The silent prayer

The hobbit house is built in to the side of Laguna Canyon and for that reason at night with no heat it feels cozy and held by the earth herself.  I have a space heater Annie and Tony gave me when I first moved in and that's all it takes to stay warm.  With lots of soaking rain the soil is green and smells like life.  Even the morning mist-gray feels right in an atmosphere like this, one that sings Allliiiiive!

Damnit even if the Gods themselves gave me a paintbrush I couldn't of hand-created a life more exactly specific to what I love.  This I tell Serena to ensure her, this, this our hard fought independence, our always-there choice, to live. What Laguna Beach for us actually means.  She has done it every step of the way as I have and I admire her fiercely and devotedly for this.  We will always have this.  I laugh then and say because they did!  I took my brush right from the God's hands!  Said gimme that I will choose the life I live!  Serena laughs too, this our secret, what we treasure and hold dear in the other.

It has been a long road since she left the treehouse upstairs.  Life, which in living gives us what we need.  We are so blessed I also tell her, and yes, yes we are I know, she says back to me.  I feel a gulp in my heart and for us both feel-say the silent prayer.

I am always so wrought through with home and the ties that bind.  Spent two years studying the psyche of this, of these things, and am convinced more than ever of the continuum of earth, of how she uses her people to soul-speak for a place, and in this way keeps sacred the tides of the land.  There is so much life outside any door.  When I first got to California the best part was how new it was.  I vowed never ever to take you for granted Holy California and even though sometimes I start to, in the end I never do.  Or still haven't.  And that's what life is.  To keep waking up. Again.

I consider family, too.  Back east, here.  Derynne and Cam, the kids.  We buried her brother in what for her I know was a long whir of endless sad.  Pacifica family and blessing the sacred space for Eve and Kalen to wed.  Visiting with Atticus, seeing clients again, waiting on Jasmine to get back for school.  Through it all there are tacos at Feast, the hot counter in San Juan with the pounds of chilaquiles, the clerks at the market downtown who tell you they missed seeing you, there is mermaid beach and the other secret spots and burrito joints with surf boys covered in tattoos.  It is amazing how our tiny rounds from day to day connect us in, make life, see us through the daily passings of grocery trips and recycling and take-out Chinese food.  See us to the big ones. Death, marriage, birth, tears and laughter. The sighs in between where words can not fit.

So it life again.  I come back to you.  I let you in.