Adult Education

She's spunky, and youthful, though if she hadn't told me her age I would've placed her in her mid-sixties anyhow merely because of comments she's made this year and because I know she's a widow. She doesn't remember it but I do: when I first got home from Oregon and worked for Mediation she was one of our mediators. She never mentioned it back then but the boss told me that her husband was ill, and falling more ill, while she caregave at home.

It's some years later tho; and according to her New England lilted words Well if you all will have me I plan on staying here as long as I am able. I consider this a calling, it's not teaching to me or even a job. I had just finished telling her about the new mother I assessed and counseled for placement in her GED class. The new student is 31. Mom of 7 kids. Last husband a military man who abused the hell out of her and the kids. Her own mother would leave literally weeks at a time; she was seven when she first remembers being removed by DSS for neglect--she had for several days been caring for a disabled sister because mom was missing. She has the most level head on her shoulders, and an 8th grade education. Her initial assessments with me show that she will likely have her high school diploma by the end of the year.

People are so infinitely able of survival. It is a primal drive, and again and again this year I have been levelled by the young women and men, and the aged out of work or laid-off women and men, by this huuuge un-named population of working poor that have put their lives on the table before me and again and again demonstrated unwavering spirit in the face of life stories that I can not imagine nor comprehend.

In the middle of telling the teacher about her new student, I started to get choked up and had to take a small pause. I stopped what I was doing, put the student file on the desk and just looked at her. We are so lucky, Carolee, we are so blessed to be among these students. To get to do the work we do.

Adult Education, at the risk of reiterating some trite expression, has educated me beyond what I ever expected or knew could happen. It has shaped the adult woman I have both slowly and startlingly learned to become. My first year teaching, the winter of 2002 in to 2003, I lived five doors down from the mentor Instructor I'd been recommended to spend time with. She is a jolly, warm-hearted Catholic with three kids and as many dogs and she used to make me iced coffee and laugh this enormous river of acceptance and forgiveness around me when we would get in the car and I'd have to blow in my hummer-breathalyzer in order to get my damn car to go. She told me Whenever you have more resources then somebody, more money, more wisdom, more education, it is never your job to look down or judge or even sympathize. Look them eye to eye, then remember it is your job to share, and your work is to lift them up. It makes me choke on the heaviness in my chest to say it aloud now...Then she'd say Never forget that all of us, all of us were lifted up. All of us are standing on a long, unseeable chain of the giants that went before us. Whoever they were...

I shared this with Carolee yesterday before I left the Family Center for my thirty minute drive through the rural farm country back to the little Eastern Shore metro of Easton and my office. Accessible education. Meeting people on leveled ground, then giving them tools to be lifted up. I had no idea what it would feel like to get to be someone standing down here, on the shoulders of people like the teacher yesterday, or my mentor back then, and students in a line towering above me.

Lunar Beltane

...tonight! She peaks at full at 5:18am on the EC. First full moon in Taurus is Lunar Beltane. Taurus is a fixed energy in the earth element. I love the energy of right now its so healing, it's like if we could hear the spheres of heaven and the mountains and trees all singing that is what we are soaking up right now. Under Aries last month we had all that heat and fire to initiate new ideas. Think of the sun that was busy heating and busting open all those new buds and seeds. That's Aries, pure new life force. Now Taurus is all about the earth--look around! Everything's in full bloom it is just absolutely alluring outside, breathtaking. Taurus full moon is the apex or peak of fixed energy, of lifeforce-into-matter fertility everywhere. Beltane also is traditionally a time that celebrates the union of man and woman--or in Jungian application, animus and anima energies. We all have each within and they strive to compliment our inner and outter lives.

That wonderful earth energy is energizing us from within right now--magnifying what we are growing or manifesting in our own lives, whether spiritually and emotionally, creatively, in relationships, finances, homes, business, etc

It is a time internally and externally that our year's intentions are beginning to manifest. The moon is in Scorpio tonight tho, which is a water sign. The moon she rules our inner-lives, the inside us we are less likely to show the world. It is spiritual in scope and not ruled by personality. So we could be feeling overly sensitive today especially, and mercury is retro so all that watery emotional energy is peaking at the same time with the internal review of whatever issues we are evolving through since our last retro ended in mid-January. If suddenly you are finding yourself revisiting something you thought you'd resolved it's Merc, who rules our mental energy, showing where there is still restlessness surrounding that issue.

The other thing to pay attention to: the Holy Days on the Earth Path are when people, all people, benefit from added reflective time. Visions and insights are more likely. I like to actually sit under the moon and bathe my spirit in the light. I believe we need moonlight much as sun--in older days women ovulated under the full moon because it so directly affects the pineal gland. Interesting stuff, huh?

Be well, be whole. May you take time enough to appreciate the world, the earth and her flow and cycles, around you.

Reminiscing. Play it Again Sam's.

The door of the CoffeeCat is heavy wood and you have to push it in the center of the handle with a certain amount of compact umph for it to swing easily open. This morning and without any anticipation upon the push of the door I got struck in the gut with the most endured sense of wistful longing, an immediate and aching clutch on my heart the moment I stepped inside.

It was the tunneled noise of the milk-steamer that did it. And the warm bouancy, from all the rain outside, inside on the air.

I scanned the room for a recognizable face and there was Liz, the barista I got to know first when I started coming here last year. She is in her senior year of highschool and an athlete so I rarely see her anymore.

Just that little familiarity added a certain tweak to my heart.

Sometimes, with the least amount of expectation or warning, this happens to me. I am struck by sudden and complete awe for life. For its fleeting passing. For all the little moments that are all the time sliding us by.

This morning it descended upon me in a memory so physical I could've stepped back in time. I worked as a barista in a coffee shop in Chestertown my senior year of college. 2001 and most of 02. Mornings in the winter each step on the cold earth I'd pound closer to downtown my breath would grow more severe--I'd clutch whatever thin little sweater I was wearing harder across my chest and see my knuckles redden by the chill. It seems it was always gray that winter. The door, when it pushed open, rang little bells and my glasses immediately would cover in steam and my nose fill with the most alluring savory smell of the homemade muffins, Comfort Food, that Natalie Comfort was busy baking. One of the other baristas, almost always, was already at work steaming themselves a morning wake-me-up drink.

I dropped out of college twice from drugging and booze--the second time it was in order to get clean. The year I worked as a barista, my senior year, was the only year I was clean while in school, and it's really the only year that I remember with any sort of clarity. And they are sweet, specific sensory memories. The inborn joy that bubbles out of Katie that would jolt my heart every Thursday afternoon when we would meet and walk in to poetry class together; the tweak of enjoyment seeing the new outfit or wig that Libby would have on when I would turn the corner on High Street and see her in front of the coffee shop on her smoke break; the peace, inherent, of the way Jazmine moved across our apartment--the way one person's nature can wordlessly inspire you to want more from yourself. Dear God did I relive the collective experiences of that time in a mere instant this morning~and oh did it make my heart cry out in longing over what used to be.

It made me think quite instantly about other times in my life that are no more than memory~other times and whole other groups of fabulous, wild, hysterical, ridiculous people that are actively no more to me today than, if I am lucky, a facebook status update. Crofton, the pizza shop, 6th street, Ocean Pines Beach Club, the boys from the beach. I guess what ultimately this experience did was force me in to the reality of what I've quietly been witnessing and coming to terms with in the past few months: that too, Chestertown, the people there and memories, Play it Again, Andy's, Truslow Road, Anngar....all those too will pass away. Have already begun to, and how the aspects of this have hit me with a surrendering that is much like grief.

There is no other way to put it than that. I am looking forward, in great joy and enthusiasm, towards this next unwrit chapter of my life. It thrills me to no end the great, raw power in this~of choice and faith when mixed together. The pure alchemy of it. Yet the picture would be incomplete without the other...the saying goodbye. I have learned that all things pass, and yet somehow come again~that this is the thing about life. Most experiences merely change form, whether they are relationships, aspects of our selves or each other, the work we do, the family we spend time with, the ways in general we spend our time. There is at work always a greater thread that is weaving us and nudging us and it is part the tapestry--and part our choice of the stitches me choose to make, that make up all of life. I am lucky today to still have close, amazying friends that span all parts of my journey, and too grateful as hell for social sites like Facebook because even if we dont actually talk or see one another--knowing for example that Jess Singleton is happy and has a dog and a job she enjoys out someplace in Arizona, or that Ryan Muller is surfing and chilling in Florida gives me infinite peace.

I am in the Coffee Cat right now, preparing to work on my book. A warm-up as Erika would say. Sweet sweet Erika from all the way back chorus and basketball practice at Arthur Slade.
In less than a month Coffee Cat will no longer be my regular haunt. Once, my senior year of college, the poet Li Young Lee came to speak to our Contemporary Poetry Class. He was asked about faith, and his belief in God. He could not answer specific to a godhead, or even to faith, but what he did say was that LIFE is in this moment, and this moment is also always changing and passing on by. I make practice, he said, of centering myself much as I can throughout my day and then in that centered moment, reminding myself by saying Thank you, Goodbye.

Ahhhh, reminder to be present. Thank you, good bye.

List. Cant you see the breeze is just a change in pace?

Song playlist of serendipity for a Saturday morning with nothing to do but stretch and feel the beauty of muscles and soft sheets and blue sky out the window and anticipate coffee, ahhh delight delight three tunes on RNR sooo dance-able and yes of course some days you should just fall out of bed, celebrating....

1. Southside of Heaven, Ryan Bingham
2. Strange Overtones, David Byrne and Brian Eno
3. Cripple Creek, The Band

Instructions for reclaiming wild sensibilities if its been more than 24 hours since you've breathed the sun

1. Barefeet
2. Get near something green that has roots and eats sunshine and air
3. Find your back breath: Recognize your feet. Be solid, but open. Recognize your belly breath. Next! Center. Breathe into/from back of neck, into back of shoulders and then to back of back on down. This is where wild-sense lives, dormant. You are part wild animal. You have rhythms that remind you and ache for you to run in the breeze. Breath these parts awake again. Re-connect.
4. Listen. Feel. Open. Breathe.

Poetry

1. Is a way of living which includes or perhaps is reliant on following what turns you on
2. Spanish turns me on
3. Words and stories turn me on
4. People turn me on
5. La mama: Nature and Life turns me on
6. Library has lots of poem books
7. Study introductions, especially if written by other poets
8. Lay in the sun on second hand sheet eating food you made yourself and drinking cream soda
9. Read poem a word at a time. Read spanish translations a breath at a time. Harmonize
10. Harmonize. Harmonize

Pay attention. If not now, when? Why not?

1. Beautiful friend in middle of great heartbreak/heartmending life change over delicious dinner under trees and starlight says forget about living each day as if it were my last. I AM LIVING EACH DAY LIKE MY FIRST
2. These could be just words. They are. They are also more.
3. Are they?
4. If not, why not?

Fear and sadness resign oneself to unconscious greed and acts of selfishness. Jealousy clouds vision. Inverse relationship of not owning self projects outter whirls of powerlessness on to everyone else. Matter is atomic. Everyone changes.

1. Be honest with myself fear and sadness are natural and normal as is jealousy a common defense
2. Be honest with my friends and the people on my path entrusted to help you care for your heart
3. Be still. All things pass, and later come again
4. Life goes on and that's just it: LIFE. It is the most affirming guide there is.

Carl Jung wrote that 35 is middle-aged. Is when one steps in to the afternoon of one's life....

1. I turned 33 one month ago
2. I for the first time in my life can actually say that I know myself, know with confidence at least some certain parts of who I am, and feel confident going forward trusting in the room and grace and space within that I've taken the long years to own and love in to light
3. I see this not as the afternoon. I am barely just now first breathing!! I am just now taking first steps, this is the First Day!

In meditation gentleness ease and non-judgment are encouraged. As is comfort of posture. Prepare for yourself a soft sweet inner place of silence and refuge where I and only I can always go. Be the warrior traveller of your own domain.

1. I meditate under a soft blanky, laid out straight chillin like I'm watching tv
2. Often it helps to remind myself to ritualize. So I start with time to center, let what I'm doing sink in. I put a tender smile on my face
3. Time is mutable
4. When found to be scattering up the walls of the monkey mind, begin again
5. There go the thoughts and there I go with them, ahhhh well, begin again
6. Begin again
7. It's ok. Be gentle. Begin again
8. Witness all thoughts and feelings without becoming them, without judging them
9. Ooooops, became them again. Begin again...
10. Metta is the practice of loving kindness
11. End all ritual with practice of loving kindness. Start with self. Then intend outwards towards all of Life

Great Change and Pendulum Swing/ Spiral Upward Of Is/Not Is Spiral Downward of Timeless Great DNA Helix Combo of All Things, upon us now, ever upon us, have grace IS mercy...

1. My last day of work is May 14
2. I will spend the week after that packing up 127 Goldsborough
3. Ladies, I may have lots of clothes to give away
4. Peoples, there may be lots of books up for grabs!
5. Great mama plunge to come then
6. Move stuff in to Maggie's storage place at beach and otherwise in to Ocean Pines
7. May 26 fly to Pac NW for one month
8. Beth, Gretchen. Oregon, aaaahh. Hippie retreat yea. Hotsprings. Tall trees. Ocean. Coast. Trains. Seattle. Larry. Cousin Kate.
9. Waiting tables at Yacht Club in OP
10. Indefinite trust of what is yet to be..................

Thoughts on Love, Addiction & Be-ing the Change

I fall in love easy.

Sometimes all it takes is a certain look, or lilt of the voice, and then that's it I'm all rosy-chested and sparkling.

I'm addicted to it--but (I feel like I've been quoting Buddha a lot lately) addiction is the human condition so this is me non-demonizing. We're hooked on feeling good or feeling bad, in general we're hooked on feelings and it is that reliance, and the anxiety created by wishing those sensate states would remain, that is the root of suffering. We are attached, essentially, to our self. But this isn't about suffering or Eastern theology other than perhaps experimenting with personal and varying applications of such... Really for me today this is about love, and people and humanity. And doing, according to my own spirit, the right thing.

What I am getting at is that I am in love with almost everyone that I know.

Guy, girl, old, young. Doesn't matter. In general, I think people are amazing and really the only thing that I've found that can instantly, and I guess permanently, turn me off is ingenuity. Any really abrasive signs that you dont think for yourself. But even that quality or immediate projection I've learned to try to be gentle around though, I've begun to learn to practice love-ing anyway. If I am around you and you are at ease in yourself, then pow. Watch out. Now we're in love!

I also am baptized again and again in synchronicity and so look out for it, especially in the subtle ways. I heard this guy tell a story--he was making fun of himself because as he related it he went to the beach to be alone and find silence and maybe the grandness, too, and it turns out there was this crying ass kid going nuts just a couple hundred yards from him. So the guy starts totally bugging out because damnit that kid stole his peace, and then he thought maybe that kid needs help? And he turns and inspects the scene more closely and what he finds is this mom of three, struggling like with a capital s, and this little kid's ball in the waves. So the guy goes and gets this ball for the little one, and the little one's like thanks and stops crying and through his little snifflysniffles beams. And the guy he realizes, holy shit. There's always a million little ways to better the world. He thinks, it all comes down to paying attention.

He wonders, deeply. Am I paying attention?

Well isn't that just it, in any given moment, am I paying attention? Where can I give or practice love? Practice, as in the principle, open-heartedness? Am I paying attention?

So stay with me here. Am I paying attention in my own life? In the past few days again and again the same message has come to me in different forms, and it has to do with staying away from negative people. Now I am not too sure how I feel about this. At first, I was like o yea, yes yes that is it. But really, is it?

If we are trying, really trying to be the change we wish to see than do we purposefully stay away from negative people? In that I am someone who falls in love with everyone I know, it means that I have had to learn good inner boundaries. In other words, making sure I am not seeking from you something I need to fulfill in an inner way myself, and/or giving too much of myself in a way that depletes me and disempowers you from your own personal stance of filling your self up from within. So the question is, in the presence of someone negative isn't it our duty to really let loving actions and thoughts shine through? Isn't it than up to us to double down and really stand true to who we are and could be? True, at times there have been some people who are so stuck on there own downer trip and going further and ever down more and more that I have had to limit my time around them. There are others still that threaten my inner-security and how I feel about me, and too I've had to honor that. So I know the necessity of self-protection, but all the same. I'm wondering....

Ok so I'm gonna say it. What would Jesus do? Jesus, who hugged the lepers and broke bread with the whores. Now that of course begs recognition of a primary difference: those folks were socially stigmatized NOT negative; but truly, what is the inherent lesson, the principal taught in that?

For me I know the answer that resonates to my most current truth. When I am true to myself, to being who I can be when I am out in the world and to as much as possible caring for and loving the inside broken, or twisted or funny and also glorious and unique and beautiful parts of me, then I can better do the same with whomever I come in contact with. And more, my path seems to naturally connect me to those who most easily resonate in a true way with me when I am flowing according to my own truths and rhythms, too. In other words, when I am good to me and practicing love, all else sort of takes care of itself. Look, back to last week--it is a fucked up unfair world. BUT if I am alive and loving than inherently I say yes to all of it, right? And do the best I can to love anyway even if it hurts.

Hurt passes. I stay in love. Maybe the message isn't to stay away from negative folks. Maybe the way I'm going to practice it is to work to be around the positive ones.

If your heart is open and my heart is open...We beat.

She woke up humming to herself and then asked me who sings I Think We're Alone Now? She was futzing with her I-phone so I could only guess she was looking it up.

I dont know I answered. The Beatles?

In a minute it was on, coming through those mini-speakers of her phone all distorted. I stopped in the middle of the room to listen and I had to strain. But then the automatic motion of my body halted on the peak of my breath and demanded my awareness in that quiet inside way that feels like soft nudging or a sparkle--and then everything else fell in to place: everything stilled. The moment stopped. We were breathing, and listening to the music. Feeling every arc of voice every pause of breath and especially every word.

When it was done I just looked at her. Weepy, like we'd been since the night before. Wow, this is the song you woke up humming? and she just nodded wide-eyed. I always heard it as a love song I said, and she nodded some more than started to play it again.

We were surrounded by friends the night before, tons of friends, but in her animal head she was scurrying up the walls of herself spinning out because she felt so alone. She's a junkie but like me has been clean a long long while. When she finally talked about it the fear and self-hate I hugged her forever and told her the only secret that I truly know: that aloneness, it is what we all have in common, what binds us together as humans! It's what Buddha called suffering. But so many of us use that fear to alienate ourselves from one another when our real duty is to let it allow true compassion to grow. Because really, loving me and my tortured human parts are all I need to be able to learn to love you, and yours...

It was Sunday morning and like I said we were away on a road trip and partying with lots of lots of friends. And all I could think the whole time, the whole weekend, all I could clearly see the whole time was how much each of us, how much we all just want and need love.

I got home on Sunday it was late and I had to work Monday way early. The sun was out so blue and the trees were in that heavenly chorus that sounds so good and feels like breath on Monday afternoon and I was in Caroline County so I drove to the park in the woods and had a little visit with Chop. I took myself out to dinner, a lovely old-fashioned date with me. I brought Dani Shapiro's Devotion with me to finish, it's the story of a woman's crisis of faith and struggle for a working spirituality in her life and my writing partner, Erika, shipped it to me the week I quit my job even though she didn't know that that's what I was doing at the time. It has had me well-versed the last few weeks or so and I've been taking it in slowly the way I do chamomile tea or deep breaths of lavender oil in the bathtub. I got all weepy again, Monday night at the Italian restaurant, when I read:

The human condition--the knowledge of this--drives many of us to drink, to drugs, to denial, to running as fast as we can away from the truth of life's fragility. We think we can shore ourselves up. If only we work hard enough, make lots of money, are good and kind enough, pray hard enough, we will somehow be exempt. Then we discover that no one is exempt. What is to be done?

Wow. What is to be done? I thought about it and there are plenty of things that I do. Probably the most important of them all--I find time almost every day to sit quiet, and I have a special place--a chair that has come with me everywhere since I was 19--to do so. I just sit, and sigh, and relax and remind myself that so long as I can breathe and sink within then right now, in this moment, all is well. Sometimes all I can literally find is five minutes but even so I do this pretty much daily--so much so I almost forget to talk about it because I am so accustomed to this necessary me-time and so reliant on the results that I take it for granted. And I dont do it because I am disciplined or sacrosanct or because I feel like I have to in some rigid way...I do it because I crave the results. I Like Feeling Good. And it's made me convinced--I am the tool I came here with, and I am the only thing I'm leaving here with, so I and only I have the power to go inside me and find, or otherwise, effect my peace. To know and watch what's happening inside me, and to love all of it, which is the only way I might ever change. Love love love.

Love of me in my most raw and human condition. My most alone.

I sent my grlfriend the quote over email. It sounds so simple doesn't it? Love yourself. So simple but what's got us all on the absolute run.

...the way the high hawk's key unlocks the throat of the sky...

Go here & read about this anthology, and also read Dungy's poem at the bottom of the page!

Short Poem. Immortal.

When I set out today I didn't know
I'd come here, to the park. I only
had mail to do--a post office drop
& didn't expect to be sitting here
across from you
perfect stranger
while you sketch me &
I pretend I do not know.

More on Truth, and Following my heart

It used to be fall was my favorite season, but that seems to be the company I used to keep, too. Bonfire company, walking through the woods and camping company, peoplein flannels, that kind of thing. The truth of the matter is I love spring.

This bounty everywhere. I'm out on my walk and the forsythias are about gone--people think she's the first to show her delicate head but lemme tell you it's actually camellia, and oh is she grand how she bobs the branch all the way down with that deep brush of pink-almost-red--the bradford stinkass pears almost gone, but instead would you look at that? The neon green grass? The hot pink azaleas?! The most beautiful smelling lavender lilacs like little perfect stars waving high from the corner of some people's tailored lawn. The hollys with all the little white flowers of sex sweet breathing as you walk on by.

The first two weeks, when the dandys were everywhere at very first and no one had been out yet with their poison I took a couple walks to forage my favorite herbal weeds. Lawn tea, my own witchy specialty. There's so much I am aware of right now as I end my days perusing my town. So much I am captivated by, so much gentle sweeping light, fresh sweeping air. All I can think each time I walk is wow, how lucky and happy and thankful I am to be alive. And how much life is all around me. And how much there is this aligned well inside, this steeple of silence and peace.

It's been a year and a half since I first set out to "follow my heart" whatever that means, to learn to be true to myself as an adult woman. All I had back then to guide me was the most brutal dose of confusion and discontentedness, and this sense of acquiescence that had sort of settled over like a low fog. I didn't know it at first but that ill all the time dull feeling and always upset, that was a signal of the purest kind. There was a lot I had to learn about self-honesty. A lot of little tied up parts of my heart and spirit that were stuck and didn't translate so well. A lot of driving on auto-pilot and a lot of continued confusion, and also at times a lot of pain.

But bit by bits I've gotten stronger, I've learned to trust myself. That's what it is, what I'm trying to explain right now. Knowing that I can trust deeply in me. And practicing from day to day the truth of my current personal matter--how I'm feeling today. Not disavowing myself of that expereince, of my own reality as it is going down right now. Ah, yes the truth is mutable it's true. Just like they taught at Vipassana--changing changing changing moment to moment. But why do we think we need to force it, force away how we are in this exact moment? What the hell is that instinct injury all about? I am at worst when falling to the hand of my own stunning rigidity...

Right now a re-cap of SNL is on and it is hysterical. God I love to laugh, and I love to be moved to a moment of reverant reflection, stilled, too. I love to experience life. They showed Paul Simon's rendition of the Boxer just a bit ago. It was from the Saturday immediately following 9/11 and watching it instantly made tears well up in my eyes, but then right after there's Amy and Will doing a Little Mermaid act that literally made me belly laugh. Maybe my favorite part of SNL has always been watching the actors try not bust up at each other--or try to do their individual jobs so well that the goal is to make one another bust up? Same thing I remember that used to make me lose it when I was a kid and mom and I would watch Carol Burnett. Wow you know? Life. Mutable truth? In so much as we, at times foolishly, take reality as we see it from moment to moment via our limited perception to be all that is--and hoplessly so, no truth never changes. Autopilot has to do with shutting down our impulses and instincts from a place of fear. So that we experience recurrent patterns, ridges or grooves in our consciousness. Learning to feel, literally healing my sensate life has been such deep remedy to that. My truth has been mutable, and when I aim to love every part of it, the good bad and ugly, then it is Visionary, too. Then I truly have power in the matter, I am aligned. I get all flumuxed though when it comes to thinking you, she, he it are changable according to me and my needs and feelings and sensations. That is always a big challenge for me and I guess so long as I am living I will have lots to experience and lots to challenge that feeling-life, but the last year and a half of devotion to my own heart has paid off in so much that I get it--it's up to me to own me and that's what it means, being true to me--no matter what.

Years ago, in my early sobriety, driving with my friend Amy who herself at the time had about 10 months clean The Boxer came on a tape we were listening to and chills covered my body, and then hers, and then both of us had that eye-sheen of spontaneous confirmation-tears. Wow. Life you know? Me and my precious beating heart, the only thing I'm ever guaranteed to truly know...

The Writing Life. A ramble. Onward.

I will do what I always do, I will write it out out out I will write it all the way out...

Truth is visionary, that makes it mutable.

This is scribbled sideways in the hardbacked spiral book Erika gave me for my birthday. My favorite kind of book the kind I use for poetry when I am writing longhand spontaneous download or Duende poems. I was driving to the beach on Saturday in the afternoon, it was gorgeous out blue sky and green sunny fields on the Eastern Shore and the words were coming and I was content to drive 62 in the right-hand lane of Gateway 50 and periodically even 58 alone on my side of the highway in order just to jot down the words. A story came together that was supposed to go on here, on the blog. A story of one of the first times I understood about friends and how everything passes, a story from back then and Crofton and loving a boy called Mudd.

Then I got behind some kid in a old beater Pontiac going 55 in the passing lane and chomping on a gnarly huge cigar. As soon as I got behind him and saw the silhouetted outlines of the map that he was looking at from behind the wheel like a great big story book there goes the tape in my head: Oh sure you come down here to the Eastern Shore to drive around and see all the quaint little people in the quaint little towns that history made-up you sure of yourself hungover got the world by the balls fuck Well we have lives too we have places to get to you know, we use the passing lane too for Christsake and I am off, adrenaline going and the second that happened I admittedly was a little appalled at myself for such pure white judgement, and I sped up, passed his fedora wearing cigar chomping beater driving hipster ass and then got myself back to the right lane, content not to go a minute over 60 in a painfully and also unabashedly aware of myself way of being surrendered to not taking myself so fucking seriously.

The story and the words that were coming were gone though. Later, maybe twenty minutes down the highway, one more seemingly unrelated line came out. Truth is visionary, which makes it mutable. This had nothing to do with Easter Sunday almost 15 years ago, the time I met Mudd's mom for the first time in his front yard on her knees digging in the fresh April green, nothing to do with sameness and differences and where they merge and with understanding roots and how all things pass but also somehow in different forms come again. Or did it?

This morning at work I read some info in an email from the state and just started crying. I have exactly one month, as of today, left at that job, at that job that I've been prostrating to and demonizing then laying down again and again before and on the behalf of for the last eight years. And when, about five or six weeks ago, the tears came like my spirit was an overused sponge not capable of soaking one more droplet off water--tears literally for three days fell from my eyes with out so much as a sob or whimper from my chest, with out so much as a blink or gasp or any form for that matter of automatic physical seizure that otherwise would cause tears--I knew then that something deep, something fundamental in me was shifting. That I was full, my cup was literally soaked with burden, and it was time to empty. At the end of that week I quit my job. Those tears they came again today, without warning, without the trite rhyme, without the trite soul of any sort of reason.

Just an email forward from the state. And I called Gretchen, who is wise woman to me, and I wept on my drive home because I barely had the strength to get in the car that's how spirit-ed the tears were. Wow I sort of barely thought to myself, this really is bad.

You cant change it Kelly she said and then the sobs really came and I knew it was the same thing that was going on five or six weeks ago, the same source of all these today real to me tears. And we hung up and every instinct in me was to pack my shit and walk in the sun down here to a lovely safe corner in the coffee shop window and write and write, and somehow I knew it'd be peaceful here. And when Rudy and KJ showed up I sighed because they are part of it, for some reason lately I've been able to talk to them and so soon enough I was saying it out loud. Because it is huge and important to me not to have it witnessed by another so much as to have someone witness me witnessing it and I felt silly when I said it aloud: I really thought I could change it. I thought I could change the fucked up shit of the world. This is my idealism breaking, this is life is unfair and me finally willing to let go and finally willing and getting it, this is me understanding there is so much you can not change.

Rudy who they call Satva started in on me the way I do on most people most of the times and it felt good to be on the receiving end of some treatment. He went on about his approach to life and he is someone who has good stories and good experiences to pull from and most of all he is like I told him once before a bone collector--he gets peoples true parts. Could just be a flip of a switch in perspective Kel is all he said.

O yea right, I tried to change the world but found the only thing one is capable of changing is them self. Again.

Please Gretchen help me not have to learn this one over.

The World Truth is mutable dependant on the self truth. selfTruth/Selftruth. Yes, visionary. Yes spirit's mutability. Yes to the writing life, the one and only true steps I only ever for sure for sure know is the right step on my path to helping me see.

O my god...

Read this.

A Poet's Date, & Jealousy

I am jealous of him, and I miss him, in both the way a needy girlfriend craves attention and in the way you miss tossing your hair over your shoulder when it gets cut off or miss the outline between the trees of sky when suddenly the winter's gone. The way it is with that old cliche about not knowing how much you love respect appreciate etc something until you lose it--that is how I feel this week about him and I tell him this. Over text message, cuz it's the only way I can. You'll only have the number of real, true friends in your life that you can count on one hand is a line I was raised on, heard again again and again and so I value so strongly the connections I have with folks and understand what a brave and great gift it is to be "friend." If this exact axiom is true or not I dont know tho, it hasn't been my whole life yet or at least I hope not, but it is true that there are to me legit qualifiers for true friends. And so as men go, he qualifies, really currently he is only one of two men who do. My bro is the other one.

He texts about getting lunch and I agree because I know he is on Artist's Retreat and still was willing to reach out to the needy-girlfriend part in me. He's not my boyfriend we are not at all romantic we long ago discussed and then established that, it's just that he's filled such a huge role and taught me to trust again so maybe there's some of my possessiveness. We go to the Market where we always almost every Thursday go and standing in line I ask him to tell me about how it's going and that is when I realize I am jealous. When he talks about the songs he's completed, the songs he's writing, the songs he's going to record. When he starts talking about getting up at 8 and working all day.

What will it look like for me? Working all day? I found this quote from Rilke this morning.

Works of art are of an infinite loneliness and with nothing so little to be reached as with criticism. Only love can grasp and hold and be just toward them. Consider yourself and your feeling right every time with regard to every such argumentation, discussion or introduction; if you are wrong after all, the natural growth of your inner life will lead you slowly and with time to other insights. Leave to your opinions their own quiet undisturbed development, which, like all progress, must come from deep within and cannot be pressed or hurried by anything. Everything is gestation and then bringing forth. To let each impression and each germ of a feeling come to completion wholly in itself, in the dark, in the inexpressible, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one's own intelligence, and await with deep humility and patience the birth-hour of a new clarity: that alone is living the artist's life: in understanding as in creating.

This confirmed for me what I am struggling to maintain belief in because nowhere, practically nowhere in the daytoday grind do I see this valued: the inner life, the spirit and surrendering to the rhythms of me again, the tides of my own soul. I am on an Poet's Date with me right now, and I stuck to it today as it was pencilled in. 3 o'clock Poet's Date with You. Which means time uncharted with nothing to do but follow inside of me what I yearn for. I am writing, I just read Neruda and got transfixed on the spanish differences in assumption that can be made versus the english tranlation. y que la edad escribe letras/con agua y piedra para nadie,/para que nadie sepa donde,/para que nadie entienda nada again and again until it rolled like washed pebbles with gemstones inside over and over on my tongue. Until the words confused me, the words confused themselves, the translation was one thing the words something else the sound they made too its own thing the heartfusionmomentofactiontransaction on the tongue a total other. The time to do this--to be brave and foolish and quiet and sighing long enough to raise and then honor the song. No place to go but here, with me, alight alight alive and in the moment with my spirit and its wants and its needs. I think of Oregon, I picture it in my minds eye and sometimes I am on retreat and it is just reading long books in bed, stopping trailside to write down the words, laying on my back on the hot sand the sun marking me and the combination brine and green buoyant sea smell of the Coast. But sometimes it is, it is writing all day. And to me both kinds of work, the action kind and the priming honoring the tides and spirit of me are equally important.

We are so sick with the lac of it.

We are so sick with the need for it.

I saw it, wordless in his eye today and want that, that fire that transpires to speak greater languages than I currently can, that writes itself on my skin with its words that makes it so I dont even need to speak them because it speaks for me so great from in my soul. I saw it in him today and made myself be happy for him We're in this together remember he reminded me last week so I chose to be happy and let my jealousy go.

Afterall I had a date with me today and here I am now and am swept whole in that clean deep sigh inside glisten way from listening listening and submitting to the rhythms and tides so he's right, and back I go....

Silly Download Poem for a month of Poetry...What I make of it

could be good, could be anything quick to crumble
or instamatic, like the way my coffee sputters and spurts
to bring life. It is all, it will be everything I need, in the morning
I sit and the window is open and the traffic is Russian all
communist cause of togetherness the rise and fall of mechanics
outside right through the screen sucking up and at witness
like me
of the resting soft miracle of the air. I dont know
what to say. That I have music at my fingertips
a neon clock soft sheets a remote control and a clean
place to live & in the morning, a choice
to sit here, should I so desire, and witness
the siege of brain matter on my own cherished air:
the ways I could or could not, just for today
burn. What shall I, who shall I
become. It is not a hard tale to tell
this challenging choking desire to rise
with life, like ending the trail at the parting
of valleys where the green lush of land
is carbohydrate in its feast and the sun
hush of the grass in arching aching cry of mercy
is sweet, is beckoning you to ahhh
just lay down a while here
the substance of surrender
just be.
And feet, humble as they are
will go or will come
not for lac of air or rise or meat
or togetherness or mechanics but because,
will too with their own little miraculous
nerve endings in great call of heroic victory
prop up on parted land-floor & too say
Sweeeeet

O woman, o woman o woman O

The Language of the Brag
by Sharon Olds

I have wanted excellence in the knife-throw,
I have wanted to use my exceptionally strong and accurate arms
and my straight posture and quick electric muscles
to achieve something at the centre of a crowd,
the blade piercing the bark deep,
the haft slowly and heavily vibrating like the cock.

I have wanted some epic use for my excellent body,
some heroism, some American achievement
beyond the ordinary for my extraordinary self,
magnetic and tensile, I have stood by the sandlot
and watched the boys play.

I have wanted courage, I have thought about fire
and the crossing of waterfalls, I have dragged around

belly big with cowardice and safety,
stool charcoal from the iron pills,
huge breasts leaking colostrum,
legs swelling, hands swelling,
face swelling and reddening, hair
falling out, inner sex
stabbed again and again with pain like a knife.
I have lain down.

I have lain down and sweated and shaken
and passed blood and shit and water and
slowly alone in the centre of a circle I have
passed the new person out
and they have lifted the new person free of the act
and wiped the new person free of that
language of blood like praise all over the body.

I have done what you wanted to do, Walt Whitman,
Allen Ginsberg, I have done this thing,
I and the other women this exceptional
act with the exceptional heroic body,
this giving birth, this glistening verb,
and I am putting my proud American boast
right here with the others.


Happy National Poetry Month