cut down and the music on the radio and the obscure music and shows I find on the web. I love it sobbing on the backroads of the deep shore of Maryland with dark trees and an orange sky. I love it. I love that I get to live it. I love that I get to write about it and that writing about it makes me love my love even more.

Here is what Charlie asked me to read when his life is honored and remembered and he is officially laid to rest on Monday. It is called the Prayer of St. Francis.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

where there is sadness, joy;
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;

to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

God bless you my friend! You did so good. Travel well my angel. I love you. Amen amen amen.

Retrogrades @ Harvest Time

I am still in my pajamas. I am still in my pajamas and my breath is the breath of someone who spent a day long laid-out on the earth in the sun. That sun is going down now--I am blissed and calm and mellowed beyond words.

This is good, that love affair with self I am so committed to. Not the selfish kind, but the courageous kind, embolden by solitude and knowing when to listen to your own cry. The Elizabeth Gilbert When you fill up your own skin with yourself that alone becomes your offering kind.

I sat long outdoors today, under my favorite trees. Brandon in the hammock part of that time, me chest opened to the sky and also at times chest folded over my knees. I sunk in deep to me and let the feelings of inadequacy from my new job, the fears and insecurities prisoned-up in my heart rise and pass. I read poetry til the song moved in me and tears wet-up my eyes. Seriously, for a day of doing Nothing, I got a lot done.

It is harvest time, the geese are arriving back from their summer stops. All the greens from the summer garden were today brought in--and new-bloomed fall crops, too: turnips and radishes and the last of the apples from the highest branches in the tree. Tonight we are having our friends over to feast on the season and sit by the bonfire in the cooling Autumn night.




It is also Mercury Retro right now. In her book We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For Alice Walker talks about the periodic times in life that call for a natural pause. She uses the time right after college as specific example, but goes on with her own poetry to exemplify the richness in spirit, the natural ebbs and flows of the human-spirit experience as the essence of, and at once the reason for this nessecary phenom. Here is what I know: Mercury Retro comes four times a year, once always during Harvest time. This is the time to do Nothing, Nothing w the capitol letter N kind. To take, in Walker's words, the great Pause. Time to give yourself, to your Soul or your subconscious or your physical health or your mental machine or however you see you in your finer undefined essence, time to Breathe. To just stop. And watch. Maybe to gather, or to reckon. To go within.

If your running around crazy that's because your fighting your self and the cosmos and the earth's right now natural flow. Get outside. Eat a late bloom apple, drink some harvest wine. The earth in her infinite changing expressions of oneness is teaching: Your Nature is Her Nature. This I know. So get your toes and heels down on her and watch your mind go and go until it realizes you see it and it has nothing more to do. Unwind. Real-ize. That flow is of you and you are it and now it offers you a real chance to witness, and to grow.

So love a little. For us super-scared humans taking time to learn to love the passings is the least (if not the best) work we can do.....

Smile Kel, it's almost 6pm and you're still in your pj's!

Warty and Peanut Punkins & Harvest Corn Dollies

Beware of Tricksters

i am anamericanconsumer i am anamericanconsumer i am (say it with me) anamericanconsumer...does this life-style ever end!?: when the economy goes down the toilet best thing to do is flaunt your junk....literally. wow. i am laughing, and exasperating, out loud right now, wondering if it's true what i sometimes think that after this life-through ends i will be delivered back to that shining white tree-full land from where i came and they will be like, so, could you even believe being human???

Full Moon Meditation

Last night was the full moon--or early this morning anyhow, round 5.

I caught this shot at about 6:30 am, literally as la luna was setting herself discreetly behind the clouds...

...and this other while driving north on 213 Saturday evening

Autumn Equinox is this weekend...the nights length passing over to grow longer than the day and I love the Autumn, that great triumph of space that gathers itself in a bundle, the long slow sigh of the earth. A breeze is blowing so great on the farm right now--through the windows, moving the curtains way out and making me very aware of the lines of my body. The full moon is past, but that doesn't change the spirit of a Harvest Moon in the fall.

Harvest moons bring to the surface the bounty of your year...

Look lightly on yourself now, do you like what you see? This is a strong, though subtle week. Take time to yourself, give your insides a peek--this truly is the time of year to be especially conscious of what "you're putting out there" right now. So get out there, root, connect to the deep breathing earth and the far-growing sky and try some Wonder...

Because I Feel Like It

yes yes yes, a weekend all to me, starting despairingly bc i dear reader am always no-thing if not dramatically self-involved in the happenings or so perceived non-happenings of my very own life...and do tend to let such perceptions overcome the best of me...

so said, what a glory day i've had since yesterday passed and i subsequently got my head out of my ass. handscrubbed my versa this afternoon after a trip to the library--where my card was so outdated i had to open a new account in order to check out Girls Like Us Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon--and the Journey of a Generation which called to me literally off of the shelf as i passed it by. i hoped, as i heaped said work and a slathering poetry books on the counter, that it would deliver me in a similar mythically-steeped retrieval of trailblazer femin-ista historia as diPrima's bio My Life as a Woman The New York Years did. and so far i am adequately quenched.

made some jewelry today, too. and wrote a poem. tonite, it's my plan, after the moon goes up and the light is all over the land the way only darktime light can be, i am going to write. like, maybe even all nite long....

May Day

I've decided to waste my life again,
Like I used to: get drunk on
The light in the leaves, find a wall
Against which something can happen,
Whatever may have happened

Long ago—let a bullet hole echoing
The will of an executioner, a crevice
In which a love note was hidden,
Be a cell where a struggling tendril

Utters a few spare syllables at dawn.
I've decided to waste my life
In a new way, to forget whoever
Touched a hair on my head, because

It doesn't matter what came to pass,
Only that it passed, because we repeat
Ourselves, we repeat ourselves.
I've decided to walk a long way

Out of the way, to allow something
Dreaded to waken for no good reason,
Let it go without saying,
Let it go as it will to the place

It will go without saying: a wall
Against which a body was pressed
For no good reason, other than this.

Phillis Levin

grace of movement

Yeah, so really, I've never been good at balance. Seriously, I mean the great quest to land the right combo of caine and wine, or weed beer and ex--these were fastidious choices i so thought would educate me in the wide wide world of what it would mean to be adult.

it doesn't work so good--trying to achieve that state of balance, some elusive chemical equilibrium, by messing around w the wiring like that in your head.

sometimes i think it took me the first five years of sobriety just drying out--like just to get some air, come up to breathe, make things not re-wire but un. dont know why this is on my mind--maybe cuz i got to spend some great time w those homefries that did me so good in the early days of what it meant to be clean, and young.

either way, here i am days and days since i wrote out loud!! as does this format of blog deliver me--and all bc i am pulling crazy long, and late hours at my new job. haven't seen the potlucking crew in ever, too.

but the miracle--i know that this is part of the pendulum swing, and i am standing, perched there on the edge, my feet steady hard stuck in but also dangling off just a little and the ground moving fast past me as i swing there, steady even, too and fro.

maybe balance has nothing to do at all w standing still?

perhaps its the perfect movement, the grace of the swing--the inner awareness of where you are being exactly how you are making it through, how there is no next step w out the one on the other side, that came before---

and guess what? i like my new job--i actually do. how cool--

Angel Moves

Wow. Lots going on. The MGY gang just left--hosting this conference for young ppl recovering from drugs and booze is a loooot of work!! but enjoyable work, and we are officially at t-minus 17 days and counting until the big event. i am wowed and awed by the simple, powerful preciousness of bringing hearts together for a common good. two of the ppl on our committee have been clean and sober for one whole year! this week, it is like a room full of sunshine to see the smiles on their sweet faces as they celebrate themselves and anticipate the conference that they dedicated this whole past year of their life to, too.

i am blessed.

(you are too.) (believe it.)

listen, if you want to see something beautiful that absolutely tears at your heart strings, go to this link and watch "Cameron Dances." it's my "baby" amy's baby doing those angelic moves....
http://www.youtube.com/user/keithojensen

i am working like a maniac at my new job, and getting ready for this conference, and loving fall and in general showing up and believing in life. that's really all it takes sometimes, huh?

may you, too, believe....

10,000 Ways

Smile...

There must be 10,000 ways to kneel and kiss the earth...

by Mowlana Jalaluddin Rumi, 13th century mystic and poet who inspired the All Faiths Beautiful exhibit, in its final week at the American Visionary Art Museum, Bmore.

Go there! (but dont get caught snapping photos cuz the guard'll yell at you...)

Fall, oh splendid Fall

I don't know what it's like where you live right now but where we are, on Maryland's Eastern Shore, on farmland and surrounded by fields and fields of dead dry corn, it is breezy and light and the mornings are cool and require soft cotton long sleeves and cause me deep and lustful intermittent aches for fall....

That's not to say that by the afternoon there isn't the glare of sweat and furrow on my brow, but I gotta tell ya, our first First Harvest Jam back on the 9th ushered in a glory of sweet cool air and long shadows, a sense that the sky was growing and stretching to send the sun back nigh to the furthest ends of the horizon almost to the all the way below...and I am amazed at this! My heart buzzing, how close and real the actual seasons are following the old marks of season's treads on cell memory in our blood currents and primal memory in our hearts and in our souls. We discussed this at our potluck the week past, how cool the night was, sweater weather and how we all remembered (except for Dykeman, who disagreed, but he was in general in contention w Sam that night, and besides, for all us humans isn't memory just a turn away from imagination anyway...) that it used to be when we were kids that the cricket air at night in August chilled us on our neck and put shivers down our back when we were done with hide and seek or private clubhouses next to the swing set or whatever. And this is true, the seasons did used to be so much more of a mild rolling, near enough that our generation of Xers on the corner of Y can still remember...

A return to this and yet a swift reminder for me: the toxic details are still all around. Dead corn, only harvestable this year are bushels of 70 or so a stand, far less than last years average of 120 and our drought last year was awful-bad. (The mild season's return hasn't done a damn thing for our lac of rain.)

(Anyhow.) The new moon is coming this weekend--the full in Leo sun was two weekends ago and this is strong strong time of year. Subtle discontent is actually your soul's way of seeking harmony, listen to the message the deep tune in you is trying to send, actually surrender to the flow of discord. Or to the glory and grace in moments of solitude right now--these are the guideposts singing to you of the unity, these are reminders to know gratitude for the cycle of all that is.

My first harvest full moon on the 16th was wowed by me--that week I returned again to quiet time and have ever since seen the physical details--material level, you dig--of my life easily and seamlessly clicked right in to place. New job etc. Harvest time, as it should be. At once too is the calm cool of seeking peace within myself again--giving over to the realm of KellyLove inside me, the only grace I'll ever need that power deep within my soul...

I feel so good to connect once again to the cycles of our earth. And happy at the little coincidences that affirm and push this connection along....Check out my new blogfriend Tim at This Being Human, I love the new techno version of sage counsel--how it comes from linking and linking and random comments to strangers to help the flow of what seems right.

Anyhow Autumn Equinox is fast coming. Reminder that all things pass us by. Connect to yourself now, get outside. Go, Be, still.

And also, check out my new favorite song which is playing on livestream right now, BenFolds and Regina Spector duet "You Don't Know Me"....

Detours, windows, doors & light: this week around kent county

Well, so i got a job. it all happened very fast and i am not feeling, say, fluent in the language of my new life just yet. and yet, it seems so right, so somehow as if i am finally, after a long long detour, stepping in to the facts of my life as if my soul just snapped open like an old 1980's blind and windowed me in on things: this is how it is meant to be--these are your moments, 'writ in eternity'....

i was of course waiting tables--slinging grease is what always goes in the back of my head when i say that, which is true regardless the level of white linen affair in which one is involved. it's all grease, it's all over you at night's end, it's all always in your hair and lingering not so much as a coating on your skin as a smell, or a sense, or a flavor of the over-processing of your life that ends up going with you, that you end up carrying around with you and wearing like a form of yourself not so true but also that you quietly can't seem to rid.....
it is the function of this life, no? to carry these skins of us on our back and at once deep within, and to try not to struggle when they are slow to come off, and try too not to force the transmutation...?

oohhhh, so i am an intake counselor, a liason for students of Adult Ed once again. but now sooo far to drive to my new job each day, so far to drive from my home. yet this feels so good to me, exhilerating and also stunning at the very same time.

ohhhh! and my eight pairs of ohsogorg trouser pants some wide-legged some high-wasted all so demurely chic and debonair hanging there on the new love affair i have which are my legs... literally make me quiver. that's right, i got hired by 11 and was shopping shopping shopping and remembering my body by 2....

in other not as fashionable news, but good to remember--authentic and just as true: coming out of my detour this week coincidently corresponded w touching down on so many lovely parts of our home land here in kent and queen anne's county...

sammy g

sammy g, bran and i were out on the chester monday eve. ran in to timmy p and greg down at ben's dock taking a swim before pearl creek's band practice. this is where we all go for relaxing dips, down the very end of blue heron farm lane--i wonder does ben know how often the all of us, at varied times, are there swimming even if he's not around?

our swimming hole at ben's dock

tuesday nite was ladies nite out--laura leah and i surprised brooke, who's getting ready to move, on her own, back in to her historic 13 bedroom unfinished hotel-house outside tolchester w the brand new wrap-around porch. we went out and about in naptown, our way of saying go on grrrrrl and also each quietly getting to remember that we are none of us ever alone...

brooke, laura, leah

then, thursday nite we all potlucked at mark and andrea's place out to rock hall. (you love the vernacular i know go ahead and sweat it) mark is this funny easy too come across as shy guy but so quik w the dead-on sharpheaded wit once you've been around him enough that you literally get moved to cry w your laughter...i know, it's happened to me way more than once. and andrea is his baltimore-living girlfriend who weekends it at their work-in-progress farm house here on the shore. he's a wash coll alum, so is she, like many of us. he's working now for the college on oyster restoration and other local sustainability grant and projects, taking whatever is handed to him and going along with it in his steady kind of mark walk-run. he, too, worked at the resteraunt w me. we quit the same week.....















mark's front porch & stairs, under construction

mark and andrea

their way cool bathroom door, handcrafted by mark!!

(probably i should have taken more pictures of the finished rooms--their lovely warm kitchen or the study upstairs. but guess that's for another potluck....)

and lastly, this morning, in our bedroom. how very good, still and clear the light can feel sometimes...