Who needs to go places

There's an enormous amount on my mind.

I went to see Liz for her intuition and to get a tarot reading.  Her shop is closing, in the morning I have a reiki client there and then that is the last I will ever see of Ancient Arts.  I was staggered by what came out in the cards, sitting there open-jawed it felt like Liz had me cornered under a bright white light.  It was true, afterall, what I saw laid out there between her and me.  Hard to admit, plain out in the daytime like that, but even harder under Liz's wise eyes to deny.

Amy is driving me all the way to Conneticut tomorrow and then to get home Sunday I will take the train. Bebe has offered to let me stay in her cabin back in Cali for a caretaking exchange for up to seven months.  I am stunned by the kindness of the people that I love and can not help feeling that these are things I do not deserve.  So I will write...  I spent most the day and even time after going out tonight sorting through my old room here at the beach.  Trying to decide what of my writing materials needs to come back to California with me, what I can live without.  Journals, notes, folders and folders.  What I can fit.  I feel horrible for long moments about leaving mom.  And worse than that about leaving my niece.  I'm confused about the reading I got, it was counter to all the work I felt like I've been doing.  I am talking here about men specifically. Suddenly it was three years ago and I couldn't trust because I didn't know myself, all over again, and that was all before I got on the phone tonight with Josh.

Thank god for Jott, and a high-backed booth at our local bar.  I haven't had a drink in 11 years but that has yet to change the fact that I'm the kinda girl who needs to go places, to drive in the dark when it starts to turn late at night to meet friends in the hush dead of winter with our faces lit by neon lights.  That camaraderie, the magic of shiver-bones and tires on a cold street and then people who are warm, will always be medicine for me.

We drank club soda and red bull and ate chicken wings until our bellies hurt and there was nothing more to say.  Thankfully that's when Tara turned up so the laughter started.

Thankfully life goes on.

Of course a dance party broke out

It would have been easy to stay in bed with Erin and watch the entire third season of Bored To Death, sleeping half the time and with a lac-of-sleep headache the rest.  Grease nap.  At Double T the day after the party stories, when everyone's punch-drunk still and easy to make fun of, made breakfast fun.  I like Christmas week, always have, when I was a teacher or intake counselor and even last year at the coffee shop I had off and could travel and that's how I used to get my kicks.  Being on the road Christmas week.  Now, I'm just on the road, all the time. 

There's something to the clouds the last two days.  On the drive up 83 to Pennsylvania my mom said it's a cold front, all I know is the clouds and the colors up there keep capturing my attention and then next thing I know I'm engulfed, staring out the window or above the trees.  The gray and the blue and the white.  It's so striking, I forget it's Christmas and just think, Maryland, this is so your sky.

Em and Nicky were home from the farm too and drove down from Connecticut last night.  It was raining and balmy on the streets of Baltimore, Em was shaking it at me through the window from out on the street and of course a dance party broke out.  Sixty some years ago in a basement on Church Street in Brooklyn Park my grandparents started having Christmas parties for their brothers and sisters and all their friends.  My dad and all his brothers and sisters raised us kids on black and white pictures and stories from then, the dusty liquor bottles behind the sheet in the corner, the train that ran the floor on hand connected tracks.  Shiny shoes one pair a kid lined in a row.  It's a long time away from that little two bedroom house with the 9 people in South Baltimore, my brother and I still do what we can.  Our parties have people dancing on the bar and dancing outside, smoking in the streets.  According to the aunts and uncles, Grammy's and Pop's had them dancing in the basement under the stairs and sometimes, on the roof.  Singing at the stars...

There are no leaves on these trees.

The Patient First next door to the Panera had Mandy's car in the parking lot, and when I texted her that I was creeping on her she answered how small our home town is.

It's not a town, where she and I are from, it's a county.  Due south of Baltimore. But in 2011 with chain stores and strip malls up and down Route 2, that doesn't make what she said any less true.  It's good to be home, there are few things more real and heartening to me than my family and friends.  But I am tired and don't feel too well.  Everyone here is sick, everyone.  Mandy was feeling ill and thought she might be catching what her kids and man had, I'm feeling it because of five days without my morning practice: meditation and writing.  And because there are no leaves on these trees which feels so potently voyeuristic to me, and it's so damn cold.

How quick to fall off the beam, I thought, and called Brooks to make an artist's date.  Erika told me about Zelda's paintings at a gallery at Hopkins, so hopefully that will remedy my soul.  The first week of December on the mountain in NorCal I was walking outside in the sunshine along the ridge of a hill. It was winter and I felt vital still and knew it, I was charged and alive. I remembered what Justin said to me in July, jogging by my side from the inlet rocks along the beach in Ocean City, down by the Pier.

You're elemental, Kel.  You need the elements to be well.  He's so energetic, Justin, and I remember us happy and diving in the water either on or just after our run.  He was right, and I knew it that day months later and a coast away, in the 50 degree mountain air.  My cure for seasonal affective is no more than regular contact with the air, the earth, the sunshine, the trees, the sea.  So it's not just the cold and lac of light that bothers me, it's the absence of a lifestyle.  It's an outdoor wellness regimen that I need.

That, and my regular quiet routine.

I cancelled on Mandy, we cancelled on each other.  I am going to Tim and Mary's tonight to do what I know to do this time of year back east.  It's time to hibernate.  I need sleep.

All those people under all those little orange lights

The air on 28th street in Ocean City is warmer than the mountain air in Northern California.  Warm beach air, is there anything better in the world? It's December, when I got home to mom's it was rustling the branches asking hey come on where are your leaves?  I got out of the car and started to squat to pee.  Cmon, Kel, I had to remind myself, no more outhouse living you're not on the compound now.

I cried when I left the farm Tuesday night and mumbled something in to the neck of Monique like "Dont tell Jon I dont want him to know he was right."  He said for two days that I'd cry when I left, it's funny the things you think of when your emotions get the best.  I did cry, but not til after all my little moments, all my little private goodbyes, after I was walked to the car and watched them all walk back to the cabin led by their headlights through the dark. It was as I was pulling away, Mo ran back, knocked on the window, and then neither of us said anything.  Just started to sob.

It took 32 hours to get to Ocean Pines.  Lots of driving, a motel stop, more driving, a car drop, a shuttle then airport rigamaroll. In between it all that warm California sunshine.  Smiling and lots of I love my life.  My transfer flight outta Vegas was empty, I had a row to myself and slept a funny plane sleep that was never quite all the way.  I saw a shooting star out the window, right next to the big dipper which looked like I could touch it, or at least sing a song close enough for it to hear.  In Maryland I stared at the lights of Baltimore as we neared the ground.  I love to travel.  And I especially love to fly home, all those people under all those little orange lights, in the middle of the night.

My brother surprised me at 8 this morning.  He showed up at the Pines and laid my three month old niece on my belly in my sleep.  I was totally startled then in a rosy-warm-baby-blanket-glow.  All day I just kept looking at them, him and his daughter, thinking wow, he's really a dad.  Tonight I went with Jott and Schank, my ol Yacht Club girls, to Mother's Christmas Party.  The bartender from Peppers was guest pouring, Chico was there, Ryan was wearing a red tie.  Life goes on, things change, and also they dont.  All of it's so great, I feel like a spectator watching the peaceful way I get to enjoy myself.

We raised hell.  I love the way beach air feels, it still smells that good-same walking out the bar room door.  No tears now. It's rad, to be home.

I lay dazzled.

Our Compound Christmas Party was the night before last.  Tequila was involved and Secret Santa Survival Kits, so the gift-giving in the hot seat went on for three rowdy hours.  All the presents were wrapped in newspapers or boxes and bags from the recycling pile. Thrift store and hand made gifts stilled the room.  My face hurt and eye wrinkles got deeper from this smile that wouldn't leave me, the smile matched the curve in my gut from laughing so hard.  When I finally came to bed the bonfire pit still flamed, there were orange coals enough to cook bushels of oysters, and the white round moon made the fog moving in from the valley look like a fish bowl above us.  You could see the beams in the bows of the trees.

I lay in bed for 45 minutes unable to sleep. Listening to my friends laughing and singing outside, or snoring and breathing in their beds.  I lay dazzled.  By my life.  It's a long, long time since I can remember being sleeplessly stoked as that.

On Thursday I went out with this guy from up here, we've talked on and off the past couple months, it was good to see him one last time.  On our way out of the bar I grabbed him.  Hang on, I said, looking up at the sky and the tree line from the bottom of the valley.  I told him, I want to remember this, it may be the last time I ever walk out of a bar in Southern Humboldt.  He grinned that dancy grin he has and gave me my moment.  Then he laughed and walked to his truck, his back to me to take a piss.  No it's not, he said.  You'll be back...you're a Humboldt girl, now.

There really was nothing else to say.

Little grey car and ocean air.

Yesterday at work I was listening to this song by The Phoenix Foundation called Buffalo.   Every time I hear it I see myself in my car driving down the coast highway, next to the diamond filtering dark blue respirating sea.  Big rocks, knee-high grasses and the cliff side.  Sharp colors, green, yellow, blue, brown. Sonoma County where the Russian River pours out.

When I flew back to California in September, after my brother's baby was born and when I still had my Versa to live in, I took an exit off the 101 one day that on my map led to the coast.  I discovered Sebastopol that way, ate carnitas for $2.00 from a parking lot taco stand, found a deal on Red Bulls and iced espresso drinks in the same place and then landed at a bright farmers market in the center of downtown.  I love the flowers in California. The happy space on the sidewalks.  All the magic in the stores. I love the hippies in Mendicino, too.  After that was all done I took the Russian River Highway all jagged and twisted to the coast.  That's when I found the sea again, me and the sea, always us together, always the rolling crawls then crashes that lead me on.  It was the perfect, perfect spontaneous road trip kind of day.

I keep seeing myself in that bliss.  Window down, sunglasses, little grey car and ocean air, rocks big as castles, water and yellowed grass. It's so real.  I dont know what's coming next.  I just hang on to this, this sense, this vision, because of the way it's so clear in my heart .  Me heading south again, maybe camping, near the coast where I belong.  I hang on because of how happy and natural it feels.

Guns and whiskey.

We hadn't walked the hills all the way to the creek in a long time, most nights now we just do several laps from our cabin down to the gate.  It's more athletic that way, the steep climb.  Tonight the moon was right though, and besides.  It's my last week.

Two new guys moved in while I was away in Oregon, they are younger and the family names we gave them stuck.  Bucket and Son Won. They're from Washington in the Cascades and bring this amazing new enthusiasm combo'd with that boundless, nameless mountain spirit.  It has a name actually, I'd call it peace.

Also, Em had to leave, which hurts my heart every day.

When we got to the field in the middle of the hills and the valleys circled like a black tapestry backdrop hung in the sky we stood a long while and looked at the stars.  None of us used our headlights the entire time because the moon of course was so wide with the soft white light.  We walked to the bridge, the creek was running high and the air around it was cold and wet as snow or ice.  In the daytime here it's warm in the sun, at night next to the creek by the bridge our bodies caused steam.  At night it's winter in the hills.

In the field walking back Mo and Bucket and I stayed back and I showed them how to use their breath to open their instinct.  Their backbreath, or moonbreath, that subtle wild body we all have but dont use because we think we're higher or better than animals now. It got Mo all jazzed and talking about wanting to take survival classes, how to live in our enviroment naturally. Permaculture!  I was happy, going on to her and Buck about my earth activist training coming up in Jan.  Native plants and invasives and medicinals and eco-diversity and harmony.  We were amped, inspired, energized and grounded from the moon and breathing exercise.  How?  I asked them then.  How did we get so disconnected from our home?

Guns, Bucket answered.  Guns and whiskey he said.  And we laughed and walked up the hill past our gate, in the dark, through the woods.

This was driftwood.

I almost lined up with a place in Topanga Canyon. In Oregon the last day it rained all day long.   Soaking rain is what mom would call it, the kind we really count on back east in the late spring.  I was at Gretchen's in her cottage so close to the coast you can hear the sea.  We stayed in our pj's all day long, the pine trees outside bowing way down from the weight of the rainy wind.  She handed me her Ipad on our third or fourth cup of coffee and said c'mon, that's what we can do let's find you your place in LA.

On Craigslist under sublets I searched Topanga.  The only result was the exact place I see in meditation. At work someone said Mama you would love Topanga Canyon, Topanga's where you need to be.  Soon after that knowing nothing about Topanga came the vision of me at a white cast iron table on a patio, surrounded on three sides by potted flowers and trees.  That was the place Gretchen and I found on Sunday, exact pictures and all.  I say almost lined up with it because in the end I said no.  It was out of my price range.

Nikki assured me, as it was she that helped list the pros and cons, that this was driftwood.  It's not her original metaphor, yet it bares repeating.  If my heart's goal is an island, the paradise joyful island where I am heading, then little examples like the spot on Craigslist that I saw first in my head are signs from the island that my tide's moving me the right way.  Little signs, pieces of driftwood, from the island.  My enthusiasm was crazy high so applying practical decision making to this was hard.  Nikki's example really helped.

Before heading south to park at Gretchen's in the rain, Beth and I forged our own paths through the woods on Saturday to pick chanterelles.  The day before that we stood in the bead shop in Nye Beach where I used to work and get paid to make and sell jewelry.  Both times I felt so like myself that everything even looked lined and clear, more defined, somehow crisper.  Lit by light from my heart.

Driftwood.

This is my favorite part of the inventing process.  Scariest, too. When you can just barely, happily and anxiously, start to feel the tides starting to pull.

Right up through our feet.

There are certain nights here that bed sits like the ocean does--way out the far side of 101 past the trees somewhere near the sky. Tonight they're even trying to get Nicky to stay on the floor in a sleeping bag because that's how real and raw, endless, the vibe is--jam session in the low low light for two solid hours now. Excellent! I will take drumming and singing and dancing over pilates and yoga any single night of the week.

Someone garage-banded tonight, too, on their Mac...But listen, even if you heard it the candles and dancing, the endless black out the screens and the sage in your hair would be missing.  We dance and speak the sounds of the earth here.  Right up through our feet.

I'm back on the mountain, and there's a lot to say.

The feeling of coming home.

Beth and Ben have their computer hooked up to the tv making my work seem very important. Yes I call this, my seemingly mindless download onto the tv/computer screen/virtual world of the internet, work. Because it is necessary, it is relevant to the state of my soul and heart, it is creative discipline. I spoke it out loud to Beth: could it be true? Two years of pining for the time when I go away and just write, only write, no teaching no counseling no waitressing no energy healing no farm work no scheduling, just me. Writing. Administering in to words the Real Work. That, and that alone, for the first time? It feels surreal, could it really, really actually be real?

It's getting near.

I left the farm where I've lived and worked since October yesterday and headed north up the coast on 101. In Port Orford I called Beth to say I wouldn't be able to finish the drive, it was night by then and storming and whole pine branches were blowing so fast past my car they were only a blur of raindrops and green. Since I lived up here on the Oregon Coast in 04 and 05 it's always made me laugh. Weather that we'd call hurricanes back east they just eye-rollingly call winter storms. I pulled over in the parking lot to make the call and my car was blowing so hard you could actually hear the metal denting in and out. I was scared.

At the motel in Bandon the man tried to get me high. That's the second older man to come on to me in the past week, furthering my sense of being a woman on the verge of 35. Not sure why but I am really feeling my age: in the motel that was sweet like 1950's quaint smells like grandma's with a little kitchenette and a place to sit in the corner sweet, I caught myself in the mirror and was stunned a minute. There are no mirrors really on the farm, and there I was. Living out of my car in the mountains on a commune, travel-weary but peaceful and happy to be on the road. And turning the far corner of the year that will finish and make me 35.

When one arrives there's a reflective sense that happens, and it grounds us in a very practical way into our current reality. I am not talking about physical arrival so much as some intuitive experience of satisfaction, and it's in me, I'm of it right now. It led me all morning, finishing my drive in the rain counting all of Oregon's endless shades of dark green and grey. There, the Umpqua Lighthouse, there the drab clapboards of Winchester Bay, there the Lamplight Inn, there the cement of Oldtown Florence, there in the distance the Five Rivers Bridge.  Little starbursts of recognition, little nods of yes and mmm-hmmm, the natural expansion in me I always get in Oregon that means only one thing: I have arrived again.  The feeling of coming home.

At Governor Patterson's beach I jumped out in my rain coat just so I could breathe the breath that only comes with the sea.

Later, Beth met me half-way through her doorway. We hugged. That pause there, that outbreath, felt like sitting down on the beach for the first time in June. That good.

It's Thanks-giving time, and I am grateful. To be so clearly where I am meant to be. To be so aware of it. I pray the same peace and settledness for all the hearts out there I know.

Happy and smiling by your side.

I was quiet most the day, with my headphones in, til in the kitchen while Jen was making dinner I got some texts from someone who used to me smile. We only get reception on the sill in the kitchen.  He still makes me smile which is good, and after that with him and with Jen I met the others and the mood had changed.  Biff Poundcake, Mike Hunt Pudding, Desert Cumming were all there.  Our trannie characters.  Our favorite passtime is coming up with storylines and characters.  We have care bear names, awkward dance troop names, rapper names.  Reggae names.  And settings and scenes of course to go with each.  The list goes on. They always include us, real us not alter ego us's of course, gasping and wiping tears from our eyes. Tonight in the time it took me to chat with Jen in the kitchen our trannie characters had turned in to assassins.  Making my drag alias, Rufus Lemonbar, the six foot tall James Brown-esque black man in a yellow leather tuxedo  and a feather in his hair, a dangerous killer.  Rufus-me lives in Detroit and with my new assassin capability I'm adept at using my dagger/cane to slice the throats of all who seek to repress the world of freakiness and getting down.  Watch out!

Maybe you had to be there.

In any case my time here, freaky and down as it's been is almost over.  I am distinctly aware of the fact.  I love these people, these hills, these trees.  The way it all smells, how it is in our little room in the cabin where we sleep.  I will miss it so much, and am caught with the longing also now to continue on.

I leave for good on December 13.  When the new year turns I will be living out of my new California-tagged car til I find my place to write in the sun.  This is my life.  This is my life!  On Tuesday I am going north to Oregon for the holiday and so maybe it's this, the 8 hours of 101 that beckon between here and there and the delight, the freedom, the lightness I know I'll feel when I get on the road again.   It brought flashes all day long of driving out here, from Maryland to here.  August seems so, so long ago.  August, when I had my Versa and my sunny Ocean City tan.  The million doors I've walked through since then.  All these people here.  Holy California.  This great big farm. After the tran-sasin's stories ended tonight and our laughter died down, after dinner was done and Em and Nick had gone, Jen put on one of her favorite songs.  I love to dance to it, I guess it's one of my favorites now too.  When we dance party in the big tent she always puts it on and tonight was no different, her Bebee and me.  Put it on and dance along.  Imagine me, Honey Bear me, Mama me, "Peaches" Christ me, Rufus Lemonbar me, happy and smiling by your side.

It'd gotten lodged

Jon's letting me use his computer, I bought a new car.  We have the internet again, yesterday we didn't, the day before yes, today yes, most of last week no.

My computer screen is all white.  My new car is 22 years old.  I came to California to live in my car until I could find a place next to the sea to write.  So far all I can do is laugh.

In the meantime, I connect in some new way with someone different each day.  Tonight it was me and Nicky a long time in the kitchen, energy work and long long talking and it was the only thing that brought my head out from my ass where it'd gotten lodged this morning.  Asshead makes me laugh at myself most times but a day like today, 11 people on a mountain and the rain.  It just made me feel bad.  Ahhh and so this too will pass.

Last week, because I am meditating and journaling a lot, reading poetry and diPrima and Women Who Run With the Wolves, I had a moment where I understood all this:  this time of great pause on the side of the hill.  There is a psychic state of passing, it looks like traction, can feel uncomfortable.  It's like the moving on from one form to the next, or the fitting in to the new skin.  Before all that can happen the new body has to be cured.  That's what's up, and I know it because I've been here before.  I'm holed up on the side of the mountain, with time for the old to pass away, being made ready for the new, being made in to my best new form.  Like much of our harvest had to be.  I'm being cured.

Really peaceful on the mountain.

A critter ate our interenet chord, so today in town I got five dollars worth of food to sign on.  That's why I've been MIA--so dont worry, I'm okay!!

 It's really, really peaceful on the mountain, so it all fits.

No reception or internet, and I actually sorta like it this way!

To take a big leap.

I live on the side of a mountain.  We live on the side of a mountain, six of us, we have no other place right now and so we call this home.

Others live and work here too, but they live here.  Their own houses nestled in green hills off dirt roads.  Hidden by trees, used to the sudden talking breeze.  The rest of us six live out of our cars and are happy to have a place to work that doubles as where we sleep at night.  Dori and her man came here at end of an 8 month journey by car through the South Americas.  She is in school in Berkeley now she commutes down for a long weekend each month.  Mo has her shows, Jandro his man.  Jon, like me has no car, no home where he will return, and a drawing board wide-open and full of potential as the depth of his authentic smile.  We walked a long time today through the hills discussing our what we know for sure's.    I am stoked for him, we talked our futures out, our what we love and what we want and the realities of our needs.  How it is that it's him and me assures me I am right where I must be, getting my footing, to take a big leap.

I heard from someone today who is the closest blood I have to a sister and certain lines in her email tweaked my heart so sharp that through my smiles or laughs I felt tears.  They were the happiest kind, when you know life is right on time, and you know it most because you see the little ways each day you are so blessed.  Mine, the blessings, come the most in the forms of those who I love, who I can allow in and who trust our moments enough to trust me, too.  Countless hearts, you know?  Countless moments we've shared, we'll share, endings that come, and preludes and preparations too when you're certain what you're sharing is Begin....

And we are just us.

The moon is a skinless fat slice of pear, juice dripping in the air.  It is white out the window, it is cold out the window, I hear Jandro out there on the phone with his man. There are two spots on the whole farm where we get reception.  If you're clever like him you have a blue tooth so when the cellgods are happy and you get one bar then you make a call and can walk around the yard outside of the cabin.  In the cold, on the phone. 

Nicki made us watch the funniest thing.  Which in real life I would find disturbing like I'm embarrassed by this and my secret embarrassment makes it funnier.  But here on the Cosmic Murk Farm it was hysterical, and we are just us.

Dori is home, tonight she played me guitar.  There is a song by Gillian Welch that reminds me of us, of us saving money eager with our whatnexts but also of us, here.  Under the pine trees in the hills.  I played it for her tonight in hopes that she can learn it for our fire tomorrow.  On facebook there was a thread to/for/from all my cousins with 22 names attached, it was about a cousin slumber party at Thanksgiving which I wont get to be a part.  In Bmore.  One of my homes.  Seanie and Jame and the baby will be there!  It made me sad but also so happy to see the boy cousins making fun of one another and our cousins-who-are-friends-that-have-become-McCousins a part of the whole thing too.  Life is good.  Let's sing this song....

That's me, laughing at you

It's late to be blogging.  I know.  Especially because of the hard time I've had waking up to start work by nine the past several days.  I haven't.  Started by 9 that is.  I like my mornings, it's the only time I get quiet time, and peace.

Beth told me:  I was in the hot tub with Benj three or four nights ago listening to the wind blow.  I asked him do you hear how deep it sounds?  He didn't get it...

I smile when she tells me this, admiring of her wild wisdom.  The trees moved in constant rustle here for two days. Spoke tree-speak but the air didn't move at all close down to the grass on the land. I get it, I know what it means, know what Beth means.  I recognize when my soul, my "other 92%" (that awareness my brain chooses not to make me conscious of) beckons my attention for example by drawing me, reasonless, to the breeze.  I relish these bits of times.  I bless it as sacred for the tiny moment that it is.

And the changes, they are coming.  But first much will be moved gently away.  I talked about it all with Beth.  In preparation for what will change--what will come, what will end, what will begin again--I am up late, researching cars.  My rental is due back Saturday.  I've been on the internet every night now for three days, edmunds and autotrader and I can tell you all about V6's and 4 cylinders and why CVT's aren't good for the engine if you're looking at an SUV.  Also, side and curtain airbags.  They saved my life and are a necessity if the car is going to get anything more than a POOR rating for safety.  I try to walk the even line between being prepared but knowing I can't be in control.

Life!  You're funny.  That's me, laughing at you giggling at me.

I am looking forward to Thanksgiving, and seeing my family in Oregon.  I am also looking forward to getting paid.  And, I like the idea of seeing the path ahead unfold in a way that was first whispered to me from a steady California wind, high in the Humboldt trees.

I could walk like lady

Got off the farm today and off to Arcata to sit in the sauna a long, hot time.  The hot tub/sauna place there has a fabulous little cedar cafe with magazines and a fire and a cat, and homemade soups. 

 After, I drove north to Trinidad with Nicki and Em.  We left Jon off in Eureka to do his writerly thing.  I wore ankle boots all day.  So that I could walk like a lady on the cliffside paths that led to the surf break, and the boulders and the sea.

I left part of my heart there, on the coast with those sexy surfer boys, the friendly locals, all that rolling fog and the cabin that I'm meant for, somewhere under the redwood trees where the buoy bells ring the waves crash you to sleep and the words are waiting, like fruit plucked clear out of the miracle air.   

Kingsly, give me back that cigar!

By Thursday we're all crazy.  Six days of work often twelve hour days.  There's nothing off limits. People's habits and patterns, moods and physical hang-ups, all of it's on display when you live ten of you always together.  Mountain fever, and everyones secrets become each other's business.  Most of all, we turn it in to reason to laugh.

Our family band is a rap group now. We rotate British or deep South accents until the rapping starts.  The rapper is me Mama MC and the rest of them are my clique.  Lil Mo she guest raps.  Lil PooG she does the ughghghgh noise while Baby Silk repeats everything I say. Sister Holla shouts what what and calls people bitches. Papa Bass is just that, the Papa and Jandro is our bodyguard.  Peach Dream drops all the vulgar lines.  Some days we dont drop character for hours.

Wait a minute, is everyone picturing Jesus driving the reindeer sleigh? 

Category:  favorite bears.  Who the hell is Boogie Bear?   Of course, Yogi's scary cousin who lives under the bed. 

Mama, dont talk like that you're turnin my stomach sour. 

Category: Favorite Pairs in history, tv or real.  Do Dolly Parton's count? 

Kingsly, give me back that cigar!

Category:  Favorite colors.  Eighties Blue!

Now honey, dont forget to practice your kiegels! Just like mama showed you!

There is a bonfire right now right outside the sliding door.  I can hear the ukulele and laughing through the glass.  For as much as we are together, I can't wait to get out there with everyone. Tomorrow I have a sauna appointment and then am heading north to look at cabins with Em and Nicki.  We already have a family band.  Like all families we see each other at our worst and dont love each other only for our best.  And also, it's hysterical when we sing.

We didn't even time it to end on the new moon.

The moon is dark, it is the new moon which is Lunar Samhain, time of transition from old to new harvest year. When the crops are all in and it’s time to set seeds. We will celebrate with a bonfire at the end of work week on Thursday. Normally I bless and cook beans, but instead it’s Mo’s birthday so I made grandma’s chicken and dumplings from scratch, except we’d already eaten most the chicken off the carcass making it more like chicken broth and dumplings but not that Mo cared. Chicken broth, dumplings and tons of veggies right off the farm. The dumplings are blazin, I cant wait to tell grandma how good at this I’m getting.  Sunday night I made her enchilladas, passed down to her 4 decades ago from a Mexican couple named Albert and Alberta.  They were the bomb, am I allowed to say that?  About my own food? The chicken dumplings are sitting right now for the night so the flavors can soak in which is good because at night we try not to get in to any thing other than fiber cereal or fruit. Unless your me in which case like tonight you add jack cheese to the top of the garlic bread and stick it in the broiler for your ‘while I’m cooking chicken dumplings for lunch tomorrow’ snack.


The police busted up the Occupy Oakland movement. We watched in people-reported video snips online. It’s true civil disobedience though, peaceful dissidence so the people will assemble again. I pray for them everyday. This is the only way. We don’t have tv so we try to rely on the local public-supported radio for as much news as possible, I don’t let corporate media influence me so anyway it’s better for me this way. The past week the works been long but what was left in the field is almost entirely, finally, all done. We didn’t even time it to end on the new moon. Saturday I sat a long time in the orange side-light of the barn on upside down buckets with Jon. He played Palmetto Bug Stompers and we talked for hours, working peacefully side by side. It felt like a movie and more than once I thought relish this Kelly this setting and this peace, this nowhere at all else to be. It’s like a movie, the mythic sense is that real, and I told Jon so and he instantly agreed. Later, that night on our walk when we reached the bottom of the hill and stopped at the gate to rest he saw two shooting stars.

I like making friends. We laugh so hard that we cant even find breath to start the jokes that will come next. Today our boss brought the new Wilco CD and put it in and Tweedy’s singing “Sadness is my luxury” made me exhilarate with the irony: my decision to devote my life to true inner happiness and light, to devote my poet’s calling to this power within. To no longer buy the lazy-man’s excuse of cynicism or nihilism or darkness in order to create or be. Suffering should not be a requisite. That’s why I am so enamored of the uprisings all over the world, apathy among moral, thinking people is the worst social ill of all. Worse even than greed. We meditate and use our visions to see the world we want to see. We focus on solution. I got the offer from insurance for my car, barely anything at all. I didn’t expect this: to be starting the new harvest year carless, homeless, on the west coast. Reminded again that men see you for who you are while boys always project their fears. And also, almost entirely debt-free with no money tied up in the corporations and banks! Like my mom said on Sunday on the phone, I’ve had it easy, an easy, easy life. She’s right, so so right and I am grateful, and willing to lend my heart to the rest of the world. Willing and grateful for this work and life on the farm, the like- minds and inspiration, this quiet life in the hills and sharing in each other’s processes and changes we wish to see. Willing and grateful to believe in what we can be.

Can't you?

Writing just to write.  That part's frustrating, the long hours working are gratifying but the no time to write, much harder.  There is discipline, there is being lazy or unmotivated, then there is just. Tired. 

The girls are getting yoga instruction in the middle of the common room, it is our Weekend.  Tomorrow I am going on a date with myself and I simply can. not. wait.  Mountain Fever turns out is a real thing.  I am wonky this week, I am in need of quiet time, I am in deep need of some Kelly space.  If I weren't saving money for a writing cabin when this gig is over I would've gone north tonight and gotten a room.  Cable TV, black out curtains and most of all.  Quiet, and peace that's my own.

Starting to look forward now.  Whatever cycle that had to wash me over with the car accidents and the guy seems to have integrated and passed now, I am me again able to identify the me inside.  Not personality me or maybe personality me who knows, this isn't eastern thought here this is just one girl with different ideas every day.  The solid me I call spirit that is there, I sought to be able to find her through most of 2009 and 10.  Were friends now, past few weeks she was injured and hurt a while and that was process and emotions that she dipped down in to and disappeared in to but all that, as just said, seems to be settled.  Because most of all I feel like I have choice again.

There is revolution going on the world over.  I have anarchy in my blood and am a natural leader and orator, so when I meditate I include the world now, too.  Otherwise it is solution, my retreat I often see or feel, but first what I will use this money for.  A little cabin somewhere near the coast, in the woods.  I can almost see it, cant you?

One time a long time ago

I am learning so much, each day it is something new.  Today was the first day that I worked til I was hungry.  You know what I am talking about?  Work so physical that hunger replaces your sense of your body, you're not a body that's hungry your're hunger that's expressed itself through body.  Through every coursing movement. Food your body says, in a way that makes you smile because your hunger reminds you that its main and real purpose is energy.  At the end of the day when the sun was going down I got to drive the four wheeler golf cart thing all around the farms fast as I could.  Alex held on tight but tried to pretend like he wasn't scared. 

The best answer for Apples to Apples tonight for Lucky was Redwood Forests.  Emily got to choose and Redwood Forests was Dora's card, and I was giving Em reiki when she gathered all the cards so I felt her whole body warm the moment she saw home.  She lives over the hill from me and tomorrow, which is my day off, I am taking her cinnamon-raisin-bagel-french-toast. The only time better to give reiki, if you can not do it alone in a quiet calm setting, is surrounded by people screaming and laughing apple to appling and speaking in changing accents battling over who gets to wear the Santa Hat to be able to boss everyone else around.  Papa feed Baby Bird Emily from your mouth, now!  Daughter's Favorite Sister Daughter's New Boyfriend welcome to our family.  Mama, I won!  I know Papa, I know.

Some friends have written to make sure I am okay, adjusting alright after the accident and now not having a car.  One time a long time ago us people rose up out of the land, amoebic at first then respirating out of our gills.  Eventually we grew tall and learned to make sounds later called words, it was the earth's charge that we talk.  For her, as one.  Working the land is like that, I am muscles of the earth, taking from the earth but taking in a way that intuitively feels like giving back.  It is the most right place for me I've ever been in life.

I am, I am well.  I promise.  It's fun, I'm learning so much.  And any tears that might have been there got turned at some point in to non-stop laughs, and smiling under the tall trees in the fall sun.

Everything was so new it glistened

At night I walk the hills under the moon which has been growing near full. It is last harvest moon, it peaked today around 4pm here, and when there is no rain I’ve been discovering the way the moon makes the air and the hills and the nighttime sky here all the same kind of muted-out white.
It brings me great joy to go walking, how everything in the night is so very still. On facebook I see people back home in bikinis on the beach, and I think that is true, last year summer lasted til October. But here it is turning fall—even today in the high sun working outside on the farm getting hot it still felt like weather meant for turning days.

The season is passing, it is a good time for me to be bringing a harvest in. Last night Mo and Jon and I sat on the back deck of the cabin and I led us in a meditation. We reviewed our year, looking within at all we’ve grown. When I first got here in August I was elated, everything was so new it glistened and I just walked around with a glow. Now with both car crashes behind me and my reality being so stunned, I am more grounded, not low so much as simple, on my feet. Like a colt. Sort of learning. Sure she can stand but conscious about the way her feet might go.

My favorite part of the hills is when they’re spread out with valleys on either side. I stand in the middle on the flat long stretch and look at all that land raising and falling in a great circle around me. The land folds in all different black shades at night like an uphill-going ocean caught in a ripple and painted in time. And the moon is there to say I’m part of this artwork, too.

I go walking because it is good for me but more I realized tonight because it is a way of moving but still staying still. They aren’t power walks and not even, at night anyway, jogs. It’s just me, alone sometimes or sometimes with friends. Being quiet, exploring new ground.

You're alright you're alright.

The end of a long day at the end of a very long week.  I got lost coming up the mountain in my rental SUV.  There were no trespassing signs all over all the trees.

My car crashed Monday night in to the guard rail.  Then I skidded back out on to the freeway and 180'd on the first-rain oil-slick hydroplane of road til I was facing oncoming traffic. I was knocked out for just a sec but some part louder in me than my regular head woke me up by screaming at me you're alright you're alright cmon so I moved out of the way in time.  I have never been so scared and also, now I have no home. 

It's been a long exhausting week.  It is fall on the mountain, dorm-living again.  I am thankful for woodstoves, warm meals amazing bosses and my funny, peaceful and deep new friends.

I miss my mom and dad.  And brother and sister-in-law, my baby new niece, my cousins and friends.

In the deep place tonight next to the redwoods by the stream I prayed to the earth bc that's the only thing I really pray to that listens, afterall.  It said husshhhh, hussshhhhh. So I remembered, be still.  There is no place to be but where you're at.  Which frees up the energy for all else to come about as it will.

Maybe ten thousand, maybe more.

Every morning I meditate in some way, most mornings it is a private event that would go unnoticed by other people.  But Dory and Jon, and Mo and Alle and the others when they are around and our space is shared--I dont mind being my whole, true self in front of all of them.

I keep a little travelling alter, again most wouldn't recognize the trinkets and baubles as holy to me.  But anywhere I have a space that is mine for more than overnight, I pull it out so my little corner can be alive, and "anywhere" becomes home.  Because home to me means silent and sacred, and is really about what lives inside. 

Some days it is discipline to approach and refind me, but others I can feel the deep inside place stirring with my own instructive wisdom and magic.  Today was one of those days.  The sun was shining hot on my legs on Jon's floor in Oakland, and outside the blue sky was so clear it was hard to tell there was a window-sill.  I was sleepy and smiley and had a deep sighing stretch when the quiet place put forth a little vision to my consciousness.  I was in the ocean, and a great monster wave, so mighty and long and also round, was preparing to crash down.  It was slow coming but the kind that could panic me if I didn't react smoothly and all at once.  I wasn't surfing, this wasn't about the endurance-teaching lesson of consistency you learn paddling out.  This was just me, ocean-me of 30 plus years, and so in this flash of vision my body long and lean dove way, way down, and caught the under-rushing water and let it pull me completely under the wave.  I didn't see myself when I came out, just the finesse of moving deeply at the bottom and all the way through. And more important I felt the natural assurance and calming feeling that comes with knowing how to move.  How the force of going under pulls then surfaces you out beyond where the waves crest and crash, how then you can relax into the gentle updown rocking of the forming motion.  Which is what I love the most in the ocean--way out there just floating on top.

I've done that a thousand times, maybe ten thousand, maybe more.  In real life, in Ocean City, Maryland, in the Atlantic my teacher-sea.  I love it, I miss it, I crave it like food.  But most of all, I am honored that my deep wisdom used the mama ocean today for me to hear its call.  Because this time in my life will pass me easily in to floating happily along if right now I just dive deep, deep down.  Which is what mediation does, in fact it's exactly what I use it for: quiet time and space to celebrate my wiser self, by just meeting me where I am at every day.  The sacred ordinariness, the consistency and instruction that comes as result from letting that daily meeting lead me deep inside.  The happiness that is always present when I surface back out again.

This keeps me from the obvious.

Waiting to go dancing.  We're going to San Francisco tonight which in Oakland everyone refers to as the city.  Even though Oakland is pretty city to me. This is what I do!   Meet gorgeous women to dress up with and go be fabulous.  Last weekend we were in San Jose, made tons of friends around the pool table and on the dance floor.  Mo killed it on stage, later I did body work on Sage for no other reason then her energy was full of love and I wanted to support it, and the ittybitty baby she's got growing inside.  Dory, Kristen, Mo and I dared each other to dress in ridiculous tiny outfits and pretend to be synchronised swimmers at the outdoor pool.  I mean tiny.  We did it, laughing while I hissed straight-faces, straight-faces the whole time.

More than anything I am having fun.  It makes me giggle to think that this is my life, how lucky I am.  But then I think, I'm not lucky at all I chose this.  Any one could.  Anyone at all.  Just allow for the wonder of the moment to guide your way: it sounds silly and self-helpy but there really is no other way to put this reality.  Just show up, eager to dig on the experience.  Grateful you get to.

This keeps me from the obvious, for the most part...the I wonder where I will end up?  Everyone here is in transition.  Dory's home from 9 months on the road in South America not sure where she and her man will go, Jon's moving out Tuesday and Mo left her pad last week.  Ale gave up her place and is staying with her ma.  Who knows?  I will continue to show up grateful for the experience, trusting in the alchemy of the process.  Gratitude and no expectations other than digging on whatever life has to bring.

Oakland

 These pictures are of memories, a fairy, & making friends.

In Oakland I sleep with the back door opened.  There is no screen just a second floor wood veranda that looks out to the right at Lake Merit and used to have green plants all over it but now just has Jon's tent, airing out.  The breeze is always light and cool, and steady.  It makes me think the music up the street or downstairs is a festival in the street.  Which means Oakland has carnival air.

Tonight after work we ate Italian food on a corner at a wrought iron table.  They drank wine.  I had a down feather in my hair that made me think of getting clean.  We are working a lot, which feels good.  At night I run next to the lake which smells like sweat, or fish, or salt.  Like home.  There are always tons of people, in the dark, walking their dogs, sitting in the grass, being romantic, holding hands. 

I love laughing, that is a theme of Oakland, that and the peace of being myself and having nights of quiet company.  I love how the air through the back door breezes me to sleep.  I am going through something very recently that makes me realize how much I've grown when it comes to intimacy.  Which is good, because back when I realized I needed it, growth seemed the hardest, most far off way.

I love Oakland, Jon wants to live here forever, to maybe never leave.  I get it.  I would feel the same, too, if I had a home with laughing and peaceful carnival air.

The Adventures of Charlotte Bliss. Which are non-stop.

It's amazing how no matter what, here is the blog, and I come back again.

The flowers in California are beautiful and I want know to every one by name.  I want to call them on the phone and find out what their favorite fruit is and where they'd go on vacation.  Did anyone ever think to say~hey, that flower belongs some place pretty, somewhere natural and fresh and alive, easy as she is~I would do that for you flowers, in the tree code ocean worshiping language that I speak.

What a world, what a life, what a barrelled tumble of its wind.   I got back here and there was some ill shit that happened to my car that had to get tended to, and it really bummed me out.  There is little that can be done for your heart when the world runs amok in its most intimate places.  My trust got rattled. I met a guy, he was amazing, the time we spent together was amazing.  He lives far away.  I live in my car which is everywhere and nowhere all at once.  Life keeps happening.  We moved Monique out basically overnight.  We went to San Jose in a posh posh swank hotel with the whole band.  Dancing and powerhouse women and the dirtiest mouth ever on Kristen.  I laughed so much I had to borrow from my laugh account, which hurts your stomach after a while and makes your heart better where maybe it had stopped remembering for a minute how to work. I can't get over the good luck in my life and amazing strong and sexy and gorgeous and funny, deep powerhouse women.  O did I say that once already?  It's true!  We were up til 5 Friday and 3:30 Saturday.  Dorthea took me to Berkeley yesterday.  Talking late night women's cycle talk in the kitchen with Aloe.  The hills here, the shores, the ocean.  The breeze.  We were back to the beach by the night and it was damp and cold in the street.  We used an Kristen's apps to name planets and look at the stars.  I am going to Oakland tomorrow, the mountains by the weekend, there is so much to show up to, so much to do.  Life!  I want to live you!  I want to know the names of all your flowers again.  To be an active lover of your land.

I want to be surrounded by the people who care if I do.

Fall Equinox. Season of bounty and light~Farewell

Yes it's the fall equinox tonight, overnight.  Making today the last day of the summer~

My heart's been terribly wistful.  I dipped down lower in fact than I've been in some time and damn do I not do well with that--unaccounted for fluxing in my mood.  Even though I am the one who knows and teaches Anicha, the wisdom of the emotional and mental life how it is fleeting and always will change, even that knowledge still didn't stop me from being really effing hard on myself in trying to figure out Whyyyy?  It started Monday, I walked the cliffside to the beach and lay in the yellow sun, light blue swells and diamond sparkles and Santa Cruz hippies and teenagers all around, so much smiles.  I sat a long, long time, just trying to be gentle with the discomfort of myself, in myself.

Here we are: the season of change. The wheel turns to the dark half of the year tonight, even if for now we are perfectly balanced.  And so at this state of in-between, it's time for reflection, gratitude, and above all listening deeply to your own soul's response.  I had the coolest, coolest fucking year.  My high time at the beach was ecstatic like little before I've known, the dancing, the sun, the surf, the good friends.  The immediate and consistent blessings of family all around.  This is not even to mention the time I've spent on the road, the harmony and serendipity and surprises that have come with all that.  I will spend the fall working in the mountains, and what comes then and after I can not know...

It was Erika, on Tuesday, who pointed out the birth of my niece and the outlying impact a baby always brings.  On the heel of that conversation it occurred to me, slowly, the deep grief I am feeling over moving forward.  Moving on from my life and times at the beach, back east, among the intimacy of the people who mean so much to me and a lifestyle I had whittled by choice.  There is little to do with this experience other than ride it, feel it, honor it.  And too, in quiet, dream more, dream forward, and trust in the power of my dreams and my heart to guide me towards the next harvest season to come.

In all things, we are right here, where we are meant to be.  Or like my brother Brooks has been known to say~She might come late, but she always on time...

...That's just what the mama wisdom has to teach us today.

The Adventures of Charlotte Bliss. California, poetry & tidbits.

~Sebastopol, 9/18/11

In California everyone knows what an Americano is, the light still slants the same dark yellow in the fall, and asada always comes with cilantro and lime.

~

I told you help me remember this the body has a body all its own
The poems are back again, little do you know this is truth about us
already written
how timelessness aches to find someone
willing to come to life
the song

~
I love spontaneous shuffled-ipod moments that sum it up.  that cant be planned.

12 song round-up, driving out Ukiah down the 101.

1. Home.  Edward Sharp...
2. Sweetest Thing.  The Waifs
3. Tree.  Blitzen Trapper
4. Below the Hurricane.  Blizten Trapper
5. Lie Detector Test.  Sage Francis
6. No Dough.  The Mamas and Papas
7. Wasted.  Brandi Carlile
8. Dreams.  Brandi Carlile
9. Oh Dear.  Brandi Carlile
10. Speed Law. Mos Def
11. That Hump.  Erykah Badu 
12. Tiny Cities Made of Ashes.  Modest Mouse

ahhh, poems~
masquerading as mere sound

~
Nobody wants you when you're old and gray, they'll be some changes made
~

Bodega Hwy, The Russian River...
so what i dont have money.  i also dont give a damn.
~

"In San Francisco, everything is more bohemian, and a good deal like Paris." --Alfred Hertz, 1910

~

9/20/11

You met me, I want to tell him, when I had my at-home body.  Might as well of been my winter-weight.  Comforting, taking of food and tv.  Low light of evening, settling sounds of night in the comfort of mom's home.  It falls so easy in to flopping. In to not taking care of myself.  I ran yesterday for 45 minutes, the whole time next to the sea.  I walked around town twice, once before that to the market and once later, in the afternoon, to the beach.  California is the active high-bodied vitality.  Of how to live.

~ 

It's not cryptic!  Some things I just keep private on here

~

the girl w the pendant of her grandmother's also has genuine, kind eyes. 

~

maybe she is a student?  probably.  i want to tell her.  hold tight to this freshness.  the vitality will try to disappear.  the maintenance of which will be all that matters in your times to come.

this is not california.  just, soul.  that which can not be taught.  but practiced.  well-practiced in to a disciplined gold.

~

i love coffee shops.

it's hot in Central California,

& who cares the boys club

I may never get in?

~

Sebastopol, finally~these are my ppl.

groovy as they come.

TAoCB. Baby Grace.

It was a long trip off the mountain.

Through the redwoods, alongside the river trained against the sand and stone shores.  The sun beams literally were vibrating the air so you could see them.  More than once Yalle and I were holding hands, high up towards the ceiling of the car for no reason other than radiant joy.  She is a hero to me, in just one night I watched her hustle pool change a tire in heeled boots and skinny jeans and chug whiskey out the bottle.  Once the 101 turned to the freeway outside Oakland she took over behind the wheel because she's better at "stepping on it".  She got me to the airport Monday night in San Jose with enough time to get searched in security, by a ponytailed woman with an accent and rubber blue gloves.  My bra set off the buzzer more than once. I took it in stride, what else did I have to do?  When it was over I talked to Gretchen, wrote some on the travel piece I've been keeping and right before I boarded, texted the boy I'd see him when I got back.

There were four people I wanted to surprise the most, of course the number one was my brother the new dad.  It was 9:20 am when I flew in to BWI Tuesday morning and almost 10 when I texted my brother could he talk in 15 minutes.  When 15 minutes was up I was standing outside the door to the room of the hospital where my sister-in-law was in the bed with her baby on her chest both of them glowing the most tender new momma-baby glow.  I texted him Could he talk in person then dad opened the door and I walked in.

My brother and I, emotional as we are and hard as we've worked to learn how to communicate and be adults, were capable of nothing at that moment other than tears.  Tears and sobbing and smiling and laughing and hugging, and most of all breathless utter still staring at tiny baby Grace.

Tim and Mary showed up my godparents and they were number two and three to be surprised and there they were, the tears again.  Family, my family surrounding me.  My brother's closest friends, watching the hearts melt right inside these grown men.  I stayed at Erin's that night and spent the next day with Kelly in Catonsville then Brooks in the city and reveled in how very much I love where I am from.  Brian and I drove to my sister-in-laws house the day after that and the best part was the cuddle nest of all of us, the lights out and the baby hiding under blankets snuggled sleeping on my chest.  That night I drove to the beach with Erin who is my sister, we were dirty Burnie as we get when we're together eating junk food from the Wawa in Easton and making merciless fun of each other til we finally got to Ocean Pines.  We cuddled most the night when we did get there, settled in the house with my sleeping mom. 

Yesterday I went to the Yacht Club where I lastly surprised Jott.  She screamed like in a horror movie and then my trip finally felt done.  I came home after that and rested, talked to the boy a while and have been peaceful, smiling a lot, and enjoying my blessings.  September is my favorite time ever to be in the sun by the beach. 

Welcome to this precious ordinary world, my darling baby niece.

The Adventures of Charlotte Bliss. Bliss.

At night we laugh until our faces freeze red and there’s no sound left because we’re out of breath. Usually it’s cause Yalle is hanging out on the dating sight and she’s writing outrageous and shocking off the cuff responses to the unsuspecting dudes brave enough to email first. The rest of us are living through her. My favorite wine is whiskey. There’s one guy she really does like so those emails take at least an hour to write. We don’t have tv but there are lots of movies on dvd and also Mo figured out how to stream Jersey Shore. In the morning the sky is always blue and the redwoods are so tall I can’t see the dark tops from my bottom bunk when I first start to wake. I always can hear the music of the wind though, the orchestra of air moving through the high up bows. This is so, so good for me. I tell my friends here: for years I could see this wooded mountain place with yellow light and soft air on my skin. I could feel the deep rounded peace and how it was the mountains and the ocean was near. I get choked up periodically, especially in the mornings, doing yoga on the back deck of the cabin under the trees. Because this is it, I am here.


The woman who runs the house loves to cook and it’s joyous every night the way she feeds us all. She has a funny looking dog all muscley who behaves as if he’s really tough but curls in a ball on her chest whenever he can. Farm work is fun, the hours are long and the weather so fine, the company amazing. My body is always edged out, satiated from the regiment strength I give to this land and its bounty here, always pushing beyond what I think I am prepared to give. I sleep so well as if sleep is a brand new gift that I get to use as much as I can. The music, our music always plays. It echoes in the valley and the stories, then the silence…then the music then the sun-wind-music made by the trees. It all echoes, one lends to the other, it goes on and on. The stories. These people. The mountains and the sun.

This is so, so good for me.

TAoCB. NorCal.

So, the grls in the north Cali woods have adequately blown my mind.

I mean, I just love when life contradicts your expectations of it. I am surrounded by majestic Redwoods, dark green pines far older than our Constitution, the Eel River is ribboning along side the soft quiet of the land. There are buckets of sunshine and a sky so blue it sings, men who talk about creating your own reality and the vortex of your own loving soul and women with uncut dreadlocks sixteen years long in tie-die skirts. The music never ends. People use composting toilets, at the farmer’s market way down the hills are cucumber lemons that you eat like an apple, in the outhouse there are crayons next to the toilet paper so you can draw on the walls while having a seat.

Now. Add to that, should you be able, the sight of two long-haired mellow hippie mamas rapping every single word to Kanye’s Monster. I mean all of a sudden out of nowhere first we were hula-hooping then they’re full-out rapping gangsta rough-neck style as if they never left the projects whaaat?? I was so off the chain with down to earth glee, so utterly delighted by this little bit of city in my temporary mountain home, so headchecked by such unexpected burst of spontaneity-keeping-me-on-my toes-ness of it that I still can not stop grinning. And as result, I now have two new grl-heros in my life, and so thank you Life for never letting me down, and thank you Bess and Ehm… This one’s for you~

What's Rad. Kir-Russ & Tess. (Scim, too~!) YoLo.

These three women proved the Holy-Wonder-Awe Power of When-the-World-Takes-Hold-of-Your-Open-Heart. (If you let it!)  They swooped in and saved my life last week.

Two of them keep snapshot blogs, entry-corners into the endless beauty of the passion in their lives.  Check them out

Here  (courierknew.tumblr.com) is Kirsten

and

Here  (ourbeachbaby.com) is Tessa

YoLo!

TAoCB. Santa Cruz.

So it happened that we were on the back porch the high veggie gardens and butterflies pointed overhead when I fell in love.

Classic east-west hybrid of grease and health scrambled egg and cheese breakfast on toast with hummus and arugula and avocado, too, it was late in the morning what some people--not my people--would consider afternoon.  Monique's friend got here and fit right in and the three of us in our random wondrous rounds flitted about a bit than landed together in a circle wide enough for us all, but close together too, on the wood deck and stones, in the sun with breakfast in her backyard.

And it came out what a Sunday Funday football nerd I am--the roots in this, how it connects me to home, to south Baltimore home of dad and the McMullens and all the maleness, the males the males the men of my family my history and the industry and honesty of the blue-collar turned prosperous settled traditional hard-working people who grew me.  How it comes out for me now in shades of Ravens purple in the fall.

How it means all, when it comes to security that is.  We were talking then I was high energized light in my eyes talking about the exhibition game Thursday night.  Eagles and the Ravens on tv at the brew-pub in Santa Barbara just me and my Chestertown-who-arent-from-Chestertown and dont even live-there-now some Ravens-fans some-for-Philly eastcoast-friends.  And then I started to tell Mo's friend about our highschool football team, how bad they were in the nineties how it took them til our senior year before they won one game.  This is when Monique interjected with her own contagious personality of half-enthusiasm half-pure sweet Yes!! Yes we were so bad we actually got a day off school when they won the Homecoming Game! And then I was zeal-fresh with my own infected spur YES!  Yes! Because of course that is where I was going with the story--that we actually--did she remember--got a day off school.  So obviously.  That is when I fell in love.  So I figured I better tell her:  once I love you it's no more good.  You're sorta stuck with me, then no matter what may come.  Like...forever...

She is taking me north in to the mountains with friends.  Santa Cruz mellow as it is--on bikes all over town yesterday, volleyball on the beach happy hour tacos all her friends so sooo good--the smile and the yellow sun and my strong legs and sandy knees and the smile on me--oh did I mention my smile?  Non-stop?  Now we'll go north, than Oregon later just me. Maybe we'll chill in the mountains for the fall?  And also there's south again soon to Newport Beach and more of LA.  Where Mike is, where there's winter-sun.  Also where her everloving heart lives.  I am unconcerned with the details, actually.  Yo tengo mi rinconita...I have my little corner.  In my car!  And otherwise, all the land, alll the sun.  There is work to be done.  All else, the larger corner as of yet meant to be found, for my own great big and small at once sacred ordinary thumbrint of the world...will surely show itself as it continues to go.  Will surely just come to be.

TAoCB. Cali.

There is confetti all over the streets of Santa Barbara.  What else need be said?