It's Been A Good Year (but dont make her lift her skirts or I'll be pissed!)

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. 

Sammy and the boys

In my Book of Awesomeness kept meticulously in my fabulous imagination, one of the most recent gold-scripted entries is that Sammy and the boys played Falcon Ridge.

Just writing that fills me with Oregon dreams and gypsy wisdom and barefeet secrets....

But this post isn't about the guys, or at least not in total, it's also about a funny-ass blogger. Read all about Spencer in the City's report of her tender heart getting Sammed....Then go check out the Chester River Runoff, the coolest fucking guys around xoxoxo

Why haven't you heard of these guys yet?

Reminiscing. Play it Again Sam's.

The door of the CoffeeCat is heavy wood and you have to push it in the center of the handle with a certain amount of compact umph for it to swing easily open. This morning and without any anticipation upon the push of the door I got struck in the gut with the most endured sense of wistful longing, an immediate and aching clutch on my heart the moment I stepped inside.

It was the tunneled noise of the milk-steamer that did it. And the warm bouancy, from all the rain outside, inside on the air.

I scanned the room for a recognizable face and there was Liz, the barista I got to know first when I started coming here last year. She is in her senior year of highschool and an athlete so I rarely see her anymore.

Just that little familiarity added a certain tweak to my heart.

Sometimes, with the least amount of expectation or warning, this happens to me. I am struck by sudden and complete awe for life. For its fleeting passing. For all the little moments that are all the time sliding us by.

This morning it descended upon me in a memory so physical I could've stepped back in time. I worked as a barista in a coffee shop in Chestertown my senior year of college. 2001 and most of 02. Mornings in the winter each step on the cold earth I'd pound closer to downtown my breath would grow more severe--I'd clutch whatever thin little sweater I was wearing harder across my chest and see my knuckles redden by the chill. It seems it was always gray that winter. The door, when it pushed open, rang little bells and my glasses immediately would cover in steam and my nose fill with the most alluring savory smell of the homemade muffins, Comfort Food, that Natalie Comfort was busy baking. One of the other baristas, almost always, was already at work steaming themselves a morning wake-me-up drink.

I dropped out of college twice from drugging and booze--the second time it was in order to get clean. The year I worked as a barista, my senior year, was the only year I was clean while in school, and it's really the only year that I remember with any sort of clarity. And they are sweet, specific sensory memories. The inborn joy that bubbles out of Katie that would jolt my heart every Thursday afternoon when we would meet and walk in to poetry class together; the tweak of enjoyment seeing the new outfit or wig that Libby would have on when I would turn the corner on High Street and see her in front of the coffee shop on her smoke break; the peace, inherent, of the way Jazmine moved across our apartment--the way one person's nature can wordlessly inspire you to want more from yourself. Dear God did I relive the collective experiences of that time in a mere instant this morning~and oh did it make my heart cry out in longing over what used to be.

It made me think quite instantly about other times in my life that are no more than memory~other times and whole other groups of fabulous, wild, hysterical, ridiculous people that are actively no more to me today than, if I am lucky, a facebook status update. Crofton, the pizza shop, 6th street, Ocean Pines Beach Club, the boys from the beach. I guess what ultimately this experience did was force me in to the reality of what I've quietly been witnessing and coming to terms with in the past few months: that too, Chestertown, the people there and memories, Play it Again, Andy's, Truslow Road, Anngar....all those too will pass away. Have already begun to, and how the aspects of this have hit me with a surrendering that is much like grief.

There is no other way to put it than that. I am looking forward, in great joy and enthusiasm, towards this next unwrit chapter of my life. It thrills me to no end the great, raw power in this~of choice and faith when mixed together. The pure alchemy of it. Yet the picture would be incomplete without the other...the saying goodbye. I have learned that all things pass, and yet somehow come again~that this is the thing about life. Most experiences merely change form, whether they are relationships, aspects of our selves or each other, the work we do, the family we spend time with, the ways in general we spend our time. There is at work always a greater thread that is weaving us and nudging us and it is part the tapestry--and part our choice of the stitches me choose to make, that make up all of life. I am lucky today to still have close, amazying friends that span all parts of my journey, and too grateful as hell for social sites like Facebook because even if we dont actually talk or see one another--knowing for example that Jess Singleton is happy and has a dog and a job she enjoys out someplace in Arizona, or that Ryan Muller is surfing and chilling in Florida gives me infinite peace.

I am in the Coffee Cat right now, preparing to work on my book. A warm-up as Erika would say. Sweet sweet Erika from all the way back chorus and basketball practice at Arthur Slade.
In less than a month Coffee Cat will no longer be my regular haunt. Once, my senior year of college, the poet Li Young Lee came to speak to our Contemporary Poetry Class. He was asked about faith, and his belief in God. He could not answer specific to a godhead, or even to faith, but what he did say was that LIFE is in this moment, and this moment is also always changing and passing on by. I make practice, he said, of centering myself much as I can throughout my day and then in that centered moment, reminding myself by saying Thank you, Goodbye.

Ahhhh, reminder to be present. Thank you, good bye.

O, coffee life....

thank life for you coffee cat, even tho when you changed from coffee east how i hated your name. thank life for you erika, and your practical approach to things. thank life for you date book: and the hour and half penciled in three times a week assuring i come here, sit down, and do just this....

thank life for you and all these young people, for rob and kj in seperate frames here on the walls. thank life for you funny aching beautiful minimal songs by huskyvoiced fellas and breathy womyns--i was a senior in college when i added to my agenda "barista" and worked a year at the local spot in chestertown, the one you learned to avoid if you had to get somewhere on time. because everyone there you know, and everyone you know is always there.

easton is bigger, the country surrounding her more spread out. (yes yes where ctown was a man, sweet easton is definitely a woman. i can hear it at night in the silence of her streets and how her trees and flowers sing. a chorus of sweet, while chestertown was always so flat, or thunderouosly barritone...o shamanmamaearthofmineheartandsoul, thank life for thank life....) and so while the poverty here is more spread out, and class in general more specifically profound, there is a far greater sense of lower middle class around here....o eastern shore, o employment office and family centers where i call my home, yes these too, thank life for you

why did i avoid it here so long? so much of my good times of the last 10 years have come out of coffee shops the late night dc ones after the clubs or meetins, all those all those 49 west nights, and o chestertown, where my moments came together for more than one love and now on to this one, center of a far larger town, all the people with smiles like they already know me, all the people who i'm sure really do already have me figured out...o writing life, o coffee shop opened til 10... with Rob and KJ on the walls how their local heroism delights and joys me and cracks me up, o faces here and the music i've never heard of but always always makes me groove....i am so gloriously glowing right now i dont know quite what to do....

what i'm listening to: gwendolyn

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.

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

Going Gothic

Winter Shots

@Blue Heron Farm,

C-town

Three is One: Lessons from Mercury Retro

Wow I had such a long day today I feel like I lived a million different lives. At an open house at the college's Continuing Ed department where I work, some of the various aspects of me literally collided this afternoon. I was barely manning the Adult Ed station when I noticed the women next to me had a booth set-up about a Reiki One class she was offering. I introduced myself and we got immediately in to one of those peacefull, clear and heightened-conversations. Next thing you know, out of the blue appears Tai-Chi Wayne from Chestertown, and now the three of us are jamming and in our own little harmonic convergence. Big talks, lots of light. In the middle of all it I notice that the bigboss from the Maryland State Dept of Ed just got there--I knew I needed to get my head over to the crowd around her. Wayne, upon my excusing myself, pulled me in for a quik reiki-share as means of departing, at which moment I was caught red-handed as the freeflowymoonymama I am: there in my Calvin Klein bizness trousers and sharp black fitted-sweater with my college nametag on, the whole Adult Ed staff witnessed my huruguru wyld woman as they sought me out for the bigboss. I took it in stride.

It gets better.

As I'm greeting the MSDE bigboss, here comes my bigboss, the head of the college's Cont Ed Dept. She wants me to meet her daughter, whom she has always claimed is just like me from looks on in. So off we go across the building to the conference room where her daughter is teaching a class. I meet her daughter hello hi hi hello. And then who should appear behind the daughter but Brandon's mom, who is taking the class because it is a farm management class for women. I've not seen his mom but once since I moved off Anngar farm.

Talk about convergence people.

I literally felt like, in those ten minutes time, I was in a revolving door and each time an opening passed it was a window in on my life. And more, for the first time in ever, I understood, like in me!! In my heart not my head!! that life, plainly put, IS NOT segmented. Which was exactly what me and Dena the Reiki Lady and Tai Chi Wayne were talking about: the web of life, the ecological truth of the wholeness, or interconnection, of all earthly things. That there isnoseperating any of it out, how same as run-off effects the river effects the ocean effects the fish effects the humans effects the air effects the stream...So too am I that same example of autonomy, at once functioning within the larger flow of all that effects me and that I effect. As the me who shows up for "real life" and my job is the same me that creates, is the me with the writing as a hobby that keeps me sane. Is the me in love, the me in need of me and Independence, the me who has a community, the me that is alone. And maybe it's true that all of those parts speak in somewhat different forms, but it's still the same voice I use, all as one.

The funny thing is I felt like I should have felt overwhelmed to swallow all of that all at once. And I did, in all honesty, cut out of there hella quik and get on the phone to my friend in Oregon...but I had to be somewhere else anyway. And what counts is I saw it all.

Which brings me to mercury, in retrograde right now. Reviewing reviewing reviewing. An excellent time to let life run its course and sort of just sit back and watch the stream float past, like little picture windows open but with nice screens and open breeze. To try not to get too connected to any of it, any thoughts or ideas or experiences or circumstances, as right now we are literally in soul review prior to first seed of spring. Think of it as a seasonal inventory. Time to take stock, once again, of within.

Anicha. This too shall pass. Anicha. The nature of all things is changing. Anicha. Changing. Anicha. Changing. All things rise. Anicha. All things fall. Anicha. All things pass.

Anicha. All things circle back, and by and by, again. Anicha. So it goes. Anicha. So it goes. Anicha. So may it be.

Legends

I'm so lucky cuz for some reason Chestertown has this totally epic cult-like epicenter for crazy talented-ass musicians. I dont know why, or what it is that draws us all in our antic-questing to encounter and run in to each other out here in the middle of colonial drudgery under-your-thumb-imprinted-capitalistic-ruin perfect pinpoint micro image of the macro which is Chestertown out amid the middle of the farmfields, maybe it is as Tai-Chi way-out Wayne says there must be an aquafir or something...

But anyhow all the musicians at right are ones who wnadered past here, Kent County, good ol Eastern Shore. Some have stayed on if not for good at least for now and Marc Dykeman from Plans Plans is one of those cats. Turns out we used to not know each other but know those or know of those who knew each other back in my purple booted punk-rock riot grrrl days of dark firehalls garage bands and flannel shirts, outside Balitmore, USA.

He's kept that loud thing up. I sweat him for it. A hella lot. Also, his wife is a fairy princess and I think she's so rad and they throw the best parties, too.

Go check out his rock band Plans Plans tonite, in Baldamore, 1700 N Charles the Metro Gallery. It'll be worth it I know.

ps i just figured out how to copy soemthing off YouTube I stole that video above off of PlansPlans, I'm so proud of me!

Detours, windows, doors & light: this week around kent county

Well, so i got a job. it all happened very fast and i am not feeling, say, fluent in the language of my new life just yet. and yet, it seems so right, so somehow as if i am finally, after a long long detour, stepping in to the facts of my life as if my soul just snapped open like an old 1980's blind and windowed me in on things: this is how it is meant to be--these are your moments, 'writ in eternity'....

i was of course waiting tables--slinging grease is what always goes in the back of my head when i say that, which is true regardless the level of white linen affair in which one is involved. it's all grease, it's all over you at night's end, it's all always in your hair and lingering not so much as a coating on your skin as a smell, or a sense, or a flavor of the over-processing of your life that ends up going with you, that you end up carrying around with you and wearing like a form of yourself not so true but also that you quietly can't seem to rid.....
it is the function of this life, no? to carry these skins of us on our back and at once deep within, and to try not to struggle when they are slow to come off, and try too not to force the transmutation...?

oohhhh, so i am an intake counselor, a liason for students of Adult Ed once again. but now sooo far to drive to my new job each day, so far to drive from my home. yet this feels so good to me, exhilerating and also stunning at the very same time.

ohhhh! and my eight pairs of ohsogorg trouser pants some wide-legged some high-wasted all so demurely chic and debonair hanging there on the new love affair i have which are my legs... literally make me quiver. that's right, i got hired by 11 and was shopping shopping shopping and remembering my body by 2....

in other not as fashionable news, but good to remember--authentic and just as true: coming out of my detour this week coincidently corresponded w touching down on so many lovely parts of our home land here in kent and queen anne's county...

sammy g

sammy g, bran and i were out on the chester monday eve. ran in to timmy p and greg down at ben's dock taking a swim before pearl creek's band practice. this is where we all go for relaxing dips, down the very end of blue heron farm lane--i wonder does ben know how often the all of us, at varied times, are there swimming even if he's not around?

our swimming hole at ben's dock

tuesday nite was ladies nite out--laura leah and i surprised brooke, who's getting ready to move, on her own, back in to her historic 13 bedroom unfinished hotel-house outside tolchester w the brand new wrap-around porch. we went out and about in naptown, our way of saying go on grrrrrl and also each quietly getting to remember that we are none of us ever alone...

brooke, laura, leah

then, thursday nite we all potlucked at mark and andrea's place out to rock hall. (you love the vernacular i know go ahead and sweat it) mark is this funny easy too come across as shy guy but so quik w the dead-on sharpheaded wit once you've been around him enough that you literally get moved to cry w your laughter...i know, it's happened to me way more than once. and andrea is his baltimore-living girlfriend who weekends it at their work-in-progress farm house here on the shore. he's a wash coll alum, so is she, like many of us. he's working now for the college on oyster restoration and other local sustainability grant and projects, taking whatever is handed to him and going along with it in his steady kind of mark walk-run. he, too, worked at the resteraunt w me. we quit the same week.....















mark's front porch & stairs, under construction

mark and andrea

their way cool bathroom door, handcrafted by mark!!

(probably i should have taken more pictures of the finished rooms--their lovely warm kitchen or the study upstairs. but guess that's for another potluck....)

and lastly, this morning, in our bedroom. how very good, still and clear the light can feel sometimes...

Kat's Wedding, Time w LDubb

WOW.

I am borderline freaking out right now. I just wrote this post, full w tons of links, about kesey and the merry pranksters and tripped out theories yadayada...and somehow just deleted the whole thing.

ughghh i feel sick.

Here are shots/thoughts from katherine's wedding festivities instead.

Kat, at the Bachelorette Party, officially

"sashed".

Ummmm, yes, so these red shirts say "Enjoy Katherine & Jacob, An American Tradition since August 16, 2008" Coca-Cola Classic Lettering, what could be more Americana than that?!

Awwww, lovely Kat. She is wedded in this pic, no more dragging rehearsals lasting hours or Southern-style toasts that kept us all up and weepy with laughter and light at the end of an already long day, well after dinner was served....

Wow, look at Laura Walsh and I. She doesn't wear anything, ever, but jeans and fitted t-shirts. How illustrious she is, how sleek and elegant and so otherwise hiding of her power-full powerfull ways....

So, the morn of the actual wedding, Laura and I were together at the Bridal Luncheon on this large historic estate on a creek that opened to the mouth of the River and gave a direct view of the vast horizon of the Chesapeake Bay. At meals end, we addled aimleslly about on the lawn, or the "green" perhaps I should say more fittingly, and found ourselves wandering through a tunnel cut in some hedges, English garden style. The tunnel led on to a peer which stuck out in the center of a dead-end finger of Langford Creek. It was all edged by hunched over tress with hangy vines in the limbs and lots of breathing greenery and the creek was brown and brought you to mind of the Mississippi and truly, it all really was a magical divergence of old country south and hints of English-style roots all in one. True divergence, as myth ought to be.... We sat there, sort of etherically lingering in the white sun while schools of fish splashed under us, talking deep talks shot through w our irreverant jokes and laughter, which is the way we do. And I prodded Laura at the end of it all, about how would we ever figure a way to get a big estate of our own. "Our very own Bohemian Estate, for all us artists to live authentic and surrounded by beauty. All Boho and walking around with parasols."

So which was better, Laura's shot of laughter at the irony of my vision, or the fact that later that day when we got to the wedding reception, held on Katherine's parent's estate edged by a space of water historically named Comegy's Bite, they actually handed out parasols...!

Dinner of course was exceptional--gazpacho w crab followed by the tenderest slices of juicy rare filet. But the best part, captured below (again in the ethos)...was the haunting experience LWalsh brought to the whole affair...

Yes, Epic. Mark another one down for my records of the Sutras...my archives of the Tribe of Us....

Sarah Ban B & Sacred Spots

I have this quiet place where I go. It's in my room. (Yes, Brandon and I, in addition to our bedroom, have our own rooms.) (This is probably the only reason that we've lasted as long as we have.) This idea of a quiet spot, which I actually refer to as my sacred spot, is not original. It came to me from the book Simple Abundance by Sarah Ban Breathnach. I was 21 when I got that daily meditation book for my birthday in March of 98. And by the Fall, when I was moving my stuff in to the slant-walled wooden-floored attic-apartment on Washington Avenue in Chestertown, to start my first semester at a real four year school, I was sold on the ideas that Sarah Ban shares about personal sacred space. But my translation, back then, of seeking bliss within included bong hits to catalyze that written about state of quiet and rapture. In my first Chestertown apartment I sat on a big stuffed maroon pillow from Wal-mart in the center of my bedroom with my little pink "daybook of comfort and joy", a gratitude journal, and my Cabbage Patch lunchbox with the pink plastic bong and insence in it rested by my side. I sat cross-legged, lotus style like I'd seen all the hip wise ones do, and tried to tap open those doors of consciousness I'd heard so much about.

By January, 1999, my mom re-handed me a copy of the same book she'd gotten for Christmas. I was so out of my mind on script tranquilizers that I most strictly associated myself with a big amoebic blob. I felt sludgy and goopy and like I just sort of melted across the floor towards whatever I direction I was heading in rather than actually using feet to walk. And the floor was heavy: it weighted me down. My face felt large and pulled at the same time. The rest of my body felt spinny and without actual confines. And worst of all, I didn't really know it. My consciousness was so numbed I couldn't tabulate any vision of my real reality. Meds are like that, or can be, anyhow.

I was two or so weeks out of the mental hospital and heavily overmedicated. I was diagnosed with a mental illness, a severe one, and put on gnarly doses of anti-psychotics, anti-seizures and anti-depressants to tackle it, to tackle "me". I swarmed around and around inside of me, sludging along on the outside. I dont remember much. But I do remember sitting down in the living room trying to read that book again. And it did not click. Those meds left my brain neurons, and all that life juice, just about two steps behind.

I dropped out of my second semester at Washington College to stop there at the Ward. One institution to another, how I've always looked at it. Is it dramatic to say the two aren't too terribly far apart? I'll never claim non-drama. So I didn't really have a room at my mom's then, when I came out of the hospital to recover. My room was vacant, in my little spot on Wash Ave with the pillow and scuffed hardwood floors. Which is why when I again went looking for a sacred spot, a place all of my very own, where I could celebrate me and relax and give permission to and better know me, I found myself crouched down on the floor next to the old pleather covered toy box that still sat in the corner in my brother's old room. And I took one deep breath and bowed my head there. And I whispered something--to something? I dont know what on either accounts but I am almost sure that it had to be something like help me. And then I heard mom's footsteps on the stairs, and I quick got up and zipped, or anyhow sludged away.
It was years before I was off the meds. And by then I had learned, from my own self and much due to regular daily pauses of reflection and time within, which just means true honest time with me, that I was not mentally ill but quite chemically sensitive--or in other words the medical definition of a drug addict. And who cares the nature of the drug--street or pharm--they all affect me different.

That book changed, or maybe saved, my life. To this day when I am funked I guarantee you it's because too much time has passed since I got to sit down a while with me. I had a great sit-down this morning. And a decent enough one with me yesterday, too. It had been a while. Again. Try it sometime.

Me, in my Sacred Space or "Meditation Spot" on Wash Ave, Spring 2002, sans bonghits, booze & most of all my "ideas"

Be Ing

I got this book yesterday called Fandango by Sandy Hill. I read about it in my Vogue and had one of those sensation-al juicy reactions that i am always craving for and so am very sensitive to when they hit. The book, to my best description, is this women's compilation of years and years worth of over the top entertaining--she believes that celebrating, as in life in general, is call to give your very very most. The full title is Fandango: recipes, parties and license to make magic. Of course the word magic in the title sold me, as i am a full believer that life itself is the miracle, and that we, fragile humans, are merely the blind fools with capacity to turn our own inner glow on at any given moment--and this is magic, alchemical, to me. Of the highest form.

So let's talk about this for a moment. I wandered in to our local bookseller yesterday to pick up the book, which I had ordered some weeks ago. One of the sales people shared that she'd enjoyed looking through the book, and I casually mentioned that I found out about it through "my weakness...reading the pages of Vogue...Or more, just looking at the pictures." I giggled I think kind of shy and then looked up at her. Wow, you'd of thought she swallowed poison by the look on her face, which she politely tried to cover. As if intellectuals can't be full-bodied, juicy persons? It got me to thinking: in the Spring of 2005 i was living in a trailer in an anonymous fishing town on the Oregon coast. It rained everyday and the midst in the air was indecipherable from the grey sky and the clouds that swirled in and out of the tops of all the luscious green trees. Our trailer had walls like papyrus and when it rained or when the wind blew the weather actually happened inside our house, too. Mold grew on the walls. And i was living there, waiting tables and bar tending and taking up smoking again for the trillionth time in a roadside steakhouse. And most of all, I was sorting out my life--or what I thought was sorting out my life, ignorant as we all are at times, and me at many times! to the fact that life is actually what's going on right now, while I'm in the midst of trying to figure it all out. I had just sold everything I'd owned, quit my "career" job and all its associations, and then lived out of a truck for five months in the national forests of this great land. I spent alot of time in quiet. I learned again to listen to, and to love, the sound, the feel, the heart of our precious giving earth. I emerged from this in an in-between place, quite sure I was not who I was when I left my old life, but not sure at all who I'd become. It was my first cognizant experience of realizing that I, we, are always in the pure infinite stage of be-coming. That it has to do with be-ing. In the beginning in that trailer I was in such distress and discontent: restless all the time. My 28th birthday came and went and I took me shopping, bought myself an amazing flowy pink skirt that made/makes me feel like a fairy whenever i wore/wear it. How alive it made felt! Then I realized, I had fallen in to a rigidity of thinking: that because I spent my weekends on my hands and knees in the wet detritus of the Oregon forest floor, that because I knew how to simplify and live a life of utility on the road, it somehow meant that I had to shun off the other sides of me--the glamorous, the sexy, the diva me's! I began a list of all the me's I know me to Be. (And to this day that's a practice I continue to revisit.) I spent days in my wardrobe dressing in various combinations, oh it was like coming home to me after a long, strained no-fun vacation: this is independent photojournalist traveller kelly. This is hippie moonmama magic maker kelly. This is cross between simple forest liver kelly and diva-lishous kadada b! It felt so good to stretch those soul muscles, to flex my wings that way!

So now I laugh a little when someone makes me stop in judgement of Me. And I sadden a little when I recall how quick I used to be to judge someone for who they currently are be-ing. (Oh, those jeans didn't come from second-hand? Oh, you like labels?). Now I recoil a little when someone gives me the idea that theirs is the only way to Be. Because I don't know much, but I am sure enjoying knowing and be-ing me. I relish, I crave for that juicy feeling of alive-ness. I want that as much for you on your own terms as I demand it for me. Carl Jung and Joe Campbell and talking about archetypes, which is nerdy and boring for many I know! does that juicy aliveness for me! So do the amazingly hot stiletto strap-ups in my coworkers Anthropologie catalog. And so does dancing dirty and barefoot against the shadows thrown by the flames coming from my own handmade fire barrels out onto our trees and in my head and my heart and my soul and also against the sky. Or the sunflowers growing all simple in my garden. Or chatting w a girlfriend on gmail. Or the taste of melty creme brulee after a delicious salad feast.

Juicy. Making magic. Be-ing me.

Maine Vacay

So. What a trip!? Revelations are funny—how they come so that you don’t even realize you’re experiencing revel, even when you’re right in the middle of it. I am a closet vintage-junkie and particularly when it comes to anything John Watersy Baldamore hon value worthy (think Killer Trash circa old Eastern Ave)--so when we happened on a tumbled into discovery of a shop our first night in a small town on the Southern coastal tip of Maine called York where there was a vintagey photo/poster shop galore, budget or not I had to at least get something. I love it.
Later that night, after checking out the rest of town and me also getting a beaute of a sundress for practically nothing in another little shop, we checked in to the last available cabin at Birchwood Cottages on Rt. 1 in Cape Neddick. Only nite we used the credit card, too, go us.


Later that night (after an early dinner of Lobstah rolls at the first joint we could find the moment we got to York--and of course the proprietor had been to Chestertown) we found a take-out sushi place w rolls for like $4 a piece. Spicy tuna and salmon yummm. We walked York's beach at dark, bought some ice cream and Bran some beer and some cards cuz we forgot ours, then took our sushi back to our cottage, above. Next morning, on suggestion from Lannie Parks at our local bookstore in town we checked out world famous Flo's HotDogs, also in Cape Neddick on Rt. 1.

Check out Gale and her little red shop by the side of the road. She now owns Flo's after taking it over from her mom-in-law (of the famous namesake.) The 61-year-old hotdog stand will be on Samantha Brown on the Travel Channel on July 24 at 10:30 pm. Thanks Lannie. Before hitting Flo's, as an apetizer if you will, we had a pork rib each from the Cat & Nine Tails also on One in Cape Neddick, just because it was already almost 11 am and we were so hungry from our early morning chillychilled swim in the Maine Atlantic and we couldn't wait another second to get to Flo's! Seriously, Maine has rib joints all over the sides of the road. And this little convenient store's goods were SOOOOO good all the same...Next we headed on up 95 to Acadia for a day or so...on the way on Rt. 30 outside Belfast we stopped at the Liberty Trading post to use a port-o-john that you had to "Close your eyes, drop your drawers and back out of" according to Brandon. However, they had the best fresh out of the oven chocolate chip cookies and for love like that I am such a feign. Ended up a little later at Blackwoods campground where a very happy Brandon discovered us a big ol pile of wood just waiting for a fire...

So, how's this for cool? Over in Bass Harbor, on the far side of Mt.Desert Island, ME, there is this old lighthouse that ran, with a living, flaming light and someone there to tend it the wheel of the day/night around and around for 106 years, non-stop. Keepers changed from every six to ten years or so. Holy hell. That's from 1858 to 1974. Wowowow. So this got me to thinking, and it was probably that night that the revelations slowly began (I'm always always better at this spiritual/self-discovery stuff in retrospect...) to impart themselves like a fog settling, but also breaking at the same time. And I realized this relationship that I have with a friend in Philly had been on my mind all day long, and there, on the edge of the sea, the foghorn blasting and clearly a big storm setting almost in...I couldn't help but realize what a lighthouse does. It guides shipwreck-fearing sailors home from the sea. And there are people out there who tend to that light, day after day, night after night, even when they themselves can't even see the sailors for all the fog or for the huge swallowing sea. So like the Waifs said, Sometimes we need a Lighthouse for our own...And I got this image of a lighthouse there in my emotional shipwreck sea of a heart and soul that's been drowning me on and off for a year or more, and I realize I've got this track of poetry that's sort of been my charting maps through the haze of all this stuff. And this friend of mine who's been like my torch-holding port cuz for some reaason when all this lost stuff started happening so did poems to him, and to all the friends I sort of know through him. Which are more poems to me, the lost me in all of us. It made me, for the first time in months, realize, and have faith again, in my own anchor. The fog started parting. It did me good...going to the Lighthouse, see?

The storm came with the the night and the salty air from the sea and we only got to use about two hours worth of that wood and it was okay, cuz we needed a good long snooze. The next day was the fourth, we were due up to Sorrento that night for Levi's wedding, and had some hiking and swimming first to do. Started out in Southwest Harbor at Cafe 2 with split dishes of Juevos Rancheros and Blueberry Pancakes. Then on to the Farmer's Market, which happens in Southwest Harbor on Mt. Desert Island on Friday as from 9 to 1pm, next to the community center. It was small, but for 8 bucks we got some killer artisan pesto bread, fresh made chipolte goat cheese and a big bag of organic arugula, which fed us snack-style intermittently for the next two and a half days. Hiked Acadia Mountain Trail, swam and snacked at Echo Lake then busted on to Rt. 3 for a stop at a Lobster Pound(these places rip you off as far as I'm concerned, we never did find the "right" one and maybe the right ones don't exist like they did when we travelled in 04. Maybe the whole market for seafood is too commercialized now. Who knows? Maybe back then we just got hella lucky) before heading onward a half hour or so to Three Pines, our Bed & Breakfast in Hancock, ME.
It was about this time that I set down The Vanishing Point, a novel by Mary Sharratt, in favor of my heart's pulling me towards Paulo Coelho's The Witch of Portobello. The poetry, incidentally, had been just pouringpouring out of me. Coelho's book was, as revelations are always meant to be, the right way to go..... As would be the wedding, and most of all, the visits w family and friends to come....the details of which are on their way in a day or two...