So it's been one week exactly since I decided I needed to stop all plans and designs and literally, instead, spend one day at a time in deep, caring, blissful nurturing care and tenderness for me, me, me! Funny how unapalogetic I feel about it, too. I can't ever remember spending this long on vacation from daily stress and worry, concentrating instead only on keeping my mind and heart in a state of ease.

I am willing to take it slow.

So far the only thing I've wanted to do is be outside or to be in my bed--but not in a dramatic I'm hiding from the world way, more like in a cozy wow I feel so warm and gooood luxuriating like this under my soft covers and cozy soft blankies way. Also I am greatly pleased by the local top-40's radio station that I listen to in my kitchen. Really, it is the only station that comes in clear here at Chop: and it serves the Midshore. For those of you who dont know, Eastern Shore of Maryland, the quiet or "slow" side of the Chesapeake Bay, is track after track of farmland/boggy mudflatty swampy (ghost-stuck!) sulfury-stinky creek/farmland. Not much to it. Lots of old generation, conservative farmers--strugglin--watermen, drunks and poor people. And the rich upper-middles who bought the weekend homes and bring the money. And misanthrope wannabe's like me. Who comes from upper-middleclass people who came from working-class people but on my own and in my job I get down on it every day with the working-poor. And this weird station makes me feel I'm back in the County outside Ballmore but without the rap. But that's okay cuz in the decade or so since I moved from there rap got popular so now the top-40 stations are full of that hybrid spin-off hip-pop or pop-hop so I still mostly get a bit of what I love. Because I am a secret huge induglent fan of pop-hop and I believe all kids from the County outside B-more or DC (remember that used to be Chocolate City Baby before getrification happened and it used to be ok to call it that cuz it was a pride thing for people) are. Also the sad thing is that all the county kids are the ones who pushed the working-class or poor, which in Bmore and DC were porportionally black people, out of the cities so that makes me sad to be where I am from. And this is a nerve that strikes so, so deep with me right now--because I am working hard on adjusting my mental scope to concentrate on joy and bliss and harmony but historically whenever I do so I get really down and out because how cansomuch injustice occur and people not feel outraged and hurt and powerless over it. But in my cozy bed-nest recently, pondering this thought yet again but doing so as gently as I could be with myself, it occured to me how important it is to be grateful as I can for all the little golden spots of joy. Grateful as I can be. To see it all, all the hurt, pain, to see it All and not shy away (I work in the Unemployment Office and the UNDERFUNDED Family Support Centers people I got more broke-heart stories than I can usually bare and especially right now--you dig??) To see it all and to, as the writer/artist Sark puts it, to see "The grace in as much as you can see." This is choosing to be the change best as I can be, but more important, and for the first time, ever, for me--I recognize how not just life-preserving, but life-affirming this gentle, thankful thinking is for me. So my new favorite station makes me feel joy and light and also makes me smile without knowing it. It makes me like having dishes to do. I just wish that ALL people could get to focus on this kind-of power*full mental shift instead of having to just focus on where the shit their gonna find food...

Anyhow, I can make no excuses for who I am and where I am right now. All I can tell you is that my days look like this: Bless everyone in my office/work/job with love. Clean up after myself, lounge in my bed smiling a lot at how blessed I am to be in a cozy little nest that I love, and going outside to play. Ooo, and cooking myself good food. Tonight it was homemade macncheese and brocolli yummmmmmmmmmmm.

I am willing to believe that as I luxuriate in my own love and blessings they increase. And those I come in to contact with have a greater chance of feeling fired by one of these sparks.

O and PS, go outside tonight and talk to the moon. It helps a lot and it's wonderful. She's full and she likes it when you do this--go head, try. Also people need moonlight much as they need sun. Good for your pineal gland which in the ether or subtle body is the third-eye.

Kay, back to loving me I go.

That's my grandma and me on my little alter