Winchester Bay, OR. June 3, 2010
What if these leaves are unread, or worse, dry, not mighty, by the ambiguity of refusal
Ever after, what then, becomes of Crow~
Perched first in shadow, waiting, waiting
My returm, waiting on the wind, waiting on the sea moss that hangs
From armfat branches of so many coastal trees from the armfat moss
And mold that fight each other in the longest dying, the trying of death is what’s timeless, and means nothing, other than arm fat breeze. Ground squirrels and chipmunks come and go this is home, make this home with their rodent breath fat on chanterelles and lichen, and mud. The sea breeze and sea trees grow in Lane County right out of the dunes, as if sand were enough. NO!! No I rattle my fist in it the painted gourd from Bobby Rays, invisible, no it is not enough, it is not enough to grow merely in sand
But that is elemental. Sea breeze incense air, salt seems too much but is enough, sun is fire & now,
Crow flies by window and says I’m ever in the shadows shadows are elemental your name is made of rain
Scathach, goddess of Celtic Warriors, come to me. O Goddess of birds, o trainer of men, come to me. Come to me now by cry that you are bird goddess, that you speak the words and know the magic names of all that takes air, that take to air, of all power and medicine that flies. In the magic hills top of Willamette Southside of the Breitenbush I spoke your name but first in silence, first in the powerful spell. hush of wet pine and mats of leaves did to me I knew only for one minute what it meant. Wolves travel hilltops for you, wildness speaks the power kernelled inside your breath Scathach, Scathach do you see what I can see can you see the speak the dry bird tongue rasp of cry that shakes the forest down drops loose leaves too the ground forces detritus above and under, constant change, constant turmoil of exile tension of self upon its self, blundering up the side walls, blundering up the scurried harried walls of herself, herself an extension of river breath and mist, can you speak the black bird name? Can you speak his voiceless vocabulary the yearnful calling? Is it just emission, do you choose it only as a game. I spoke your name. I spoke your name once for the yearlings cry, I spoke your name once for the pear tree, I spoke your name once for the mist of muse that blurs in the fog impenetrable banquet net gathering and catching and harnessing the sky I speak your name once for the buddhafull belly of the land once for the boulders built in highway categories out of words from the land I speak your name for fear of the Detroit damn I speak your name for the spell of India and the death of cartoons I speak your name for the tongues of the river tongues drunk on their own breath drunk on their own licks drunk on their own current drunk on their own madness drunk on their own cities drunk on their onw joy drunk on the belief of their own ecstasies I speak your name, I am drunk on your myth
O Scathach, if birds do not come to me? Do not come to train, do not come to be trained by me?
What then? These flowers I laid bare at your door out the Winchester Harbor fishing boats moored decks wet by nets tangled inner cabin dry and nestled boatopened bellys trying to scoop and save the sea. What then? I burn a candle not just for the lost poet sister, this morning, love, I burn a candle for me.
June 30, 2010
June 29, 2010
I, Miscreant. List: love.
I hit the karmic reset button, gave total permission to myself to let go of every single idea I had about my life.
Moving to Baltimore, my novel, staying on the east coast. Savior syndrome and retreats and poetic love. Family, friends, tribal associations and unifications. How I even say my name.
In all that, I grew a total and almost complete aversion to all things electronic, save pictures. I have emails, weeks old, still unread. Facebook's become a foreign land.
Then I got on here, this morning, and thought of Bona Drag. And Erika, and my blog. The little wonders of truth that come with Love.
REASONS I LOVE TO BLOG
1. duh, because of spontaneous download~holy wonder alchemical power of submission to the impulse, itself
2. My writing partner, over at Muse. She has continued her work without me knowing well I was in the forest a while. "For your travels, on the road, and to bring you home. My writing pal." For how much I am looking forward to resuming our work together, now that I've touched down.
3. Bona Drag. Just go there and slurp a while on her delicious aesthetic.
4. Carrot. Over at I AM NOT AFRAID OF WINTER. We ran out of gas together.
5. Davka. At davka: deer girl medicine. Who also hit a reset button, which I knew she was doing before she even posted about it.
6. Kelly Johnson. Over at Manbait. Her post Home Food from Sunday June 6. About place.
I haven't sat and blogrolled in a month. But this morning the poetry was a slow wave breaking, right at the moment the white crashes over the peak and the clear upwell becomes topside and the water behind it is perfectly clear and see through, and makes everything above surface shine with prism light. And above the surface was the spectacle of color these voices are to me, so bright.
Read them.
Moving to Baltimore, my novel, staying on the east coast. Savior syndrome and retreats and poetic love. Family, friends, tribal associations and unifications. How I even say my name.
In all that, I grew a total and almost complete aversion to all things electronic, save pictures. I have emails, weeks old, still unread. Facebook's become a foreign land.
Then I got on here, this morning, and thought of Bona Drag. And Erika, and my blog. The little wonders of truth that come with Love.
REASONS I LOVE TO BLOG
1. duh, because of spontaneous download~holy wonder alchemical power of submission to the impulse, itself
2. My writing partner, over at Muse. She has continued her work without me knowing well I was in the forest a while. "For your travels, on the road, and to bring you home. My writing pal." For how much I am looking forward to resuming our work together, now that I've touched down.
3. Bona Drag. Just go there and slurp a while on her delicious aesthetic.
4. Carrot. Over at I AM NOT AFRAID OF WINTER. We ran out of gas together.
5. Davka. At davka: deer girl medicine. Who also hit a reset button, which I knew she was doing before she even posted about it.
6. Kelly Johnson. Over at Manbait. Her post Home Food from Sunday June 6. About place.
I haven't sat and blogrolled in a month. But this morning the poetry was a slow wave breaking, right at the moment the white crashes over the peak and the clear upwell becomes topside and the water behind it is perfectly clear and see through, and makes everything above surface shine with prism light. And above the surface was the spectacle of color these voices are to me, so bright.
Read them.
June 25, 2010
Circles
It was like crashing chin first on boulders, coming home, and by the time I got to the Pines I was turned every kind of inside out and I knew it was bad when even the ocean didn't speak of home.
I felt myself falling down, too, which was the frustrating part, wanting so badly to hold on to something and knowing that it was the force of my grip complicating the motion, the vortex of energy, the circles, going around and around like a downtown highrise revolving door that all the fancy people walk through. Catalytic energy of my self, working against myself, and the anger at the whole damn thing unravelling simply because I didn't, I so badly didn't want it to unravel at all.
By yesterday evening the rain came though, and my soul was emptied by then and ready for the cleanse I was so soothed all the way through. I spent the whole day working peace, swirling circles, new circles of light at my room at the beach. All I originally intended was to set up my quiet spot, set up my candles and little things of magic and sacred and power in the corner in my room so I put the windows up to burn the sage and other oils and herbs so of course by then, by the time fire and all that summer air was involved it turned quickly, happily in to an all day affair. Mom got home in the afternoon and I was blessing herbs all over the counter and we laughed the crazy laugh when I caught her with her eyes closed, blessing them too. We were giddy, Chels was in the hospital about to bring Savanah in to the world and maybe that's what started it all, sending her reiki and peace and how powerfully psychic that early day opening made me, I literally felt the contractions in her back as I sung sweet quiets of peace from my spirit to hers. Sweet sweet peace I held her across the miles in my arms, allowing for the true steady and calm. Sean in the meantime texted he was at the airport waiting, having been bumped to a flight five hours later and they gave him $400 to wait, and so he ended up flying with his fiance on the flight her company booked for her and so at the end of the day serendipity, even on the east coast, the hard dismantled cement and gray and grease and ego-tapes of mean and goddamnits revving always in the people's head east coast, serendipity, light spirit, prevail. Sky's the limit I texted him and sent him the mind vision of us out front of his house in Columbia arms at the sky like Cindy always does chest open and hearts pointed at the sun. Laughing, laughing, laughing in knowledge of the wisdom truth that as the heart goes the Universe seeks to affirm.
The best picture ever came at 4:30 Grandma with the baby in her arms. By dinner my room was the fabulous messy of explosion that comes first whenever I clean or organize anything visual and magical as I am. Mom's health food tasted so great, the rains came in sheets, the sky looked yellow with hysterical late night sun battling the storm for its final chance to poke out. The McMullen reunion is Sunday, I start work Monday, tonight I hold Savanah for the very first time.
My laundry's almost done, Sean's folded in to the streets of Memphis, Dad is home early for the weekend from Lanham having graduated 130 students last night spouting anger and politics but I smile at him the face of quiet and the moon. Even though my homecoming was anything but smooth I myself am alighting again and maybe ready now to return all the calls and texts and messages that keep coming in. I love the moist way of muted morning light coming in through my room at the Pines. I love the magic of life, reverent, dirty, ebbing and crashing, re-surfacing again and again. There is a surfboard in our kitchen and out back the forest is full of summer green. My family is touching down in various different spectacular forms it is the reminder of stability, which is another means of saying the constancy of change change change.
June 23, 2010
Thunder, The County, Sean. Memphis. Rounded-out inside.
Wanna get breakfast? It's 6:25 am and one of the first things I say.
Well, not the first, I've already shared my upon waking deep thought for the morning about the big changes he's upon, and also greeted him a happy US-in-the-World-Cup Day.
Kelly you are a fucking dump truck he says and I say when I answer something like dude you have no idea, like you cant even comprehend the amount of food I ate on my vacation, or for that matter the canyon that must be in my gut it's got to be as big at least as one of those little ones in Colorado, you know like the ones next to a big mesa? I am laughing a little it is early but I am up inside, and the laugh is not the cry-ey laugh kind just a chuckle.
I dont get the irony of mesa meaning table til now.
Last night I think I was driving us both a little crazy. I'd been on his couch all day, and it was a big day, for him at least, and I was priming my self since 9 am to drive to Brooklyn and pick up my bridesmaid dress then make the final truck to the beach. Finally at like 8 at night or something I heard the thunder and went out to sit under the sky on his front step where I feel like I've sat a million times and had to take some time to make my case, which is to say just sit quiet a while with the Nature and me, which is to say the same thing. To sit quiet awhile, find the without, find the within.
The sky was blue but wild pungent yellow behind the clouds. It felt so Maryland and in all, it was good, satisfying to be home. It's funny when you leave a while you come back and see all the subtle quiet things you take for granted. Sitting in the thunder heat with that yellowgreen sky put me in mind of Mandy, who I've seen sit like that a million times. Just watching, feeling the ripe. I had the shift feeling of light air happen then, like some ether layer of me rustling about then settling back in to me again, which actually is recognition, and realized yet again how many little things quantify a place. I went in after a while and looked at my brother with must have been that blank look on my face which is how we do, me and him, without knowing it when we are trying to cover where we've been. What we dont ever get is blank for us means the same thing as transparent and the only one in the world who can read that layer of see-through on me is him. And maybe mom. He laughed it is the laugh that always made me used to feel embarrassed because I always confused it as laughing at me, but I am older now and get that it is just laughter because he knows. Do you want some ice cream I said and he laughed some more and then said Kel, why dont you at least drive to Brooklyn and get your dress? Get out and do something at least take a drive you dont have to drive all the way home. We are afterall suburb kids, taking drives is what he know to do. He doesn't say that part about suburb kids that is mine for right here. Yea yea that's good that's what I'll do I said But you'll have to go right now just get in the car and motor before it's closed he answered and so that's what I did.
I touched down at BWI the night before, texted him I'm here, still on the plane. His car was waiting outside the black and metal mechanics of the baggage claim, under the cement that feels post-apocalypse underground and smells stale and like gas and where you cant even see a single plane. I love it there though and am happy to see him and Jamie waving at me, then I get in, and Jamie apologized immediately for being distant which I didn't notice then went on to say she just got a call from the Vice President of her company in Texas, he needed to talk to her ASAP about an opportunity. I wanted pizza so Seanie immediately drove us to the closet mall, it was near 9pm, and him and me ate pizza from a woodfire oven while she sat in the car on the phone.
Memphis is a long way away, and it all happened so quick, and I can write about it on here becasue in an hour or so from now we'll meet his friends downtown to watch the US soccer game and he will tell them then, and by this afternoon I'm sure most of the family will have found out becasue dad will likely have talked to uncle Tim. They are leaving Thursday, wont even be at the family reunion this weekend. Yesterday I didn't feel a thing today I feel a little like my heart is being taken from me, but all the same I know without any question that for them this is the exact right thing. It all happened so quick, Jamie is in Manayunk CraigsListing their apartment and doing all she can in 48 hours to tie up with her current clients there. He and I sat on his couch most of the day yesterday tightening his resume and other contacts and cover letters and stuff, and watching soccer on tv.
When I got on to route a hundred to head towards Brooklyn Park I couldn't shake that huge rounded feeling of something about to happen, but being in the calm right before it is to come. I knew this feeling wasn't about my brother, that this is more about me and his news was precursor of what's to come. Memphis is his big thing and what they've been waiting for and what we've all been secretely holding our breath in hopes that it wouldn't come, which is selfish but true. None of us knew they'd get transferred that far. I support him a hundred percent though, like I said some things are just right and you know it, you can feel it the way the tide of it fits curved and rounded, and retreats when the energy of it finally comes to fruition, and feels like relief and peace in your soul.
I drove to Brooklyn Park next to the biggest Maryland clouds, full of thunder and white scary lightening smelling ripe as cloves but never dropping any rain. Just passed the beltway where you pick up the harbor tunnel I got of to go south on route 2, and curving round the roundabout I had the most natural sensation of being on my way to visit Gram. It took me a full few seconds to realize, no, no she's dead now, has been a full 13 years and her house in Brooklyn on Church Street sold that summer, 97, first time I went traveling right after in fact I'd gotten home. And there was instead of the sweet ache just a settled feeling of mmm-hmmm, of acknowledgement, of all things passing, and for way more than the first time I had the sense again of much my whole time on the Eastern Shore seemed like a dream. Not the surreal, make-believe way, but in the way of waking so that you cant remember a darn piece of what went on the night before behind your eyes. And how you know it was important, you can feel it, but it's over now so may as well go on and greet the day. And how if anyone or thing could go ahead and show you, hit repeat on the dream button so that you could watch your dreams with the waking thoughts of day, how you wouldn't believe it was in all true, anyway, because the regularly conscious part of you slept all the way through. It's how I felt coming home, like home back to Anne Arundel county, like it's not been a day or more since I've been away--forget those 12 years on the shore. It's how I felt, foreign, when I unlocked my car.
In the beginning of the journey that Liz Gilbert goes on in Eat, Pray, Love she spends a month or more, I guess actually like 4 months, eating her way across Italy. It's healing to her soul. That's how I've felt, where I've been, from the first night in Yachats at the Adobe with Gretchen when she ordered us, literally, 4 entire enormous plates of food. We laughed and ate and ate and laughed the rest of the month away. It's felt so good to just eat. Good, savory, sweet, ethnic, rich, fatty, delicious food. It feels good, too, to be home.
Well, not the first, I've already shared my upon waking deep thought for the morning about the big changes he's upon, and also greeted him a happy US-in-the-World-Cup Day.
Kelly you are a fucking dump truck he says and I say when I answer something like dude you have no idea, like you cant even comprehend the amount of food I ate on my vacation, or for that matter the canyon that must be in my gut it's got to be as big at least as one of those little ones in Colorado, you know like the ones next to a big mesa? I am laughing a little it is early but I am up inside, and the laugh is not the cry-ey laugh kind just a chuckle.
I dont get the irony of mesa meaning table til now.
Last night I think I was driving us both a little crazy. I'd been on his couch all day, and it was a big day, for him at least, and I was priming my self since 9 am to drive to Brooklyn and pick up my bridesmaid dress then make the final truck to the beach. Finally at like 8 at night or something I heard the thunder and went out to sit under the sky on his front step where I feel like I've sat a million times and had to take some time to make my case, which is to say just sit quiet a while with the Nature and me, which is to say the same thing. To sit quiet awhile, find the without, find the within.
The sky was blue but wild pungent yellow behind the clouds. It felt so Maryland and in all, it was good, satisfying to be home. It's funny when you leave a while you come back and see all the subtle quiet things you take for granted. Sitting in the thunder heat with that yellowgreen sky put me in mind of Mandy, who I've seen sit like that a million times. Just watching, feeling the ripe. I had the shift feeling of light air happen then, like some ether layer of me rustling about then settling back in to me again, which actually is recognition, and realized yet again how many little things quantify a place. I went in after a while and looked at my brother with must have been that blank look on my face which is how we do, me and him, without knowing it when we are trying to cover where we've been. What we dont ever get is blank for us means the same thing as transparent and the only one in the world who can read that layer of see-through on me is him. And maybe mom. He laughed it is the laugh that always made me used to feel embarrassed because I always confused it as laughing at me, but I am older now and get that it is just laughter because he knows. Do you want some ice cream I said and he laughed some more and then said Kel, why dont you at least drive to Brooklyn and get your dress? Get out and do something at least take a drive you dont have to drive all the way home. We are afterall suburb kids, taking drives is what he know to do. He doesn't say that part about suburb kids that is mine for right here. Yea yea that's good that's what I'll do I said But you'll have to go right now just get in the car and motor before it's closed he answered and so that's what I did.
I touched down at BWI the night before, texted him I'm here, still on the plane. His car was waiting outside the black and metal mechanics of the baggage claim, under the cement that feels post-apocalypse underground and smells stale and like gas and where you cant even see a single plane. I love it there though and am happy to see him and Jamie waving at me, then I get in, and Jamie apologized immediately for being distant which I didn't notice then went on to say she just got a call from the Vice President of her company in Texas, he needed to talk to her ASAP about an opportunity. I wanted pizza so Seanie immediately drove us to the closet mall, it was near 9pm, and him and me ate pizza from a woodfire oven while she sat in the car on the phone.
Memphis is a long way away, and it all happened so quick, and I can write about it on here becasue in an hour or so from now we'll meet his friends downtown to watch the US soccer game and he will tell them then, and by this afternoon I'm sure most of the family will have found out becasue dad will likely have talked to uncle Tim. They are leaving Thursday, wont even be at the family reunion this weekend. Yesterday I didn't feel a thing today I feel a little like my heart is being taken from me, but all the same I know without any question that for them this is the exact right thing. It all happened so quick, Jamie is in Manayunk CraigsListing their apartment and doing all she can in 48 hours to tie up with her current clients there. He and I sat on his couch most of the day yesterday tightening his resume and other contacts and cover letters and stuff, and watching soccer on tv.
When I got on to route a hundred to head towards Brooklyn Park I couldn't shake that huge rounded feeling of something about to happen, but being in the calm right before it is to come. I knew this feeling wasn't about my brother, that this is more about me and his news was precursor of what's to come. Memphis is his big thing and what they've been waiting for and what we've all been secretely holding our breath in hopes that it wouldn't come, which is selfish but true. None of us knew they'd get transferred that far. I support him a hundred percent though, like I said some things are just right and you know it, you can feel it the way the tide of it fits curved and rounded, and retreats when the energy of it finally comes to fruition, and feels like relief and peace in your soul.
I drove to Brooklyn Park next to the biggest Maryland clouds, full of thunder and white scary lightening smelling ripe as cloves but never dropping any rain. Just passed the beltway where you pick up the harbor tunnel I got of to go south on route 2, and curving round the roundabout I had the most natural sensation of being on my way to visit Gram. It took me a full few seconds to realize, no, no she's dead now, has been a full 13 years and her house in Brooklyn on Church Street sold that summer, 97, first time I went traveling right after in fact I'd gotten home. And there was instead of the sweet ache just a settled feeling of mmm-hmmm, of acknowledgement, of all things passing, and for way more than the first time I had the sense again of much my whole time on the Eastern Shore seemed like a dream. Not the surreal, make-believe way, but in the way of waking so that you cant remember a darn piece of what went on the night before behind your eyes. And how you know it was important, you can feel it, but it's over now so may as well go on and greet the day. And how if anyone or thing could go ahead and show you, hit repeat on the dream button so that you could watch your dreams with the waking thoughts of day, how you wouldn't believe it was in all true, anyway, because the regularly conscious part of you slept all the way through. It's how I felt coming home, like home back to Anne Arundel county, like it's not been a day or more since I've been away--forget those 12 years on the shore. It's how I felt, foreign, when I unlocked my car.
In the beginning of the journey that Liz Gilbert goes on in Eat, Pray, Love she spends a month or more, I guess actually like 4 months, eating her way across Italy. It's healing to her soul. That's how I've felt, where I've been, from the first night in Yachats at the Adobe with Gretchen when she ordered us, literally, 4 entire enormous plates of food. We laughed and ate and ate and laughed the rest of the month away. It's felt so good to just eat. Good, savory, sweet, ethnic, rich, fatty, delicious food. It feels good, too, to be home.
June 21, 2010
June 20, 2010
"More caffeine, so I can use my device faster." And other moments along the way.
I used a map to drive around Southern Oregon for 8 days.
The big creased and soft along the fold-seems paper kind. My music was tunneled, country or rock and roll. I smiled alot, the whole time, whether sun and big grey clouds or blue skies or Januaryrain.
I'd get a big meal a day, eat off the leftovers, crackers, water and fruit.
And coffee.
I drank coffee with my favorite people for hours in the morning. I tripped live and large along with them through the ensuing big caffeinated conversations. Paul, Beth, Gretchen, Jill.
I made unwitting offering to the Breitenbush, she took offering from me, sitting under the diamondbacked sky tucked around Paul and I on the rickety wood bridge in the cold, black silhouette of Devils Peak measuring our breathing and blocking out the ahead of us view of the stars. The river took bittersweet chocolate from me it fell right out of my pocket and between the boards in to the hard rushing waters of the river below, and the next day on a long hike she gave back her bittersweet gifts. She hushed us to her side, she sat us down. Then unwitting again I cried in Paul's arms, I let the past go, I dunked my head in baptism in the South fork of her before she joined the North and ran hard and high down past the spiral pools and cabins of the resident side.
I wandered in the all green forest, I sung songs of thanks and then stumbled on the fairee vortex as gold and rainbos spiraled out and around us past the veil of my common eyes.
I walked in the rain. I walked in the rain and slept deep half dreams tucked in the woods under down covers and the breath of good friend.
I ran out of gas for the first time. I came off I-5 on to the exit ramp giving a blogofriend a lift to a stop midway to Portland. I came down off my otherworldmountainhigh to the soaked fumes of petro permanent on my hands.
I soaked in Beth's bath and luxuriated with her on her couch in our comfies, doing nothing but old 90's movies on Netflix on demand while the rain made songs and laughter and loong long stories on her roof sliding down.
I kissed endangered white wolves, I got kissed and shmooped by them. I listened to them howl. I melted in my heart a little to watch the wise woman most true to me in her element, dancing and happy in the almost wild with the wolves she so loves.
I looked at pictures of Gretchen from the 70's and 80's, listened to so many stories of youth and mess-ups, of passion and memories and friends, of family and lessons passed. I went to Mill Street where I used to always go, smelled the lowtide mudflats left behind while the Alsea River retreated out to the sea. I had breakfast with Mandy and Gretchen and Jeanette on the corner in Waldport of 101 and high green trees.
I packed my camelback with poetry I found in used bookstores along the road, I packed it with journals and my camera and fruit and went out on the 804 in Yachats and laid my body across hot rocks and drenched myself in sun. I listened to the ocean and laid in green grass, tucked flowers again and again in my hair. I wrote poems with rocks on rocks at the base of the sea, let the spirit of forlorn travellers and muscle gatherers and merwoman fierce goddesses speak through me.
I followed the Oregon Coast Trail with Beth through the trees, along the cliffs. I stood in tree pose with her the other tree, I screamed and laughed with her at the startled bike rider and the peculiar cries of Crow. I birthed myself naked and clean in the Cummins Creek deep in the forest at the bottom of my old secret trail while she sister soul she is was sacred witnesser for me.
I listened to music and let Nye Beach run its rivulets of weird passion love at Mundo all through me and warmed at the love between Beth and her husband Ben.
I drove to Florence because the ache was so strong.
I stopped passed the Oregon House to listen to the crashing and the wind and let my heart beat. I stopped at Heceta Head. I stopped at the top of a dune in Florence, I fell in love with the again present sun.
I giggled at the way the yellow turned white shine dipped again and again beneath the surface of the ocean in hydroreflectionrainbowshine tripping and spinning on itself in mindless perfect glee. I fell in love with me again, again, again, in Florence on my last solo date. Eating seafood enchiladas with dungeness, a new book, and sheer crazy deliriousness of melty chocolate cake.
I laughed my ass of with Jill Brewer Bard. I laughed my face off with Jill Brewer Bard and Gretchen. I laughed with those ladies till our faces were red and lined and scrunched like fists our stomachs contorted our eyes wet and mouths dry. I laughed and part of it at least was so I would not cry.
I drove the curvey Alsea Highway with Jill and we laughed again this time trying hard not to laugh so as to ward off the stomach curvy travel wurvy feeling of wanting to puke. I assured her how fabulous 30 is, I behaved with her as fabulous women ought to.
I fell in love, I fell in love, I ached and fell in love with her daughter Laurel and talked forever, like I did before, with her amazing husband John.
I took the train. I felt strong and raw with the holy train pain of goodbye.
And then, I rediscovered Seattle.
I remembered how easy it is to blend right in with family and stood back a minute to sweat how fucking cool cousin Kate really is. I laughed, and have not stopped, with her man Micah. I am touched and continue to be at how soft he is with her, how much his walking love and adoration is shown in the little things he does. I walked the high hills with them to look out on the sound and the city from upper Queen Anne's.
I walked forever on my own.
I met Larry at his favorite Turkish spot at Pike, met Katie and ate Piroshky's then shopped and stopped and talked and talked and had happy hour at Mia's at Cyclops on 1st and Wall in Belltown.
I experienced music, I experienced music on nonstop roll at Micah's techsavy hands. I experienced music at the Seatttle Music Project, I experienced music live and in the streets. I loved how friends love other friends on first meeting, I sung with Kate as she celebrated and surprised us all with celebration for Larry who turned 33. I smiled and couldnt stop at our Friday night dinner party with Annie and Larry and gin rummy and dancing and grilling and then, late night heart sobs and truth and hugs.
I caffeinated I caffeinated I caffeinated and all the important caffeinated talks. I am, I was, I continue to be floored at how magnificent Kate is, at how funny and smart and alive Micah, at how good us three flow together. Knowing that chossing something to do for the day happens way funner when you then just fold it in to how you're being. I love and love and love and miss already my amazing cousin and friend.
I celebrated Solstice in Freemont naked bike riders and festivals and music and carny light from inside dancing in the street DIY all over the place and food that drips down your arms and wildness and permission, cuz even tho it doesnt feel it, summer is here.
And I anticipate what's next now, after Ballard today and Larry taking me to SeaTac tomorrow. I love and have, in hitting fully and completely the Karmic Reset Button, wiped clean and found even deeper acceptance and love of myself. I look forward to floating in Mama Atlantic and smiling and not doing but wholly being in the East Coast OC sun.
Happy SUmmer.
Kate, to Micah:
-God, I can't believe it's June 20th it feels like November.
-I'm sorry I'm sorry I bring you all the way over here and it's fall. Altho fall is told to be your favorite season I guess it's not fun without a summer first...
(really, it's hella crazy good fun)
~~
What we are listening to, compliment of Garrison this morning:
Jessica Lea Mayfield
The big creased and soft along the fold-seems paper kind. My music was tunneled, country or rock and roll. I smiled alot, the whole time, whether sun and big grey clouds or blue skies or Januaryrain.
I'd get a big meal a day, eat off the leftovers, crackers, water and fruit.
And coffee.
I drank coffee with my favorite people for hours in the morning. I tripped live and large along with them through the ensuing big caffeinated conversations. Paul, Beth, Gretchen, Jill.
I made unwitting offering to the Breitenbush, she took offering from me, sitting under the diamondbacked sky tucked around Paul and I on the rickety wood bridge in the cold, black silhouette of Devils Peak measuring our breathing and blocking out the ahead of us view of the stars. The river took bittersweet chocolate from me it fell right out of my pocket and between the boards in to the hard rushing waters of the river below, and the next day on a long hike she gave back her bittersweet gifts. She hushed us to her side, she sat us down. Then unwitting again I cried in Paul's arms, I let the past go, I dunked my head in baptism in the South fork of her before she joined the North and ran hard and high down past the spiral pools and cabins of the resident side.
I wandered in the all green forest, I sung songs of thanks and then stumbled on the fairee vortex as gold and rainbos spiraled out and around us past the veil of my common eyes.
I walked in the rain. I walked in the rain and slept deep half dreams tucked in the woods under down covers and the breath of good friend.
I ran out of gas for the first time. I came off I-5 on to the exit ramp giving a blogofriend a lift to a stop midway to Portland. I came down off my otherworldmountainhigh to the soaked fumes of petro permanent on my hands.
I soaked in Beth's bath and luxuriated with her on her couch in our comfies, doing nothing but old 90's movies on Netflix on demand while the rain made songs and laughter and loong long stories on her roof sliding down.
I kissed endangered white wolves, I got kissed and shmooped by them. I listened to them howl. I melted in my heart a little to watch the wise woman most true to me in her element, dancing and happy in the almost wild with the wolves she so loves.
I looked at pictures of Gretchen from the 70's and 80's, listened to so many stories of youth and mess-ups, of passion and memories and friends, of family and lessons passed. I went to Mill Street where I used to always go, smelled the lowtide mudflats left behind while the Alsea River retreated out to the sea. I had breakfast with Mandy and Gretchen and Jeanette on the corner in Waldport of 101 and high green trees.
I packed my camelback with poetry I found in used bookstores along the road, I packed it with journals and my camera and fruit and went out on the 804 in Yachats and laid my body across hot rocks and drenched myself in sun. I listened to the ocean and laid in green grass, tucked flowers again and again in my hair. I wrote poems with rocks on rocks at the base of the sea, let the spirit of forlorn travellers and muscle gatherers and merwoman fierce goddesses speak through me.
I followed the Oregon Coast Trail with Beth through the trees, along the cliffs. I stood in tree pose with her the other tree, I screamed and laughed with her at the startled bike rider and the peculiar cries of Crow. I birthed myself naked and clean in the Cummins Creek deep in the forest at the bottom of my old secret trail while she sister soul she is was sacred witnesser for me.
I listened to music and let Nye Beach run its rivulets of weird passion love at Mundo all through me and warmed at the love between Beth and her husband Ben.
I drove to Florence because the ache was so strong.
I stopped passed the Oregon House to listen to the crashing and the wind and let my heart beat. I stopped at Heceta Head. I stopped at the top of a dune in Florence, I fell in love with the again present sun.
I giggled at the way the yellow turned white shine dipped again and again beneath the surface of the ocean in hydroreflectionrainbowshine tripping and spinning on itself in mindless perfect glee. I fell in love with me again, again, again, in Florence on my last solo date. Eating seafood enchiladas with dungeness, a new book, and sheer crazy deliriousness of melty chocolate cake.
I laughed my ass of with Jill Brewer Bard. I laughed my face off with Jill Brewer Bard and Gretchen. I laughed with those ladies till our faces were red and lined and scrunched like fists our stomachs contorted our eyes wet and mouths dry. I laughed and part of it at least was so I would not cry.
I drove the curvey Alsea Highway with Jill and we laughed again this time trying hard not to laugh so as to ward off the stomach curvy travel wurvy feeling of wanting to puke. I assured her how fabulous 30 is, I behaved with her as fabulous women ought to.
I fell in love, I fell in love, I ached and fell in love with her daughter Laurel and talked forever, like I did before, with her amazing husband John.
I took the train. I felt strong and raw with the holy train pain of goodbye.
And then, I rediscovered Seattle.
I remembered how easy it is to blend right in with family and stood back a minute to sweat how fucking cool cousin Kate really is. I laughed, and have not stopped, with her man Micah. I am touched and continue to be at how soft he is with her, how much his walking love and adoration is shown in the little things he does. I walked the high hills with them to look out on the sound and the city from upper Queen Anne's.
I walked forever on my own.
I met Larry at his favorite Turkish spot at Pike, met Katie and ate Piroshky's then shopped and stopped and talked and talked and had happy hour at Mia's at Cyclops on 1st and Wall in Belltown.
I experienced music, I experienced music on nonstop roll at Micah's techsavy hands. I experienced music at the Seatttle Music Project, I experienced music live and in the streets. I loved how friends love other friends on first meeting, I sung with Kate as she celebrated and surprised us all with celebration for Larry who turned 33. I smiled and couldnt stop at our Friday night dinner party with Annie and Larry and gin rummy and dancing and grilling and then, late night heart sobs and truth and hugs.
I caffeinated I caffeinated I caffeinated and all the important caffeinated talks. I am, I was, I continue to be floored at how magnificent Kate is, at how funny and smart and alive Micah, at how good us three flow together. Knowing that chossing something to do for the day happens way funner when you then just fold it in to how you're being. I love and love and love and miss already my amazing cousin and friend.
I celebrated Solstice in Freemont naked bike riders and festivals and music and carny light from inside dancing in the street DIY all over the place and food that drips down your arms and wildness and permission, cuz even tho it doesnt feel it, summer is here.
And I anticipate what's next now, after Ballard today and Larry taking me to SeaTac tomorrow. I love and have, in hitting fully and completely the Karmic Reset Button, wiped clean and found even deeper acceptance and love of myself. I look forward to floating in Mama Atlantic and smiling and not doing but wholly being in the East Coast OC sun.
Happy SUmmer.
Kate, to Micah:
-God, I can't believe it's June 20th it feels like November.
-I'm sorry I'm sorry I bring you all the way over here and it's fall. Altho fall is told to be your favorite season I guess it's not fun without a summer first...
(really, it's hella crazy good fun)
~~
What we are listening to, compliment of Garrison this morning:
Jessica Lea Mayfield
June 17, 2010
Seattle
This trip has been all about getting exactly what I need.
Which the best part of getting exactly what you need is equal part surprise and sensory relief. The serendipity of being open to and trusting in new experience is satiation, and the exchange is the light way satisfaction wears on the fulfilled soul.
This morning I got the insomnia second night in a row, laying here on cousin Kate's $20 second hand couch in her retro Goodwill house which is really a second floor apartment in Lower Queen Anne's. Same insomnia that got me the night before at Jill Bard's in Beaverton outside Portland. Summer Solstice power. And me whose soul normally is dependant on quiet time to vision and ebb and flow with Nature and her tides has instead just been living it out in my daily adventures in the Pac Northwest. And how powerful that trust and serendipity has been. But still it didn't stop my soul from wanting depth of inner vision under this fluxing power of the night and the sun. When I woke Tuesday morning in Gretchen's cottage last day on the Oregon Coast Jill in bed next to me her having driven down to spend a child-free day with an old girlfriend and the sun and the sea, us having spent a full day in Newport laughing til we couldn't speak, I slid open the slider to hear the ocean whir one last time and had to thrust myself in to the day: Hello Friend! My heart seized, it felt like how it did when I was a kid then a teenager and we would leave Ocean Pines at the end of the summer. It felt like the tide washing out, like retreat, an achy flush of being aware and sentimental and powerless to anything but the emotional movement inside.
I did not want to leave. There was no denying it~I had no desire to leave the Oregon Coast this week because it meant soon I would have to go home. And comparatively speaking, the life that I left behind me felt stale to how I've been living. I rationalized like I always do that my family is back east, how blessed I am to have them, that my good friends are on the coast that I call home. But in all, there it was, the tide of me fast rushing...the spirit place of ribbony mountain energy on my skin, of crashing Pacific on rocks like castles, of the poetry in the wind. Of the Oregon peace and happiness of home that made my heart cartwheel again and again.
I boarded the train for Seattle yesterday with a resignation that I had to fish for, and then purposefully choose to maintain. Seattle in my head meant that my trip was almost over. Once I got settled in the train station and Jill left I fidgeted around: wound up looking on Facebook, which after going back to Breitenbush and living so fully rounded and enlivened up in the green green woods and next to the river with Paul in his tent last week, I had zero desire for Internet or phone connectedness and so cut it out after that. Mandy and Sean had each posted sentiments of love and missing me yesterday tho, and it made me yearn, and the yearn made me trust in the path before me that I still cant see. And so with that I was carted along over the Willamette into Washington, and then along the waterways the train soft-running its currents through me in a gentle lulling shhhhhhh the whole trip long. I got to Union Station which little to my knowledge is across the street from Pioneer Square and memories flooded me completely and in my consciousness, just on the tip of my head it was 2004 again when I followed Larry around the city on daily walkabouts to eat at alleyway ethnic counter tops and peruse used bookstores and take pictures in the late light that always comes out over Puget Sound. And I was filled, instantly and quite entirely, with glee to be here, to be in Seattle again.
The cabbie took me to cousin Kate's and instantly I realized how good a midwife she'd be for me in this final being born stage I'm in, this birthing at the Solstice tide from who I've been to who I'm now meant to be and become. She herself being the perfect blend of classic values that I ascribe to the sacred tribe of Poet Rebel Madwoman and Muse's that I myself am most connected to as one and have reconnected to in the most important way on this trip of all things eternal and authentic and most true, and of future techy cutting edge youthfullness that one only finds in the city. They, for example, have not one piece of furniture that is younger than 1980, but also dont have TV but instead a projector set up through Micah's I-Pad and I-phone that stores programs and apps on this thing called Boxee that can like, turn your blog in to a TV show and wild stuff like that....Just the perfect blend of inner illustriousness classic edge and modernity to assimilate me in to all things yet and meant to be....
Anyhow I gotta go now, I have a walkabout in front of me which will culminate in meeting up with Larry at Pike Market at 12:30 and we haven't seen one another since his wedding in 2007.
Then I'll meet Kate and we'll walk and explore the day away.
Hell to the fucking yea.
~~
What I am listening to, my as of this morning favorite, compliments of Micah's Musical Maniacal Genius Craftmanship Colosseumass: Born Roughians
Which the best part of getting exactly what you need is equal part surprise and sensory relief. The serendipity of being open to and trusting in new experience is satiation, and the exchange is the light way satisfaction wears on the fulfilled soul.
This morning I got the insomnia second night in a row, laying here on cousin Kate's $20 second hand couch in her retro Goodwill house which is really a second floor apartment in Lower Queen Anne's. Same insomnia that got me the night before at Jill Bard's in Beaverton outside Portland. Summer Solstice power. And me whose soul normally is dependant on quiet time to vision and ebb and flow with Nature and her tides has instead just been living it out in my daily adventures in the Pac Northwest. And how powerful that trust and serendipity has been. But still it didn't stop my soul from wanting depth of inner vision under this fluxing power of the night and the sun. When I woke Tuesday morning in Gretchen's cottage last day on the Oregon Coast Jill in bed next to me her having driven down to spend a child-free day with an old girlfriend and the sun and the sea, us having spent a full day in Newport laughing til we couldn't speak, I slid open the slider to hear the ocean whir one last time and had to thrust myself in to the day: Hello Friend! My heart seized, it felt like how it did when I was a kid then a teenager and we would leave Ocean Pines at the end of the summer. It felt like the tide washing out, like retreat, an achy flush of being aware and sentimental and powerless to anything but the emotional movement inside.
I did not want to leave. There was no denying it~I had no desire to leave the Oregon Coast this week because it meant soon I would have to go home. And comparatively speaking, the life that I left behind me felt stale to how I've been living. I rationalized like I always do that my family is back east, how blessed I am to have them, that my good friends are on the coast that I call home. But in all, there it was, the tide of me fast rushing...the spirit place of ribbony mountain energy on my skin, of crashing Pacific on rocks like castles, of the poetry in the wind. Of the Oregon peace and happiness of home that made my heart cartwheel again and again.
I boarded the train for Seattle yesterday with a resignation that I had to fish for, and then purposefully choose to maintain. Seattle in my head meant that my trip was almost over. Once I got settled in the train station and Jill left I fidgeted around: wound up looking on Facebook, which after going back to Breitenbush and living so fully rounded and enlivened up in the green green woods and next to the river with Paul in his tent last week, I had zero desire for Internet or phone connectedness and so cut it out after that. Mandy and Sean had each posted sentiments of love and missing me yesterday tho, and it made me yearn, and the yearn made me trust in the path before me that I still cant see. And so with that I was carted along over the Willamette into Washington, and then along the waterways the train soft-running its currents through me in a gentle lulling shhhhhhh the whole trip long. I got to Union Station which little to my knowledge is across the street from Pioneer Square and memories flooded me completely and in my consciousness, just on the tip of my head it was 2004 again when I followed Larry around the city on daily walkabouts to eat at alleyway ethnic counter tops and peruse used bookstores and take pictures in the late light that always comes out over Puget Sound. And I was filled, instantly and quite entirely, with glee to be here, to be in Seattle again.
The cabbie took me to cousin Kate's and instantly I realized how good a midwife she'd be for me in this final being born stage I'm in, this birthing at the Solstice tide from who I've been to who I'm now meant to be and become. She herself being the perfect blend of classic values that I ascribe to the sacred tribe of Poet Rebel Madwoman and Muse's that I myself am most connected to as one and have reconnected to in the most important way on this trip of all things eternal and authentic and most true, and of future techy cutting edge youthfullness that one only finds in the city. They, for example, have not one piece of furniture that is younger than 1980, but also dont have TV but instead a projector set up through Micah's I-Pad and I-phone that stores programs and apps on this thing called Boxee that can like, turn your blog in to a TV show and wild stuff like that....Just the perfect blend of inner illustriousness classic edge and modernity to assimilate me in to all things yet and meant to be....
Anyhow I gotta go now, I have a walkabout in front of me which will culminate in meeting up with Larry at Pike Market at 12:30 and we haven't seen one another since his wedding in 2007.
Then I'll meet Kate and we'll walk and explore the day away.
Hell to the fucking yea.
~~
What I am listening to, my as of this morning favorite, compliments of Micah's Musical Maniacal Genius Craftmanship Colosseumass: Born Roughians
June 6, 2010
Date Weekend with Me, Ashland
Hey goodlookin, how bout a date weekend with me?
Sounds awesome!
downtown, Ashland I have this ring that Katie surprised me with for my birthday. It is fabulous, strong, gorgeous. I. Love. It. It came from this store we were literally gaga over called Laila Rose, I got woozy and she had to lead me by my elbow out in to the mall. It was nothing but glorious sparkly girrrlie wear all over the place. They played vintage Madonna. They had bright pink knee-high rain boots and matching head-wraps. And the store was sparkle color-coded. Pinks, purples, yellows, light blue. Sections of ribbons and long dangling crystal earrings all the prevailing shade of that part of the store. Hand-painted bags, elbow-length ruffled gloves.The theme of turning 33 this year was The Jesus Year, or better in my friend Paul's words: the year of magical thinking. Truly, I believe I've lived ten lives already, and it's only been 2 months.
Ashland has been unreal. I followed a yearning to pay in advance for three nights here, thinking how great it would be to wake up and not have to go anywhere if I didn't feel like it. What I only sort of anticipated was how great it would be to just wake up, roll over, and decide for the rest of the day to stay in bed...until my evening date at the Shakespeare Festival. At about 3 or so that first day, laying here, writing, reading, watching tv, eating take-out, somewhere in between all of that it occurred to me: I put my resignation in the week before my birthday and then began the planning stages of ending that part of my life. Now I knew all of that as I walked through it, understood even as I was going through the motions that not only was I resigning from Chesapeake College, but too I was closing a chapter that for all basic summation began in 1998 when I moved to Chestertown, on the eastern shore, to go to school. 12 years, in other words, of living on the midshore was coming to an end. Age 21 to 33. 12 years of growing up.
I spent literally two months tying up those loose ends. Finishing what was obligatory at the job and packing. And in all, recognizing in slow pieces, as I recollected and reviewed it all, the woman I have become. I got sober in Chestertown, embraced my intelligence, accepted acadamia even as I stalwartly fought institution, I got a degree, then a profession. I fell in love. I started to grow up, and I started to grow away from myself. I fell out of love. I had to challenge myself to be a big girl and pull up my big girl pants. I moved out on my own. I got my heart broke. I became an adult. I learned that being an adult means being yourself, and learned that really learning to be true to you is a one day at a time loving and nurturing type of thing. A literal deeper and deeper experience of surrender to me, of saying yes to me by accepting how I am feeling and what I need each and every day. It was a hell of a lot to review in two months, and until Saturday, I literally did not have a single day off within that process.
So that yesterday, when I did finally just sit, propped against the pillows writing, reading, sighing, listening, breathing, easing in to me; it was just so simple, and so, so buoyantly sweet. The evening got here and I took my time showering and getting dressed, I listened to funk hop on my Shuga station on Pandora and danced slowly and smilingly all around this little suite, and decorated myself, and celebrated me. I am in Oregon, where I lived for a year with Brandon after we lived out of a truck in the National Forests all over the US for five months. I am here, on the road, on my own. I got seated in the front row of the outdoor theatre for Henry IV within two minutes of curtain. Let me say that again. The theatre, from the outside, looks like a normal theatre, but it has no roof: the ceiling is the sky. Can you even imagine the smile on my face when I discovered this? It was like 70 degrees out 8:30 pm and I could feel the breath coming off the top of the green mountains all around us. The riverwater has lithium in it here. I could here it sing. The sigh in my chest, as I settled in, I believe may have been the most contended moment of my life. I did it!!!!!!
Today I woke up late, called Beth, received a call from Amy. The three of us have been trying to talk since Wednesday. We talked about different things, we talked about the same things. Becoming women. Being ourselves, striving for authenticity, for integrity in this. We talked about sisterhood. They are both married, they are both mom's. I admitted to them each my fear, the one I am allowing to pass away now, that I couldn't be both. That somehow it wasn't possible to be true to myself, to be an independent woman and be in love. I understand now that all I ever really wanted was the faith, and the experience to back it up, of being me. It wasn't about being independant so much as just being given the time, and the room, to grow in to and get to know the true me inside. Sober me, out of school me, me with out man and seperate from job and identity shared with friends. And while I needed to own my Independence to do that, it's not something that I could ever have done alone. Being me is something I have the courage for, and have explored in powerful, feminine ways that I never gave myself permission for before. And as result I will feel the familiarity of knowing how to maintain, in any circumstance, from now on, even if I lose my grasp here and there. But I am redefining now just what "independant" means, maybe getting used to new ideas of it... I was hesitant to say all this until now, I guess because of that one fear of not being able to maintain this way of being and also being able to eventually fall in love again: of having the capacity for both. Being afraid was blocking my acknowledgment of the reality of how simple and peaceful a place I am in today, made it seem to good to be true. But really, there's nothing to have to do or be or try to figure out... I dont even know when or where or how exactly it happened... I am on the verge of my whole life, of anything I want to do when I get back home and recognizing that gave me clear, and almost staggering perspective, on where I just came from...I lived on my own in retreat out in nature for a full year, I lived on my own in a sweet apartment just my size where I could walk to work or to town any time of the day or night. I helped a small handfull of people undertake and innovate a large fantastic program for the community college. I became a strong woman on my own, and the relationships with the other strong women in my life is the number one thing I have likewise grown. I am so, so proud.
I've long said that Sex and the City, the series and subsequent movies, gave permission to women beyond 30 to be more than what convention painted for them. More than just soccer moms or career women or harried modernists stretched between both. That Sex and the City gave value back to the grrrly parts we love the most, and did so specifically by emphasizing our sex. Our sex, as gender~us as women among women and planting that in Western consciousness as a real and valued and tender and important experience~and us as sexual beings, too. Sensuous beings. Not body sex, that colt-like perky curvy thing of giggles and high shrill of the late teens and early twenties, but intuitive, full-bodied, embodied sexuality, alive from within. Sex and the City gave women in common society permission for both. Today I saw a 2 o'clock matinee performance of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and wept. I mean wept. For people, for women and for men, for how twisted we are, how imperfect. Then I went out in the sun and glistened, and remembered, I have this moment, and I am, if I so choose, alive in it. I delighted in my power ring from Katie, one of my fabulous sister and best friends. I meandered around Ahsland, bought myself a gorgeous power necklace and laughed aloud when the woman read to me what kyanite the stone in it was, I smiled a lot at the sun and green mountains, treated myself to a ridiculously delicious dinner at an Italian restaurant reading a new book, then had an evening date with me, my gorgeous aliveness, and Carrie Bradshaw and the girls.
I am here, on my own, just with me~glorious me!!~and loving each and every moment of it!!! It isn't too good to be true at all, it's better than that!
What does a girl do when she gets to the top of Crater Lake? Well that's easy, she goes back down again. What does a girl do when she embraces herself, and then finds herself fabulously in love with the her that she embraced? Well that's easy, she just keeps showing up....No matter where she is, where she goes, no matter what happens. There she still is, in love. And with a cast of fabulous women all around, reflecting that new found love back at her again again and again from every glowing, precious direction. Wow, how cool is this? Who am I to doubt that whatever coming next could be anything less than totally, and wholly, blessed.
Dear Friends
Ben's Farm on the Chester, Fall Equinox 2009Maybe the most important thing we might ever say about a person is I loved her, she was my friend.
Right now, a whole lot of hearts of people that I have at various times held extremely dear are gathering to say goodbye to our friend. The heart lives forever, and so too the experiences there, as part of the living breathing whole. If we let it. O god thank god I am open again, and letting it.
I am so, so grateful right now for my life, for my experiences, for my friends.
I am with you all in spirit, in heart, and in love.
I Love You, Molly
The funniest thing I ever heard about Molly happened while I was in Colorado, visiting our mutual friend Mika. Mika was living in Boulder, it’d been two years since she’d been back east with any the crew from college, and longer still since she’d really lived the life of a college student, partying on Kent Street having a good time. So it was natural that seeing Mika in Colorado in 2005 would make her eager for news of old friends and the going-ons in Chestertown. We got down to telling stories, which of course led to more stories, which eventually led to stories from college days. Mika told this story of getting up one morning after a late night on Kent Street to come out in the hall and discover that Molly had drug a tree, a whole entire uprooted tree, in to the house. Molly was no where to be seen, but the tree, dirt-covered roots and wild branches and green leaves, was propped there, as if the most normal thing ever, against a wall. To this day when I think of Molly, I remember that story and I laugh out loud.
I love you Molly. I love you for having a spirit alive enough to want to live with that tree. I love you for saying why not, when the rest of us so often merely shrug our shoulders and ask why?
I love you for the vintage wrap-around skirt you had on the first day we met, I love you because it only cost you two dollars at the Nearly New. I love you for the Bob Dylan songs you had, behind the counter with me my first day at Play It Again Sam’s. I love you for how blue your eyes are, how they danced with poetry when we exchanged names back and forth of our favorite Dylan songs.
I love you for getting naked, pasty white Maine skin, first. Showing Brandon and me with a simple why not how crazy and fun it would be swimming in that freezing cold stream, 50 degree grey August day on the Maine coast wind and rain, I love you because you said why not, raced to get your clothes off first, and jumped in. I love you for putting sea weed on your head and being a fish goddess mermaid, I love you for taking me to the tidepools, for the wonder and childlike joy that was your grace, I love you for the word Perriwinkle, for teaching me the names of barnacles and snails, for showing me what bravery looks like out on the edge of the sea. I love you for making words like bivalve, whorl, cone, and mollusk come alive, and for infusing them with proof that youth is a timeless quality in any heart.
I love you Molly. I love you for laying in the grass at Truslow Road and painting on wood scraps with me. I love you for the books you’d show up with, the print outs of poems and essays, the whole file you gave me on Outsider and Folk art, for giving me literacy around this. For the passion and love you brought to it, to art of the people how you were contagious with it, how you birthed it deep in me. I love you for your poetry, for being the only one, the one woman in the crowd, to stand strong and speak poems back to me. For believing that this was how we could and would save ourselves. I love you for being that strong, for heeding to the wild impulse, for loving the rebel moon, for following the crazy night-lit sky. I love you for dancing at midnight and wanting more wine. I love you for believing in the power of art, for making this the example of your life. For always going back again, in and in again, to create to create to create and give vision or wild reason to live and to keep creating, for giving light with your each and every birth. I love you for the suffering that you put on the page or in color, I love you for the permission it gave me, the permission for poetry and the permission for pain, the powerful permission to say yes to life and to be.
I love you for the afternoon in May on Truslow Road, on the phone, when I told you the things I thought you needed to stop doing in your life, when I told you I thought you should change. I love you because of what you told me. No you said, no I’m not interested, I will never change, and it’s my life. I love you Molly for being so true.
I love you O Molly, O Sacred Scary Sea Goddess Molly, O Fearless Sailwoman Molly with the Green Mermaid Hair and Snail-eyes of Perrywinkle Blue. I love you Molly, O Ecstatic Witnesser of the Whole White Pure Moon. I love you Molly, Soulsiseter Poet, Rebel Artist Painter, Folk Singer Wildhearted Grrrl and Friend. I love you Molly, good Molly, bad Molly, sweet Molly, crazy Molly, precious Molly who was too alive for this world, you live now forever in my heart where all love ought to be, Molly in that place you will always be so, so true. Molly now you will never end…..
June 5, 2010
Ashland, Oregon
In memory of a dear friend
June 4, 2010
I followed the sea to the river all the way to the snow
Sunset over the valley, Ashland.
Out back of my little suite.
Coming down the mountain, Crater Lake.
Crater Lake
North Umpqua River
Headwaters of the Umpqua
Winchester Bay, where the Umpqua empties
Winchester Bay
Oregon Dunes Monument
This is Banana Dog, he is my travel companion. Follows his adventures here
travelling down coast, between Yachats and Florence
I am way way south in Oregon, about 80 miles from California in a place called Ashland.
I love Ashland. It's like a bigger, happier Easton. And surrounded by green mountains. And a really big sky. And air that I am certain looks like rainbows.
I got here today and spent too much money on a little suite outside of town for the whole weekend. Dinner tonight was with a totally indulgent novel and a fine bartender who flirted with me just enough but not too much, in a dark corner at a high bartable with mosaic art and some latin influenced tapas. Little girls with painted faces dined across from me and kept getting giggled at or shussshed by their ma's. The air was so fresh and full it felt like it could bounce and the sky was orange and seriously, hot pink, when I left and I couldn't stop smiling. On grinbeam alone I am sure I was gliding, I glided along to downtown, to the river walk, to the park. I glided in to the chocolate shop. It was getting dark. I looked East Coast. I got several compliments on my bag. I bought a single piece of homemade dark chocolate with peanut butter and eating it took like three hours. Everyone kept smiling at each other. Even the punk rock kids, the blackeyeliner and metal faces, the dready hippies on the street. Especially the smiley little families everywhere. I love the houses, the cottages, all over the sidestreets of downtown. The flowers and little twinkling white lights. Ahhhhh god I am blissful, this reminds me of California.
Earlier today I was actually on the top west rim of Crater Lake. In the Umpqua National Forest, after following the Umpqua River in from the coast since Thursday morning. By the time I got up to about 4500 feet, about an hour and half from the top, there was snow all over the ground. I was so happy I think I might have been delirious.
It's weird. My friend died Tuesday night, and the poetry light's been crazy on inside me ever since. What's weird is that I woke up in Winchester Bay, at the headwaters of the Umpqua, on Thursday morning after 36 hours of on and off vigil for her and therefor crazy open consciousness, or at least a well-lit opening to the other side, and I went down to the harbour because like Sam said more than once she was a sailor, our friend, so it seemed appropriate, and I cried. And cried and cried, then wandered in to the dunes through the knobby sea pines and down to the rock slats built up against the coast for the fisherman to make safe passing through the harbor. I had handfulls of flowers and ribbons and a little boat I made out of a random piece of driftwood that I wrote prayers and poems all over in black sharpie. I put her candle on it and added an empty Pabst Blue Ribbon cap then scrambled down to the lowest rock I could balance on with the scratchy muscles bracing me and then me and her had our little goodbye. The rest of the tribe is gathering at Ben's on Sunday to say goodbye I get the feeling it's going to be pretty huge, this is where I used to go regularly, Ben's with the old crew, this is when I was in Chestertown. And even though I've been out of that crew for over a year now there was no question about it in spirit we are all together, I am with them and they are all with her. It's all a little surreal and yet just part of the experience of being out here. I finished crying and goodbying then went up to where the harbour meets the ocean and just breathed and took a ton of pictures of the driftwood and the sand. Then I got in the car which is actually an old chevy pickup truck with classic Oregon Coast rust, and decided I had to see where the water that fed the bay that surged to the harbour and out to the sea, where it all began.
So I headed east. Up the Umpqua, and it started to rain. I drove all day, but stopped alot to talk to the earth or the trees or the river or the rain. Which I guess is one of the main ways I pray. Outside Roseburg it was like 5ish, I stopped at a brandname hotel and got her down 25 off the original price but then something in me casted out just slightly, so I said no thanks and on I went. I decided I'd take the mountain road east out of Roseburg then south towards Crater Lake, mostly because I wanted to keep following the Umpqua, we had a special thing going now. And the river led me to the sweetest motel, the Dogwood, in a place I am sure without a zipcode called Idleyld Park I am sure it was the river who told me to go. I'd just been singing and talking to her and then it was like she waved the gold air inside me after I drove by and so without thinking at all I turned right around and they had one room left and it was for me. A log cabin with kitchen and the best little well-lit table where I could, and did and did, write...
Today I started out again next to her, the North Umpqua, looking forward to a good long hike. There were two stops with hotsprings to hike in to along the way, and at least one with pictographs from anasazi and several paths with Old Growth. But the rain fell and fell so much it was hard to tell the sky from the air. So I changed my plans and settled for sure on Crater Lake, and by the time the elevation and the truck met high enough so that there was snow on the ground, the sun came out, too, and the sky went blue. I had no idea, NONE, that I would be in high mountain land today surrounded by snow. It made me so, so happy.
And now I am here. In all I imagine I covered at least 200 miles today, maybe more, and mostly on high mountain roads. The Winema Forest, The Umpqua, The Rogue, The Klamath. This little pickup Gretchen lent me runs like a dream. It's a manual, he grumbles and groans and spouts a lot but then really gets going and loves to go. I dont listen to music, most of the time, except for the tunneled classic and hair rock stations, or country which is my guilty indulgence, so popular out here. It's a...Nice Day for a...White Weddin....Yea rock out rock out scratchy tunneled pick up truck mountain rock!
This is the best thing I've ever done for myself. Life is good. I am blessed. Can you imagine, I dont have a fucking clue what I'm doing with my life when I get back home! He he it makes me giddy to think about it, if it is anything near like the journey I'm having so far I say bring it on.... <>
June 2, 2010
For Sam, and Ben. At Witching Hour, Winchester Bay, Oregon.
It was 11:37 west coast time when I knew it was soon time to burn the candle again. This is modern ritual and I do it so it lasts 7 days, the burning of the white candle that one may pass the bardo. But this is a new age, we are creating new myths, our tribe is our tribe and the new rituals matter only when so moved by one's own individual moment: therin, or where-in of course, is one's own truth. Which is why for Molly, the secret code words of power aren't Tibetan at all but live in poems. Make them read poems. She was a poet, and a painter, that's how she goes. Purity reigns here, reigns free, in poetry. These are power words then that will source her home.
We are creating new myths, here? Read this every one of you and scared, superstitious, alight, trust-full, heart of grief whatever you are trust that the choices you make matter. Raise your power, realize it is love. Love more. Think of love like fire. Fire transmutes, turns wood in to ash. Ash feeds earth, grows life again. Fire is like love, love changes things. Think of love like it's fire. It's a pure and real thing. Raise your love inside you start with the feeling in your heart of your own beam. Direct it at love, direct it at her.
From the back end of my eyes where the second sight lives I saw movement several times about my motel room here, it started an hour or more ago but it was 11:37 when it stirred in my heart. It must be close to 12 I thought when I felt the clear stir, bc no matter what midnight is a special time. The best name I've ever heard for the consciousness shift at midnite is, yes, the witching hour.
Everything is sacred, and profane. This is life. This is life god damn it! It's all sacred, it's all shit, that's the funny irony. She lived this. May her life be exemplary of this. As such, I didn't want to pray yet, Steven Colbert was on and I paid good money for this shitshack motel. I paid extra for wifi and still am stealing it on slow low one bar, unsecured, anyway. But then the time was right, it got closer to 12, I lit the candle and fell right in to prayer and she was here, in and out in and out of this room, more than once. I asked the Archangel Michael to be near, but as I write this Gabriel's name almost came out and so now, too, in that the candle's still burning I will pray to draw him near, as well.
Blessed be sister and friend. From the love beam place of grace that is the smile on her face I lifted up this prayer, I asked that she guide me in love to the poem/s she most wanted. I read aloud, I read fast, I read these leaves in and to the open air:
...O that man might take this secret, of which the world is full even to its littlest things, more humbly to himself and bear it, endure it, more seriously and feel how terribly difficult it is, instead of taking it lightly. That he might be more reverent toward his fruitfulness...Therefor, dear sir, love your solitude and bear with sweet-sounding lamentation the suffering it causes you. For those who are near you are far, you say, and that shows it is beginning to grow wide about you. And when what is near you is far, then your distance is already among the stars and very large; rejoice in your growth, in which you naturally can take no one with you, and be kind to those who remain behind, and be sure and calm before then and do not torment them with your doubts and do not frighten them with your confidence or joy, which they could not understand. Seek yourself some sort of simple and loyal community with them...
from Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, Worpswede, near Bremen, July 16, 1903
I asked that she guide me, smiles and love, and this was my favorite, for ecstat and ecstat love and I could feel her, feel her! beaming and near:
Revolutionary Letter # 49 (read loud and fast, see her smiling, whirling round)
Free Julian Beck
Free Timothy Leary
Free seven million starving in Pakistan
Free all political prisoners
Free Angela Davis
Free Soledad brothers
Free Martin Sobel
Free Sacco & Vanzetti
Free Big Bill Hayward
Free Sitting Bull
Free Carzy Horse
Free all political prisoners
Free Billy the Kid
Free Jesse James
Free all political prisoners
Free Nathan Hale
Free Joan of Arc
Free Galileo & Bruno & Eckhart
Free Jesus Christ
Free Socrates
Free all political prisoners
Free all political prisoners
All prisoners are political prisoners
Every pot smoker a political prisoner
Every holdup man a political prisoner
Every forger a political prisoner
Every angry kid who smashed a window a political prisoner
Every whore, pimp, murderer, a political prisoner
Every pederast, dealer, drunk driver, burglar
poacher, striker, strike breaker, rapist
Polar bear at San Francisco zoo, political prisoner
Ancient wise turtle at Detroit Museum, political prisoner
Flamingos dying in Phoenix tourist park, political prisoners
Otters in Tucson Desert Museum, political prisoners
Elk in Wyoming grazing behind barbed wire, political prisoners
Prairie dogs poisoned in New Mexico, war casualties
(Mass grave of Wyoming gold eagles, a battlefield)
Every kid in school a political prisoner
Every lawyer in his cubicle a political prisoner
Every doctor brainwashed by AMA a political prisoner
Every housewife a political prisoner
Every teacher lying through sad teeth a political prisoner
Every indian on reservation a political prisoner
Ever black man a political prisoner
Every faggot hiding in bar a political prisoner
Every junkie shooting up in a john a political prisoner
Every woman a political prisoner
Every woman a political prisoner
You are political prisoner locked in tense body
You are political prisoner locked in stiff mind
You are political prisoner locked to your parents
You are political prisoner locker to you past
Free yourself
Free yourself
I am political prisoner locked in anger habit
I am political prisoner locked in greed habit
I am political prisoner locked in fear habit
I am political prisoner locked in dull senses
I am political prisoner locked in numb flesh
Free me
Free me
Help to free me
Free yourself
Help to free me
Free yourself
Help to free me
Free Barry Goldwater
Help to free me
Free Governor Wallace
Free President Nixon
Free J Edgar Hoover
Free them
Free yourself
Free them
Free yourself
Free yourself
Free them
Free yourself
Help to free me
Free us
DANCE
by Diane diPrima
Amen, amen amen. I hold you all in my arms, our arms are heart long, heart strong.
We are creating new myths, here? Read this every one of you and scared, superstitious, alight, trust-full, heart of grief whatever you are trust that the choices you make matter. Raise your power, realize it is love. Love more. Think of love like fire. Fire transmutes, turns wood in to ash. Ash feeds earth, grows life again. Fire is like love, love changes things. Think of love like it's fire. It's a pure and real thing. Raise your love inside you start with the feeling in your heart of your own beam. Direct it at love, direct it at her.
From the back end of my eyes where the second sight lives I saw movement several times about my motel room here, it started an hour or more ago but it was 11:37 when it stirred in my heart. It must be close to 12 I thought when I felt the clear stir, bc no matter what midnight is a special time. The best name I've ever heard for the consciousness shift at midnite is, yes, the witching hour.
Everything is sacred, and profane. This is life. This is life god damn it! It's all sacred, it's all shit, that's the funny irony. She lived this. May her life be exemplary of this. As such, I didn't want to pray yet, Steven Colbert was on and I paid good money for this shitshack motel. I paid extra for wifi and still am stealing it on slow low one bar, unsecured, anyway. But then the time was right, it got closer to 12, I lit the candle and fell right in to prayer and she was here, in and out in and out of this room, more than once. I asked the Archangel Michael to be near, but as I write this Gabriel's name almost came out and so now, too, in that the candle's still burning I will pray to draw him near, as well.
Blessed be sister and friend. From the love beam place of grace that is the smile on her face I lifted up this prayer, I asked that she guide me in love to the poem/s she most wanted. I read aloud, I read fast, I read these leaves in and to the open air:
...O that man might take this secret, of which the world is full even to its littlest things, more humbly to himself and bear it, endure it, more seriously and feel how terribly difficult it is, instead of taking it lightly. That he might be more reverent toward his fruitfulness...Therefor, dear sir, love your solitude and bear with sweet-sounding lamentation the suffering it causes you. For those who are near you are far, you say, and that shows it is beginning to grow wide about you. And when what is near you is far, then your distance is already among the stars and very large; rejoice in your growth, in which you naturally can take no one with you, and be kind to those who remain behind, and be sure and calm before then and do not torment them with your doubts and do not frighten them with your confidence or joy, which they could not understand. Seek yourself some sort of simple and loyal community with them...
from Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, Worpswede, near Bremen, July 16, 1903
I asked that she guide me, smiles and love, and this was my favorite, for ecstat and ecstat love and I could feel her, feel her! beaming and near:
Revolutionary Letter # 49 (read loud and fast, see her smiling, whirling round)
Free Julian Beck
Free Timothy Leary
Free seven million starving in Pakistan
Free all political prisoners
Free Angela Davis
Free Soledad brothers
Free Martin Sobel
Free Sacco & Vanzetti
Free Big Bill Hayward
Free Sitting Bull
Free Carzy Horse
Free all political prisoners
Free Billy the Kid
Free Jesse James
Free all political prisoners
Free Nathan Hale
Free Joan of Arc
Free Galileo & Bruno & Eckhart
Free Jesus Christ
Free Socrates
Free all political prisoners
Free all political prisoners
All prisoners are political prisoners
Every pot smoker a political prisoner
Every holdup man a political prisoner
Every forger a political prisoner
Every angry kid who smashed a window a political prisoner
Every whore, pimp, murderer, a political prisoner
Every pederast, dealer, drunk driver, burglar
poacher, striker, strike breaker, rapist
Polar bear at San Francisco zoo, political prisoner
Ancient wise turtle at Detroit Museum, political prisoner
Flamingos dying in Phoenix tourist park, political prisoners
Otters in Tucson Desert Museum, political prisoners
Elk in Wyoming grazing behind barbed wire, political prisoners
Prairie dogs poisoned in New Mexico, war casualties
(Mass grave of Wyoming gold eagles, a battlefield)
Every kid in school a political prisoner
Every lawyer in his cubicle a political prisoner
Every doctor brainwashed by AMA a political prisoner
Every housewife a political prisoner
Every teacher lying through sad teeth a political prisoner
Every indian on reservation a political prisoner
Ever black man a political prisoner
Every faggot hiding in bar a political prisoner
Every junkie shooting up in a john a political prisoner
Every woman a political prisoner
Every woman a political prisoner
You are political prisoner locked in tense body
You are political prisoner locked in stiff mind
You are political prisoner locked to your parents
You are political prisoner locker to you past
Free yourself
Free yourself
I am political prisoner locked in anger habit
I am political prisoner locked in greed habit
I am political prisoner locked in fear habit
I am political prisoner locked in dull senses
I am political prisoner locked in numb flesh
Free me
Free me
Help to free me
Free yourself
Help to free me
Free yourself
Help to free me
Free Barry Goldwater
Help to free me
Free Governor Wallace
Free President Nixon
Free J Edgar Hoover
Free them
Free yourself
Free them
Free yourself
Free yourself
Free them
Free yourself
Help to free me
Free us
DANCE
by Diane diPrima
Amen, amen amen. I hold you all in my arms, our arms are heart long, heart strong.
Prayer for Life, in the wind. Storms come, road trips. Come together, ppl. Dreams.
Mandee told Gretchen the storm would be here soon and would last for 36 hours, and it made me laugh and reminisce on how I used to describe Oregon Coast weather when I first left here and moved home to Maryland in 2005. Coast storms? We call them hurricanes back east...
It was steady the rain, all night. I took a long, long lavender and Epsom salt soak in Gretchen's tub reading til past midnight and the rain by then had already taken on a soothing rhythm, like someone was steady going over and over the roof with a giant rolling pin. Now, outside my window the only thing that cuts the rolling hum is the counter beat of splats from the gutter overflow, and the tweet of some soaking wet birds. I woke up to the heaviest dream, heavy in content but also like sludge in my muscles that's how deep the sleep was. Jamie my brother's fiance was sedated and in my care which felt odd and irresponsible to me, it was her wedding day, we were all running late, I didn't have my dress and felt awful, my brother was detached and sad, we all were wandering the desert in fancy clothes trying to get there on time. But the last thing, before the dream switched and varied between Amy and Rudy who kept morphing to Jasper and back, was this sense in the desert that no matter what happened between Sean and Jamie with the wedding it all was ok, and they knew it, because they had each other. I saw it underneath the blankness in their eyes, there was the seed of shared heart beam. I wanted that myself, and chose to serve them out of respect for it, instead... I opened up my eyes eventually, and looked at my cell phone expecting the time to be around 8, thinking that I'd slept late since the time difference has me up by 7 am. Instead, it was almost 10. Gretchen was in bed, awful sick with a stomach flu that came in the night, I checked my phone and got a message from Sam, and called right back because I know what news stands behind messages like that. And the news from the east coast was startling and sad. Funny how much can change in the night...
Now I am in bed again, it is almost 12, waiting on my laundry to finish. We called Mandee again and found out this isn't even the big storm, with all this rolling rain and occasional wind. So I will start down coast today before it gets here, take Gretchen's little pickup south. I wont camp, I cant in all this rain I dont have the gear, the constitution for it or the desire. Thankfully, as timing does, my state taxes came today so motels and cabins it will be. I am going driving with the sea. I am going road-tripping, for the first time in my life with no destination at all, and with the only passenger: me. When the time is right, I will go in to the mountains. Tell ppl to burn white candles for her, I texted Sam. Tell them to send prayers of healing and light, and burn white candles, that's what she needs to return to her source she is loose right now, wandering but not free. I'll find a mountain side somewhere, some lake or stream, make offerings for her of flight and peace and make offerings for the tribe back home. Death scatters, but is the door through which we each, and especially the ones left behind, must go through alone in order to make whole, too.
The rounds they come, the rounds the rounds they go. We are always in some part of our own round. We are always in some part of our own journey to from or returning home.
I will go now to the road with the passings that came to urge me on in the night.
Prayer for Molly with White Candles, in the wind
Writing of fire on the slab of jade,
the cleft in the rock, serpent-goddess and queen,
pillar of cloud, and fountain struck from stone,
the nest of eagles, the circle of the moon,
the seed of anise, mortal and smallest thorn
that has the power to give immortal pain,
shepherd of valleys underneath the sea
and guardian of the valley of the dead,
liana that hangs at the pitch of vertigo,
climber and bindweed and the venomous plant,
flower of resurrection and grape of life
lady of the flute and of the lightning-flash,
terrace of jasmine, and salt rubbed in the wound,
a branch of roses for the man shot down,
snowstorm in August, moon of harrowing,
the writing of the sea cut in basalt,
the writing of the wind upon the desert,
testament of the sun, pomegranate, wheat-ear,
a face of flames, face that is eaten away,
the adolescent and persecuted face
the years of fantasy and circular days
that open upon the same street, the same wall,
the moment flares up and they are all one face,
the procession of faces of this calling,
all of these names are unified in one name,
all of these faces are now a single face,
all centuries are now a single instant
and throughout the centuries of centuries
the path to the future shut by these two eyes,
there is nothing before me, but a moment
recovered tonight, standing against a dream....
excerpt, at random by the heartcandledlight, from Sun stone (Mexico City, 1957,) by Octavio Paz. Italics mine.
It was steady the rain, all night. I took a long, long lavender and Epsom salt soak in Gretchen's tub reading til past midnight and the rain by then had already taken on a soothing rhythm, like someone was steady going over and over the roof with a giant rolling pin. Now, outside my window the only thing that cuts the rolling hum is the counter beat of splats from the gutter overflow, and the tweet of some soaking wet birds. I woke up to the heaviest dream, heavy in content but also like sludge in my muscles that's how deep the sleep was. Jamie my brother's fiance was sedated and in my care which felt odd and irresponsible to me, it was her wedding day, we were all running late, I didn't have my dress and felt awful, my brother was detached and sad, we all were wandering the desert in fancy clothes trying to get there on time. But the last thing, before the dream switched and varied between Amy and Rudy who kept morphing to Jasper and back, was this sense in the desert that no matter what happened between Sean and Jamie with the wedding it all was ok, and they knew it, because they had each other. I saw it underneath the blankness in their eyes, there was the seed of shared heart beam. I wanted that myself, and chose to serve them out of respect for it, instead... I opened up my eyes eventually, and looked at my cell phone expecting the time to be around 8, thinking that I'd slept late since the time difference has me up by 7 am. Instead, it was almost 10. Gretchen was in bed, awful sick with a stomach flu that came in the night, I checked my phone and got a message from Sam, and called right back because I know what news stands behind messages like that. And the news from the east coast was startling and sad. Funny how much can change in the night...
Now I am in bed again, it is almost 12, waiting on my laundry to finish. We called Mandee again and found out this isn't even the big storm, with all this rolling rain and occasional wind. So I will start down coast today before it gets here, take Gretchen's little pickup south. I wont camp, I cant in all this rain I dont have the gear, the constitution for it or the desire. Thankfully, as timing does, my state taxes came today so motels and cabins it will be. I am going driving with the sea. I am going road-tripping, for the first time in my life with no destination at all, and with the only passenger: me. When the time is right, I will go in to the mountains. Tell ppl to burn white candles for her, I texted Sam. Tell them to send prayers of healing and light, and burn white candles, that's what she needs to return to her source she is loose right now, wandering but not free. I'll find a mountain side somewhere, some lake or stream, make offerings for her of flight and peace and make offerings for the tribe back home. Death scatters, but is the door through which we each, and especially the ones left behind, must go through alone in order to make whole, too.
The rounds they come, the rounds the rounds they go. We are always in some part of our own round. We are always in some part of our own journey to from or returning home.
I will go now to the road with the passings that came to urge me on in the night.
Prayer for Molly with White Candles, in the wind
Writing of fire on the slab of jade,
the cleft in the rock, serpent-goddess and queen,
pillar of cloud, and fountain struck from stone,
the nest of eagles, the circle of the moon,
the seed of anise, mortal and smallest thorn
that has the power to give immortal pain,
shepherd of valleys underneath the sea
and guardian of the valley of the dead,
liana that hangs at the pitch of vertigo,
climber and bindweed and the venomous plant,
flower of resurrection and grape of life
lady of the flute and of the lightning-flash,
terrace of jasmine, and salt rubbed in the wound,
a branch of roses for the man shot down,
snowstorm in August, moon of harrowing,
the writing of the sea cut in basalt,
the writing of the wind upon the desert,
testament of the sun, pomegranate, wheat-ear,
a face of flames, face that is eaten away,
the adolescent and persecuted face
the years of fantasy and circular days
that open upon the same street, the same wall,
the moment flares up and they are all one face,
the procession of faces of this calling,
all of these names are unified in one name,
all of these faces are now a single face,
all centuries are now a single instant
and throughout the centuries of centuries
the path to the future shut by these two eyes,
there is nothing before me, but a moment
recovered tonight, standing against a dream....
excerpt, at random by the heartcandledlight, from Sun stone (Mexico City, 1957,) by Octavio Paz. Italics mine.
June 1, 2010
Newport. NE 10th Street & Ocean, just north of Nye Beach
It is raining and it will persist for days, I had this pang of yolk inside me that had to come here and take a big eyefull, big as I can manage, of the grey mist and white-capped sea.
Beth's yoga practice is so strong since I last was here, I tell her this but it is hard for me to vocalize it because the tears are raised in my chest. I haven't had a practice since I left, that was five years ago, too long to go that unrooted. She guides us to set an intention in the beginning of class and I almost laugh out loud because it is so clearly aimed at me~whether or not she meant it, she did. She is my sister, we speak that way. She is dear friend.
She knows what I came here with, what she took me to the labryinth with, what came out the other side. We haven't talked much of it, she hasn't forced or asked. She knows it's him.
And that's what it is, the difference. How strong her practice is, you can tell in her manner in class. It's all different: it's all shakti, it's all us as womyn, as grace as our selves full fruiting in our 30's, secure in our root system, owning what we have to own, what I mean when I keep talking to her all high about my obsession with full womanly ass. How good it feels to be my own. It's Anusara for her and watching her radiate as she comes in to her own. It's believing in roots, and truth, in reconvening with my vision, the willingness she eases me towards of letting go and the best is yet to be for me. I feel so good, so strong when it is done. So strong, but like she says and teaches soft, and open to what I was holding inside.
She gets off at two so I go to stare at the sea and wait. Drops of rain are all over the windsheild, drops of rain hit my face through the open pane.
What do you feel like doing?
Nothing, I answered myself. Listening to the wind.
Call you later, I text her. Going to bed, I need rest.
Beth's yoga practice is so strong since I last was here, I tell her this but it is hard for me to vocalize it because the tears are raised in my chest. I haven't had a practice since I left, that was five years ago, too long to go that unrooted. She guides us to set an intention in the beginning of class and I almost laugh out loud because it is so clearly aimed at me~whether or not she meant it, she did. She is my sister, we speak that way. She is dear friend.
She knows what I came here with, what she took me to the labryinth with, what came out the other side. We haven't talked much of it, she hasn't forced or asked. She knows it's him.
And that's what it is, the difference. How strong her practice is, you can tell in her manner in class. It's all different: it's all shakti, it's all us as womyn, as grace as our selves full fruiting in our 30's, secure in our root system, owning what we have to own, what I mean when I keep talking to her all high about my obsession with full womanly ass. How good it feels to be my own. It's Anusara for her and watching her radiate as she comes in to her own. It's believing in roots, and truth, in reconvening with my vision, the willingness she eases me towards of letting go and the best is yet to be for me. I feel so good, so strong when it is done. So strong, but like she says and teaches soft, and open to what I was holding inside.
She gets off at two so I go to stare at the sea and wait. Drops of rain are all over the windsheild, drops of rain hit my face through the open pane.
What do you feel like doing?
Nothing, I answered myself. Listening to the wind.
Call you later, I text her. Going to bed, I need rest.
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