Picture journal of Pac NorthWest. The only thing better...

...than tall trees

...is tall trees AND the sea!!

I forgot about how much synchronicity prevails over on this side...

Bring the sun they kept telling me, and so the rain stopped for the first time in weeks, the clouds parted and the sky and sea were blue the hour that I got to the coast...

it lasted for most the afternoon, than back to the signature grey...I pocketed an agate or two that were already gathered for me

O blessed, blessed loud crashing sea...

Your thunder's reawakened in me.

But the best gift was Gretchen's presence in my soul

Lincoln Beach and the myth that quick alive again in me

ahhhh Poetry and tall tall trees

and the healing waters, and mountain breath ahhhhh.

and cleanse, good sweats, and release

how good it feels to sleep in the clean outdoor breeze. to hear and know it's the mama speaking straight and pure to me.

and dear friends. dear friends speak language that is spirit,

and peace

At night we climbed in to the mountains up a path, we followed Paul. It was clear enough to see the stars, and at the cabin there was already a fire. His friends showed up slow at first then suddenly charmed and then everyone was smiling and bright and there, and then the drums and rattlers came out, and the songs started one by one.

I glowed and sung, and sung and we sung, and the songs and the drums were so, so sweet. I put songs that were prayers in to the pine and mountain and river air.

And I am full again of spirit and of peace. I smiled a lot and sat long times in the steam.
There is nothing like sisters, water fairies! Life is vibrant because of the medicine of good friends.

Tall trees and synchronicity and synchronicity and synchronicity is synchronicity. O whole pure healing and soaks and lying in the grass. I met my favorite blogger, we talked an hour she works with Paul. I didn't know she was here, but these are miracles and they are every breathing moment of life. Of course they are, why shouldn't they be?

Of course I didn't want to leave. But Beth had me go in the labyrinth which thank goodness she did because I was so blissed I had to be prompted in to what to do! It was a long, good and startling, startling true walk which reminded me evermore wherever you go there you are. And that this is ok, is right! Is good and I can trust in me. I can love.

Later, she played music which made me cry.
Good cries tho, good mountains good mountain songs.

On the road home I called mom but cousin Erin answered in spanish hola hola and hello. It confused me at first why does mom's voice sound just like me? I got to talk to Erin and it was so bouyant light and charm. She put mom on and when mom took the phone to dad I heard the voices and could tell she'd stepped on to the back porch at the Pines, aunts and uncles and family friends. About to eat steamed crabs. And dad said your brother just pulled up here let me put him on, and my heart bubbled over to be in touch with all them, my family, 3000 miles away and to know, to so know, I have a home and know who I am, and love, soo so love the place where I am from.

For now, I will love love love the Oregon Coast, all the wet, and the tall sweet trees.

For now, I will revel in the love of this sweet calm peace.

I mean, truly...

Could there be a better theme song for today?!



This is the version with the great breakdown in the center, too! Enjoy!!

Last words for Easton and Adult Ed

Oh, I am tired. But what a difference when that tiredness is just remnant sleep twinkling its way off from behind your eyes verses soul-deep, bonesludge exhaustion. Ahhh, it feels good to be light again.

I am moving today! Yea yea yea! I dont know what I want to write about, just that I had that little bit of line-feeling run through my body that always is precursor to the words. When I am paying attention, anyway. Do you know how amazing it feels to know that I am about to step in to a time and space in my life where I get to do that? Just pay attention? To my art? The emotional responsibility of my job, managing classes and responsible for new student intake for the GED program and the community English program at Chesapeake College was so huge and all-consuming, and thankfully was just the pressure I needed to shape me in to the woman that inside me I was yearning to be. I am so proud, so proud of the work I did there, of stepping up my game again and again, of learning how to really practice important things like diplomacy, practicality, picking my battles, trusting in taking the high road, treating others well again and again and not being afraid to stand in my truth. How to go to bed at night crazy or stressed or broken and trusting that this too will pass. How to learn to trust in the important stuff and to allow others to do their own good jobs. How as well to raise others expectations, and especially the students who I met each day, by keeping a high standard for myself. But learning the willingness and the ease with which I can be flexible. Seeing that at the end of the day no matter what I am still human, and fuck up! And beat my self up but also know how to love and nurture not just others but me, too. And then, especially, knowing when and how to let go, when to walk away, and to do so with my character gleaned whole and leading the way.

Easton you were so good to me. I love you, and will likely love you deeply and completely with no funny business at all like the way I love Waldport, Oregon with his Alsea Bay the Suislaw trees and the rush on the air of the Pacific sea. Where I lived in a funny little trailor a mile off the coast, funny little fishing village on the central coast and my first taste of the first catch of chinook and it actually for real melted on my tongue because first catch of the season is truly that sweet. The trailor with the rhododenron bush bigger than the ceiling of the place out back, and the apple trees, and homemade apple muffins and apple crisp. A compost bin. The little things that connected me to me that fall of 2004 in to 2005 and the green wet very wet spring. God how I loved it there, but when it was time to go it was time to go and that was that. And Easton that will be you and me, knowing how to love and respect one another in all our individual splendor and knowing no matter what returning here will make each of us once more just more complete in that. Oh my god my walks, your night air, your flowers. The market and all the little quiet spots where poetry lives on your streets. Nightcat! Your music will sing to me I'll always know when to be back for more. Coffecat my favorite, favorite part will always be just sitting like a cat on a fat cushion in the sun.

It feels so good to leave whole.

Ocean Pines can you believe I am coming home?

It all feels so smooth now, so easy. I guess that's what it is when it's right. I say in prayer this morning, in my sacred silence and checking in. Thank you thank you thank you and hello world. And this day I choose this gratitude, and my actions to be gratitude in motion.

And then, thank you life, I love you, good morning Kel, I love you. Ahhhh yes, amen amen amen.

PS Bob thank you for singing to me and being my smiling last loving look around my apartment from my bed this morning as I finish typing this you remind me that I want to post some mix tape lists again. Oh blue light and my fabulous curtains and all the full packed cardboard boxes everywhere and looking forward to my walk to the coffecat for b-fast xoxoo.

Long Letter to my Readers

Sometimes I want to start this blog the way I used to start my litmag Cantalma. Like I'm writing a letter. Dear Friends...Today it came out instinctively to write Hey Pals... so let's pretend that that's what I'm doing. Writing a letter to my readers, anonymous or otherwise, out there in the middle of the everchanging everthesame wide world of blogoland. Wherein I find comfort, and release.

Hey Pals,

It's something like 4:30 am. I woke up around 3 and couldn't get back to sleep, but didn't put the light on til a half hour ago. For a while I laid there, thinking the noises I was hearing are the giant fucking practically baseball sized roaches that have begun to show themselves at least daily since I started filling my apartment with cardboard boxes and all these magnificent little dark spaces for them to hide. God that ills me out blugghgghghghhgghgh but I am thankful for them because it's making it really easy to so want to leave this place. Then I imagined the bumping around was the ghosts of this old house that the across the hall neighbor Rebecca has seen, and often hears. In the end I turned the lights on to get some water and there were no bugs, and no haunts, at least that I could tell.

It was a long, sweet weekend. Friday was 12 hours long, I went in to my office for my last day and then up to the college for my exit interview which the HR person kept referring to in email as my Termination Interview. Which made me laugh but also mildly nervous to walk up there and turn my paperwork in, but wouldn't you know I came in and sat down and she said I hear you're moving home because your husband got transferred, I'm from Baltimore, too, Dunalk, hon. I explained that it actually is because really I have no friends or family here in Easton or on the midshore or a life really other than my job, and that I was originally from a town called Millersville outside Glen Burnie, that I am the exact oppositte of married and that first I am waiting tables at the beach to make money but before that going out to the PacNW for a month and then going to move home, then we got down to talking Hons. It was like talking to an old girlfriend that I didn't realize I missed even though Sue and me, the HR lady, had never really met before.

Later in the office trying to get my last bits of work turned in I finally gave up and just said I'd turn it in Tuesday when I have to return and give my work computer back. I was too excited and Mary's office on campus has too much of a blowing breeze. Soon it was almost five so Jackie the Executive Director of our whole department, and my immediate boss Elaine, and Mary they all drove me up to Kent Island for dinner on the water. Natasha came, and Carolee, and Jan all the way from Chestertown and some other teachers and of course Jason and Kim and Brenda, too. Then Cindy showed up, and she ended up taking me back to my car, where we sat and talked for two more hours while a nice round thunderstorm came through. Cindy is the woman I used to teach English with, nighttimes twice a week, at the elementary school in the country out near the Delaware line. This was 2006 and on. She also is the one who introduced me to Teena and had me do a catering gig for her back then, and Teena's the one who rented me the room on the Choptank River when I finally summoned the courage to leave Brandon and break his heart and move out and away to a place so isolated that even now that fast year I spent there still is surreal to me like a dream. Cindy and I, really, hadn't talked and really caught up since I very first moved out to Chop. We had lots, lots to catch the other one up on.

On Saturday I got up and couldn't get moving. I had to be in Pennsylvania first for a baby shower then a bachelorette party. The radio was danceable though and in moments it was so good and the sky was so blue, and I read this blog a long long while which I hadn't done in a long time. It made me feel good to have this, these archives of me because I, like all people, compelled as I am by my self and also very very deep, need to have a place to catalog and process me.

The drive up 83 especially was good. I listened to Rachel Sage and Ruut, both of whom I met last weekend when Brooks got to open for them. Rachel Sage especially is so deliciously good, and I thought how very much I like to hear the accordian. It makes me feel like a gypsy which probably is just to say it makes me feel more wild and whimsy and mystery like I really am. When I got to York I was proud of myself for knowing my way around even though my GPS got me lost at first, finally I just turned that bitch off and got there on my own instincts in the hot Pennsylvania concrete traffic and sun. I walked in to the basement at Aunt Lori's house almost an hour late and it was a huge commotion of people and when I walked in from the far side of the room I heard cousin Chels yell Wait where's Kelly? Chelsea is pregnant, and psychic like all the women in that family and I saw her in the corner and all the commotion was because she was about to open gifts. And I dont know how to put this part in words--that Chels, who's 19, is bringing our first grandbaby in to this world, or great grandbaby I mean, and my grandparents were both sick last year, but still are so robust. And when we are together, which we do more often now, mom her two sisters my brother and his fiance my grandparents and two cousins, we cry a lot and it is always hot and full in our chest because every breathing moment with them is awareness of life and how much we are blessed. So I walked in and Chels knew in her blood I just got there, and she waited for me to sit at her feet and then the gift opening began. Then a half hour later she goes Wait, where's Sean? and then of course we look up and he, my brother, walks in. We did well, Pap only really cried, which is what makes the rest of us bawl, really hard once and then we all were crying and gasping and laughing and wiping our faces with napkins and the other guests cried and laughed some, too.

Then I left, got out on to the rolling green hills and farmhouse lanes of Rt. 30 to drive to Fairfield right outside Gettysburg. My cousin Sarah on my dad's side, the Mc-clan, is getting married soon so next was to celebrate that. On Route 30 I got reminiscent but before it got overboard this song Lost in Pennsylvania came on and I laughed out loud, like really hardy belly laugh because Rt. 30 and me have history. York to Philly, Philly to York, York to Gettysburg and all that sky and green. I always always have such good reflection on that road and Saturday was no different. I was reflecting on the last time I made that drive and how much has changed since then. The last time it was July and Josh, who is the man that I fell in mad love with some years back and ultimately was the final reason I had courage enough to leave Brandon and follow me towards my own thing, called at the end when I pulled in to my cousin's driveway. I hadn't heard from him in like four months back then because of a hurtful falling out, and the thing about Rt. 30 is that's how I used to get from my grandparents over to his house. We always had that psychic thing too, Josh and I, among other connections, and so I was thinking back a lot on him. Next thing, over the glorious piano Ruut sings Lost in Pennsylvania and I'm like Whaaaaa? Did she just say lost in Pennsylvania because it was the first time hearing that CD. Then at that very moment mom called. Mom is from the PA hills and that was really on my mind, too, backroads and southern Pennsylvania and mom and her country people. She called to ask what I was doing. I told her driving and thinking about you and thinking about Josh and now cracking up becasue this lady is singing about Josh and I same time as me thinking about us. And mom reminded me of a time long ago going to work a bluegrass festival in those very hills and how she used to be in love back then with a well-known Nashville musician. Within moments I was at the very place, 8 miles east of Gettysburg, that the festival she was talking about is held. It was all so timely, and the conversation was good and sweet and I felt whole and clean, and happy to see Sarah the bride-to-be and the other cousins waiting to see me.

Now it is Monday morning, the birds are singing and Crow was just squawking, too. The sky out the window in my meditation room is blue and pink tinged so it's all resonant in that morning purple hue. Yesterday also was a long day and last night I wanted to finish uploading my old pics--late 80's through late 90's--on to my external hard drive so that when I move Wednesday and my couple things go in to storage that huge tupperware with all the old albums can just stay there. But I was tired, went late to Target to get a new swimsuit and that took a long time because for the first time in a long time I felt bad about how I looked which made me uncomfortable, but also grateful, because I almost never ever have to deal with that leftover teenage weirdness anymore. So when I got back home I went right to bed, didn't even keep my eyes open long enough to read my book.

I move Wednesday to Ocean Pines. Kelly Johnson, Sean, Bdubb and Brooks are going to help me. Thursday I'm taking Amy out for a pedicure to celebrate Maddie, her third child, due in July. Friday my cousin Timmy graduates college, Friday night we're all going dancing at Red Maple, Saturday's Eryka Badu. Then back to the Pines til Wednesday of the following week, when I fly to Oregon, and will be boundless, yet tall tree mountain coasts hot springs cities and hippies and Pacific ocean bound.

Yaaaaay!!!! When I get home it will be summer time and all that hotass Marilen mug. I'll be a waitress again, a writer for sure, babys will come, weddings will happen, and I will stare and smile a lot at the sea. I will swim. For now, I am sleepy, pals. Thank you for reading and always journeying along with me. Thank you all for the love and support even when you dont comment thankfully the blog counter tells me you still read. I am contented, awed, and eager because I feel certain the best is yet to be....

My wishes and prayers for the same to all of you xoxo.

Love, kel

Morning Dance Song for packing and cardboard boxes

Today is my second to last day at work!

(Insert wide-mouthed picture of me here with cartoon question marks all about my head.)

My house is 49.777654ribbonstrinketscardspaperscookbooksohhhsomuchclothes% packed.

There are lots, lots of empty boxes kindly donated from the Acme all over my bathroom bc that's the only place there's room for them.

My office is the opposite of cleaned, organized, or even a teeny bit packed. (if you know me at all than you know my office is aptly decorated with yes, ribbons, trinkets, cards and books.)

But hey, today! Hello today! My fave morning dance song by Edward Sharp and the Magnetic Zeros which I've posted here before greeted me when I got out of the shower. Followed by Bowie, Sound and Vision!

Yaaay morning dance songs and smiley out of the shower place half packed dancing. I mean, cmon. So long as we can dance, right...

PS
Today's New Moon, tonight anyhow around 9pm. Quiet thoughts in the void of what yet can be...

Leaving

You know it's legit when you gotta call mom.

Except that's not true I didn't call her, she called me, because it was Monday and that's what she does--on her drive from Ocean Pines to the county, to Anne Arundel where I'm from and where she stays every Monday night at a friend's house because she works at Maryland General, top of Howard Street in the city, every Tuesday in the operating room. She called and I was finishing up talking to Brenda at work and without thinking about it before I was even out of the cafeteria at the College where Brenda and I were, I called mom back.

Another important lesson you are learning is not to be afraid to start over. This is the chart of new beginnings...which there will be alot of....Your connection to God or the Source is extremely important and that is why you will continually need to be alone, make clear your intents and listen to your own inner council. Forced new beginnings probably seem to occur without rhyme or reason...However, when you learn to do what you want, what your passion is, finding those projects that charge your battery, as it were, you will find you will be instinctively attracted to those situations that will not let you down. Self trust is the most important lesson for you to learn.

I sat on a bench in a cement courtyard in the clear sun, the cold air, the green fields and sounds of route fifty traffic beyond the brick buildings of Chesapeake College. I sat on the bench and talked to my mother, and listened to her, and cried. I cried the way I cried when I first left the farm, the cry and ache of grief and goodbye. It was late in the afternoon, and the few students left on campus kindly went in different directions.

When I turned thirty Gretchen, who is wise woman and wolf woman to me, which is teacher medicine, (this link is where she works--an artic wolf sanctuary in the coast ranges of Oregon) gave me an extensive, 11 page single spaced reading of my natal chart that her long time wild woman friend of over fifty years did for me. I was living on Truslow Road then, had literally just started a line of intention and prayer influenced by Gandhi and Women Who Run With the Wolves based on the idea that I was discontented in life due to self-compromise and not following my heart. The birth chart was so eerily on point, so exact to the actual detail in more than one circumstance that I couldn't look at it again for three months after my first read. Self trust is the most important lesson for you to learn.

It took three years, til now, to come to a place where I can say I am willing above all to trust me, to trust in me and follow my heart and my inner power and guiding song. And this, this final departure of packing up my sweet little apartment on Goldsborough and Hanson here in Easton, where I've only been for 7 months, is breaking my heart. But it's not all of it. I'm leaving. I'm leaving -- Josh, Brandon! Katie and fun nights at Anngar, Amy and Megs and sweet afternoons in the yard! Late nights on cold cements and talks and talks and cigarettes and coffee. Magnolia trees and Play it Again Sams! The puffballs on campus in the spring oh god the geese calls in the fall. Chester River and so many swims and talks and the moon, greasy subs and potlucks, gardens and oh the hot ass dry ass choking ass Eastern Shore sun. Dust and tractors, woods and blackberry growing wild.

I'm leaving. And I am packing, and I dont have energy for this anymore, and greif feels like train tracks most overgrown by yellow weeds and thick grass clumps with no train there, and the tracks are laid down and part of you--and they hurt in your throat and feel like an incense uncurling on the air in your gut and after a while you just have to surrender to the uncurling....

And O god Kevin who went even tho like Konan said we were just waiting all those years to get the call, and saying goodbye to Brian and how just this past Friday I saw Hupman for the first time in a decade and we immediately cried to see each other and the first words out of his mouth were Fannon...because yes that's what happens after someone dies the crew falls apart cuz it hurts too bad to see one another, and jesus Mike you too and all those angry late night fuck yous after you chose the gun. How fucking much I hate goodbye. Realizing months later, after I was gone from Choptank how leaving Brandon and then losing Josh sent me in to something like ptsd where I was just stuck on loss and looping again and again through the anguish of sudden grief. And remembering Grammy coming to me those couple bad, bad times at Chop...Grammy who came to me again last night even tho it wasn't hella bad, just me and nuzzling under a soft blankey quiet and tender the tears out after talking to mom. Grammy was there, I could feel her near she has a certain way of softly filling my spirit that is specific and settling to her. And now Jenny Lewis is singing to me there but for the grace of god....and I am caught on my breath, and think of what mom said yesterday. I only know to tell you what your Grammy always used to say Kel. This too, shall pass.

This too
this too
this too shall pass. I just want for you to be peaceful Kel mom said. Not to have to struggle so much. No shit I answered, the struggles been all about learning to hold my own reigns ma. I'm there, now. This is what I've been struggling towards these past years.

Getting to be set on the ocean, the wide open calling ocean of me. And trusting the direction of the breeze, the tides, wherever they will take me, will flow me. Being at one in surrender and trust. The ocean the breeze the wide open calling, all of me...

Right. Good reminder, and now I recall in the time of vision at the end of Harvest last year, in that space of timelessness at Halloween when I moved here to Easton. And knowing that more than anything my month in Oregon would be one great rest. Just juicy, and savory, and replenishing from within.

O fucking god amen amen amen.

Taking a stand.

You've heard this axiom before, right? Stand for something or fall for everything?

I agree, but still am particularly cautious about what I stand behind. Because with wisdom comes responsibility. So to take a stand for something, in my opinion, implies responsibility to whatever you are claiming.

And responsibility is inherent of our behaviour--not who but how we be. Thus, being responsible becomes a character thing, quite legitimately being the change.

It's the end of mercury retrograde. That means that most of this week I've spent in review, not writing much because of all the watching. Lots of troubled stuff and lots of mundane, the samskaras surfacing. This is happening for us all right now, this is one of the inner mysteries it just is. Much as possible I've tried to merely witness what my spirit is showing. Allowing the automatic surfacing to guide me deeper into my experiences in life as a conscious, open person.

The review is almost over now though, it is Sunday, I have one week left of work then five days before I start my move! I am excited, terrified, and eager for it all. I am trying to stay perched on the edge of my life, of my daily experiences as a newcomer to the world: open, engaged, in awe.

Which brings me to the beach yesterday, Ocean City, a storm coming up. The way it moved caught me in that place of wild women, of wild sacred spirit: The sacred inner S/HE/IT. That tension of compulsion how sumptious it is. The authentic struggle, listing between the tides of self and inner speak and passion and the real day-to-day walking in the world of job and friends, places to be and stuff to do. In that center place, in the Great Still where the wild yowl of potential and passion surrender to the practical every day--in there the ocean air engorged with the thunder air coming from the north and I literally felt my rebel yell echo against a curve in the Atlantic sky.

That echo. A reminder of the power of the unseen magic of the world.

It was Mandy, Shannon, me. Two, then three, then four of Shannon's other friends with us. Not a lot of talking, just sitting, and some laughing in the sand and let me tell you nothing in life feels like a thunder storm moving in over the ocean and when it came the ocean turned the weirdest, most melancholy green. Then it was black all over the sky, and then the first flash and we got up to go. It'd been hot up til then but the night before outside the club the air was coming off the sea. And then yesterday the storm came and was followed by perfect blue sky, but by last night the wind was blowing like mad, the weather'd shifted, the humidity that brought the lightening and thunder is gone and in Easton today I have to have a sweatshirt on over my tee. And most of all, that place in me, the center place is awakened and charged~engaged by the magic that the natural world rooted in me.

I am taking a stand. It came around this morning after a spontaneous talk with Rudy-Satva, after remembering the impression of Shaman Bob last night in the middle of my deep, deep and otherwise dreamless sleep, after remembering that alluring reminder of magic behind the thunderocean wind. The veil over this world, the power of the unseen. It is real it is real it is real but it is up to us to walk that reality in to being. And so there is the one thing to which I am taking a stand, putting my responsibility behind. All else, the book, the boarding house, OC, Pac NW, Baltimore or Mexico, Hawaii or Crownsville, travelling or staying still~is secondary to this one thing.

Opening up to the Power inside. The deep, unyeilding power within. Being responsible to it, being responsive to it. Recognizing as within, so without. And from within, from that inner spot where I own myself and open up to the world of who I am, so too do I converge with the outter world and the day to day. It is this power that connects me to you, and to her, and to him, and to the earth and to the thunder and to the sky and to the sea. Elemental, because atomically none of us are any different and atoms react to the energy of other atoms. Get it? Within is my duty, yes, but the the living of it day to day is what matters most to me. Being struck and awed by the outter expression of thunder and electric which too is inside of me. Being struck and present in the exchange with a stranger on the street, or with mom on the phone. Being aware of my reactions, responsible to them. It is what I believe we each are charged with doing. Illuminating ourselves, and living this light, one person to one person to whole groups at a time.

Are you paying attention? Am I paying attention? To the faintest inner stirring, to the thunder rebel yell, to the conversation, to the image in the dream? Am I telling myself it doesn't matter, or am I opening up unto the mystery, and encouraging the open moment with what could be.

Consciousness, for lack of a better term and in order to make no religious association. What I am standing for, being alive, being awake, being conscious to me. What if none of it matters.

Sure that's probably true. But what if I decide it does? What if by virtue of that decision, of that one thing to stand for~it does?

Then what?

Then I take my stand.

This one thing... Telling the truth.

This is Erika, quoting Hemingway in my head and it's what happens to me any time I sit down and start to write and cant get started. Tell the truth tell the truth tell the truth. Usually it's followed by me asking myself Kelly what are you trying to say?

There is a song it just came on as I finished that last paragraph and it made me smile and pull the comfort sheets of my self up tight around my heart because of the tweak it put in my chest the second I heard it start and the immediate smile and hush of breath it drew. It is one of those serendipity songs and one that always no matter what makes my spirit emerge from whatever tight little haunt of me in which it's hiding. It's one of my fighting songs, and it is the song of songs that would of course in this instance speak to me.

I thought that pain and truth were all that really mattered but you cant stay here with every single hope that shattered. Big Country. Oh this song. The one that Kelly J put on the CD when I sold my shit and went travelling in 2004--it played as I pulled out of Chestertown and left my disillusioned past behind. The past. The past? Let me say this to the past. It becomes you, shapes the you you become. For many months I have worked to heal my associations of me, and my patterns of my past that became patterns long before I had the mind awareness to know any better. I have begun to live motivated by one idea: we regret not what we've done, but what we have not. I have had to ask myself again and again, and sit quiet surrendering to me, to the long inner road towards peace and silence within to hear the answer: years from now what will I look back on and say because I did not do this one or two or three things, I regret? It is in this way I've submitted to me, to following my truth and being brave and strong enough to stand in and go towards who I really am.

There is one area--love, men--where I have a backlog of mess. I am in the context, here, now, ongoing, of forgiveness and peace in that area, it's a constant motion thing for me. And as to this, as to regret, and to telling the truth. There was one, a single real regret that clung to me and went something like this:

I should've been true to myself. The moment, the second I knew I was in love with him--and no longer in love with the one I was with--I should've been honest with myself and with everyone involved. I was so in love with him. I should've gone forward and to him, and not looked back.

I should've. But that's not what happened. And so how does life unfold--how does it mark you, and push you along when there is indeed this one thing that you look back on and did not do?
What happens is you quantitate, you consider. You loop over and over again in yourself and become lost in your self and hate and even further have more and awful disbelief in yourself. You become deeply deflated, hopeless even and don't know why, because often times regret hides itself if you are lacking in a certain capacity for self-honesty in some areas in your life, so that's what happens: if you are like me and you have hurt in a certain area of your life, old hurt, old covered-over pain from long long ago before you even really were you yet, than being true to yourself in that area comes out all slanted and sideways because to really be true means first to have to re-live through the old pain that's still there. And that's fucking hard. Especially when that part of you's always been broke.

Then, one day you wake up. It's a half-waking, but I'm a fighter, so you grab for it. And you realize god damn it, this is my life. This is my life. And perhaps this regret was the one, the one key to the door that is finally, for real and completely, going to make me own me in my entirety. That is going to make me stand up, and be true as I can to myself.

You start to get honest then, about your wants, your needs, about your past. About who you are.

I've identified the things, the couple of them. And I'm going whole-hearted after them. BUT MORE IMPORTANT. I get it, I get me now. I know me, and love me, all of me. I know how to be true to my self. Get it? I know now how to be honest to me. And to tell the truth, and not miss opportunity. I have healed from the early fucked up shit and abuse, or at least have self-awareness that is full and complete, and real. Not sideways and slanted and blind or numb in some parts. I have broke parts you know, who doesn't? But those are now the places I learned to nurture and be gentle with myself instead of denying and hating and refusing, because of denial and numbness and self-hate. Those are the places I have medicine, real virtue now. Where I can be even more gentle and loving towards me, and others, as result.

I am real now. I am whole.

This is my life. And I guess that one regret is no longer on my list because the gift that came from it is absolutely nonexchangeable. I hope that he--the lighthouse guy, the one who led me here to this deep and dark well of my self, the one who suffered at my hands and who I ultimately pushed away and forced to walk away without his own looking back--I hope he is well. I hope he is well: is full, is whole.

I am being true to my self, to my heart. It's all I ever really wanted to learn how to do. That part I don't regret, not at all.

Too high too far too soon

INSPIRED

artwork by Nikki McClure

copyright Nikki McClure