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.