Love and thank yous

As soon as I saw on Facebook that Igor was sick I knew I was going to make him soup.   But it didn't occur to me that I was doing for him what my wise women teachers taught me to do by doing it for me over all these years until later, standing in Derynne's kitchen tonight.  Her friend, who I've never met til tonight, said 'that's really the best medicine, the vitamins and minerals cooked in from the whole foods.'  Then she took a sip from a plastic red cup of wine that already had her lips joker purple. And she grinned and added 'and all that bright white light~'

It made me raise my brow with my own little grin because indeed as she said that I was adding the last little dash of flavor and also putting blessings of so much love and thank you all over that soup.  This was the first thing she'd said to me directly all night.  I don't know if she saw my smile.  We'd been packing D's house for their move on January 2.  They are going back to the dessert where Cam's tattoo shop is.  Packing laundry boxing taping labeling drinking wine drinking wine making chicken soup.  And dumplings. This gal's either got drunk second-sight or is wild-intuitive.  Either one totally natural.  One homemade pot was macaroni noodles with broth just like Judy taught me to make way back even before I lived on the farm.  To that pot I also added kale and chard-pot like Teena used to make to heal me, when I lived in sabbatical with her those many long days at Chop.  Also tons of oregano because Igor's sinus' are sick and for sick sinus', well that's one of the first things I ever learned working with herbs.  Also back in the days that I used to salvage Judy's herb garden out on the side of her river house.  And cloves and cloves of garlic.  And other secret dashes and smiles.  The other pot was homemade chicken dumplings, the way grandma taught me all those different times standing behind or beside her or out of her sight but her not out of mine.  I didn't make hand-pressed noodles Pennsylvania-Dutch style though, but, with Grandma's recipe and a combo nod to Judy again, little butter dumplings that turned in the broth and before the roux to the warmest, fluffiest balls.  That pot I made for Laura another student of mine, or rather as I don't teach them now, for Laura a woman I know who's far away from her mom's countryside home in Romania.  My students, I mean my friends, so far away from family, during the holidays.

It is cold and clear the night before the last day of the year.  Pon Pon walked me to where I was parked on Adams.  He lives with Igor and Gustavo.  And Bob, who I've met several times through them, and Leo too.  Igor was in bed sniffling and laughing his wonderful Igor laugh.  I made all of them take emergenC's and zincs the way Maria did back when I was first learning to teach and got so sick right after Christmas that year.  Back when Judy first made me homemade chicken soup and showed me how.  And her, and Maria my mentor teacher, how both those good women took turns stopping by to give me care.  Pon Pon handed me a bag of Brazilian chocolates at my car and gave me a million kisses on my head.  We could see our breath.  I live in Southern California, it was almost midnight, I have a sweet artist's studio in the canyon that was calling me home.  All these darling Brazilians.  My sister D and her dear kids, moving away.   I made soup or dumplings for everyone who took care of me this year, for all this precious family here who helped me find my way.  My cherished friends.  I am eating a bowl now.  Thinking about the year that just passed.  Sending cosmic soup with thanks to Mike, my dear friend, on vacay in the BVI.  Remembering how in February in a panic I called him, then drove the Sonoma coast not sure what would be around the bend. Readying myself to leave and come here, all the way South.  The hand-cut life I've glistened up down here since then.  Crafted on nothing but pure love.  Love and lots of help.

Love and thank yous.  Which always work whenever you remember to cook them in.

Really guiding my way.

Siobhan sent a poem over our email chain.  She's in the gradschool cohort we all got blessed with. Our cohort, C, has its roots as the first cohort for In Depth Psych Counseling or so the legend goes, and since Pacifica is built on myth and soul and story I like that detail the best.  We are Ants--that's the medicine card we pulled our first session when some second year's came and got us and then led us out to the grass to have a little gnostic earth ceremony.  Ants: power of patience, persistence, working on behalf of the whole.

Standing on the little sundeck today against all the fat, full greens of the canyon it was that poem that came to me, the first line: Leave the dishes.  It is a poem by Louise Erdrich called Advice to Myself and it came when all us Ants were emailing about self and soul care.  I thought of it because after a week of school work new job work new job work study read quit teaching/work--well to be standing on the sun deck this afternoon about to sit and luxuriate and do nothing felt, for just that final second before sitting down, the tiniest bit indulgent.  Because the house is dirty, the dishes are piled up, the fridge needs cleaned out.  But I thought of that poem and sat down.  Way, wayyy down.

I am blissed out and quenched back up on my self and nice and relaxed now.  Full of California southsky sun.  Grateful in ways I can't speak because there are no words for the steady sobs of goodbye I shared with Chika or Loan, the tears of gratitude on the faces of Mayra or Yun.  My students who taught me more than they will ever know.  Dancing with the grls in HB last night for Annie's birthday.  Derynne about to move.  Me starting work, for myself.  And, maybe most of all, this other thing quietly going on.  How settled: I am dating, and not losing my self.

Which makes me see in my mind Krissy and I, also on the lawn at Pacifica.  Practicing empathetic listening with one another.  This was in October.  Not so far south sun.  I had told her about my time living in Ocean Pines with mom right before I came to California.  How I did nothing but wait tables and go out every night to have fun.  I told her how different that had been from the excruciating work at Chesapeake College being a Counselor.  The guilt I still had over this.  It's a large package I gave her to hold.  Her response was dead on--how I learned at the beach when I lived with mom really strong boundaries for myself.  When Krisssy said that I remembered: my motto back then was if it doesn't add joy I will cut it out.  I really did live that way, too.  With that much dedication to joy and having fun.

And so no effort is wasted.  That time at Ocean Pines I learned to carve out, and trust, my truest, brightest self.

Today I'm just sorta reveling...  She's really guiding my way.

To hug them, and live my thanks

There’s this stretch of the 5 that runs the vast central plains of California and it starts past the mountains that mean you’re finally out of LA and you drive it a long, smooth time and when you’re done you know now I’m in the corridor that marks the change between south and north.  Where the air, the trees, nothing smells the same.

I have lived 18 months of my life on the road.  More if you count the ten months I house-sat and the few I even paid rent to pause a minute and take breath once upon a time ago on the Oregon Coast.  That means my car or the earth has been my only address, it means surfing couches and beds and floors of friends, doing work in exchange for a place to rest my head.  It means the priority, the choice of showing up day to day flexible and open to the experience of only and just what Today will bring.  It means especially living and loving and learning the land.

Coming out of the San Gabriel foothills yesterday I felt so whole and calm you could’ve stretched me around the face of the planet all the way and back again and still there would’ve been more of me to give.  The power of the road:  to have no agenda.  To be in the moment.  The lesson of being here now which is also, as the tires run the pavement, the pure power of action with no stress.  The dichotomous Zen no thought: I am in control only of the fact I am out of control.

 I have been so utterly contented since second period got out yesterday in Irvine/Santa Ana/Newport at my university where those towns and sprawl all blur and seem to cross.  I filled up.  My phone was almost dead.  I turned it off.  Got on 55 and in minutes was on the 5 and here is the thing:  the-in moment-bliss, the magic of contentment with any and all.  The preciousness of it just hit.  That’s a grace thing.  It’s a deeper part of the spirit, of the unconscious part of me.  I have practiced a lot to cultivate it but it doesn’t always come.  But when it does, ahhh god it is right on time.

The oil smell in standstill traffic in LA while the sunroof lets the sun in to shine white on your skin.  The first moment that topographic transition comes and bushes green and round roll the mountain sides like the land is letting them show off their broad bumpy chests.   The circles of black birds etch-a-sketching patterns again and again above the brown mountains.  The 5, forever and ever two lanes all the way south, all the way north.  The easy glide to the passing lane then back again and the way the IPOD accompanies foot on the gas acceleration or foot off the gas slow down for full hours at a time.

There is nothing else like this, this simple bliss, in the world.  It has made me strong and supple in an adaptive sort of way, it has made me aware that the only one to confront, in truth, is me.  And the open-handed meeting of and reliance on others it’s equally taught me has instructed me more about relationships than any other chance I’ve had so far since I’ve been here.  Here, on earth I mean.  This great awing mystery beyond our living room.

I’m in bed at a Motel 6 off the 101 in Rohnert Park right now.   I’ve stayed here a lot, this very one. On my way to meet Bess, north of here by 20 minutes for a minute she let me live.   The smell of redwood last night was so fresh and stunning I felt like I’d been zapped by a starburst of light when I got out of my car.  I took that for granted last time I was here.  Last year in October during the first north rains I was going up the 101 and crashed and totaled my car.  It was terrifying.  It royally shook me.  I’d been living in my car.  And so I lost my last connection to things, to the “stuff” that connects us to what we think we are.   I met myself every morning in quiet time every day during that time and got through that.  It would be silly to try to explain here what, through losing, I was able to find.

I have not much to show in the form of bank accounts or hard assets. But I can describe for you exactly what route 50 is like in Colorado heading towards the San Juan’s.  I can try to help you understand that when the sky opens on 90 in South Dakota only then can you honestly comprehend the American association of West.  I can tell you without doubt that you will never be the same once you sleep on a mat of pine needles off a dirt logging road with not a single other human around.   I can put into words and images the specific curve of feeling, the exact encircling of homecoming that is different and precise for each individual spirit of every last one of my family members or friends.

I can not wait to get to Humboldt today.  To be surrounded by my spirit family.  They get the things I don’t know how to say.  I can not wait to be surrounded by the experience of trees that drink fog and give us back clean air.  To hug them, and live my thanks.  To celebrate the chance and choice to go up the 101 and to be aware of what that means.

The s-h coming-together-sound of the teaching sea

My apartment seriously looks how it used to when I was a drunk.

This is funny, happened in less than two days, is because the place is so hobbit-small and on my mind because I have a teleconference with Erika my writing partner today.  My 30 some pages of submission are creative non-fiction circa 95-96.  When I lived with and shared a room with Fannon or Kev or Kareen.  The days of sour boy stink on the air and layers of wet towels, insides of cigars, empty bottles to wade through on the floor.

Not that my floors are covered with blunts and empties now.  Today it's clothes and books.  All I own, all I came to California with and all I've spent my money on since I've been here, too.  Clothes and books, travel and food.  The essence of this girl.  Very little I need beyond a splotch of land, the words and close proximity to the sea.

And my little room of my own.  This I firmly believe:  a girl needs a small crafted space that's just hers, where she can have and relish her stillness.  Mine's a 2x6 spot only big enough for a desk on the back end of my closet!  But it's from this sense, the stillness and silence that a woman, that I, that she can be.

I've had little motivation to do anything these days then snuggle on the couch and eat or sit cozy in a coffee shop and write. Or to be quiet beside the sea.  My soul is wanton. Longing and turning flat if I try to ignore its mercurial wants.  I stress easily at any demands other than these.  It is winter:  this is the way.

So I walk a lot.  With Serena up the canyon to the Top of the World.  Around the curves and corners of  Newport's marshy back bay.  From the free parking lot on Forest all the way to Thalia Street on the beach.  Last Saturday someone shaped kelp in to a heart bigger by twice the size than my quiet little room.  It stilled me, gave me pause just a minute, glistened my own heart as it pushed me on.  When I got to Thalia I sat a long time watching the surfers there.  The water was aqua green even folded again and again by its rippy whiteness.  It was shadowed in spots by great seaweed blooms.  There are two breaks and I studied them and also just listened.  Listened and felt the sea. The sound of s and h come together.  This consistent noise that is hushhhing or rushhhhing depending on the state of the soul that hears.

That's how I feel, like there was one life behind me with it's own distant sound.  And that there's this other one I am headed towards but can not see.  I can almost feel it though, the way you do sometimes with a sound just before you get to hear.  And that's what I soaked in last Saturday on my walk to Thalia street. The s-h coming-together-sound of the teaching sea.

After Erika calls I'll clean.  Then relish a day to be quiet with me.  This is the in-between.  Being quiet and still, waiting.  The tide will grow and later move me forward towards the next me that I will be.

When the dark time of year gets here

This is the second Friday in a row I have spent with no agenda.  Today and last week included time on my little square deck that's built into the canyon wall.  I deeply soaked in to the feel of the land around me.  The trees, the exotic green, the breeze out of nowhere then gone again, the happy dance it did on my skin.  The sun, on its fall retreat.

Yesterday my cousin Erin called.  I was on my way to the grocery store in Laguna Woods, where everyone is over 70 and more than once I had to help an oldtimer pick out food or manage what was directly in front of them.  I followed my inner knowing it said cook something golden delicious and fatty for me that's what I so, so need.  Erin laughed, totally understanding and in the same spot.  She lost her mom three months ago.  Her mom Mary was young, a teacher, loved the sea and nature, loved her family and to be active outdoors.  In the last year of Mary's life much of those loves were taken from her--that is she had to give them up.  She raised her head anyways and walked with courage and grace through it all.  These past three months I've tried to do the same.  I've been so grief-struck though I couldn't even comprehend the grief itself.

Erin and I found one another on similar shores last weekend, having both finally stopped the ceaseless running, willing to slow down.  How significant  I thought, same weekend as the time change.  No fighting it a second more, and indeed we talked all last weekend in grateful surrender--we had to enter the season of the dark.  It was time.  My body, yesterday, begged for more of the same.  I cooked the most delicious verde enchiladas.   Baked my cousin Erin in.  Laid on my couch and ate them in front of netflix all night, with black cherry soda and red velvet cookies to wash them down.  I was seized, out of nowhere, by the most rapid tears in the middle of a movie of vignettes about different women.  I let them come out and snuggled deeper on my couch. The rain made fat airy sounds on the concrete from out my window screen .  This, this aloneness, this powerless over life's biggest swings and atrocities, this is why people fear the night.  In my Women Who Run With the Wolves book, since Mary died I've drawn the same thing.  The story about Baba Yaga, and the girl who because of her motherlessness must face the dark, hard sides of life.  Those are her psychic tasks, her work in her own personal inner or under world.  To confront the dark or fearfulness that lay within and gain the ferocity of strength that comes by completing that part.

This is what we do on a spiritual level when the dark time of year gets here.  We look at how we are human, often so connected to what we fear.  Tuesday in the afternoon the moon is new... it is Lunar Samhain, or Lunar New Year.  The dark moon after the final harvest of fall.  When we look if we dare at the kneedeep shit, all that detritus that will grow the new seeds in us through this winter's dark.  My gain and blessings this year have been enormous.  Because this is life: the way of circular, spiraling path, of the balance within of human and holy being kept--my loss and pain have also been profound.  I enter the dark hallow now--we all do.  I bless it all, surrender to the hard with the light and good.  It is not good it is not bad, it is rather the seeds of both from inside the same.  We are where we need to be, right on time.  The end, and also, how to begin.

It's just the beginning

It was a long weekend and I ended it hugging Gretchen with wet eyes, in front of a fish and burger shack under a white moon in a place called Summerland.  I drove her to Pacifica so she could see it and feel the silence there for herself.  Gretchen, who has stood by me through every bit of this year after year, back when everyone else thought I was senseless--the days of moving out of Chestertown because I was following my heart but didn't know towards what.  All I could think coming up to this weekend, it all makes sense now...all I could say again and again when we saw one another...I've only just begun.

Brian who's never written poetically once in his whole life texted There are two tragedies in life.  One is to lose your hearts desire.  The other is to gain it.  Some think the latter is worse.  They think once you gain your hearts desire, what you truly want, then life becomes pointless.  There's nothing left to strive for.  You become scared and fearful once you've gained it you will lose it.  Scared to give in and let yourself feel everything amazing that comes along with gaining one's hearts desire...these people are punks! They're wrong!  The tragedy of gaining one's hearts desire isn't the realization that this is all life has to offer.  That life is pointless from here on out....The real tragedy for some is once you've gained your hearts desire you don't stop and realize that it's just the beginning and NOT the end.  The beginning of something amazing we human beings get to feel.  A feeling that's intense and truthful.  A feeling that's painful and exciting.  A feeling that allows you to love someone or something more than yourself.  To be scared to give in to those feelings is where the tragedy lies.  I called him and we talked for an hour.  He is in love and she is afraid to lose her independence.  I called and talked to Paul almost as long, back to back phone calls about the exact same thing.  Dear Paul who is returning north to the hot springs to live in the forest again before Kalani.   I thought, how lucky am I to know these men.  Oh 2012. Time of new roles that never have been.  These two men loving like they never have before.  New roles everywhere.  Willing to love and getting hurt and keeping their hearts open the whole while.   How proud I am to know them who can be so brave.  It's not all golden in the Age of Female Wisdom.  All of us women and men we are struggling and learning every day. I am inspired by my brothers and try and learn from them.

I did laundry for the first time in a month.  The TV on the Radio station on Pandora rocks.  So does listening to sorta old school The Lonesome Crowded West.  My students are brave and beautiful.  I sat at my favorite beach Sleepy Hollow.  Had a taco from Loco's while I read the book I bought when Josh was here.  In other news while puttering around my house I pulled the salsa verde out of the fridge and was touched in that sudden, merciless way that brings unexpected tears to my eyes because I was so grateful to have a refrigerator, a closet full of lovely clothes.  Life is incredibly simple like that.  To see so clearly how abundant and blessed we are. There is so much for which to give thanks.  Life is ridiculous and complicated, too.  Intense and painful, breaking down defenses growing new roles. So it goes.  I've only just begun.

Repost: In Memoriam.

(original posting, september 2009.  So I can feel connected this far away from home during Hurricane Sandy)

Suzette had this raspy voice and a laugh entirely unanticipated. It used to shoot out of her mouth and hit you in your chest then explode up your neck and down your back, cacophonous echo blast of megaphone and hot air.

She worked the Fool the Guesser one stand up from me on the Pier.

In September the tourists went home, it all sort of started when Felix came in early August which was also the time I kicked Kevin out of the house for the PCP. This left us, Suzette and me or the hot Tico Kiki who was way older which then meant like 35, with lots of time to holler back and forth to each other on our mics. Hurricane Felix was a big one and I got on the local news screaming kooks go home--the reporter was on 9th street, three up from us where the old deadhead house was, we learned from them early on where not to buy our drugs. Jerry died that summer, it was almost omen-ic: Deadheads by then couldn't be trusted a lot of them were tweakers, everybody knew. I imagine the reporters edited me out, we didn't have a tv so I never knew. We didn't even know the hurricane was coming. I got off for my afternoon break and came home for a puff or jay and a swim or some food hopefully someone had some otherwise it was soft-pretzels from the Pier for free the only place I could surely get hooked-up. Sparky was the only dude around though, he was a squatter one of those 9th street kids. Besides Black Mike and Little Kid, the only ones still down to hang after I kicked Kevin out, there was Sparky. Sparky I never trusted cuz of the deadhead squatter thing but we still hung cuz my roommate thought he was the shit. He never had anything to offer he just came looking. We had nothing though since Kevin and the boys went, nothing at all. So instead me and Sparky just took a swim and it's the only time I ever remember the Ocean slamming me again and again like a hard wood board. I swam hard but never never got to a place where she was settled and smooth so I could just float and roll. Like I said the Hurricane was coming but we didn't know. No one else was on the beach though! Mom somehow got in touch with me and said to put all the stuff on the floor up so really that just meant my books and music on the lowest shelf. The pots and pans earlier in the summer, since we didn't ever wash them, all got thrown out.

After Felix it was all different. Like I said, then it was just Black Mike who slept on the couch every night and also suggested we each sleep with a little switchblade under our mattress. Which is funny to me now, cuz like cousin Joey says a weapon will end up getting you in even more trouble if you dont know how to use it. And I for one, didn't, no one ever taught me how.

But luckily we never had trouble. Kevin moved out, he and his boys trashed our house broke windows and the outside porch lights and tagged all over all our shit, then Felix came and after that everything changed. The alleys were more quiet, there was a lot more of the large grey sky. And when the sun was out it was ethereal again, funny yellow glow. I didn't know it yet but that was the summer I first started to learn: there are tides that come and they move as one and they bring a certain power all their own, and they effect us all.

And the earth is where and how we learn.

By September it was cool already I had the greatest snaked Hoodie I lived in with holes down at the edge for my thumbs. Everyone was gone. Just 14 years ago, that's all, but OC didn't have the condo weekenders it's so full of now. Even my aunt and uncle and grammy who lived summer here were gone, they had to go home to the county to teach school.

Which meant we ditched 6th street for my family's house at the Pines, the girls and I, because it scared us being alone like that with just the beach rats who were hating on us and the ghosts that we heard again and again--no lie, the old fashioned player piano music or loud foot steps upstairs on the outside deck when for sure no one was there, or even the radios in our house that would go on without reason sometimes. Local folklore said the Broadripple on 14th, and our place too on 6th, were the original Bordellos from back in the day. It was mid-1800's that the town came to be. But Wikipedia says the original Pier burned down in a fire in 1994, which isn't true, the fire happened in the winter of 1995, winter after Felix, I remember because we drove over that winter to see. The fire took Morbid Manor and the waterpark, too; I smoked pot everyday in Morbid Manor in 95 then got to ride the water rides for free since I worked there, ran a betting game for the same guy who did Fool the Guesser, Suzette Kiki and me. And that fire took everything, all that, down. 1995 last of the Pier and the Manor, the Riptide Park and Jerry, too.

So me and Chrissy who worked Morbid Manor and loved a guy, Johnny, started hanging at the Pines. It was cool and vacant in town and I learned all at once to love September, the sheet clear blue sky, the white clouds puffy and bright as a smile. The way the water looked suddenly so navy blue. September, goddamn I learned to love you.

Suzette invited us over for for spaghetti that's how I found out she was into selling and smoking crack. She got arrested later that winter which I learned the same night as I heard about the fire at the Pier. It sucked cuz she had a little one, I dont remember his name anymore he had brown hair with flints of yellow curl, he was three-years-old. Guess he'd be 17 now hope he's not in jail. That night over spaghetti when I first found out about her drug of choice, it was the first time I ever got that gut-twisting sweaty-necked premonition-chill. It was September, the streets were flat and empty but she lived all the way downtown so the air from the inlet was coming off the water and was damp with a terrible cold. The sky was low and hung with thin grey clouds.

Addiction is a hell of a fucking disease.

In September now I come here every year weekend after Labor Day and have a reunion with old friends. Last night we were up to 3, boardwalk, dancing, talking, laughing and lots of quiet on the cool, white sand. Round 2am I walked past sixth street, Kevin is dead, I'm 9 years clean.



Everything is changed. And also, September, the clean earth and shushing sea, is just the same.

Repost: Wistful and grateful on the night before I go to grad school to become a therapist...

(original posting 5.13.2009
Choptank, MD)

About a month or so ago I went to try therapy.

“Let’s see,” she said. “So you started using drugs regularly at 15. I am sure you have heard that whatever age you start using is the age that you basically stop growing. So we’ve got a lot of work to do. It’s time to grow up. You are still, essentially, 15.”

Hmm. Maybe it’s possible that this woman, who for the first 45 minutes of our meeting did not allow me to talk except to answer her pointed questions, somehow missed the part where I mentioned that for over eight years I’ve been on a committed path of recovery and self-help, learning to take responsibility for me and aiming for emotional maturity.

Of the “adult” skills I’ve actually focused on, one has been the willingness to allow others room to be heard; so normally this helps to curb any immediate reactiveness to asinine fucking comments like the one above. But that day on the therapist couch the blood curled around my neck even as I smiled graciously at her opinion, oh, uh-huh, mmm-hmmm. It was later in the session when the radical, albeit kind, honesty kicked in.  When she tried to tell me that my wanderlust and great passion for traveling too were indicators that I needed “to grow up.”

One of the other adult skills I’m really working on is learning to integrate information from various different sources and in the end use them to supplement my own views with all the regularly outputting stimulus of the world. I am learning, in other words, how to trust myself.

Needless to say, therapy, this time, didn’t quite work out.

I was 15 when I first found myself saddled up with my bags and my trinkets, my combat boots and cigarettes, scowling from low down in the passenger’s seat of the blue hatchback my mom behind the wheel, my brother’s perpetual chirpiness behind us his head in the middle between the seats. Up the Baltimore beltway then down 295, on our way to Dr. Lessey in the city. He had an office on Park Ave. On the corner was a soul food joint with bars on the window and a yellow sign for Lake Trout. Across the street and to the left was a store called The Leather Underground.

I had my learner’s permit, I was almost 16, it would soon be my regular, weekly route. Soon enough it was just me in the car. I was never brave enough to try the soul food. The bemused gay men in the bondage store, however, eventually knew this pink-headed purple-booted riot grrl by name. It was the early 90’s and hard to find places like that were ahead of the soon to come piercing trend. Leather Underground was the only place that I knew of that you could go for a belly button ring, and they used a 10 gauge cow-ring, not a bar, and there was nothing girly or petite about it.

Dr. Lessey was soft and gentle with gold spectacles and a sandman peace about him. I always pictured him with a nightcap on, the kind that triangles down one side of the head with a little cotton ball on the end, you know faded cotton-white with light blue stripes. And a candle in his hands.

It was six or eight months that I went to the city to see him. I was touched in a way that I couldn’t get my words to say, I was touched by the kindness of this sweet, quiet little man. I never told him about the pot I was smoking or the drinking that was edging beyond exploratory. I kept us occupied by tales of the girls I hated at school and this new, daring guy who showed up one day by my side, grinning down at me delicious in his eyes, walking me up the stairs to my homeroom. He had just gotten kicked out of public school. I was entranced and a month or so later when the same guy got locked up at Harbour Hospital in South Baltimore, Dr. Lessey encouraged me to go see him. I trusted the good Doctor. I used to bring my friends there to meet him, my brother, my boyfriend even (the boyfriend that I had secured as result of a visit paid to him at South Baltimore’s Harbour Hospital mental ward.) Dr. Lessey looked on in amazement, the only adult who didn’t judge and seemed uniquely interested, when my friend Briana showed up with me in his office sporting her knew Leather Underground navel loop. I loved how much he seemed, simply, to care.

Around the time that I really did start to make changes and work to get my life cleaned up, this would be roughly the spring of 2001, I entered in to another therapist relationship, this time with Father Ed. His was, I think, the fourth “couch” I’d been on by then. He was supplied to me for free by the uber-conservative liberal arts college that I’d already by then dropped out twice from, both times as result of drinking and drugs. Father Ed had me do things like hold fake conversations with the air; the air of course was always a character and usually someone close to me in life. I had to hold pillows tight and close and pretend that they were me. He was the first therapist I ever cried in front of and lord did it make me feel so, so clean. I loved him, Father Ed, for the same reason as Dr. Lessey, he truly seemed to care. That, and one clear, new thing: I was capable, or at least so beginning, of being honest. Truly honest about me. No more hiding the extracurricular’s that were so much a part of my life it wasn’t that I was even purposefully hiding them before, just that I took them so much for granted as a part of how I lived my life. The drugs and the alcohol were, plainly, part of me, of who I was, as natural as air or water or food when it came to the things I did each day. I just never questioned any of it, no matter the consequences or miserable thin vein of fear that seemed to increase with each passing year, feeling like ice in my blood and a cold wall at the base of my heart, steadily growing.

The honesty made all the difference. Clarity is a mixture of willingness, or at least a capacity, to be honest with myself and then trusting me enough to know that my own truth is the one that counts. The therapists that I’ve gained the most from over the years, as I’ve sorted through and grieved out my humanness and wounds, are the ones who’ve made it clear that they care and you can’t fake that, caring is a quality that is or isn’t. I know when it’s true, and more, affront when it is false or faked. In an atmosphere of care one feels safe, and safety is what is required, at least for me, to get to a place where I am willing to get honest with myself—on whatever level, at whatever risk of responsibility it means that I am going to have to take. And good therapy, for me at least, has been no more than the process of showing up to witness that allowing. Good therapists ask the right questions and then let the process of discovery guide its self. I always end up being the one who sees what I need to see just by having a safe place to say it out loud.

So if I’ve learned anything at all over the years, it’s that the answers are indeed within; and that especially it’s not a sign of weakness to sometimes need another’s help in order to get them out. In fact I’d say that empowering oneself like that is all about being Brave. But that other person doesn’t get to tell you what to do. They definitely don’t get to yield control over your ideas. Self-trust is the goal to me, and so it was that over a month ago my life started to turn around at its darkest point: what I thought would be the beginning step in self-discovery when I took the plunge on to a new couch turned out actually to be the exercise I needed to affirm the ending of self-doubt. And now that I am here, doing the Real Work with a book and some close friends as my guides, I am realizing that the two concepts are actually one and the same.

With the mere mind and heart

I moved to Laguna because one day in May on a field trip my students and I hiked the canyon at Crystal Cove. That day for the first time since I'd been south I felt the mama impulse in my blood.  That means I could feel the land rise and fall, it means that my breathe as if breathing earth particles caught then plummeted in silent then threshold spirit-plateaus.  Like the earth was actually breathing me.  I forgot how it felt to be so connected to the green, even though it was coming to me in my dreams.  I looked on the map when I got back to my room in Huntington that day and saw the wilderness surrounding Laguna.  In the most quiet place in my heart where I go when I get still or maybe where stillness goes when I get my heart I quieted then asked me, I mean spirit-me, what do you want and this little apartment here, that's what, when the silence parted, I could see. Fall has never had such a thrill.

The two first months here I ran in constant press in preparation for grad school which was between two major trips back east.   It was not until Beth came the weekend before last that I could be here, now.  Grief can be so hectic the way it pushes you around.

Tonight I made dinner then sat outside under my plants and twinkle lights the canyon walls above me houses constellating the ridge like touchable stars.  Oh big California, oh rancher artist adobe houses on cliffs I could put 9 of my little apartments inside.  12 if you count your deck.  16 your garage and carport with the at least two antique cars....

In the last two chapters of one of my textbooks for gradschool I read about contemplative therapies. I was sitting in the crazy sun.  I learned that Maslow and others have long issued what came to me those early months my first fall out of college, when I gave myself to poetry and meditation each and every day.  That human consciousness, for most of us, is in its infancy.  That with the mere mind and heart alone we are capable of sheer galaxies inside.  I strapped in, alone, back then and have never stopped enjoying the ride.  Since then it has been my only and final guide.

It's nice to be not so alone in that anymore.  To know what this path has all been for, or to have one tiny clue anyhow.  It's really nice to be outside at dinner, in the warm fall in California, the mama hush cradling me in her round green Laguna arms.

Enjoy. Settle in.

All these marvels jigsawing across the floating screens in my head.  It is two weeks since I've blogged but that doesn't stop me from composing in my mind.  From wanting to tell you, funny computer page, about the yellow fall light it's different not for its bright but its shadows, how a dark edge can make the radiance so much more succinct   Understand, if you can, the way the brown earth rises from the sea at Crystal Cove, how the crowns of land remind me of low tide on the Choptank River where I used to jump from tump to tump, where the fragmite grows.  I want to tell you that my friend is on the road in canyon country and that talking to him made me see the Anasazi riches and how the gnosis of that energy once lived me deep and whole on that same land.  Made me smell the high-nosed sugar of the black-green pines, made me exalt Coconino coconino...ahh Kaibab.  O to truly live off the land.  Enchanted.  Poet wanderer on the road, any person on the road.  And me, for the first time, the first ever when talking to such a person, did not yearn to move, felt no ache no pressing that said go get out go be and allow, no hard thin line in me with no words but an urge that says must go be simply in the flow.  Do you get it white page?  What that feels like, the outbreath?  The exhalation of these roots, straight down are meant to grow?

I spent last fall in the mountains under the tall trees.  I watched magic manifest. I am here now, fall again, a different setting, just as blessed.  I am plugged in to this, am plugging in now, to my real life.  To what I want to build, to grow, powering on and in to the best parts of who I am.  Or can be, or become.  As recently as (my most recent) trip east I was near that quitten point, with the drain-strain of exhaustion nipping at my heels and running tapes in my head. The only thing worse than regret is doubt and I believe the two shadow box from an arm with two fake fists.  Thankfully the lesson of retract curved me in its hand, I remembered the heir of patience which is acceptance, blends to compassion, softens in to loving tenderness with my self.  Is the gentle loving hush that sings Slowww down.  Sink down.

Enjoy...
Settle in.

Maryland in the Fall

Past the flat side of the Eastern Shore, past the Bay, past the sprawl of the Route 2 corridor, past the cities and burbs where I'm from...

...Come the hills.  Where the mountains start, Western Maryland where my brother and his lady and the sweetest ever little babe live.  I slept so full last night, long sweet talks with Sean and Jamie til our eyes were part closed, then the peepers out my window, Carl Jung on my chest.  Heee heee and baby cuddles all morning long....  

I Love Maryland in the Fall.

To tame this head

The Eastern Shore is the rural, country side of Maryland.  It is flat but full of agricultural and watermen history, you can almost see its bias and charm in the fog banks that stack thick on a fall day like today.  The Chesapeake Bay divides the shore from the stretch of urban corridor between Annapolis, DC, and Baltimore where I am right now.   Over there, or  the other side is what Shore people call it here.

The last time I was here in this shop I lived on the shore.  I had edits due to Erika; her most recent submission of Hemingway's Girl.  It didn't have a contract on it yet.  She didn't even have an agent then.  In such little time so much can change.

My cousin Erin drove us to Annapolis this morning.  Last night sort of late we went to Ellicot City, my favorite place to go in the fall. Later of course it was Sex and the City reruns in her bed.  We parted ways this morning at her car, she to the State House where she works me to the Hard Bean where now I can write and study and be the Kelly that inside me really is and needs to be.  It's been a whirlwind, in San Antonio with mom and dad the Montezuma Cypresses hung over us on the river walk and talked low like they knew our names.  A Mexican man fell in love with me and spoke in Spanish about the true ancient heritage of my tattoo.  It made me laugh in a gentle way and turn red.  It's the first time anyone has done that, ever, in spanish Los Indios, Los Aztecos...not one of my Mexican friends ever knew, not one.  Coatalique in the eyes, lore of female divine still living in our unconscious but in the temporal from day to day she is dead.  In Austin I stayed on a ranch with 26 other McMullens for the weekend.  It was like being a child again at Gram and Pops at the beach.  People on mattresses on the floor and every couch bodied.  Kate looked like a Grecian princess in the times of the Goddess on her wedding day.  We made a circle around them and I couldn't stop the hot tears that ran the whole time.  Now I'm here, Maryland where I'm from, time at Uncle Tim's where I slept all night two nights ago, the first time I've done that since Mary went in the hospital.  Time with Brian my brother in Canton and my family in Pennsylvania, too.

And now time with me today, before I meet with my brother Sean and Aunt Sue, to write poems and sing this soul of mine back to life.  Out the shop front the boat show is setting up, years ago I worked twelve hour shifts at Pussers back to back because boat show weekend brings all the tips.  I lived here then and was going to marry a man named Joe.  Years after that I came here to the docks on my first date with Brandon, who I would spend six years with in a farmhouse deep in the country of the Eastern Shore.  Growing veggies and swapping music and fresh eggs.  Years after that I came up here to meet with Erika, begin this phase which has been all about the soul song, all about trusting that there is no arrival, just a path that presses and spirals, and cycles on.

Good for me to think on that today.  To tame this head that really wants to know about   ...Years from now...?  That really loves to wrap up in the different experiences of home.

Like we were fairy blue

I don't know why it happened here but an outbreath just left me feeling soaked in and comfortable, almost relaxed, for the first time in over a week.  This is the coffee shop I used to ride my bike to all the time when I first moved here to Southern California back in February.  I remember the first time I sat in this comfy chair, with a poem book in my lap to put the peacock light on inside me (to reference--for Erika--Millay.)  Maybe that's why my soul nudged me here today.  Because it feels like a home base.  Where a keystone is set so that I can take pause.  And try to...breathe.

That was the most intense several weeks I have lived in a really long time.  Moving then Mary dying, getting accepted to school, then trying to prepare for school and beginning to teach at night, then school.  School.  Woaaaah school.  What the hell just happened?

In our group process session on Sunday I got all fidgety and couldn't sit still in my seat, next thing I was standing under the rafters out back of Pacifica where the whisper breeze lingers then stops with these two women in my group. Sobbing.  This feels like a blood clot, all I could think, a little spot of purple rot stuck in my heart trying to get out my throat, and it went all the way back to when I left my job at Chesapeake, that deep and devastating burn out.  We have to log 3000 hours of internship before we get licensed, meaning non-profits and the system all over again, and I could barely take it, the misery and reality of this.  And like that I was on the phone with Gretchen in April 2010 fumbling on my words admitting with my fool heart to her all that time I believed I could change it.   Feeling so embarrassed to say this out loud.

So that's in-depth, soul psychology.  Recognizing all change happens only within.  Woooooaaaah and here I go.

I swam Saturday night in the dark of the Equinox, the balance held.  For the first time on the West Coast, a night swim!  With my new friends from grad school. Covered in moonstruck phosphorescence like we were fairy blue. I am so grateful, already, for them.

Fly to Austin in less than two days.  Cousin Kate, ohhh!  Cousin Kate.   Then on to Maryland to be in Mandy's wedding, to officially celebrate the union of her and Dave.  I miss my family with a tremendous ache.  Doing all this, this commitment and follow through, is taking all of me.  My support system is back east and that's really hard.  I don't know what else to say.

Summer skies stars are fallin all along the injured coast

My coffee in my hand and the sky a colorless balm 6:30 am I was ready.  Then at my car Nici texted nothing out there.  Which I was like shit I know but it says glassy and where we surf midway between here and HB is this sweet small break that is perfect for me who cant surf but is obsessive about learning.  Knee high Kelly waves!!  Boo.

So I am blogging because that is the second best way to unfurl my muscles and soften my stress and relax my bones.  It does not cease to amaze me:  the effect the salt and sun have on my soul.  This is not just hippiedippie as it sounds it is also true.  It is the solitary reason I moved here, all the way away from my family and friends and the land that raised me and the sea that is my own.  Because I need the elements in a bodily, active, daily way.

I am listening to Paul Simon on Spotify, The Rhythm of the Saints.  So remedying for the poet in me and it's been a good year or two since I've started a day with the glory of The Obvious Child.  Should I not have the ocean this morning, I shall instead have this the other tide that moves me.  Words, and muse, which is its own flow all the same.  oooo aaa ooo aaaahhh Summer skies stars are fallin all along the injured coast...In the sixties he just let it out the words the flight the heart of America he moved us on.  I am backstepping now because of all the new which there is to start and it feels scary and huge and insurmountable when it wakes me up in my new bed in my new loft with the peepers chirping out the window their nighttime canyon song.  Surf I don't have to think about.  Just feel and float then rock that shit along.  Just be and let the do happen.  Naturalness surge easy flux of retreat, be still, now move on.  Again, again, yet again.

There is a bonus track called Thelma on Spotify this is re-released, a nice surprise.  I will get the hang of this,  work and school and so on.  I am quite good at in-between I remind myself alot that's what all this is.  It just feels cramped and like I can't move.  That's so not me.

Gratitude goes a long way a day at a time tho.
See~!

The grls,: Annie, me Nic and D in HB

Gray's 10th bday party 9/9/12 xo

Room for me

Maybe the most cradled security or identity feeling I have ever known, my whole life long, centers on my own personal space.  It is one the earliest senses of self I have and begins in my bedroom when I lived outside Annapolis.  We moved there in 1989, the summer I began middle school.  You know what I mean by sense of self right?  A first real foothold on the inside terrain called Kelly that's been with me all these years.

What stands out is me making my room my own.  Right down to a sign on the door called Kelly's Place.

Writing about it now brings back a lineage of memories that predate middle school.  The back cubby of our garage in Severn, concrete that extended on the left beyond the space for cars.  I used cardboard boxes to establish my own little nooks and special places back there.  My wonderland, amid the spider webs and dust and athletic gear of Sean and dad's, that's what it felt like.  Magic.  This was the space I relied on to create Murder Mysteries and Haunted Train Rides for the other kids in the neighborhood.  Or Grammy's attic in Brooklyn, the corner where the slant of eaves triangled off a spot between the dresser with the vanity mirror and the bookshelf to the right.  This was my spot, where I arranged stuffed animals and a typewriter that belonged to either Sharon or Sue.  Or actually, probably Paul.

At 21 I dropped out of college for the second time.  That's when, on suggestion from a book called Simple Abundance, I purposefully created a corner in mom's basement for me.  To "find" myself.  This was the first time I consciously used the tool of a sacred space, though back then, in early 99, I don't think I used it more than three or four times.  But to be sure, every single home I have lived in since that winter at mom's I have made my space.  In Chestertown on Mt. Vernon and at Truslow Road and Anngar Farm I actually had my own little room for me.  In Easton, too.  Every other place, including Ocean Pines where it currently is, I took with me that first chair, from back in mom's basement in 1999.

It's where and how I charge my battery.  When I went on the road I made a travelling alter and so long as it and its contents were next to me I knew peace.  In Huntington the alter went next to my bed so my bed became my space, my little nest.  This morning, at about 9am, Nici off surfing alone because this was even more important than that, I finished my room.

I didn't even know this room existed until I moved in, it's a little extension off the closet and the door was closed when I looked at the place.  Now it's my office.  Where the magic to write and grow and learn and evolve through grad school will begin.  My little room for me is the most quiet place in the world, and still, too, like I am tucked in the belly of the earth.  Even dark as it is back there, I swear it glistens.

So that's that.  Erika, who arrived last night, who launched her book from Barnes and Noble in Annapolis where we're from.   And me in my magic room finally, also arrived, back to self.  Home.

From day to day

Reinvention.  It takes time.  That's what's going on:  I am concentrating on where all the rubble has landed.  This is not a bad thing.  Just, concentrated.  And a lot.

Found out that I didn't take out enough money for grad school.  And missed the due date for the minimum deposit.  The strings, when they unravel--even if the grand purpose is to re-ravel them in a more lovely, fitting way--they are wispy and numerous.  Quite a lot to keep track of.  So I have sat down in the middle of it all: the unfurled mess springing out from every direction, just to do what is the next priority from day to day.

Tonight I will apply for more loans and figure out the cheapest way to buy books which are not covered by loans. I am trying to be different then I am.  Not anti-institution and seeing red over the minuscule crap.  I keep perspective by laughing a lot and thinking about how grateful I am for the beach and sunshine and following through with what I always said I'd do.  Wow.  I think of surfing a lot and thank life in my head.  It makes me feel the smile in my heart--this is it, my life.  The only one I've got, I am dealing with the choices I made.  That keeps it all in check.  Mostly.  Also I have friends that listen to my foul mouth and laugh while I blow off steam.  I value that they value that side of me, too.

Trying not to think only of my new surf board and my book.  My book is yelling for me so loud that my morning meditation is actually aligning with my Ipod day after day.   My surf board's named Wiss.  After my aunt.  Monday morning was her inaugural ride and from the line up I popped up then sunk the side and fell right off.  This happened three times then Chelsea who's eleven was like is that board a little tough for you?  Yea I said I'm definitely wobbly and I took the next wave in to shore break.  Nici hollered little tips for the next hour.  The board is a full foot shorter then anything I've rode.  Finally she pointed to a spot to put my right foot and I did and was up just like that.   White water warrior again and again I never went back to the line up just told Nic I'd be out soon then eventually went and got a burrito instead.  Haha California when did you happen?

Grad school syllabus has hundreds and hundreds of pages to read each month.  Surfing writing reading repeat.

Lots to tie up before I get to that, tho~

Erika Robuck

This is a picture of Erika Robuck in April, 2009.  Taken at the high school we attended, after she read from her self-published novel Receive Me Falling. 

It was the first time I'd seen her in almost a decade and a half.

When we were in Ms. Fouse's English class, back in Catholic School together in the seventh grade, we used to pass one another loose-leaf with stories written on them.  Hand to hand beneath our desks when the teacher wasn't looking.  Hers had willful characters with tortured backgrounds and eloquent names like Victoria.  Mine were loosely veiled recaps of characters based on people we both knew.

Little has changed...as far as our primary interests and passions go, and the enthusiasm which we use all these years later in our continued sharing of the words.  Erika and I decided a month after our re-connection in 2009 to begin what has become three years of story-sharing and more importantly, life-creating with one another.  And I am beyond words now, truly, when attempting to best describe the experience of watching the world welcome her gifts.

What is there to possibly say to cover this amount of awe, and gratitude?

Hemingway's Girl, her first offering from Penguin's NAL hit the shelves today!  Erika writes historical fiction and brings Papa H to life in such a realistic way that I am whole-heartedly certain: she has made him proud. What a ride, and what great fortune I have to continue this relationship of spirit and words and heart and trust, of the ebbs and flows of creating and life.  I am honored, and hope you all will support her and her book.  Go here to read Erika's thoughts on this special day and here to purchase her first of many books.  With love and special thanks to Erika, and the nous, for so touching us both with its mystery and magic on this and all our days ~  To countless more my friend.

The enormity of quiet gratitude

The keys for my studio in Laguna were in my hand like a talisman, some octagonal  proof of all I'd been running towards, all I left behind.  When did it change from that to this, to heading towards from leaving behind...Every throttle and instinct that propelled me dangling on a quarter-sized metal ring.  Two little keys pushed me out of Anngar Farm, out from my six year love affair with the boy with the honey eyes, pushed Josh out the door that sickening Sunday at Choptank, pushed me and Brooks to leave the Talbot County Employment Center because we knew, we insisted, convinced the other even when we didn't believe it ourselves that it had to be the Muse holding tight to those two keys.  Pushed me around Oregon in Gretchen's beater pick-up, pushed then paused, sighed deep in me, nestled me under conifers big as cities, tucked me in the mists of the Cascades, bathed me naked with Beth as I vowed, as we vowed yet again start again.  Held me tight as it cooked me clean the year and a half I moved back to Ocean Pines.  I stopped with Jayden at Rudy's Shake Shop where it looks out over the Pacific just south of Crystal Cove those keys still in my hand like a dreamscape whose designer I'd finally, finally finally! just met. Arrival!  All I could think.   That's when I got the message I was accepted to gradschool. I have done it, I have finally, finally arrived! I just kept thinking you did it Kel, you finally got here.  You have finally made those dreams come true.  It was the oddest feeling, so plain but also still.  It was right about then, that very day, when aunt Mary went in the hospital.

It switched then, my voice in my head.  Would only say this too, this too, this too.  Which is from Dani Shapiro.  I called my mom and sobbed then my dad and uncle Tim and did the same.  Then I talked to Aunt Mary, I wanted to be strong for her, I really did.  I wasn't.  It was bad I couldn't breathe.  My greatest fear about being so far from home, come true.  What happened from then to the end isn't so much private as it is a blur.  By Thursday I had a ticket home by Friday I was on the plane.  I never got to see her though, in our last conversation I was selfish and told her this sucks, exactly what I said was this effing sucks but I used the real word.  She was honest with me and direct about her pain and every little thing going on, which she knew I needed to hear because for so long she just lifted up from love and made me laugh on the phone or wanted to know about my life.  She knew I needed to hear where she was at though, to be able to have peace with her letting go.  At home it was my amazing cousins her kids who are stronger than I will ever be.  Erin my amazing sis.  Ed and Tim.  They are heroes and inspirations and I am honored they are my blood,  a testament, fully, to their mom. The pit bull in me wants to pummel something, some big shadow portion of life, for doing this to them.  I want to take them up like the puppies they are to my heart, I want to shield and shelter and take this all from them.  I am selfish and had to tell myself if they can do this so can you.  We all of us fell in line behind my uncle this amazing gentle man, we followed my dad,  they moved us gracefully through it all, we let the strength of  family lead us on.  What we've always done.  The Irish twins, eleven months between dad and uncle Tim they're calling themselves the Odd Couple since Mary's passed and it's only them in the house now, the Uncle Dad's.  Uncle dad!    All of my cousins and aunts and uncles every single one and every person ever touched by the enormity of love that comes from the combined McMullen heart.  It was homage to Aunt Mary's quiet steadiness, there and painting our edges with softness all those years, we could still feel her glow in the air.  The whole family together, all but Bernd who was unable to come from Germany.  It was the only family event since the 80's where everyone was there.  I am just so, so proud to see so clearly who I am, who I come from.  It's a hard way to come by it, but here, now, keys to Laguna and future in hand: it helps me so honestly and gratefully see where I will aim to go.

My aunt Mary was sick for three years and suffered silently until the very end.  She was an angel, the kind of person whose each day is a  triumph because she added to it the best of who she was.   She made manifest, daily, parts of the infinity of spirit within.  Irreverent but with the loving patience of a natural teacher's heart. So few rise up to that, few even try.  She did it her whole life, but especially at the end.  She raised me and my brother with her peace and easiness all those summers in Ocean Pines and those quiet nights at Shady Hill Lane.  The unconditionality of her and Uncle Tim.  She raised three awe-inspiring kids.  The safety.  They, she inspired in me absolutely some of the finest parts of who I, if I choose to step up to it, can be.  I can not take a step since she passed without seeing the footfalls left I feel now so compelled to trippingly try and fill.  When I got back here, used those keys to let myself in at midnight on Sunday, the boxes and bags packed but half-opened all around, I could do nothing but sit and soak in the shock.  Brooks said she was a Matriarch of the tribe and he told me you are, too, and when he said that it finally felt like someone got it the enormity of responsibility, the enormity of quiet gratitude at hand.  The loss.  I finally let out the twists of pain and shatter all stuck inside.

The days are passing now, will.  Life goes on.  Yesterday driving down Irvine on my way to the beach between my classes, I looked up and realized oh my gosh this feels like home to me.  Like in that merciless, taken for granted way.  This is my home, now.  I haven't said that about a place as an adult, not once, except for in Ocean Pines.  But that's what happens I guess when you walk through the open door.

Like I always do

Laguna.  It's like a whole new experience of being in California for the first time. A whole new bottomless new, all over again.  It felt impending as it got closer, full of locked dark fear, now I know why.  Paul came with Jill, Derynn helped me all day Friday, I try to concentrate on the grace of alignment and the little pleasures and joys and peace of place...and home?  I can walk to a world-known artfest.  There are trees out the window of my loft I can touch because in California no windows have screens.  There are private beaches and hippies and long-dressed ladies, rolling hills that remind me of Sonoma and nightime canyon air.   The arcs of earth twinkle like sighs or breath.  There is a friendliness here that I haven't found any place else on the West Coast.  Last night at a Mexican restaurant a man name Pete talked to me for an hour about Laguna's what what and all the where's.  I was grateful for the contact but left before I got teary because gay and emotional as Pete was proud to be it still would've been too much for him.  Since he was a stranger I'd just laughed a lot with over carnitas, afterall.

I got my keys for this place on Wednesday, got accepted to grad school that day, it was also my year anniversary of arriving to Cali.  I was riding glee and high.  Mike and I went out which was planned as a catch up not a celebration so it turned timely and perfect.  I am glad I have him right now--I needed Sean my brother all weekend and Mike who lives just north of me here was the best man in his wedding and just knowing he is here continues to anchor me.  And this weekend which has shown me again how quick it is that the spheres of earth can move...it is impossible to not feel isolated which is wickedly different than the cleanly feeling of alone.

Finally Sean and I spoke this morning.  I was sleepless at 5, could think only of surfing because I guess the flat surfaces and quiet slants of nighttime color where I sleep felt a lot in my mind like the ocean in the early morning, when all colors seem to emanate from and back to the same shade.  My brother and I who are psychic our whole lives with each other it was true came to each other today at dawn with things we only could understand together.  He was trying to communicate to Jamie and I to Mike it turned out the same stuff, though it was something he and I barely needed words with one another to get.

I don't want to teach today.  I want to be headed east.  I'm going to need a boyfriend I think I need someone who's just there.  I had five dates with a guy who disappeared after I wouldn't have sex.  I had two dates with a different guy who disappeared entirely the day after telling me he wanted to really get to know me and try to "do this thing."  I am tired.  I am thinking of my family and of my strength and how weak I feel and how sometimes what makes us who we are is not the beautiful part, but the pain.  How these so often line up with seemingly no reason.  Sean sent me a picture of a butterfly that landed on his brother-in-laws finger after they'd talked heart to heart about the mysteries in life.  I will choose the mystery, gratefully, which is what I always do.

It will take a while for my soul and heart tho.  Mysteries can hurt like hell.

Let the earth find them whole again

Full moon mama in me all spirals of nag champa hippie oils lavender and sage...The sun was out yesterday morning in yellow single beams only for an hour.  It cut between the steel hanging of the marine layer the sky the color of dolphins,  the dolphins so close to Nici and I on our surfboards that I could see the shine and divots of their skin.  I could not contain my sounds of glee.  I got pummeled when I tried to catch a wave and came up smiling with some crazy headless determination.  I say headless because the white waves aren't good enough I want to ride real waves and it has nothing to do with fixated mentality, it's a total body thing.

Just like the draw to the ocean always is, my whole life.  It's a peace that satiates me from a wordless place inside but that I can feel run through as real as I can feel the tides of the moon.  And I am living in it now, like that feeling is one big orb I have stepped into, or am born out of.  From deep inside.

Today's the first harvest, holy holy sacred life blessed be.  Me and my religiousity.  My contempt for it, too.  I taught a private english lesson last night that had me jazzed way after it was done.  I watched Kelly Slater surf the men's heat at the Open and stood it awe, I listened to Best Coast on my phone last night, laying in bed.  We are taking our students to the Fair.  I live on the beach in California like I always saw and felt only this is real not the inside bliss feeling that was only a dream.  This morning it strummed in me, my book again, and I told it ok I am coming thanks for letting me know.  I want to worship this earth and her rounds on my knees, I want this majesty of gratitude to pour out in dusted gold ribbons and magnify the love of all the people that I know.  Let their love light the way around the hearts of those they love let the whole world kindle on that flame.  Let the earth find them whole again finding her let them have reason to be grateful under sky.

Lunar Lammas again, we turn we turn, these are my thanks. I'm Amazed~

How amazingly rad.

It felt good to take a breath--my roommates did a 48-hour crusade to Chicago and back and having a house to myself was just that.  A big long breath out.  Steel Pulse was so fun. Major surprises there, too.  Barefeet on the lawn dancing and the moon.  At 6:30am Saturday my phone started buzzing Nici wanted to surf and Derynn wanted to know if I was going to the Open with her boys.  It went on like that for an hour me laughing all the way.  There was nothing like cruising across PCH at the pier that morning.  I had that sense about my life, of fresh and at-one-ness at once and this is really happening.  That hasn't happened in a while.  We got to the Open and the boys had to stand on line for an hour to get their passes to swipe so they can win prizes all week.  Last year Jayden won hundreds of dollars worth of stuff.  Just in the first ten minutes we'd gotten hats for free.

After a while we went to Tower 8 and Nici was in the water and after another while she convinced me to go out.  I was like no way not a chance am I surfing California for the first day at the kick-off of the US Surf Open.  I felt like a big kook but she forced me and turns out she's an awesome teacher.  I was up in the white water in an instant and like that my whole pulse for it was back.  I rode white waves for a good bit til she forced me to paddle all the way out and in the line up she was teaching me all kinds of little great tips, confirming my original instinct all the way back to last year that I needed a woman to teach me.  After an hour I was whipped and was like I'm going in and started to paddle and next thing I knew I was right inside the wave and it moved me right and then I was up and rode it all the way to when it reformed and still was up and going, and it felt like yoga, that union, and I saw how to be in control and let it happen at once.  It was RADICAL.  I hope to start going with her in the morning before school.


 Der and I tried to go to the movies later but that didn't work out so instead I made us dinner.  We wound up at Barnes and Noble on the floor of the poetry section reading the little hymns out loud. I slept well then was up early again and got all the errandy house things out of the way which always makes me feel at peace.  Today I spent the day with a cutie which was rad.  Finally talked to Erin too so I feel connected again. Erika tagged me on Instagram with a picture of a Crow on the beach in NC.  Fannon's anniversary just passed and  this is the final loop before the season begins to round out.  Meaning Crow made good sense. My interview at Pacifica is Friday.  I am going to jam out at the Open all week.  I have a date tonight.  I want to write an essay on being a woman for Holly.  Book, no worries, I'll soon be back.  


My life is becoming what I always saw in my heart.  Part of this is because I was willing to let go of a lot of ideas jammed up in my head. 


How amazingly rad.

And dance

Three weeks ago I decided it's time for me to see more live music again.  I was hanging out with this cutie lifeguard watching some surf punk band with a horrible drunk wannabe Morrison lead.  My company was far better than the band.  Since then I've seen Matisyahu and tomorrow Steel Pulse.  Steel Pulse!!!  Haven't seen good reggae since the old Sunsplash days.  Next week at the Surf Open Best Coast, Toro y Moi and TV on the Radio. Free Best Coast on the beach!  Tonight I'm going with Annie and like 10 girls to see a No Doubt cover band.  I am looking forward to a deep-fried avocado since we'll be at the fair.

To the hell yea.  I rode my bike forever today.   The headwind on the way back was hilarious. So much resistance that's the first time a  bike ride on the beach path made me sweat.  Like always I get a big smile when I ride, which makes everyone smile too.  Which makes me happy.  And smile more.  The Open started today, meaning even more than normal little skaters everywhere and all the registers now accepting money at every concession stand.  I don't think surf events happen til Saturday.  Jayden and I have plans to be down there at like 6am...I'm going to watch a lot of surfing and not move much other than bike to beach to water to sand.  Back to bike again.


Talked to Josh last night forever and it made me feel whole and clean.  That's been happening more often with him.  And so things move on.  The admissions counselor at Pacifica emailed me today, they presented my application to the board, I am freaked out.  And happy.  Sometimes there's nothing else than Wait.  This feels really good to me.  


A prayer now for Derynne, for what is to come.  What is to come, what has been, and the sacred in-between.  Which is a great time to go get Stefani on, dance and dance and dance...and be.

All those words I can't contain

Once Erika (click on that link!  watch her book trailer!!!) started an email with What a day, what a day...

It's a line from an Erykah Badu song.  In the frenzy of  my response, all those words I can't contain--I don't know if I ever got to the part of mentioning how often I find those words singing through my own head.

Under the palm trees in the dark, sweet breeze tonight.  In my car, sunroof open, just past 11.  On Instagram, which I tool around with at the strangest times....like standing in the middle of my room after a bike ride next thing for 10 straight minutes everything else but this damn dumb little phone dissolves like my brain has wires hooked to it, or I'll be on my feet in the kitchen ignorant to the dogs or my roommates me on my phone screen waiting for tea water boil.  In my car, after the longest most eventful day ever, in the front seat after the lights and engines are off tonight.  Smelling the cool, sweet breeze.  Hearing the palm leaves fan.  Tooling around on Instagram.  Thinking What a day what a day.

Sometimes, it just feels nice to turn your brain off.  To hit a button and then space.   My ears were wet after Shavasana tonight.  Seeping little leaky tears.  D rang the gentle chime to pull us from meditation and I realized it was my last class with her here in Huntington, and I thought of when I started in March and my intentions for healing my body and strengthening, and how strong I am now.  I laid there feeling my heart open from the center, feeling my energy running up and down the course of me smooth as if my spine were train tracks in a long looping line.   Mandy's wedding invitation came in the mail.   And this too, this too.  So much else.  These sisters of mine.  Me, single, alone.  Not at all alone.  Them.  Never at all.  This too, this too my god this too.  I can not even register today.

Life I thought, yoga tears wetting my face.  I don't get you.  Happy, grateful tears, and compassionate tears.  Some of each, so close to the same.  This too.  So many different this-es, so many, many too-s.

What a day what a day~

The only ones who get it

The week after next will be one year since I got in the car to drive to California.  With no place to live and no real plan.  I arrived at Mike's in Newport Beach on the 8th of August.  I had my first breakfast with Mo on her backporch in Santa Cruz on August 15.  Days later she took me north to farm and meet Em and Bebe and Nicky and Jon and everyone.  These people who became my precious family in SoHum.  I have messages saved on my VM  that make me smile or grateful...Erika saying she's closing in on a book deal.  Erin shhhmrrring....My brother repeating the word farts...  My sohum fam, one from Em and one from Jon each calling me Mama in character, with a tone of voice that immediately draws laugh-based tears.  That was one year ago.  On August 15 this year I will move in to my own studio apartment in Laguna Beach.  A mile up the canyon, surrounded by green trees.

I haven't had my own place since I officially left behind Easton, my job at the Community College, and the final remnants of life I'd created in Chestertown in May 2010.  The next two years were intermediary.  A long, major crossing.  I went to my then love Brandon in April 08 and said I want to go to California for grad school. Four years later my application is now in, same school as the grad packet that was in my hands all the way back then.  I am waiting.  Awaiting.  Primed to move, to lock things in.  This next step so timely, and so long in coming.

One night this past week I watched the sun go down with Jott on the other end of the phone.  I cried a lot and put some things to rest.  Her friendship one of the prime bounties that came from those two years in-between.  I talked to Gretchen another night and laughed the wild laugh the whole time.  This women who continues, again and again, to see to my rounds.  Bebe called Thursday and I lay on the ottoman in my room, my back half-hanging down, in the lavender-smelling orange-lit candled-air.  My fan turning, Bebe and I in communion over the passing of her mom.  Sonoma, my life with her, just one corner ago--just January--but so much living this year that it feels so long ago.  I did little this weekend other than sleep on the clear blue beach.  I swam, alot.  Finally.  I feel whole, rhythmic, much as I can connected and whole to the many different parts of all of who I am.  

In Starbucks now a dad holds his baby girl on his lap in the most tender, devoted way.  It's just the same gesture as my brother with his baby girl on Skype this morning.  Not one part of me considers my life any differently than it is right now.  Wishes that it had gone any other way.  Here I am, with me, about to go whole-heartedly after me.  My place, my book, my students and teaching, my avocation.  The beach and bike rides the sun and palm trees.  I am quiet, not in awe, just still.  I wanted everything on the shelf.  Every cake and muffin every tart and scone.  Every last treat so I helped my self.  A cookie and a donut.  Sometimes a girl deserves more than just the one.

It's quiet, sometimes, the little marks and occasions that pass.  How we are the only ones who get it, who really know.    

Her true essence.

After yoga, which was with a different teacher tonight and one of the sweatiest, most energizing workouts I have ever had, my body was craving fresh veggie pasta with every vibrating cell.  I walked to Mother's and bought ingredients and came home and cooked myself a feast.  And decided I'm gonna chill and watch tv.  

So You Think You Can Dance.  It's the first time I've watched prime time in my house in Huntington but today on the phone mom said I needed to.  It makes me miss her.  This was our show.   When we lived together two falls ago she got me hooked.  I forgot how deeply dance moves me.  Good dance pangs my heart, catches my throat, covers me in chills.  Makes my eyes fill.   It makes me ache for Baltimore and home because Artscape, all that magnificent street art and dance, starts this week.

My kids are doing so well!  They are not kids by any means but some days like today when I give them a project and look up from my attendance book to see each of them concentrating I swell with something like parental pride and adoration.  In my eyes, it's true, they can do no wrong.  After school I applied for a second job.  It's a mile from my new house.  I can ride my bike, so I hope I get it.

My new house!  There is a hiking trail that leads up the canyon it starts in my neighborhood!  God I am thrilled.  Muller's coming down this weekend and Jason who I haven't seen since Kevin and I were 16 and 15-years-old.  Samba tomorrow night then Long Beach with Alison and who knows who else for dinner and dancing Friday.  Today is the new moon.  My meditation each morning has gotten more and more strong and the journaling has me really self-connected.  We were chanting in class tonight and my soul was so still, so engaged and filling up the vessel of me so presently that all I could think of was Hannah at Earth Activist Training when we did our New Moon ritual.  This was up in the Cazadero Mountains in January.  She said how connected she felt to the moon in her dark phase, when she isn't obliged to reflect the sun and can simply be her whole, pure self.  Her true essence.  That line came back to me on my breath tonight, it filled me whole with my self, it filled me strong as the two weeks of silence at Vipassana did, whole as Cazadero and the Permaculture kids.  I am feeling so sweetly quenched on the gratitude in my heart, on the walking blessings of my life, so excited to be here and on the verge of so many amazing changes.   So alive.  The checking in daily with me is paying off.

I am grateful, aware.  New moon sets a new cycle in motion, our own personal start anew.  Yes yes and thank you.

Mine was clean

Drove to Laguna this morning.  Found my dream.  Spent the afternoon at Sawdust Art Festival--here is a free idea, someone figure out how to get Instagram pics to upload to Blogger--  Because the trees growing through the art booths built in to the canyon walls??  Come on.  You need to see it to believe.  Laguna I'm yours. Take my idea someone I'm sure it will make you a nice little egg.

Put some applications in today, finished my portion of grad school apps yesterday.  Started reading this bitchen essay on poetry while at the outdoor mall in the sun.  How academia in the second half of the century  made it a specialized art form. That devalued its primal social function of speaking for the people.  YEP yep and yep.  Making it so the only people who care about poetry are the "poets"--now defined as the ones who paid the money to go to school programs to gain access to who's who.  Reminds me of Gary Snyder's short piece on a man and woman who went up to spend a season together in a fire lookout.  When a co-ranger got up there to check on them he said but all that was left was two assholes jumping through each other.

Google it Dana Gioia Can Poetry Matter.

Picked up Greyson and chilled with him last night so Derryne could tattoo.  He was at Annie's, she fed me dinner with her fam then made calls to Newport friends to play whose who and who knows who and scoop out info and embarrass me.  Orange County is so full of all these insular small towns, and rivalries.  It's funny and odd.  Greyson is 10.  We took a walk downtown at sunset along the beach and I realized, as I always do, how easy it is to hang out with dudes between the ages of 10 to 20.  Like we just laugh and make fun of each other and I swear to god no other time in life is it easier for me to be myself.  The lady getting the tattoo, when we got back to 12th street, was like oh sure that's because it's all fun...no worries no stress.  You just get to be.

There was sun inland all day but the coast is still socked in.  Derryne cancelled on me for Duende Flamenco and dancing.  I have no plans and will probably take a nice bike ride then read.


Yes, that's just it, isn't it?  I just get to be.  Maybe the main difference goes: When Grey and I got back to 12th last night his face was covered in chocolate, covered, from sweet treats.  And I had enough self-consciousness to make sure mine was clean.  

Breathe. Smile. Go Slow.

Yoga tonight, it was great, Derryne's mantra for practice was Breathe.  Smile.  Go Slowly.  On our last few rounds of sun salutations she really had us go deep in to our breath, which I would do all of class if I could (and wind up on my own endless bliss planet, Planet Kel.)   She said imagine you are moving through honey.  I did.  It made me smile, a lot.

Told my class today that the reason I call them my little chickens is because I am the Mama Hen.  I tried to explain what this meant.  Mama Hen doesn't translate so well.  I caught the Japanese girls calling me The Big Chicken.  With genuine affection in their voices.

This has made me laugh until I am wet-eyed no less than six times today.

Mom's birthday today, Beth yesterday, Paul the day before.   Season of Cancer, Mother Energy.  Talked to ma and grandma.  Thought about men, how I was raised to believe men behave.  What my experience has affirmed or changed of those ideas.  What ideas still need adjusting.

Thoughts are with Erika.  My novel's moving.  Grad school apps are close to complete--ahhhhh and so instead of writing this afternoon when the rare Southern California rain showed up I laid down on my bed and got snuggly and listened to the way the rain sounds in the alley right out of my side window.  Just like I used to love to do in Ocean Pines, the smack noise of rain on tree leaves on to the ground.  Ahhhh.

Tiki Bar last night.  Dancing in the parking lot at midnight. Cute.  I love my life.  Breathe.  Smile.  Go slow.

Check in.

I can't get enough I can't get enough

I was trying to think honestly about moving from Huntington.  To be closer to work.  The realization hit me last week that it would be hard to leave the library here. I know it's as silly to me as it is to you.  Today coming up the concrete stairs it became my reality though.  I simply may love this place too much.

And here, on the lower level five feet from a fountain, another fountain and grassy woodland park out the floor to ceiling wall to my right, I know it's true.  And I get why.  It is quiet here, an indulgent, reverent, human quiet. This is the best library in the world.  Full with the sound of literally hundreds of bodies choosing to be silent, to be still.


Out my window on Main Street cars run all day and night long.  Dogs bark from the back yards.  That all the time whir and buzz has its effect on people.

Here at the library the downstairs study rooms are open-aired with two overstuffed comfy couches in the center.   In whichever study room you enter those cozy chairs always have people laid out like Jesus on the cross with their head all the way back and eyes closed.  And today, I got it.  The sacred sound, they like me come here to soak in it.  The aching, conscientious quiet.

I can not get enough of it.  That's not even to mention the satisfaction of the forever long bike ride all its hills and concrete, or the basement where the poetry stacks are and I can go and completely lose my mind its dimensions so opened that a library basement is my quaky heart drug.  I go there for the bliss,  I can't get enough.  I can't get enough I can't get enough.

So here's to my third daily check-in.  Got my morning pages done today, located my backpack finally (dear Dell, does the warranty cover damage done from transport in a bag with a bottomfull of sand?) and now here I am, at the library.  To finish my essays.  I talk with Erika about my latest submission tonight at 6:15.

Last night was super fun, too even though I wound up not chilling with Derynn and them.  I'm stoked to do it again~

Being a girl

Ok, so I didn't do morning pages today.  Those are my first thought journal downloads in the morning, a process/tool that never, ever fails to plug me more in to me in a focused, realized way.   When I use it fairly consistently.  I didn't do morning pages today because I hit snooze FOUR times!!  I could barely keep my eyes open getting out of bed!  And I realized it's because I had no afternoon espresso or nighttime redbull this weekend.  Just my daily two cups in the morning.  My body was so unwound and deeply tired/sleeping this morning that I only had one cup today for breakfast and replaced my afternoon Americano with chamomile tea.  I want to listen to my body as part of this new direction.

Inbox full of emails by the time I was done teaching.  FAFSA, general application done.  Stopped at the Teacher's Union to see about loans through them.  Went downtown to write my 2000 words and start on my essays for the rest of the application.   Two paragraphs and my computer dies.  I thought I could throw myself through the glass window right now.  That is very dramatic I know.  But to look at my calm, centered face one would not likely think:  that girl she must be thinking that she'd like to jump out of that chair and hurtle herself through the glass window on to the streets of downtown Huntington.  Hmmm then what would the tourists say....it maybe is not so good to keep your tension bottled but then the computer dies.  What the hell else can you do?

I called Justin back home panicked but he didn't answer because he works a zillion jobs in the summer. So I talked to Samil at Dell for an hour and got it all straight.  Computer working again my momentum was gone though.  I came home on my bike it was too late for yoga. I left my mat at the yoga center a couple weeks ago and it's not there now.  Meaning when I get off my blog here I will practice on the floor on a sheet or tapestry.

Derynn's bbq was super fun.  Lots of great food and people and also bocci ball which I haven't played since I left Chestertown.  It made me really happy.  Tonight we are going out downtown and I invited a guy I met.  Tomorrow I will begin again.  Tonight I will put music on and shower and just tinkle around getting dressed and doing my hair and letting time dissipate a while, being a girl.