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.
September 25, 2012
September 12, 2012
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~!
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
September 8, 2012
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.
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.
September 5, 2012
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~
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~
September 4, 2012
Erika Robuck
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)