honey,
i have known a lot of music men. a Lot. i lend my gold hand around all over those streets back there and have a long long time if i do say, which normally i don't.
that said.
there is SO MUCH I WANT TO SAY.
it must be done over other wires than these.
so i will go w: this is the first time ever in my life that i have listened to an album of a friend and been absolutely wowed. i mean these--i know i am often a cheerleader so let me be real, real clear--these songs? one on top of the other? i cannot handle it. normally w my peeps when i say wow, it is because as a whole picture, a whole piece, an album right? it captures the essence of you that is original you and as essence and out of admiration for you, ohhh hell yea, i get it. but THAT is NOT what we have here.
um wtf this is so the exact other of that--where the album as a whole makes me swoon because it as a whole is what it is bc of HOW INDIVIDUAL TO THE ENCHANT EACH AND EVERY SONG IS, which makes this extraordinary >>> get this? like NOT ONLY does each song live out the very life of its own soul WHAT!? every song on the album being fuckn epic is what makes the album so fuckn epic, the songs stand their own ground each but as a whole make the album this masterpiece, like a crazy explosion of vastly different-similiar songs. I don't know how to say this--there is so much influence i hear in each but so much of YOU, in different flavors of you in each, too
which is what i mean to say differentiates from others music i usually first hear, which is that every song is different and therefor makes you. most albums run a single flavor and make a nice long song separated by different titles. this is like. w t f?? how did you did this?
i am wowed.
thought you should know
Showing posts with label Brooks Long. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brooks Long. Show all posts
January 19, 2015
May 4, 2012
My first house
It's one of the girl's birthdays, on Facebook my students arranged a hilarious broken-english thread arranging the details of yesterday's surprise party. Hilarious because they get jokes not because of their misused pronouns and verb forms. Getting jokes says a lot when you are learning a language. It is cheesy I get it but that's my first focus, we speak heart in my class. Lots of laughter so that even if the words don't translate the spirit does.
We are all homeless I am thinking when I walk through the door of class and see the hopeful looks of the two Japanese girls in the corner decorating Maiko's chair with gifts and streamers, they are relieved to see that I am not the birthday girl. What is a home? Is it the knowledge that, say, you have to be turning on to Fairfield by quarter of if you want to walk in to class five minutes before class starts? Is it the way your bed feels on Friday mornings, pillows stuffed with the zion of sleep and still cushioning your awareness when you settle back in with your first cup of coffee and books and blank pages? Is it the way the air, through the screen when the sun is almost down and you are drying your dishes, reminds you that there is life outside? How it makes you grateful, reminds you to pay attention?
There was sad news from the East Coast that came after other sad news from the East Coast. The kind of news that jolted my routine and knocked me off balance for a while, after already being a tiny bit off balance because my cousin was here for ten days. I had to pause and be firm enough with myself, my sleep was a mess, my caffeine intake off the chain. My diet for shit and no yoga. But totally obsessed with writing and studying, so really the past two weeks have been a madness of the poetic kind. Frenzy. The Poetry finally came back to me the night before last. So I am proud of myself. The golden tail tried to slip away under the door. I went after it. Wriggly little bastard. I mean seriously, I didn't let up. My poem muscles must be so lean and strong now. Poetry sounds like palm trees and feels like the sea. Or big bright magical flowers that only live in California and must have sparkle names. It feels like the bald light of the moon. Like the way that light must put invisible magic on your skin.
We're floating through space Brooks reminded me, a long talk under the palm trees them witnessing me letting him be my witness through the sun roof of my car. I sat under my purple mexican blanket because it was cold out and night but I needed the fresh salt air. That's when I felt the untying, when he said that. That's what made it all good...this is life is what he was saying. Which was enough for me to say, ohhh yea and I get a choice in the matter, to make it holy. To make it holy with my own special sunshine and rain.
We are all homeless and speaking a second language. I make a home my own home. I do it for us, using language, my first house. Also I don't really know what I am doing.
There is beauty in the knowing that no one really does.
We are all homeless I am thinking when I walk through the door of class and see the hopeful looks of the two Japanese girls in the corner decorating Maiko's chair with gifts and streamers, they are relieved to see that I am not the birthday girl. What is a home? Is it the knowledge that, say, you have to be turning on to Fairfield by quarter of if you want to walk in to class five minutes before class starts? Is it the way your bed feels on Friday mornings, pillows stuffed with the zion of sleep and still cushioning your awareness when you settle back in with your first cup of coffee and books and blank pages? Is it the way the air, through the screen when the sun is almost down and you are drying your dishes, reminds you that there is life outside? How it makes you grateful, reminds you to pay attention?
There was sad news from the East Coast that came after other sad news from the East Coast. The kind of news that jolted my routine and knocked me off balance for a while, after already being a tiny bit off balance because my cousin was here for ten days. I had to pause and be firm enough with myself, my sleep was a mess, my caffeine intake off the chain. My diet for shit and no yoga. But totally obsessed with writing and studying, so really the past two weeks have been a madness of the poetic kind. Frenzy. The Poetry finally came back to me the night before last. So I am proud of myself. The golden tail tried to slip away under the door. I went after it. Wriggly little bastard. I mean seriously, I didn't let up. My poem muscles must be so lean and strong now. Poetry sounds like palm trees and feels like the sea. Or big bright magical flowers that only live in California and must have sparkle names. It feels like the bald light of the moon. Like the way that light must put invisible magic on your skin.
We're floating through space Brooks reminded me, a long talk under the palm trees them witnessing me letting him be my witness through the sun roof of my car. I sat under my purple mexican blanket because it was cold out and night but I needed the fresh salt air. That's when I felt the untying, when he said that. That's what made it all good...this is life is what he was saying. Which was enough for me to say, ohhh yea and I get a choice in the matter, to make it holy. To make it holy with my own special sunshine and rain.
We are all homeless and speaking a second language. I make a home my own home. I do it for us, using language, my first house. Also I don't really know what I am doing.
There is beauty in the knowing that no one really does.
March 19, 2012
Your soulspeak companions
Lindsey, my dear sweet friend from way back then, confirmed that meeting in San Diego for the night wouldn't be feasible because her work load was so intense--she's been in town for five days but we couldn't make anything happen. After she texted I left the 99 cent store, where I seem to visit once weekly for creative accouterments to aid in teaching, and cruised home. The sun was burning the wildest poetic orange. The palm trees looked black against the nightening sky. I hit a left on Ellis from Brookhurst and whadya know, Ellis is the street that turns to Main which is where I live. This I did instinctively, body knowledge, and when I realized it sitting at the light I had the most satisfied ease. I have lived here going on four weeks. I have slowed down, given over unto myself, allowed for the creation of my own rounds. And so I begin to feel lovingly contented with my self, with this sweet little hand-crafted life I am whittling out piece by piece.
Laura and Clay eat dinner together every night, they were just finishing the ritual with their customary evening commentary on current events when I walked in the door. He was a dj on college radio in the late sixties and again in the mid-seventies so his musical sensibility when it comes to soul and in general roots music is unstoppable. Makes me wish my love Brooks was here because him and Clay would stay up musicing til well past the palms went black til well past them going blue in the moonlight all the way past, for sure, when they turn orange pink again in the earliest morning sun. That's what happened, unexpected, with us tonight, we got talking music and the conversation had me so lit up I was on spotify with the finest Ray Charles play list I believe I have ever heard, back and forth back and forth to the rocking boat rhythm of some of the sexiest music alive. Music that made my veins sweat on the inside, music that made me want to squat low on my haunches and let the very earth itself sway me side to side. Music that made me think of Brooks, of dancing like no one on the planet dances because that planet made of soul is invisible it's one you can only feel through your feet someplace cosmic where they brush on the floor of your shoes it's a planet you inhabit from within, this the planet where Brooks and I live, and so Clay brought him near and Laura too, who brought Erika near by telling me she channeled Fitzgerald while writing this afternoon.
All is right with the world when your housemates, decades ahead of you, bring to you your husband and wife of the creative element, your soulspeak companions three thousand miles away. When things are so aligned they meld that well to your inner atmosphere. I love my life. I love putting my energy in to exactly what I care about, exactly what turns me on. I do so and it feeds me back at me, in this power surge of soul music over dinner and Fitzgerald wander lust fettering in and out. I want to yell to Erika, yell to her a quarter-stretch across the globe The Duende The Duende it's alive it's well, but I don't need to because she is my sister my wife in this soul land so she already knows. Tomorrow I meet Derynne for the Huntington Beach Street Fair then we are going to an Equinox Bonfire also here in HB. She too one of this tribe... I danced the best fun dancing with sweet Wallace and his friends this weekend they actually helped themselves to taking over the dj stand, I wrote poems all day on Friday and read in bed most the day long yesterday. To feed the soul, any who would ever label this selfish how sad! How much they miss out, how this life by very design sees to it that we serve others just by serving our own true self, that we empower others from the genuine source power when this is what we do.
Ah and for me? This time, this quiet gentle precious time. It's been a long time coming. Life is good.
Laura and Clay eat dinner together every night, they were just finishing the ritual with their customary evening commentary on current events when I walked in the door. He was a dj on college radio in the late sixties and again in the mid-seventies so his musical sensibility when it comes to soul and in general roots music is unstoppable. Makes me wish my love Brooks was here because him and Clay would stay up musicing til well past the palms went black til well past them going blue in the moonlight all the way past, for sure, when they turn orange pink again in the earliest morning sun. That's what happened, unexpected, with us tonight, we got talking music and the conversation had me so lit up I was on spotify with the finest Ray Charles play list I believe I have ever heard, back and forth back and forth to the rocking boat rhythm of some of the sexiest music alive. Music that made my veins sweat on the inside, music that made me want to squat low on my haunches and let the very earth itself sway me side to side. Music that made me think of Brooks, of dancing like no one on the planet dances because that planet made of soul is invisible it's one you can only feel through your feet someplace cosmic where they brush on the floor of your shoes it's a planet you inhabit from within, this the planet where Brooks and I live, and so Clay brought him near and Laura too, who brought Erika near by telling me she channeled Fitzgerald while writing this afternoon.
All is right with the world when your housemates, decades ahead of you, bring to you your husband and wife of the creative element, your soulspeak companions three thousand miles away. When things are so aligned they meld that well to your inner atmosphere. I love my life. I love putting my energy in to exactly what I care about, exactly what turns me on. I do so and it feeds me back at me, in this power surge of soul music over dinner and Fitzgerald wander lust fettering in and out. I want to yell to Erika, yell to her a quarter-stretch across the globe The Duende The Duende it's alive it's well, but I don't need to because she is my sister my wife in this soul land so she already knows. Tomorrow I meet Derynne for the Huntington Beach Street Fair then we are going to an Equinox Bonfire also here in HB. She too one of this tribe... I danced the best fun dancing with sweet Wallace and his friends this weekend they actually helped themselves to taking over the dj stand, I wrote poems all day on Friday and read in bed most the day long yesterday. To feed the soul, any who would ever label this selfish how sad! How much they miss out, how this life by very design sees to it that we serve others just by serving our own true self, that we empower others from the genuine source power when this is what we do.
Ah and for me? This time, this quiet gentle precious time. It's been a long time coming. Life is good.
December 20, 2011
There are no leaves on these trees.
The Patient First next door to the Panera had Mandy's car in the parking lot, and when I texted her that I was creeping on her she answered how small our home town is.
It's not a town, where she and I are from, it's a county. Due south of Baltimore. But in 2011 with chain stores and strip malls up and down Route 2, that doesn't make what she said any less true. It's good to be home, there are few things more real and heartening to me than my family and friends. But I am tired and don't feel too well. Everyone here is sick, everyone. Mandy was feeling ill and thought she might be catching what her kids and man had, I'm feeling it because of five days without my morning practice: meditation and writing. And because there are no leaves on these trees which feels so potently voyeuristic to me, and it's so damn cold.
How quick to fall off the beam, I thought, and called Brooks to make an artist's date. Erika told me about Zelda's paintings at a gallery at Hopkins, so hopefully that will remedy my soul. The first week of December on the mountain in NorCal I was walking outside in the sunshine along the ridge of a hill. It was winter and I felt vital still and knew it, I was charged and alive. I remembered what Justin said to me in July, jogging by my side from the inlet rocks along the beach in Ocean City, down by the Pier.
You're elemental, Kel. You need the elements to be well. He's so energetic, Justin, and I remember us happy and diving in the water either on or just after our run. He was right, and I knew it that day months later and a coast away, in the 50 degree mountain air. My cure for seasonal affective is no more than regular contact with the air, the earth, the sunshine, the trees, the sea. So it's not just the cold and lac of light that bothers me, it's the absence of a lifestyle. It's an outdoor wellness regimen that I need.
That, and my regular quiet routine.
I cancelled on Mandy, we cancelled on each other. I am going to Tim and Mary's tonight to do what I know to do this time of year back east. It's time to hibernate. I need sleep.
It's not a town, where she and I are from, it's a county. Due south of Baltimore. But in 2011 with chain stores and strip malls up and down Route 2, that doesn't make what she said any less true. It's good to be home, there are few things more real and heartening to me than my family and friends. But I am tired and don't feel too well. Everyone here is sick, everyone. Mandy was feeling ill and thought she might be catching what her kids and man had, I'm feeling it because of five days without my morning practice: meditation and writing. And because there are no leaves on these trees which feels so potently voyeuristic to me, and it's so damn cold.
How quick to fall off the beam, I thought, and called Brooks to make an artist's date. Erika told me about Zelda's paintings at a gallery at Hopkins, so hopefully that will remedy my soul. The first week of December on the mountain in NorCal I was walking outside in the sunshine along the ridge of a hill. It was winter and I felt vital still and knew it, I was charged and alive. I remembered what Justin said to me in July, jogging by my side from the inlet rocks along the beach in Ocean City, down by the Pier.
You're elemental, Kel. You need the elements to be well. He's so energetic, Justin, and I remember us happy and diving in the water either on or just after our run. He was right, and I knew it that day months later and a coast away, in the 50 degree mountain air. My cure for seasonal affective is no more than regular contact with the air, the earth, the sunshine, the trees, the sea. So it's not just the cold and lac of light that bothers me, it's the absence of a lifestyle. It's an outdoor wellness regimen that I need.
That, and my regular quiet routine.
I cancelled on Mandy, we cancelled on each other. I am going to Tim and Mary's tonight to do what I know to do this time of year back east. It's time to hibernate. I need sleep.
December 22, 2010
Tribute. Los Que Saben.
Last night Brooks and I were on the phone talking process and art and inspiration for at least two and a half hours.
He quit his job the day after I did in March, we both worked in the same office and the idea was we were both moving to the city to follow our dreams. He is doing amazingly well, is the host beginning tonight of the Balitmore Song Writers open mic in Fells and this is among at least four or five other big deal things. When we used to work in cubicles across from one another every week we would talk high-energy, deeply riveting "Narnia" talk (Narnia a reference he came off the cuff with last night, talking about relationships with "normal", un-arty people. We need them, he said, "to help pull the ropes and lead us out of Narnia.") I used to grab him and yank him towards Narnia--literally take him hand and run us out the back door of the employment agency and through the hard parking lot in the cold light of the sun. I'd make us walk on a patch of grass-slanted hill, the only section in that area of Easton not paved. Eventually he caught on and would do the same to or for me. Yank me out the door when my head needed a check and take me out for duende talk, food and sun. Our enthusiasm, talking Campbell's bliss-talk and serendipity and inspiration--constantly quoting philosophers or poets or musicians musicians musicians--was unstoppable.
I've tried not to think about it at all and the proof of that fact is it didn't even come up in conversation last night, but my laptop is down and it is killing me. The hardest part of not having it is staring me down this morning--all scowling face and fang-toothed today. And that's going on the road. Ahead of me is lots of uncharted time, 6 days in fact of road trip, that would normally be cleaved in to long swaths at various coffee shops between Annapolis and Baltimore working on my novel and blogging and so forth. The thought of being without that sustenance is making my stomach turn. The other thing about not having my laptop is not being able to write poetry, too, which I am used to doing at least once a week propped up in bed on a lounge of pillows in the most comfortable place in my world, letting the words drop and flow and come and come.
This all happened in Memphis the week before last when I went to visit Sean. He has this intercom thing that runs radio stations all through the house and we listened to Christmas music from the moment my family stepped through the door. So I was in my guest room after a shower and turned on my laptop and turned off the intercom and typed in the address for Pandora. I'm all for being festive but I needed a break and the myth is always upon me these days, the creative life flourishing there beneath the surface at all times and I believe I need to nurture it much as I can, I believe this can be done through music and reading poems and being present in the still cold winter air and also by being brave. There were ads that kept popping up on my computer though, and a commercial for Wal-mart that wasn't even connected to a pop-up but that wouldn't turn off. Next just like that my adrenaline was already going and my head full of panic and memories of the late nineties and the computer at mom's infested with spyware. I quick turned my laptop off and pretended it wasn't happening and I numbed the part of me that needs that nurturing same as it needs air.
A few days later Justin from work texted me through trying to remove it on my own. It didn't work. Full-fledged denial kicked in, this was last week on Tuesday. I have literally glossed over the reality that my laptop is unusable. This weekend my dad was home, rendering the computer I am typing on at this moment--in his bedroom--unusable. I pretended like the urge to write just wasn't there. This is similar, for those of you unfamiliar, to say not having a tongue but trying to pretend you are able otherwise able to eat and speak. I laid in bed with library books all weekend listening to the radio. My music is on my laptop, too. I kept telling myself, this too shall pass.
And therein, the point of this post.
Thank god for Brooks, for Sam, for Erika. The ones who need the nurturing as much as air. I lived for years denying that part of me, and then wondering why I felt so consistently deadened inside. I am writing an entire book about this struggle. I dont feel crazy, or like it's something made up, anymore. In the past month I have had extensive conversations with each of those people about this very thing. It makes me miss Laura Walsh, who I spent every solstice with for years, and our talks. Laura who sat for hours and hours in the Chestertown coffee shop with me discussing this struggle as I bit by bit garnered the strength I'd need to change my priorities. So this post is for them, the crazies. For Laura and Kat, Erika and Kirsten. For Molly, who lost the battle. For Sam and Brooks, the two most kind and gentle, glorious magician men I have ever known. This holiday, at the end of this good year, I am so, so thankful to have such tribespeople in my realm.
So long as I have pen and paper I will have to be alright.
And that is all I know to say about that.
He quit his job the day after I did in March, we both worked in the same office and the idea was we were both moving to the city to follow our dreams. He is doing amazingly well, is the host beginning tonight of the Balitmore Song Writers open mic in Fells and this is among at least four or five other big deal things. When we used to work in cubicles across from one another every week we would talk high-energy, deeply riveting "Narnia" talk (Narnia a reference he came off the cuff with last night, talking about relationships with "normal", un-arty people. We need them, he said, "to help pull the ropes and lead us out of Narnia.") I used to grab him and yank him towards Narnia--literally take him hand and run us out the back door of the employment agency and through the hard parking lot in the cold light of the sun. I'd make us walk on a patch of grass-slanted hill, the only section in that area of Easton not paved. Eventually he caught on and would do the same to or for me. Yank me out the door when my head needed a check and take me out for duende talk, food and sun. Our enthusiasm, talking Campbell's bliss-talk and serendipity and inspiration--constantly quoting philosophers or poets or musicians musicians musicians--was unstoppable.
I've tried not to think about it at all and the proof of that fact is it didn't even come up in conversation last night, but my laptop is down and it is killing me. The hardest part of not having it is staring me down this morning--all scowling face and fang-toothed today. And that's going on the road. Ahead of me is lots of uncharted time, 6 days in fact of road trip, that would normally be cleaved in to long swaths at various coffee shops between Annapolis and Baltimore working on my novel and blogging and so forth. The thought of being without that sustenance is making my stomach turn. The other thing about not having my laptop is not being able to write poetry, too, which I am used to doing at least once a week propped up in bed on a lounge of pillows in the most comfortable place in my world, letting the words drop and flow and come and come.
This all happened in Memphis the week before last when I went to visit Sean. He has this intercom thing that runs radio stations all through the house and we listened to Christmas music from the moment my family stepped through the door. So I was in my guest room after a shower and turned on my laptop and turned off the intercom and typed in the address for Pandora. I'm all for being festive but I needed a break and the myth is always upon me these days, the creative life flourishing there beneath the surface at all times and I believe I need to nurture it much as I can, I believe this can be done through music and reading poems and being present in the still cold winter air and also by being brave. There were ads that kept popping up on my computer though, and a commercial for Wal-mart that wasn't even connected to a pop-up but that wouldn't turn off. Next just like that my adrenaline was already going and my head full of panic and memories of the late nineties and the computer at mom's infested with spyware. I quick turned my laptop off and pretended it wasn't happening and I numbed the part of me that needs that nurturing same as it needs air.
A few days later Justin from work texted me through trying to remove it on my own. It didn't work. Full-fledged denial kicked in, this was last week on Tuesday. I have literally glossed over the reality that my laptop is unusable. This weekend my dad was home, rendering the computer I am typing on at this moment--in his bedroom--unusable. I pretended like the urge to write just wasn't there. This is similar, for those of you unfamiliar, to say not having a tongue but trying to pretend you are able otherwise able to eat and speak. I laid in bed with library books all weekend listening to the radio. My music is on my laptop, too. I kept telling myself, this too shall pass.
And therein, the point of this post.
Thank god for Brooks, for Sam, for Erika. The ones who need the nurturing as much as air. I lived for years denying that part of me, and then wondering why I felt so consistently deadened inside. I am writing an entire book about this struggle. I dont feel crazy, or like it's something made up, anymore. In the past month I have had extensive conversations with each of those people about this very thing. It makes me miss Laura Walsh, who I spent every solstice with for years, and our talks. Laura who sat for hours and hours in the Chestertown coffee shop with me discussing this struggle as I bit by bit garnered the strength I'd need to change my priorities. So this post is for them, the crazies. For Laura and Kat, Erika and Kirsten. For Molly, who lost the battle. For Sam and Brooks, the two most kind and gentle, glorious magician men I have ever known. This holiday, at the end of this good year, I am so, so thankful to have such tribespeople in my realm.
So long as I have pen and paper I will have to be alright.
And that is all I know to say about that.
October 24, 2010
"She's a mystic in the sense that she's still mystified by things..."
Luke Doucet is singing those words that terrorize my heart and that also make me smile meekly with a chest full of shine, like this dream I once had that I remember blogging about where the whole symbolism of the thing was me beating the shit out of myself, really beating my self up--I had all these missing teeth and a big cartoon sized swollen purple and blue eye but was dumbly smiling, and felt whole and shiny and free. This song, and that Sea Wolf one and the one by Sandro Perri all make me feel the same. Haha and Cardinal Song. They all played this morning, Larry was on my mind off and on all week and his new stencils also broke my heart in that free glistening way, and in all this there is the cohesive feeling like the end of October ought to bring. And yes it always does.
Things are changing, things that change must also virtuously stay the same. What is all this, and where are our choices? Do we choose or just pretend to by acquiescing or enjoying or bitching along the way? It all is choice. I took the cushiony fold-out chair on to the front porch, it's like the one grandma and pap had on their motorhome before gram's sisters died and they used to go to Florida all the time, and I sat in the sun there. No one ever sits there because that's where all the plants are in the summer, they are in the house now though because the frost at night has already begun to come. I sat in the sun, I did as told--soak in the sun, listen to the trees. When or if there is the sense of being numb this works, go outdoors find your back-breath, your second-half, and let this part just listen and relax. Store sunshine, for light. Happens all the time...
That is our choice, to go out through the doors...
So, do I need school for all of this or what? It is so funny to me how easy I am now with all these songs that I used to have to stay away from because of him. Every station turned his way instead and ok, god it's all so fucking good! At least there's no more dislike button all the time now at least I say the holy yes yes yes this is all true and that's not all the time. Nothing extreme in one direction or the other. Just is. So it should be, this is the time of the year of Hecate--wisdom of the underworld, a whole entire harvest year now past, all the blessings, all the gain, all the loss. And I am ok! Not looking for prophecy though no thank you. I am good, whole it feels nice to see myself in this way. It feels nice to be myself in this way. Ha, and writing like mad. In less than three weeks 12, 000 words. The story now telling itslef. It took me 14 fucking months of pressing the stones, carrying the rocks up the god damn hill with nothing to base it on but that decision made years ago that no matter what else this is what you'll do...I took yesterday and Friday off from the words, had waitressing to do, and tonight too, all it further proved that I am only really good when I have primary focus on just the one or two things. I didn't get to Chico's art show and I felt really bad. Just him having it has me thinking about Brook's and I and all our scene-dreams. I will be impresario scene-chic no matter who's in my life that I also know for sure. What next, what next what next is I will finish my book, that is all I truly know. Jotto and I sat out back at work yesterday waiting for tables to come in. What do you want? I asked my self. I was laying on the flat old wooden deck. White sun and the salt water smell. In order to dissect the fears from the truth at this crossroads. Acknowledging all, making room for all parts of the whole. Institution, I have such gnarly bad aversion to it. Had to sit in it, sit through it, I did this morning for over an hour also while in the sun. Money and taking out loans to become later one who has money seems so fucking counter intuitive. I am glad I will not be sitting with this decision for too long.
The moon came over the sea last night like magic. Soooo big and a yellow so faded and not bright it was like someone erased half of her. We sat far out on the peir and I listened to the ocean crash and just let the sound swallow me. I breathed the terror-glee of it and smelled the smell. Ahhh god I felt so clean.
Now if Danny Schmidt would just show up with my favorite song lyric ever this would be the conclusive end. To what? Just this one single prayer, which really is one small strand hard to say where it ends or where all the others begin...
Things are changing, things that change must also virtuously stay the same. What is all this, and where are our choices? Do we choose or just pretend to by acquiescing or enjoying or bitching along the way? It all is choice. I took the cushiony fold-out chair on to the front porch, it's like the one grandma and pap had on their motorhome before gram's sisters died and they used to go to Florida all the time, and I sat in the sun there. No one ever sits there because that's where all the plants are in the summer, they are in the house now though because the frost at night has already begun to come. I sat in the sun, I did as told--soak in the sun, listen to the trees. When or if there is the sense of being numb this works, go outdoors find your back-breath, your second-half, and let this part just listen and relax. Store sunshine, for light. Happens all the time...
That is our choice, to go out through the doors...
So, do I need school for all of this or what? It is so funny to me how easy I am now with all these songs that I used to have to stay away from because of him. Every station turned his way instead and ok, god it's all so fucking good! At least there's no more dislike button all the time now at least I say the holy yes yes yes this is all true and that's not all the time. Nothing extreme in one direction or the other. Just is. So it should be, this is the time of the year of Hecate--wisdom of the underworld, a whole entire harvest year now past, all the blessings, all the gain, all the loss. And I am ok! Not looking for prophecy though no thank you. I am good, whole it feels nice to see myself in this way. It feels nice to be myself in this way. Ha, and writing like mad. In less than three weeks 12, 000 words. The story now telling itslef. It took me 14 fucking months of pressing the stones, carrying the rocks up the god damn hill with nothing to base it on but that decision made years ago that no matter what else this is what you'll do...I took yesterday and Friday off from the words, had waitressing to do, and tonight too, all it further proved that I am only really good when I have primary focus on just the one or two things. I didn't get to Chico's art show and I felt really bad. Just him having it has me thinking about Brook's and I and all our scene-dreams. I will be impresario scene-chic no matter who's in my life that I also know for sure. What next, what next what next is I will finish my book, that is all I truly know. Jotto and I sat out back at work yesterday waiting for tables to come in. What do you want? I asked my self. I was laying on the flat old wooden deck. White sun and the salt water smell. In order to dissect the fears from the truth at this crossroads. Acknowledging all, making room for all parts of the whole. Institution, I have such gnarly bad aversion to it. Had to sit in it, sit through it, I did this morning for over an hour also while in the sun. Money and taking out loans to become later one who has money seems so fucking counter intuitive. I am glad I will not be sitting with this decision for too long.
The moon came over the sea last night like magic. Soooo big and a yellow so faded and not bright it was like someone erased half of her. We sat far out on the peir and I listened to the ocean crash and just let the sound swallow me. I breathed the terror-glee of it and smelled the smell. Ahhh god I felt so clean.
Now if Danny Schmidt would just show up with my favorite song lyric ever this would be the conclusive end. To what? Just this one single prayer, which really is one small strand hard to say where it ends or where all the others begin...
April 8, 2010
A Poet's Date, & Jealousy
I am jealous of him, and I miss him, in both the way a needy girlfriend craves attention and in the way you miss tossing your hair over your shoulder when it gets cut off or miss the outline between the trees of sky when suddenly the winter's gone. The way it is with that old cliche about not knowing how much you love respect appreciate etc something until you lose it--that is how I feel this week about him and I tell him this. Over text message, cuz it's the only way I can. You'll only have the number of real, true friends in your life that you can count on one hand is a line I was raised on, heard again again and again and so I value so strongly the connections I have with folks and understand what a brave and great gift it is to be "friend." If this exact axiom is true or not I dont know tho, it hasn't been my whole life yet or at least I hope not, but it is true that there are to me legit qualifiers for true friends. And so as men go, he qualifies, really currently he is only one of two men who do. My bro is the other one.
He texts about getting lunch and I agree because I know he is on Artist's Retreat and still was willing to reach out to the needy-girlfriend part in me. He's not my boyfriend we are not at all romantic we long ago discussed and then established that, it's just that he's filled such a huge role and taught me to trust again so maybe there's some of my possessiveness. We go to the Market where we always almost every Thursday go and standing in line I ask him to tell me about how it's going and that is when I realize I am jealous. When he talks about the songs he's completed, the songs he's writing, the songs he's going to record. When he starts talking about getting up at 8 and working all day.
What will it look like for me? Working all day? I found this quote from Rilke this morning.
Works of art are of an infinite loneliness and with nothing so little to be reached as with criticism. Only love can grasp and hold and be just toward them. Consider yourself and your feeling right every time with regard to every such argumentation, discussion or introduction; if you are wrong after all, the natural growth of your inner life will lead you slowly and with time to other insights. Leave to your opinions their own quiet undisturbed development, which, like all progress, must come from deep within and cannot be pressed or hurried by anything. Everything is gestation and then bringing forth. To let each impression and each germ of a feeling come to completion wholly in itself, in the dark, in the inexpressible, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one's own intelligence, and await with deep humility and patience the birth-hour of a new clarity: that alone is living the artist's life: in understanding as in creating.
This confirmed for me what I am struggling to maintain belief in because nowhere, practically nowhere in the daytoday grind do I see this valued: the inner life, the spirit and surrendering to the rhythms of me again, the tides of my own soul. I am on an Poet's Date with me right now, and I stuck to it today as it was pencilled in. 3 o'clock Poet's Date with You. Which means time uncharted with nothing to do but follow inside of me what I yearn for. I am writing, I just read Neruda and got transfixed on the spanish differences in assumption that can be made versus the english tranlation. y que la edad escribe letras/con agua y piedra para nadie,/para que nadie sepa donde,/para que nadie entienda nada again and again until it rolled like washed pebbles with gemstones inside over and over on my tongue. Until the words confused me, the words confused themselves, the translation was one thing the words something else the sound they made too its own thing the heartfusionmomentofactiontransaction on the tongue a total other. The time to do this--to be brave and foolish and quiet and sighing long enough to raise and then honor the song. No place to go but here, with me, alight alight alive and in the moment with my spirit and its wants and its needs. I think of Oregon, I picture it in my minds eye and sometimes I am on retreat and it is just reading long books in bed, stopping trailside to write down the words, laying on my back on the hot sand the sun marking me and the combination brine and green buoyant sea smell of the Coast. But sometimes it is, it is writing all day. And to me both kinds of work, the action kind and the priming honoring the tides and spirit of me are equally important.
We are so sick with the lac of it.
We are so sick with the need for it.
I saw it, wordless in his eye today and want that, that fire that transpires to speak greater languages than I currently can, that writes itself on my skin with its words that makes it so I dont even need to speak them because it speaks for me so great from in my soul. I saw it in him today and made myself be happy for him We're in this together remember he reminded me last week so I chose to be happy and let my jealousy go.
Afterall I had a date with me today and here I am now and am swept whole in that clean deep sigh inside glisten way from listening listening and submitting to the rhythms and tides so he's right, and back I go....
He texts about getting lunch and I agree because I know he is on Artist's Retreat and still was willing to reach out to the needy-girlfriend part in me. He's not my boyfriend we are not at all romantic we long ago discussed and then established that, it's just that he's filled such a huge role and taught me to trust again so maybe there's some of my possessiveness. We go to the Market where we always almost every Thursday go and standing in line I ask him to tell me about how it's going and that is when I realize I am jealous. When he talks about the songs he's completed, the songs he's writing, the songs he's going to record. When he starts talking about getting up at 8 and working all day.
What will it look like for me? Working all day? I found this quote from Rilke this morning.
Works of art are of an infinite loneliness and with nothing so little to be reached as with criticism. Only love can grasp and hold and be just toward them. Consider yourself and your feeling right every time with regard to every such argumentation, discussion or introduction; if you are wrong after all, the natural growth of your inner life will lead you slowly and with time to other insights. Leave to your opinions their own quiet undisturbed development, which, like all progress, must come from deep within and cannot be pressed or hurried by anything. Everything is gestation and then bringing forth. To let each impression and each germ of a feeling come to completion wholly in itself, in the dark, in the inexpressible, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one's own intelligence, and await with deep humility and patience the birth-hour of a new clarity: that alone is living the artist's life: in understanding as in creating.
This confirmed for me what I am struggling to maintain belief in because nowhere, practically nowhere in the daytoday grind do I see this valued: the inner life, the spirit and surrendering to the rhythms of me again, the tides of my own soul. I am on an Poet's Date with me right now, and I stuck to it today as it was pencilled in. 3 o'clock Poet's Date with You. Which means time uncharted with nothing to do but follow inside of me what I yearn for. I am writing, I just read Neruda and got transfixed on the spanish differences in assumption that can be made versus the english tranlation. y que la edad escribe letras/con agua y piedra para nadie,/para que nadie sepa donde,/para que nadie entienda nada again and again until it rolled like washed pebbles with gemstones inside over and over on my tongue. Until the words confused me, the words confused themselves, the translation was one thing the words something else the sound they made too its own thing the heartfusionmomentofactiontransaction on the tongue a total other. The time to do this--to be brave and foolish and quiet and sighing long enough to raise and then honor the song. No place to go but here, with me, alight alight alive and in the moment with my spirit and its wants and its needs. I think of Oregon, I picture it in my minds eye and sometimes I am on retreat and it is just reading long books in bed, stopping trailside to write down the words, laying on my back on the hot sand the sun marking me and the combination brine and green buoyant sea smell of the Coast. But sometimes it is, it is writing all day. And to me both kinds of work, the action kind and the priming honoring the tides and spirit of me are equally important.
We are so sick with the lac of it.
We are so sick with the need for it.
I saw it, wordless in his eye today and want that, that fire that transpires to speak greater languages than I currently can, that writes itself on my skin with its words that makes it so I dont even need to speak them because it speaks for me so great from in my soul. I saw it in him today and made myself be happy for him We're in this together remember he reminded me last week so I chose to be happy and let my jealousy go.
Afterall I had a date with me today and here I am now and am swept whole in that clean deep sigh inside glisten way from listening listening and submitting to the rhythms and tides so he's right, and back I go....
March 24, 2010
Personal Agnostic Creed
by Brooks Long
I believe in the twin justices of peace and murder
I believe in the benevolence of my father and mother
As much as I refuse the truth of their failings
I believe in the one story, its depth and wonder and tragedy too heavy to escape the throat of one voice yet slips from every lip every day
I believe in the child whom can not be defined even after a lifetime
I believe that God looks after fools and drunks
(and there is no God)
I believe in the love of Jesus and the grand tyranny of a joke and its jester
I believe in the indignation following a tree and a rope and
No hate, only
the denial of love
I believe in myself twice daily
I believe myself always
I believe fiercly in the ballet of a junkie
I believe in the grandeur of harsh vernacular
I believe in pussy
I believe in the hush of a kiss
I believe in one American color: brown, yellow, black, red, white and blues
I believe in Rock and Roll, which most certainly exists
I believe in my grandfathers own church and pulpit
I believe in Fayette Street
I believe in a promised land
I believe passionately in calm rationality
I believe in the fist
I believe in the knife and the rifle
I believe in the atomic bomb, which most certainly exists
I believe in the survival of me and mine
I still believe in the twin justices of peace and murder
I believe that after life is death
And know nothing
Amen.
I believe in the twin justices of peace and murder
I believe in the benevolence of my father and mother
As much as I refuse the truth of their failings
I believe in the one story, its depth and wonder and tragedy too heavy to escape the throat of one voice yet slips from every lip every day
I believe in the child whom can not be defined even after a lifetime
I believe that God looks after fools and drunks
(and there is no God)
I believe in the love of Jesus and the grand tyranny of a joke and its jester
I believe in the indignation following a tree and a rope and
No hate, only
the denial of love
I believe in myself twice daily
I believe myself always
I believe fiercly in the ballet of a junkie
I believe in the grandeur of harsh vernacular
I believe in pussy
I believe in the hush of a kiss
I believe in one American color: brown, yellow, black, red, white and blues
I believe in Rock and Roll, which most certainly exists
I believe in my grandfathers own church and pulpit
I believe in Fayette Street
I believe in a promised land
I believe passionately in calm rationality
I believe in the fist
I believe in the knife and the rifle
I believe in the atomic bomb, which most certainly exists
I believe in the survival of me and mine
I still believe in the twin justices of peace and murder
I believe that after life is death
And know nothing
Amen.
~~~
I dont know much, but I believe in love and santification through imperfection. And the holy light coming in through the least expected cracks in the cement and holes in the wall when you're too fucking tired and broken and dust-filled to even think or strain to look. This man has saved my life, again again again and once more again and again this year. So many times I could never quantify or possibly relate them back for you all to even try to make sense or comprehend. But where once there was none, there is love and light again--trust. Thank you friend travel well I so, so believe in you xoxo
April 27, 2009
"Too Zen"
I walked in to work the week before last and much to my fabulous surprise encountered a buddy from Chestertown who is also a fellow tribe member (Compelled by the Calling). His name is Brooks and I've blogged about him before he's a member of the band The Took (see link at left of page.) Well he just started working in my office! And of course you know soon as noontime rolled around I was like Brooks let's go go go I'll take you out for sun, I mean lunch and out the backdoor we ran like teenagers cutting school. I love having someone alive from the inside there to relate with me now. So last Thursday we were walking--in the sun--to the Amish Market for the amazing freaking goodies this place offers. And somehow we got in to this conversation about Destiny. He kept saying that he felt like everything is meant to be. To which I was like well that's predestination, you know like a very Christian subtext. So what do you think then of free-will? And he's like no no I dont mean that things are scheduled in advance, I just mean they are meant to be because they happen. And of course me, ever the Queen of ruinous depths am like what, huh--I mean what's human implication in all of this thinking? Dont you think that that burdens the individual with more than a wee's bit of mite--to have the responsibility of "choice" on her shoulders? [This was all quite good-natured and high-spirited as we were both in fired-up sunny good-food moods and I for one was busy trying to sort out where I stand in the nature of said discussion.] I start delving in to the tenets of Creating Your Own Reality and so forth, to which he again is like No no no I mean it's meant to be cuz it just happens. Like if it doesn't happen it's not meant to be. And suddenly I stop in a bolt of silence and literal white light sunbeam exalt and am like, OH! I think I get it! You are clever Jedi Sensai!! You are saying the mere simplicity of the eternal moment of Zen. Purely truly nothing to figure out ahhhhh but the second you grasp it..... ahhh gone again. The most simple truth: If it happens it's meant simply because it did. No meaning. Just....experience. Just light simple eternal treasure pleasure of joy in this continuous ongoing moment. Ah, the Chink is in my presence.
Purity Of In-Bliss Eternal Moment May I Never Question You Oh Sacred Truth.
Ah that in recognizing and never wanting to question you are gone...again.....!
Eternal Flower
Eternal Crescent Mama Moon
Eternal Blue
Eternal Star
Eternal Art
Eternal Wild
Eternal Tricksters!!
Ah, tricky tricky!I Was So Delighted!! I punched him on the arm like a kid in third grade and was like poor thing, you with me, we equal Too Zen! Then we took off running for the back door of work cuz we were late, and didn't want to get in trouble.
Purity Of In-Bliss Eternal Moment May I Never Question You Oh Sacred Truth.
Ah that in recognizing and never wanting to question you are gone...again.....!
Eternal Flower
Eternal Crescent Mama Moon
Eternal Blue
Eternal Star
Eternal Art
Eternal Wild
Eternal Tricksters!!
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