It's been a good year. I am sitting in conversation with this guy at the door of a coffee shop in this place called Severna Park and I have not seen him since no shit 1995 (oh my god, how funny I just remembered we were Class Partiers together in the year book, that's why he was explaining so bummedly and borderline apologetically about having to quit smoking! Holmes my dad's got lung disease c'mon! We're grown up now it's alright...) and all I can think is it's been a good year.
I am kind, and ground myself and remind myself to be present. It is genuinely good to see him: he is one of the only people from my high school, or the one near where I worked as a teen, that via facebook or some other networking means hadn't been found and labeled: Married, Divorced, Parent, etc and I tell him as much. I admit I do, now I can check him off in my head. Our funny little ways of keeping track of one another that get complained about but that at the end of the day matter, afterall. Me, I have a Mama-Soul as part of my spirit, and a tight-knit tribe of Family which marked me deep in the place that gets marked by how we are nurtured, so knowing where and how people are adds to my security. I grounded in this, and was happy to connect again to this guy.
But It's been a good year, and that is the line that has the little wick attached. It's the line that when gionng through my head while walking out of Brian's house this morning in desperate strides towards the nearest wifi-having local coffee shop, triggered the light inside to tell me the Muses are near. There is no other way to explain this to you if it is not your experience--the best I can do is what I always do when I sit down and write. Just tell the truth tell the truth tell the truth and follow that little feeling of light. I do not know when it started but I do know that it is real, it is the most real thing I know. It is a feeling that comes on inside that alerts me to the inner creativity the boundless place and my duty, my calling here on this earth no matter what else is to bring it to the surface, to midwife it and breathe in to it the life it needs to fly. And when I disregard it I get short and turn in to an asshole and so help me if you cross my way when I am in the middle of my dance with the Muse. So help me, that is, should you make her lift her skirts and high-heeled or bare-footed run away.
But what a superstition that is, too? Writing involves discipline and the most clear lesson I learned in the past two years is to not underestimate what happens by simple alchemy of action. Showing up, not bitching, and doing what the hell's got to get done, which almost always is what's right in front of me. It's more than just saying ahhh yea I will start with It's been a good year because that is where the little light is attached. It's also bringing in to the coffe shop two books that really turn me on and reading a while this morning, and even more it's about sitting down especially when the light hasn't or doesn't feel like it's going to come.
It's been a good year. In November it was the Harvest New Year and starting out--the first week of the new year!--my bank account was in the red. So what was in front of me was get a better job and get your finances re-ordered, no matter what. So I did because after the last two years of my life dont ever underestimate my hustle. Turns out now I get to manage this way hip, way mellow local coffee shop in the Pines where I live. It's brand new and the boss needed someone with experience in community building and coffee-shop culture, which has nothing to do with caffeine and everything to do with supporting and growing your local tribe. Even the business model functions that way and I brought to this my barista-ing for Peggy those years back at Play It Again in Chestertown, as well as the local art, food and music movement we grew around The Oregon Dialogue. So far sooo good. It overlooks the Bay and River on the west side of the inlet of Ocean City. I watch the sun come up every morning and breathe and exhilarate in how fucking rad it is to be alive.
And I am writing, and chilling a lot outside, and that is that. It's been a good year. In November 2008 I left my relationship of 6 years. Right after that Josh and I tried to be lovers after a decade of being Muse to one another. I still believe he was a true love, but we ended too because just because something's true doesn't mean it's meant to be. Losing him, and leaving Brandon and Chestertown and Anngar Farm all at the same time was the single most painful part of my life and from start to finish it lasted until around the middle of this summer.
It's been a good year.
I worked for Chesapeake College when I left Bran, I was one of four people who started the GED and community English program that now serves all five counties on the upper and mid Eastern Shore. I worked my fucking ass off while I was there, and stepped down in May after living in isolation for a year out on the Choptank River and licking my wounds. I was lonely and needed family and friends. I went on a month long sabbatical in the Pac NW in May and June and while there had more than one other-world experience of being Called again. I moved back to mom's at the beach after that and partied like a rock star all summer long and still found that I had one more hall to cross to transition my life from Brandon-Josh-Chesapeake to the one that lay beyond. This stuff cant be made up, you know? The light within is real, what if that is our only choice, to surrender to the myth of what could be and give it our all to bring it to life? How about learning that the only way to do this is to do it!? And what about the struggle of being a woman and feeling this is the work you're meant to do? This is subject matter for another post (or a whole damn book, ehem...) but what about that? I know plenty of artist men whose art is their main and only priority. What about when you're a woman with the same compulsion, what happens then? When the pain is that bad I know now that actually it's my only choice, to believe in this mid-wifing and keep breathing and trusting in the birth about to come. The pain is my spirit--not a religious thing I am talking about the place inside of I AM--calling out a red alert to listen the hell up.
It's been a good year. Tuesday night I watched Candace, Jessica, Shanika and LaShae walk in their caps and gowns and receive their Maryland State High School Diplomas. They were four of 43 graduates from Chesapeake in just the last six months! And at one time I held each of those girls hand in hand. I hooped and hollered from the audience because I dont work there anymore so now it's okay for me to be wild and exuberant and un-professional even if it seems I'm acting a fool.
It's been a good year. I dont live in fantasy anymore about a man who's love will finally change or set me free. I dont dream of someday when I get to do.....all these millions of different passion-fueled things. For the first time in my life I wake up now and just live today. Seriously. It's the first time in my life I've ever done that, you dig how crazy that sounds? The passing from then to now was long and great and so dark at times that I often forgot what path I was on. But I am me today and at peace with who I am. All I need to do now is trust in her day to day.
And pay attention to when the wick-light comes on, by listening and more, taking action on what's right in front of me. By practicing what I learned in those two years which is easy to say but takes a while to get the footwork right. It sounds silly maybe but what the hell is there other than saying yes ok, the next step is just be present that's how right now that I can Show up, and the peace is inside knowing that the rest will be what it will be.
Showing posts with label Anngar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Anngar. Show all posts
December 9, 2010
October 25, 2010
It is pertinent as hell. Words.
I don't remember the year I spent at Choptank.
I don't remember anything specific, it just sits more as a memory of sense, gray and swirly with the occasional feeling of peace thrown in to the thicket of my reserve filed back then.
I moved from Anngar Farm the first week of November 2008, it was a Friday and I stopped my car at the edge of our 400 acres of feed-corn and soy to talk to two flannel-clad surveyors parked on the side of the road. The farm, they confirmed, had been sold. For all I know it happened that very day.
I talked to Brandon on the phone for about one minute. Then I called mom. I cried most of the way to 301.
Choptank was an hour from Chestertown by the backroads, which are the only roads I traveled back then, it was something about the soothing lay of the road against my tire tread. It was calming, all that farm country, all those trees, the changes of fall seizing the land. I was working for Chesapeake and had roughly ten sites in two rural counties spread out between well over 100 square miles. It was the something I could count on--I'd been on the Eastern Shore for a total of eight years of my life by then. I counted movement by the markers of farmhouses, wide turns in the roads and fields.
Besides leaving Brandon, I left behind a town of friends. A movement of local culture centered around both homegrown food and music, one that I personally worked hard to motivate and set within a momentum. It was sudden, to all of them, my departure. It was sudden and wrecking to him. It was like death, a numb whack of shock to the chest, to me. It was a miracle those first three months that I could even breathe.
I can say only that I was depressed back then and that is why I had to leave, and in a large way this had to do with being incapable of stating what I wanted. I knew what I loved but was too frightened to cultivate it or own it. I really believed it was something I did not deserve and so I went back on things all the time. My truth was changing because so much of my truth included lodges of fear, no dissipating no moving through, therefor no knowing for sure what I thought I thought for sure I knew. For months after I left Anngar lived in me with a filter of dull over it, but the fall is here now, the geese are calling and the trees have that certain subtle whisper in their departing leaves. I remember now so much. The fields that shivered purple at dusk. The yellow light on the barns and the half-there outbuildings and the way the birds carved the air inside. The sounds my kitties used to make in the high camelia bushes right out front. Old time records through the speakers at night, night after nights of dinners and the high chaotic laughter of our most amazing friends. Unannounced drop-ins from Sam. Coffee in the morning hot on the throat and cup hot on the hands, on the weekends the cool side-porch view of the shady hardwood trees against all that green. The quietness there with my love. Holding hands.
Last week, or maybe the one before that, I found my journal from the year I spent on the Choptank River, out in isolation renting a room in an 1800's farmhouse, talking to the water and laying in the grass. Over the years, since the early 2000's anyway, I've kept a practice called morning pages--writing three pages of longhand mental minutia download. Just getting the crud out of my head. It's something, a trick I've relied on with consistency that came my way via two different helpful books, that simply is the one true tool that's led me through. But I forgot about it: when I took up writing a novel morning pages were replaced with stronger doses of honesty on my blog. How I used my blog changed then, for sure. Literally this became the place of truth-telling, of writing my way through and thank god for it. It's helped codify the process, helped me shave down at the edges and in the great balancing act of writing for self versus convening with the audience, it's been the primary vehicle of me establishing how best to tell what I know. So it shocked me anyhow, discovering the hundred or two pages of writing my way through while at Choptank. Page after page of the same old horrible stuff, literally so much grief. Some of it ancient, some of it pity-pot, some of it contextual and some of it nameless in ways that kept me deep in the dark hole. Oh god the bravery it took for me to write all the way through! I had no idea, literally no recollection, of those pages being there.
There are loads of things I would different if I had the experience to do-over, and aint that the funny thing of it--I'd do it different now because of who I am now, but becoming who I am today had everything to do with going through those mistakes and casualties the hard way. Ultimately it comes down to that's just the way it goes. I stand poised in her today though, the woman who didn't know how to firmly say who she was or have the strength to stake her claim in the world. It is my own tiny miracle, my own heaven that is mine and mine alone and meant for only me to understand. It is pertinent as hell. It is the ground beneath me and it is the country of wild within me labeled not only what I want, but who I am. I hope the people that I hurt through it have forgiven. It has been a long hall, that one where forgiveness is gentle and blame retreats itself and lets open the next door, that one dark eddy of grave self-sin. I hope they all know how much love there is within. I am moving on from the chapter, the words falling like clean rain or leaves funny and quiet, but imminent, all the same. I am trying to convince myself in my most silent parts that the words are worth all I have, are at least as important when translated in to what I've come to give, from what I've lost and equally come to learn I own.
I don't remember anything specific, it just sits more as a memory of sense, gray and swirly with the occasional feeling of peace thrown in to the thicket of my reserve filed back then.
I moved from Anngar Farm the first week of November 2008, it was a Friday and I stopped my car at the edge of our 400 acres of feed-corn and soy to talk to two flannel-clad surveyors parked on the side of the road. The farm, they confirmed, had been sold. For all I know it happened that very day.
I talked to Brandon on the phone for about one minute. Then I called mom. I cried most of the way to 301.
Choptank was an hour from Chestertown by the backroads, which are the only roads I traveled back then, it was something about the soothing lay of the road against my tire tread. It was calming, all that farm country, all those trees, the changes of fall seizing the land. I was working for Chesapeake and had roughly ten sites in two rural counties spread out between well over 100 square miles. It was the something I could count on--I'd been on the Eastern Shore for a total of eight years of my life by then. I counted movement by the markers of farmhouses, wide turns in the roads and fields.
Besides leaving Brandon, I left behind a town of friends. A movement of local culture centered around both homegrown food and music, one that I personally worked hard to motivate and set within a momentum. It was sudden, to all of them, my departure. It was sudden and wrecking to him. It was like death, a numb whack of shock to the chest, to me. It was a miracle those first three months that I could even breathe.
I can say only that I was depressed back then and that is why I had to leave, and in a large way this had to do with being incapable of stating what I wanted. I knew what I loved but was too frightened to cultivate it or own it. I really believed it was something I did not deserve and so I went back on things all the time. My truth was changing because so much of my truth included lodges of fear, no dissipating no moving through, therefor no knowing for sure what I thought I thought for sure I knew. For months after I left Anngar lived in me with a filter of dull over it, but the fall is here now, the geese are calling and the trees have that certain subtle whisper in their departing leaves. I remember now so much. The fields that shivered purple at dusk. The yellow light on the barns and the half-there outbuildings and the way the birds carved the air inside. The sounds my kitties used to make in the high camelia bushes right out front. Old time records through the speakers at night, night after nights of dinners and the high chaotic laughter of our most amazing friends. Unannounced drop-ins from Sam. Coffee in the morning hot on the throat and cup hot on the hands, on the weekends the cool side-porch view of the shady hardwood trees against all that green. The quietness there with my love. Holding hands.
Last week, or maybe the one before that, I found my journal from the year I spent on the Choptank River, out in isolation renting a room in an 1800's farmhouse, talking to the water and laying in the grass. Over the years, since the early 2000's anyway, I've kept a practice called morning pages--writing three pages of longhand mental minutia download. Just getting the crud out of my head. It's something, a trick I've relied on with consistency that came my way via two different helpful books, that simply is the one true tool that's led me through. But I forgot about it: when I took up writing a novel morning pages were replaced with stronger doses of honesty on my blog. How I used my blog changed then, for sure. Literally this became the place of truth-telling, of writing my way through and thank god for it. It's helped codify the process, helped me shave down at the edges and in the great balancing act of writing for self versus convening with the audience, it's been the primary vehicle of me establishing how best to tell what I know. So it shocked me anyhow, discovering the hundred or two pages of writing my way through while at Choptank. Page after page of the same old horrible stuff, literally so much grief. Some of it ancient, some of it pity-pot, some of it contextual and some of it nameless in ways that kept me deep in the dark hole. Oh god the bravery it took for me to write all the way through! I had no idea, literally no recollection, of those pages being there.
There are loads of things I would different if I had the experience to do-over, and aint that the funny thing of it--I'd do it different now because of who I am now, but becoming who I am today had everything to do with going through those mistakes and casualties the hard way. Ultimately it comes down to that's just the way it goes. I stand poised in her today though, the woman who didn't know how to firmly say who she was or have the strength to stake her claim in the world. It is my own tiny miracle, my own heaven that is mine and mine alone and meant for only me to understand. It is pertinent as hell. It is the ground beneath me and it is the country of wild within me labeled not only what I want, but who I am. I hope the people that I hurt through it have forgiven. It has been a long hall, that one where forgiveness is gentle and blame retreats itself and lets open the next door, that one dark eddy of grave self-sin. I hope they all know how much love there is within. I am moving on from the chapter, the words falling like clean rain or leaves funny and quiet, but imminent, all the same. I am trying to convince myself in my most silent parts that the words are worth all I have, are at least as important when translated in to what I've come to give, from what I've lost and equally come to learn I own.
September 29, 2009
Bones & Love
Every night when I come home the first thing I see is the river. Or, what I ought to say: every night when I come home, the first thing I see through my windshield is the expanse of black above my head and the crazy mat of stars through the trees in the driveway. And I get out of the car, and the first thing I feel is the river.
No matter what my day's been like, no matter what is otherwise on my mind or bogging up my head. I pull into my driveway, ease the Versa far back near to the old boat that hasn't been used in more than a couple seasons, park and have the door open before I have time to think. And then, on impulse, as a matter of muscle memory and also, of something deeper programmed in me, some part ancient and respondent to firesmoke and the hush of trees, I breathe. I take a deep breath and let it all out and what happens is from inside me I get a soft smile, and I go still. And then, I can feel the river. I can feel her moving, can feel her in that place in my belly and on the back of my neck--same place where you feel when, say, a storm's coming on.
And for that brief moment, all is well. I know peace.
I moved here, to the town of Choptank with it's 20 or so houses, on the Choptank River, last November. I rent a room in an old house two up from the river. This house has modern painted gray-taupe siding but still looks old because it is. It was originally built in the 1830's. At night you can feel the life in its walls, all that it has breathed and seen. In the morning, where I come to the front porch to write, you can see the river out the window to my left.
At the time of my decision to move here to Chop, I lived in a six-bedroom farmhouse on a 400-acre-farm that grew soybeans and feed corn. That's a lot of land, a lot of space, a lot of air to breathe. I basically lived there on a deal with the owners to tend their property and upkeep the old place, the owners were distant inlaws of the magnificent man I was living with and was in love with and enjoying life with since the fall that I got out of college, in 2002. Brandon was my best friend, he was who and how I processed one of those strange times of transition that makes us humans so sketchy and uncertain: time of what-next or in-between. I loved him with every last blood inside my heart, I loved him so it was how my bones moved. A sweet, adoring love that saw nothing other than him, nothing else outside of us. He was all I knew, and all I ever hoped to know.
That same year my dad came back in to my life in a hands-on way because of a sad and serious depression at mid-life. And my mom sold our house, the one that me and my brother and her had always known, the one in the county between Annapolis and B-more. And she moved back in with my dad, first time in 15 years, to the beach.
Last night I was out late in the county. We met Brian, my brother Sean's best friend since they were five, and his little brother Little Sean, and their folks and our folks for dinner at our old favorite spot for crabcakes, Hellas. Their mom, Ms. Louise, helped raise my brother and me. It was her birthday last night, first time all of us have been together seriously since I dont know when. When we were growing up ma would drop Sean and I off at their place 6 in the morning on her way to work in the city. Ms. Lou would get us ready for school, breakfast, uniforms, carpool. Me and the boys would scream and fight or laugh and play. Nintendo and VCR movies on tv for hours. We were lucky, blessed, charmed-life kids. BMX bikes and kickball in the deadend when we'd come home from school. Anymore when I am home, like last night, I am so, so grateful. I am so aware of how good it was, and wistful in the most tender of grateful ways. And I miss it so much.
I was born in Baltimore City. I remember the market at Cross Street when I was only old enough to stand level with people's knees. I remember what Old Bay smells like on the salty Harbour air. I remember imagining how close the big boats were to the sea. I remember what it feels like, to have a river of living move under you, and that river be no more visible than the concrete at your feet.
It is hard to put this in to words. The bones of me, the true substantial life-time blood. I can say only that when the time comes to know you again, when the time comes to reclaim the flesh of who you are, you know it. You know it in a way that you will fight and pray not to recognize. You know it in a way that feels awful, like fear and hate and pain. In the most secret, darkest places in your brain, in the stomach tight breath that draws you awake at night, in the weight that sits just above your neck, you know it. And when you know something as distinct as Time, there is simply nothing else to know.
Choptank, you healed my soul. I am the river of me again. It was a fucking hard and awful fight and I hated how many times I had to let go. But here I am, on the shore again. How can I ever thank you? How can I ever thank you, Life? How can I ever thank you enuff...?
~~~
The song that helped birth this post: Wharf Rat, The Grateful Dead. O, Jerry. I love you. I love your guitar. You touch the myth inside of me.
No matter what my day's been like, no matter what is otherwise on my mind or bogging up my head. I pull into my driveway, ease the Versa far back near to the old boat that hasn't been used in more than a couple seasons, park and have the door open before I have time to think. And then, on impulse, as a matter of muscle memory and also, of something deeper programmed in me, some part ancient and respondent to firesmoke and the hush of trees, I breathe. I take a deep breath and let it all out and what happens is from inside me I get a soft smile, and I go still. And then, I can feel the river. I can feel her moving, can feel her in that place in my belly and on the back of my neck--same place where you feel when, say, a storm's coming on.
And for that brief moment, all is well. I know peace.
I moved here, to the town of Choptank with it's 20 or so houses, on the Choptank River, last November. I rent a room in an old house two up from the river. This house has modern painted gray-taupe siding but still looks old because it is. It was originally built in the 1830's. At night you can feel the life in its walls, all that it has breathed and seen. In the morning, where I come to the front porch to write, you can see the river out the window to my left.
At the time of my decision to move here to Chop, I lived in a six-bedroom farmhouse on a 400-acre-farm that grew soybeans and feed corn. That's a lot of land, a lot of space, a lot of air to breathe. I basically lived there on a deal with the owners to tend their property and upkeep the old place, the owners were distant inlaws of the magnificent man I was living with and was in love with and enjoying life with since the fall that I got out of college, in 2002. Brandon was my best friend, he was who and how I processed one of those strange times of transition that makes us humans so sketchy and uncertain: time of what-next or in-between. I loved him with every last blood inside my heart, I loved him so it was how my bones moved. A sweet, adoring love that saw nothing other than him, nothing else outside of us. He was all I knew, and all I ever hoped to know.
That same year my dad came back in to my life in a hands-on way because of a sad and serious depression at mid-life. And my mom sold our house, the one that me and my brother and her had always known, the one in the county between Annapolis and B-more. And she moved back in with my dad, first time in 15 years, to the beach.
Last night I was out late in the county. We met Brian, my brother Sean's best friend since they were five, and his little brother Little Sean, and their folks and our folks for dinner at our old favorite spot for crabcakes, Hellas. Their mom, Ms. Louise, helped raise my brother and me. It was her birthday last night, first time all of us have been together seriously since I dont know when. When we were growing up ma would drop Sean and I off at their place 6 in the morning on her way to work in the city. Ms. Lou would get us ready for school, breakfast, uniforms, carpool. Me and the boys would scream and fight or laugh and play. Nintendo and VCR movies on tv for hours. We were lucky, blessed, charmed-life kids. BMX bikes and kickball in the deadend when we'd come home from school. Anymore when I am home, like last night, I am so, so grateful. I am so aware of how good it was, and wistful in the most tender of grateful ways. And I miss it so much.
I was born in Baltimore City. I remember the market at Cross Street when I was only old enough to stand level with people's knees. I remember what Old Bay smells like on the salty Harbour air. I remember imagining how close the big boats were to the sea. I remember what it feels like, to have a river of living move under you, and that river be no more visible than the concrete at your feet.
It is hard to put this in to words. The bones of me, the true substantial life-time blood. I can say only that when the time comes to know you again, when the time comes to reclaim the flesh of who you are, you know it. You know it in a way that you will fight and pray not to recognize. You know it in a way that feels awful, like fear and hate and pain. In the most secret, darkest places in your brain, in the stomach tight breath that draws you awake at night, in the weight that sits just above your neck, you know it. And when you know something as distinct as Time, there is simply nothing else to know.
Choptank, you healed my soul. I am the river of me again. It was a fucking hard and awful fight and I hated how many times I had to let go. But here I am, on the shore again. How can I ever thank you? How can I ever thank you, Life? How can I ever thank you enuff...?
~~~
The song that helped birth this post: Wharf Rat, The Grateful Dead. O, Jerry. I love you. I love your guitar. You touch the myth inside of me.
April 10, 2009
Friday Reflections: Truslow Road
There were these tall pines that lined the back end of the land at Truslow. Tall, and with the sweet achy smell of the needles that make you remember a kind of inner quiet you never actually knew but secretly hope for in the woods. Tall pines, like the kind that at night blend in with sky so you are sure they are having a conversation up there in the dark with the clouds that are joking with them with their tender little caresses moving as fast as they do across the sky. Slow down slow down maybe the tall pines are saying to the night clouds, slow down and stay a while here in the dark with our sweet sweet smell.
It was November, the end, when we moved in there, to that 600-square-foot falling down asbestos run deadgreen shingled shack on Truslow Road, back of Truslow Creek edge of Kingstown, Queen Anne's County side of the Chester. A town as I always find them, without a zip code. We furnished that house with third and fourth-hand finds we bought at the local auction for $10, $7, maybe $6 the whole Lot. Once, that $7 bought me a brown banana seat bike from the seventies, a red paint-splattered stool, two brown wood foot stools, a pair of work boots and two quarts of oil. Every Wednesday for months we'd go to auction to see what we could see, neither of us having jobs or any belongings but campgear to speak of, having just ended our travelling days of living on the road. It was an auspicious return home, Full Moon night of Final Harvest, October 2005. Moon so big and pink and white it stuck us where our breath should be as it hung over watching Washington DC. We rolled in from the Mountains charging along Rt. 50 New York Avenue beside the Mall and I secretly sucked in when we got to the city and I felt the energy of the land all around of where I'm from and then, I saw the moon at once too and felt the longing inside give out Home....
Truslow wasn't planned, as so much of the big moves in my life rarely are. One day we just got sick of living with his mom. Ex-stepdad had this shitty little pad going down in the dirt and did we want to upkeep it, fix it up even, and care for the land? The land. It was November so that the land when we moved in was just one big patch of curled brown grass, but a whole-acre full, and with the tall tall trees in the back that never lose their leaves. And it had this dead-zone that vibrated to me: this huge matted mess of vines with prickers and thicket and undergrowth where some time ago some nice hedges or bushes must've been. That's where we will make this home I knew.
And we did: by February first seed we'd set about taking out that thicket just sort of stuck there in the back acre of our land. It covered a good 4 or 5 hundred square feet, almost as big as our house itself, and we worked at it, hard, sweaty in the cold February air but under the early that year sun. I wore work gloves and got tears and lines of red blood anywhere I had exposed skin and at the end of those days I felt for the first time what it feels like to cultivate something with your entire body, something sacred and precious as the eternal land. It was his idea to actually recess the fire pit we were putting in, so that the fire would actually warm from the underside of the ground. And by light/dark time of Equinox that year we had made our mark and called others in to join our Home: a community gathering advertised locally to all to join us for soul warming and music in celebration of grass-roots place-building and being true to as within, so without. I burnt a thick dried twig of sage and set a sacred circle around that fire pit as we completed it, walking three times with the smoke and the song on my breath and my heart open in love and thanksgiving--my friend Turtle Mike was there to help set up with the lights and he followed me round and round and round. It was the first night I ever met Walsh and heard her sing and of course this happened through Josh, and both of them played and stilled our hearts and many people, caught fully by the vibe we meant to capture and release in goodwill that night, had tears of gratefullness rolling down their cheeks. At the very end it rained a light light rain and this was the sign of release and blessing, and at once cleansing, which I was waiting for as omen of great harmony and success.
It was March the following year that those tall pines and that space created in honor and awe and thanksgiving at their feet called out to me again so loudly. Spring herself came quieter that year, waiting to show little peeks of her face til well after first-seed, unlike February the year before. I had been through a long winter. A new position in Adult Ed under a threatening and domineering new boss was challenging me in ways I never before knew. I gave all my energy to it, the job, because I cared about the people and so if there are people involved that is what I always do. But I was dwindling away and miserable inside. In long hours of prayer and mediation I sought to follow the heart of, to transmute with the change, that I knew on my deepest level was attempting to begin. I hated it, though knew begrudgingly that time is time and the process must run its course. And so, in those weeks of March leading to Equinox and New Year for me, I felt called out by the land, by the deep healing energy of Home.
I carried arm loads of books: notebooks and poetry, and a Christian text by Oswald Chambers I was deeply in to, out to the land moist in her pre-spring roots. And sometimes I would read, and if the words started to come I would write and write, but mostly I just laid there, on the ground. With my body feeling the waking of the land. Recognizing a fine softening between my contour and its. And I would breathe, and it was like the first time I ever knew about and tasted air. I still remember quite physically what it was like to take those long healing breaths like that, like, in fact, I was breathing in the whole of that land, of those trees, of all that pulsing of music and light by fire that still I am sure lives right now back there, back of Truslow in the roots of the one time heart of our land.
Yesterday I came home from work and the sun was high enough in the sky to still get to soak in some strong white rays. I ran in to Teena's house, got some books and notebooks, and ran out with my arms full dragging a beach chair awkwardly behind. I didn't read at all, just sat in that deep breathing place of half-eyed slumber.
That last March at Truslow it was as if a great rest had come upon me. And inside that sleep there lived the quiet seedlings of personal truth I wasn't capable yet, and so therefor unready, to be. Indeed, in the time that followed those several weeks it turned out I would need all the energy that I stored during my great and blessed pause with the tall pine trees: by the end of that month we learned that we had to move, and so the adventure continued, and the deep seeds began to unfurl, as we made our way on to Anngar Farm.
Recently my friend Susan told me one of her favorite sayings is But the hallway's hell! As in when we are waiting for the promised window to open after our most recent door has shut, waiting in the hallway sure can suck. But I don't know. Maybe the hallway can be the best part. Maybe it's like the deep reserve of air we never knew we had.
It was November, the end, when we moved in there, to that 600-square-foot falling down asbestos run deadgreen shingled shack on Truslow Road, back of Truslow Creek edge of Kingstown, Queen Anne's County side of the Chester. A town as I always find them, without a zip code. We furnished that house with third and fourth-hand finds we bought at the local auction for $10, $7, maybe $6 the whole Lot. Once, that $7 bought me a brown banana seat bike from the seventies, a red paint-splattered stool, two brown wood foot stools, a pair of work boots and two quarts of oil. Every Wednesday for months we'd go to auction to see what we could see, neither of us having jobs or any belongings but campgear to speak of, having just ended our travelling days of living on the road. It was an auspicious return home, Full Moon night of Final Harvest, October 2005. Moon so big and pink and white it stuck us where our breath should be as it hung over watching Washington DC. We rolled in from the Mountains charging along Rt. 50 New York Avenue beside the Mall and I secretly sucked in when we got to the city and I felt the energy of the land all around of where I'm from and then, I saw the moon at once too and felt the longing inside give out Home....
Truslow wasn't planned, as so much of the big moves in my life rarely are. One day we just got sick of living with his mom. Ex-stepdad had this shitty little pad going down in the dirt and did we want to upkeep it, fix it up even, and care for the land? The land. It was November so that the land when we moved in was just one big patch of curled brown grass, but a whole-acre full, and with the tall tall trees in the back that never lose their leaves. And it had this dead-zone that vibrated to me: this huge matted mess of vines with prickers and thicket and undergrowth where some time ago some nice hedges or bushes must've been. That's where we will make this home I knew.
And we did: by February first seed we'd set about taking out that thicket just sort of stuck there in the back acre of our land. It covered a good 4 or 5 hundred square feet, almost as big as our house itself, and we worked at it, hard, sweaty in the cold February air but under the early that year sun. I wore work gloves and got tears and lines of red blood anywhere I had exposed skin and at the end of those days I felt for the first time what it feels like to cultivate something with your entire body, something sacred and precious as the eternal land. It was his idea to actually recess the fire pit we were putting in, so that the fire would actually warm from the underside of the ground. And by light/dark time of Equinox that year we had made our mark and called others in to join our Home: a community gathering advertised locally to all to join us for soul warming and music in celebration of grass-roots place-building and being true to as within, so without. I burnt a thick dried twig of sage and set a sacred circle around that fire pit as we completed it, walking three times with the smoke and the song on my breath and my heart open in love and thanksgiving--my friend Turtle Mike was there to help set up with the lights and he followed me round and round and round. It was the first night I ever met Walsh and heard her sing and of course this happened through Josh, and both of them played and stilled our hearts and many people, caught fully by the vibe we meant to capture and release in goodwill that night, had tears of gratefullness rolling down their cheeks. At the very end it rained a light light rain and this was the sign of release and blessing, and at once cleansing, which I was waiting for as omen of great harmony and success.
It was March the following year that those tall pines and that space created in honor and awe and thanksgiving at their feet called out to me again so loudly. Spring herself came quieter that year, waiting to show little peeks of her face til well after first-seed, unlike February the year before. I had been through a long winter. A new position in Adult Ed under a threatening and domineering new boss was challenging me in ways I never before knew. I gave all my energy to it, the job, because I cared about the people and so if there are people involved that is what I always do. But I was dwindling away and miserable inside. In long hours of prayer and mediation I sought to follow the heart of, to transmute with the change, that I knew on my deepest level was attempting to begin. I hated it, though knew begrudgingly that time is time and the process must run its course. And so, in those weeks of March leading to Equinox and New Year for me, I felt called out by the land, by the deep healing energy of Home.
I carried arm loads of books: notebooks and poetry, and a Christian text by Oswald Chambers I was deeply in to, out to the land moist in her pre-spring roots. And sometimes I would read, and if the words started to come I would write and write, but mostly I just laid there, on the ground. With my body feeling the waking of the land. Recognizing a fine softening between my contour and its. And I would breathe, and it was like the first time I ever knew about and tasted air. I still remember quite physically what it was like to take those long healing breaths like that, like, in fact, I was breathing in the whole of that land, of those trees, of all that pulsing of music and light by fire that still I am sure lives right now back there, back of Truslow in the roots of the one time heart of our land.
Yesterday I came home from work and the sun was high enough in the sky to still get to soak in some strong white rays. I ran in to Teena's house, got some books and notebooks, and ran out with my arms full dragging a beach chair awkwardly behind. I didn't read at all, just sat in that deep breathing place of half-eyed slumber.
That last March at Truslow it was as if a great rest had come upon me. And inside that sleep there lived the quiet seedlings of personal truth I wasn't capable yet, and so therefor unready, to be. Indeed, in the time that followed those several weeks it turned out I would need all the energy that I stored during my great and blessed pause with the tall pine trees: by the end of that month we learned that we had to move, and so the adventure continued, and the deep seeds began to unfurl, as we made our way on to Anngar Farm.
Recently my friend Susan told me one of her favorite sayings is But the hallway's hell! As in when we are waiting for the promised window to open after our most recent door has shut, waiting in the hallway sure can suck. But I don't know. Maybe the hallway can be the best part. Maybe it's like the deep reserve of air we never knew we had.
March 8, 2009
Message in my bottle
There are common concerns I've heard, and usually shared, about moving up the time change and thereby forcing the start of spring. Screwing up our Circadian Cycles and what not. I am born one day after the equinox, and I mean to write it that way: I Am Born, recognizing this time of year always as a time of great rebirth for me. I am one day in to the start of spring, and my whole life, or long as I can consciously remember being aware of "within", I have cycled with the seasons. I am a sunhead, drawn to the light, but born under a Taurus moon, so ruled inwardly by the night. So I flow gently as I can allowing the seasons, and my own deep and personal experiences of them, to inform my soul. I'm born at the Equinox, a baby of perfect union of dark and light. I think these are the marks I came in to this world with, and I seek the balance of allowing them to inform me but only insomuch as trying recognize the "intuitive"-born pathways in to my soul.
Last year at the timechange I remember feeling like Milly the Mole: someone turned the lights on too quick!! I was surrendered to my burrow, in deep hibernation doing an awful lot of resting. I wasn't ready to come out yet from my hole. But this year. Woah. I. Am. So. Ready.
This sickness I am just coming through--and by the way, thank you so much all my well-wishers who commented on this blog or facebook or via email, it meant a ton, truly--it was so much more than just a physical thing. I believe in the oneness of the body: the physical and the chemical and hormonal body, effected fully by the mental or emotional body, the subconscious body and the intuitive, the subtle energy body and the spirit. I believe in the full picture of all of these, and I can tell you for sure that my illness was symptomatic of far deeper imbalances than merely fluid in my ears. I was forced during that time of sickness (and time of snow-hostage!) (oh, and during all that, in case the message WASN'T LOUD ENOUGH, my phone got wet and stopped working!) to surrender and to fully hear me. And what I was saying was what I, my deep quiet voice within, has been saying for so, so long. 
I moved on to Anngar Farm with Brandon over a year and half ago, in fact in June it will be two years. And strangely, the moment we got all our stuff in to that castillo--or castle--which is what my Mexican friend Santiago called the six-bedroom farmhouse that Brandon and I were literally given in exchange for caretaking the several acres of landscaped lawn that came along with it, I began to experience a deep and nagging discontent. I had no words for it, but it kept me up late, woke me up in the dark with blank stares, and caused me endless bouts of un-named melancholy worsened by my own refusal to just listen to what was Within. I kept telling my self just to shut-it, and be grateful for all the gifts you have why don't you?! By October of that year, some four or so months after we'd finally settled in, I had at least allowed myself to hear my inner message: I just want some time to be alone.
It made no sense to me. But intensified monthly. Now, here's the thing you need to know about me. I believe in our own deep Authenticity. That we each are alit with gifts specific to our own souls, unique to our own form of song. And it is our duties to listen and align with them and draw them out, and indeed this is how to evolve in to our best selves and serve this world. I believe in constant change, the power of intention, positive thinking and the law of attraction. And most of all I believe that we all are engaged by the same unifying energy, and that that energy exists in vibrations, and that everything, from a thought or intention to the rising-tide, the full moon the equinox a winter's snow or bad news from your best friend, vibrates at a certain level. And at any given moment my being, my holistic whole-bodied being vibrates according to all these many factors of Oneness. And my job is to stay the Conscious Witness so I can align and offer up those vibrations that are unique to me...I believe that in this way Harmony is possible...if even at times it looks like and feels like Divine Chaos. 
So in this Oneness of things, all movement has it seasons. And finally it came time for me to surrender to that deep yearning: it was all I could do to not scream it at the top of my lungs I just need to be Alone! It logically made no sense but I couldn't fight it anymore, and in fact, I often wonder if fighting that instinct for as long as I did instead of exploring the message of it contributed to the pain that it has greatly caused between me and Brandon. I literally was beginning to fracture inside, to feel depressed and more. And by the time I could take it no more what was left was letting down the person I loved most in the world. And frankly, I had no real reason to give to him.... 
But there is absolutely no denying that when I surrendered to the deep inner calling and said Yes to it--doors opened immediately. First a new job that afforded me enough money to live on my own, then a home in the vicinity of the new job. The first night I was here at Chop I was busybusy moving all my packed bags off my bed when something suddenly shook me and I stilled inside, and in the utter quiet of those surroundings the inner voice said: Do you hear it? This, this deep silence is what you wanted. And my friends, it is so, so quiet here.
I moved on to Anngar Farm with Brandon over a year and half ago, in fact in June it will be two years. And strangely, the moment we got all our stuff in to that castillo--or castle--which is what my Mexican friend Santiago called the six-bedroom farmhouse that Brandon and I were literally given in exchange for caretaking the several acres of landscaped lawn that came along with it, I began to experience a deep and nagging discontent. I had no words for it, but it kept me up late, woke me up in the dark with blank stares, and caused me endless bouts of un-named melancholy worsened by my own refusal to just listen to what was Within. I kept telling my self just to shut-it, and be grateful for all the gifts you have why don't you?! By October of that year, some four or so months after we'd finally settled in, I had at least allowed myself to hear my inner message: I just want some time to be alone.It made no sense to me. But intensified monthly. Now, here's the thing you need to know about me. I believe in our own deep Authenticity. That we each are alit with gifts specific to our own souls, unique to our own form of song. And it is our duties to listen and align with them and draw them out, and indeed this is how to evolve in to our best selves and serve this world. I believe in constant change, the power of intention, positive thinking and the law of attraction. And most of all I believe that we all are engaged by the same unifying energy, and that that energy exists in vibrations, and that everything, from a thought or intention to the rising-tide, the full moon the equinox a winter's snow or bad news from your best friend, vibrates at a certain level. And at any given moment my being, my holistic whole-bodied being vibrates according to all these many factors of Oneness. And my job is to stay the Conscious Witness so I can align and offer up those vibrations that are unique to me...I believe that in this way Harmony is possible...if even at times it looks like and feels like Divine Chaos. So in this Oneness of things, all movement has it seasons. And finally it came time for me to surrender to that deep yearning: it was all I could do to not scream it at the top of my lungs I just need to be Alone! It logically made no sense but I couldn't fight it anymore, and in fact, I often wonder if fighting that instinct for as long as I did instead of exploring the message of it contributed to the pain that it has greatly caused between me and Brandon. I literally was beginning to fracture inside, to feel depressed and more. And by the time I could take it no more what was left was letting down the person I loved most in the world. And frankly, I had no real reason to give to him.... But there is absolutely no denying that when I surrendered to the deep inner calling and said Yes to it--doors opened immediately. First a new job that afforded me enough money to live on my own, then a home in the vicinity of the new job. The first night I was here at Chop I was busybusy moving all my packed bags off my bed when something suddenly shook me and I stilled inside, and in the utter quiet of those surroundings the inner voice said: Do you hear it? This, this deep silence is what you wanted. And my friends, it is so, so quiet here. 
So, I'd love to tell you that I've just honored that quiet since then. And certainly in my own little regular ways I have. But I've also quietly been trying to plot and plan my next move, and then getting frustrated when I can't seem to force those changes. Ping-pong, ping-pong. The more time passes, the more frustrated and full of plans I get. Only to feel exhausted and more confused that ever. I like Louise Hay's term for this--Divine Discontent--and here-in lay the message of my illness: to slow down and just do what I came here, what I quite literally was led here, to do. Be Quiet. Take time to be quiet, in silence, and alone. And trust what will come from within will come in its right time. As all things come as and when they should... Like a foot of snow after you've been home sick for four days. Or the vibrant buds of purple crocus' who so needed some snow melt to grow grow grow... Ahhh, what balance to continually learn and relearn how to strike: balance of the light of knowledge versus faith that in what you can't always see ahead of you in the dark...So it goes so it goes and so it goes..So might it be....
Inside Great MaMa Magnolia, Who Breathes Silence, late-night witching hour with Laura Walsh, Chestertown
January 16, 2009
Cuz it's my favorite kind of meditation & it reminds me of Sammy G
First Day of the Hunt
The schools always close,
knowing we're so country
all our boys will skip anyway,
and the valley rises together before dawn—
daughters pulling wool caps
past fathers' ears, reciting the profound
and elemental list:
rifle, rounds, knife, rope,
only to send each heavy man to the woods
where he'll slump the day in drifts
of solitude and prayer
while most deer stay down, evading
the unlucky, the night spent
visiting cousins: stroking curves
of antler, lengths of blood-stiffened fur.
Every year it's the same
soft and deliberate snow prints,
the waiting—
as if mine could emerge from his last hiding
place and walk the evening,
empty-handed, to me.
poem for the day by Paula Bohince
Seriously, if you've never tried:
let's posit that meditation is simply a means of going within
or, let's not posit, let's visit dictionary.com:
meditate
verb, -tat⋅ed, -tat⋅ing.
–verb (used without object)
1.
to engage in thought or contemplation; reflect.
2.
to engage in transcendental meditation, devout religious contemplation, or quiescent spiritual introspection.
okay, so if that's the case, reflecting or contemplating, even devoutly religious or quiescent
(-adjective 1.being at rest; quiet; still; inactive or motionless: a quiescent mind. ) or spiritual introspection that involves the mind. well. i am obsessed with this experience, maybe, naw likely because as a teenager and thus when my identity schisms were being chemically cemented by way of the all mighty hormone, i was early engaged in conscious-changing experiments that always involved substances of some sort. so now, sans-substance of course, i really dig on what can still take me to more open, or heightened, or even Still levels of being from within.
try reading a poem, really connecting the movement of it to your inner state. as means of quiescent introspection. join me in the tribe of the holy yogic creatix: from ecopoetshaman gary snyder "The yogin is an experimenter. He experiments on himself. Yoga, from the root Yuj (related to the English \yoke") means to be at work, engaged." join me in this fabulous dance of self-creating, supplication, sublimation on into beginning and beginning all over again....
p.s. also, if you read this far. the poem above reminds me of my friend sam. who i want to mention bc i dig him so much, too. brandon told me last nite he was headed to sammy's for some of the overflow of venison he's got this season. it made me so full of longing for hard, cold earth days that you walk through gingerly but assured purely by the warmth of your friends. the pond out back of the corn pokes and over the hill at sam and tim's. the goose blinds there that always mildly disturbed me, til the nite same cooked us goose soaked in oj in the black cast iron top of his wood stove. how it chokes me to look back on those times. growing up together: knowing sam as this goofy lanky dude that one time was already up in a tree that i suddenly needed to climb. or the night, last january time of Cold moon and god was it cold, and we walked through the woods at anngar the air with its bluehue that reminds you of the ghosts there in the body and bones of the ancient old land--and we were so cold that all at once bran and sam and me looked at one another and ran, under the full moon with cold cheeks and air that burnt our runny noses, all the way back to the farm house, and scraped together a meal of what sam had brought--oodles of noodles, and what was left of ours--some veggies and a little cheese.
how this time of cold calls for warmth. for friends. or good poems. or surrendering, at rest, quiet, still, to within.
The schools always close,
knowing we're so country
all our boys will skip anyway,
and the valley rises together before dawn—
daughters pulling wool caps
past fathers' ears, reciting the profound
and elemental list:
rifle, rounds, knife, rope,
only to send each heavy man to the woods
where he'll slump the day in drifts
of solitude and prayer
while most deer stay down, evading
the unlucky, the night spent
visiting cousins: stroking curves
of antler, lengths of blood-stiffened fur.
Every year it's the same
soft and deliberate snow prints,
the waiting—
as if mine could emerge from his last hiding
place and walk the evening,
empty-handed, to me.
poem for the day by Paula Bohince
Seriously, if you've never tried:
let's posit that meditation is simply a means of going within
or, let's not posit, let's visit dictionary.com:
meditate
verb, -tat⋅ed, -tat⋅ing.
–verb (used without object)
1.
to engage in thought or contemplation; reflect.
2.
to engage in transcendental meditation, devout religious contemplation, or quiescent spiritual introspection.
okay, so if that's the case, reflecting or contemplating, even devoutly religious or quiescent
(-adjective 1.being at rest; quiet; still; inactive or motionless: a quiescent mind. ) or spiritual introspection that involves the mind. well. i am obsessed with this experience, maybe, naw likely because as a teenager and thus when my identity schisms were being chemically cemented by way of the all mighty hormone, i was early engaged in conscious-changing experiments that always involved substances of some sort. so now, sans-substance of course, i really dig on what can still take me to more open, or heightened, or even Still levels of being from within.
try reading a poem, really connecting the movement of it to your inner state. as means of quiescent introspection. join me in the tribe of the holy yogic creatix: from ecopoetshaman gary snyder "The yogin is an experimenter. He experiments on himself. Yoga, from the root Yuj (related to the English \yoke") means to be at work, engaged." join me in this fabulous dance of self-creating, supplication, sublimation on into beginning and beginning all over again....
p.s. also, if you read this far. the poem above reminds me of my friend sam. who i want to mention bc i dig him so much, too. brandon told me last nite he was headed to sammy's for some of the overflow of venison he's got this season. it made me so full of longing for hard, cold earth days that you walk through gingerly but assured purely by the warmth of your friends. the pond out back of the corn pokes and over the hill at sam and tim's. the goose blinds there that always mildly disturbed me, til the nite same cooked us goose soaked in oj in the black cast iron top of his wood stove. how it chokes me to look back on those times. growing up together: knowing sam as this goofy lanky dude that one time was already up in a tree that i suddenly needed to climb. or the night, last january time of Cold moon and god was it cold, and we walked through the woods at anngar the air with its bluehue that reminds you of the ghosts there in the body and bones of the ancient old land--and we were so cold that all at once bran and sam and me looked at one another and ran, under the full moon with cold cheeks and air that burnt our runny noses, all the way back to the farm house, and scraped together a meal of what sam had brought--oodles of noodles, and what was left of ours--some veggies and a little cheese.
how this time of cold calls for warmth. for friends. or good poems. or surrendering, at rest, quiet, still, to within.
August 28, 2008
Fall, oh splendid Fall
I don't know what it's like where you live right now but where we are, on Maryland's Eastern Shore, on farmland and surrounded by fields and fields of dead dry corn, it is breezy and light and the mornings are cool and require soft cotton long sleeves and cause me deep and lustful intermittent aches for fall....
That's not to say that by the afternoon there isn't the glare of sweat and furrow on my brow, but I gotta tell ya, our first First Harvest Jam back on the 9th ushered in a glory of sweet cool air and long shadows, a sense that the sky was growing and stretching to send the sun back nigh to the furthest ends of the horizon almost to the all the way below...and I am amazed at this! My heart buzzing, how close and real the actual seasons are following the old marks of season's treads on cell memory in our blood currents and primal memory in our hearts and in our souls. We discussed this at our potluck the week past, how cool the night was, sweater weather and how we all remembered (except for Dykeman, who disagreed, but he was in general in contention w Sam that night, and besides, for all us humans isn't memory just a turn away from imagination anyway...) that it used to be when we were kids that the cricket air at night in August chilled us on our neck and put shivers down our back when we were done with hide and seek or private clubhouses next to the swing set or whatever. And this is true, the seasons did used to be so much more of a mild rolling, near enough that our generation of Xers on the corner of Y can still remember... 
A return to this and yet a swift reminder for me: the toxic details are still all around. Dead corn, only harvestable this year are bushels of 70 or so a stand, far less than last years average of 120 and our drought last year was awful-bad. (The mild season's return hasn't done a damn thing for our lac of rain.)
(Anyhow.) The new moon is coming this weekend--the full in Leo sun was two weekends ago and this is strong strong time of year. Subtle discontent is actually your soul's way of seeking harmony, listen to the message the deep tune in you is trying to send, actually surrender to the flow of discord. Or to the glory and grace in moments of solitude right now--these are the guideposts singing to you of the unity, these are reminders to know gratitude for the cycle of all that is.
My first harvest full moon on the 16th was wowed by me--that week I returned again to quiet time and have ever since seen the physical details--material level, you dig--of my life easily and seamlessly clicked right in to place. New job etc. Harvest time, as it should be. At once too is the calm cool of seeking peace within myself again--giving over to the realm of KellyLove inside me, the only grace I'll ever need that power deep within my soul...
I feel so good to connect once again to the cycles of our earth. And happy at the little coincidences that affirm and push this connection along....Check out my new blogfriend Tim at This Being Human, I love the new techno version of sage counsel--how it comes from linking and linking and random comments to strangers to help the flow of what seems right.
Anyhow Autumn Equinox is fast coming. Reminder that all things pass us by. Connect to yourself now, get outside. Go, Be, still.
And also, check out my new favorite song which is playing on livestream right now, BenFolds and Regina Spector duet "You Don't Know Me"....
August 13, 2008
Anicha Anicha
Well, the digital didn't show til yesterday. So here is my life, no job as of last night but a potential interview? waiting in the wings. And another restaurant gig as a good possibility, with a killer talented chef friend of mine--her dream come true!! tho the plans keep getting pushed back for the opening date. And me, robo-eating like these fricken doughnuts might catch me a buzz or help me forget the night or at least drop me some of my inhibitions and make me dance better, sure I dont want to wait tables for the rest of my life but confused as to any other move. We shall see...letting the river flow is what I say I am doing but the rib-grease on my face, if I consider too deeply, clues me in to perhaps some deeper feelings of untapped stress...
Getting ready for Kat's wedding this weekend. And instead of looking for jobs, just hoping on this one phone call and otherwise researching grad schools. Been a couple of years, and anti-institution as I am I still am having these moments where I catch myself, like, Seriously? Seriously are you thinking of getting involved in the dogma of academia again? Then I check my righteousness and my own common roadblock of me and remember with a breathless swing how much I love knowledge and NEED and CRAVE stimulation. Then I think about having a smoke. And laugh and roll my eyes at myself cuz I sure do change from day to day. Or minute to minute. Anicha Anicha, this is Sanskrit: Changing. Changing. The nature of all things....The river as it flows...
(Ughhgh too deep for me right now. Chips and salsa it is.)
Here are pics from my farm, followed by a brief poem by moi.
"My Tree"
Sunflowers in the garden
The Only Truth is Change
I have all
Getting ready for Kat's wedding this weekend. And instead of looking for jobs, just hoping on this one phone call and otherwise researching grad schools. Been a couple of years, and anti-institution as I am I still am having these moments where I catch myself, like, Seriously? Seriously are you thinking of getting involved in the dogma of academia again? Then I check my righteousness and my own common roadblock of me and remember with a breathless swing how much I love knowledge and NEED and CRAVE stimulation. Then I think about having a smoke. And laugh and roll my eyes at myself cuz I sure do change from day to day. Or minute to minute. Anicha Anicha, this is Sanskrit: Changing. Changing. The nature of all things....The river as it flows...
(Ughhgh too deep for me right now. Chips and salsa it is.)
Here are pics from my farm, followed by a brief poem by moi.
"My Tree"
Sunflowers in the garden The Only Truth is ChangeI have all
the whole perfect world
balanced
on this thin silver of
this tip
oh pencilprint
oh failure
oh searching
oh simple
several
masks of god
oh blessed blasphemy
of me
August 8, 2008
Parties, & Cycles & Life on the Farm
Kirsten Russel, Laura Scimeca
Equinox Bonfire and Fullmoon Jamfest, Seed-tending Time, Anngar Farm.
All photos courtesy of & brilliantly done by Geoff Demeritt
So, guess who finally, finally got a digital camera? Just in time for our next Farm Party! Tho I would never go back on hiring Geoff to photograph our last big Jam in March...
I gotta say, it's really been slow-going for me, metrosuburbanite girl now living this crazy outsized life here on the farm--the sunflowers like trees bent down now to kiss the ground from where they come, the bob-white singing in the bows of the holly each morning, the shadows on the porch that make the greens so green and the light so white and gold. The wind like an ocean through the sycamore leaves. The corn, so tall and ripe, taller than the street from the angle that I am used to peering at the roads so that now I can't see who is driving through this little patch of country that we call ours. How funny that this computer I write on is only 9 months old, this online deal now only 8a way of life for me for 8 months? It feels like forever--and change, balance, transition, is so subtle in its various manifestations that we curse ourselves with missing how easy it goes by...complaining all the while how we're missing it.
Tommorow is Bran and I's last big summer party--summer, that is, if you're going by the school rotation of the year. But it is the perfect time to celebrate, with the earth waning as she does and already, here on the shore, so clearly expressive of her tides. I saw my first V of geese yesterday, already. On my back flush with the ocean and parallel completely to the sky, I rose up out of my saltwater bob like a magnet had drawn me only to see a formation of geese flying across the top of the westend of the sky. And I thought, what? They only fly like that at travel time, at season's change....then last night on my ride home from the ocean, just as I turned on to the back farmroads near where I live and stake my current claim, there they flew again, in the orange and near green pre-thunderstorm night. And the weather this moringing--it speaks of fall. Go outside and let your mind float--see to it that you, too, know this to be true...
So this party tommorow was meant to have some fine musicians taking the stage, but every band we scheduled backed out than recommitted than backed out once again. Hard to say who will come. At this point, the only official band we have on is Firey Steve and His Moosehead Friends, these way hip young dudes right out of C-town. I am amped and fully stoked to see these kids come on. Otherwise, there are slated to be a lot of single performers--friends whose bands can't come or aren't all able to play together etcetra. And so it should be, Harvest time is about the individual's gifts and and at once about collectivity--which is why the energy of Harvest parties always always bring out the best jams....Impromptu sessions to light up the night...
Here are a few of our far out friends, in their finest elements, making music and soul shaking back at the turn of light..Equinox full moon first day of Spring...
Chris and Josh of the Turnpikes,
Brandon Hoy
Josh Britton of The Sweetheart Parade
Laura Walsh of Forgetful Francis
Marc Dykeman of Plans Plans (forground), Mat Warrington of The Turnpikes
Sam Guthridge, Chester River Runoff
Timmy and Greg Parent, formerly of Astralyte
Leah and Brooke, of Blue Heron Farm and The Shuman Compound
June 29, 2008
Gardens and bunnies, corn and metal
I like little bits of broken things. There is this knob of metal on the driveway, small like a robin’s egg, easy to be mistaken or just mixed in with the dirt and rubble of stones and busted concrete there, but on closer look it has an hourglass shape and is made of copper. I like it. I will put it on the alter in my garden, where heels of old glass bottles, shiny stones seashells and busted pieces of porcelain grow reverence. Most of it I dug up in the garden either here or on Truslow Road. My own little tribute to the earth, who sees all things grow. And helps them or holds on to them as they pass away.
Our garden is growing strong. Zuchs and squash are coming on and so are our first hearty green tomatoes. The broccoli, still! is sending off shoots. My Parsley and Basil are doing well and so are Chamomile and Milk Thistle. And oh, the sunflowers are waist high already! But my St. Johns, White Sage and Lavender don’t look like they made it. I heard Lavender and St. Johns don’t go well from seed, and as for my White Sage I got lazy when it came to weeding.
Gardens need watering and priming, weeding and so forth. Thank god for Brandon cuz I just ain’t been with it this summer. I look out on the sea of shiny green leaves of corn in every direction. Slow growing but woah—fast enough so when I go away for a week I am stunned to come home and laugh at myself talking to them, to these stocks of stand after stand of GMO corn rows, who still glisten the gold dusk energy of dancing shimmer on the air at magic time every night anyway when the sun goes low and casts gold on everything and you can see between the zones, there they are all gold even tho the humans have been fucking with their gene pool—Myyy my babies! Look at how tall you’ve grown! Then I stand there with this life pull inside me humming, and I look at all this corn, and I think, there must be something for me, too…It is a prayer of sorts? And also, it is mildly depressing. So usually instead of the garden and all the perpetual growing all around me I go inside. And write. Or do laundry. It feels like we always have a lot.
Bran showed me around where he tilled this morning. It was like a dream when he said, “Have you seen the baby bunnies?” then grabbed a hoe and moved a pile of hay, snuggled tight among a nest of weeds and my Chamomile, aside. There were like three, or four, little lumps of fur curled together under there. Little shut-tight eyes. Soon they will eat what’s left of our bitter lettuce and I will yell and shoe them off of our watermelon shoots. I love them silently and gently and humbly with a weird absolution and tears in my eyes.
Oh garden, just to watch how you grow.
Potluck tonight, curry theme. Thank god for us, us people, confusing things. Us friends to each other, trying to make sense of it all. Hope you like zucchinis, guys.
Our garden is growing strong. Zuchs and squash are coming on and so are our first hearty green tomatoes. The broccoli, still! is sending off shoots. My Parsley and Basil are doing well and so are Chamomile and Milk Thistle. And oh, the sunflowers are waist high already! But my St. Johns, White Sage and Lavender don’t look like they made it. I heard Lavender and St. Johns don’t go well from seed, and as for my White Sage I got lazy when it came to weeding.
Gardens need watering and priming, weeding and so forth. Thank god for Brandon cuz I just ain’t been with it this summer. I look out on the sea of shiny green leaves of corn in every direction. Slow growing but woah—fast enough so when I go away for a week I am stunned to come home and laugh at myself talking to them, to these stocks of stand after stand of GMO corn rows, who still glisten the gold dusk energy of dancing shimmer on the air at magic time every night anyway when the sun goes low and casts gold on everything and you can see between the zones, there they are all gold even tho the humans have been fucking with their gene pool—Myyy my babies! Look at how tall you’ve grown! Then I stand there with this life pull inside me humming, and I look at all this corn, and I think, there must be something for me, too…It is a prayer of sorts? And also, it is mildly depressing. So usually instead of the garden and all the perpetual growing all around me I go inside. And write. Or do laundry. It feels like we always have a lot.
Bran showed me around where he tilled this morning. It was like a dream when he said, “Have you seen the baby bunnies?” then grabbed a hoe and moved a pile of hay, snuggled tight among a nest of weeds and my Chamomile, aside. There were like three, or four, little lumps of fur curled together under there. Little shut-tight eyes. Soon they will eat what’s left of our bitter lettuce and I will yell and shoe them off of our watermelon shoots. I love them silently and gently and humbly with a weird absolution and tears in my eyes.
Oh garden, just to watch how you grow.
Potluck tonight, curry theme. Thank god for us, us people, confusing things. Us friends to each other, trying to make sense of it all. Hope you like zucchinis, guys.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)