Last words for Easton and Adult Ed

Oh, I am tired. But what a difference when that tiredness is just remnant sleep twinkling its way off from behind your eyes verses soul-deep, bonesludge exhaustion. Ahhh, it feels good to be light again.

I am moving today! Yea yea yea! I dont know what I want to write about, just that I had that little bit of line-feeling run through my body that always is precursor to the words. When I am paying attention, anyway. Do you know how amazing it feels to know that I am about to step in to a time and space in my life where I get to do that? Just pay attention? To my art? The emotional responsibility of my job, managing classes and responsible for new student intake for the GED program and the community English program at Chesapeake College was so huge and all-consuming, and thankfully was just the pressure I needed to shape me in to the woman that inside me I was yearning to be. I am so proud, so proud of the work I did there, of stepping up my game again and again, of learning how to really practice important things like diplomacy, practicality, picking my battles, trusting in taking the high road, treating others well again and again and not being afraid to stand in my truth. How to go to bed at night crazy or stressed or broken and trusting that this too will pass. How to learn to trust in the important stuff and to allow others to do their own good jobs. How as well to raise others expectations, and especially the students who I met each day, by keeping a high standard for myself. But learning the willingness and the ease with which I can be flexible. Seeing that at the end of the day no matter what I am still human, and fuck up! And beat my self up but also know how to love and nurture not just others but me, too. And then, especially, knowing when and how to let go, when to walk away, and to do so with my character gleaned whole and leading the way.

Easton you were so good to me. I love you, and will likely love you deeply and completely with no funny business at all like the way I love Waldport, Oregon with his Alsea Bay the Suislaw trees and the rush on the air of the Pacific sea. Where I lived in a funny little trailor a mile off the coast, funny little fishing village on the central coast and my first taste of the first catch of chinook and it actually for real melted on my tongue because first catch of the season is truly that sweet. The trailor with the rhododenron bush bigger than the ceiling of the place out back, and the apple trees, and homemade apple muffins and apple crisp. A compost bin. The little things that connected me to me that fall of 2004 in to 2005 and the green wet very wet spring. God how I loved it there, but when it was time to go it was time to go and that was that. And Easton that will be you and me, knowing how to love and respect one another in all our individual splendor and knowing no matter what returning here will make each of us once more just more complete in that. Oh my god my walks, your night air, your flowers. The market and all the little quiet spots where poetry lives on your streets. Nightcat! Your music will sing to me I'll always know when to be back for more. Coffecat my favorite, favorite part will always be just sitting like a cat on a fat cushion in the sun.

It feels so good to leave whole.

Ocean Pines can you believe I am coming home?

It all feels so smooth now, so easy. I guess that's what it is when it's right. I say in prayer this morning, in my sacred silence and checking in. Thank you thank you thank you and hello world. And this day I choose this gratitude, and my actions to be gratitude in motion.

And then, thank you life, I love you, good morning Kel, I love you. Ahhhh yes, amen amen amen.

PS Bob thank you for singing to me and being my smiling last loving look around my apartment from my bed this morning as I finish typing this you remind me that I want to post some mix tape lists again. Oh blue light and my fabulous curtains and all the full packed cardboard boxes everywhere and looking forward to my walk to the coffecat for b-fast xoxoo.

Mad Vision

Remember when Dylan did that Unplugged thing on MTV? Same one Lauryn Hill did that caught her a ton of flack, sort of gave her her final docking papers? I was never crazy about Unplugged after that, after the way ppl couldn't get down with Lauryn un-pared. I loved her, the bones sans flesh feeling of the whole thing. But that spoiled me on MTV for good for the ill media hype they gave my grl.

But Dylan. He did this version of Knocking on Heaven's Door. He was aged, you could tell, it was before the whole tumor thing tho bc I remember seeing him preform after that and that happened later. But still, you can hear it. The age, which, much as age is wisdom it too is doubt, remorse, the looking back. You can hear it in his voice but it's all alright bc most of all you recognize that the hoarseness, the spine crunch of deliverance, the throaty almost about to break in there is the aged expression of Devout Hunger itself. His very voice, always such a part of his epic-ness, his whole persona and legend specifically because IT was inherent to his artistry, I saw so clearly how human that instrument really is. What fuels it then? What powers that Epicness?

I dont know what year it was released or made, but on the Peir in 95 peddling cassettes and CD singles as the prizes for a betting game that I worked the mic for, Dylan Unplugged was one of the many tapes that themed my days. Rolling up the tarp side of my game stand in the early morning breeze the sea glittering all tinseley, sick with no sleep and chemicals behind my shades but always lighted up on the inside in that slappy happy day-after-still-drunk-way that the sun and salt always did for me. The blue sky and the ferris wheel looming high above, spreading, big as hell, big as the world, big as heaven had to be. I dont know why I got to thinking of it this morning--maybe cuz Muller, whose dad owned that betting game we both worked for, just showed in my life all these years later. Or bc I saw Notorious for the second time over the weekend down the beach, or at least part of it before the cable went out, and Ready to Die dropped so huge that year and the CD single for One More Chance, with Meth and Big doing The What on the B side, made us all say we were getting FTW tatted on us by Chico that summer. Which makes me think even more of of Legend and Epicness and Hunger. Big and Puff. And what makes the difference. And what you regret.

It's not what you do but what you dont that you regret? That's what I've heard anyway I dont know tho. I would say it's all a matter of, all part of the being Epic. Torture is what you sign your bones too, what you hang your clothes too, what you name your song. What you love is always what you regret because if you're like me it's all you're ever truly willing to lay down for. And no matter what, laying down will always have a quality of recklessness to it. Frenzy-inducing. It's what we call Hunger. Why so many of us are scared to live.

The crazy, unadulterated full surrender.

I got changes coming, Mad Vision. What I used to bemoan bc I always used to fight my Epic tides, the ones that propel my indefinite forward motion. I'm stoked now tho. Fueled and fired, ready to go.

Destiny's not something that happens to you. It's something you step in to if you're brave enough to seethingly grasp at the Holy Amen.

Amen. Amen amen amen!!