Love and thank yous

As soon as I saw on Facebook that Igor was sick I knew I was going to make him soup.   But it didn't occur to me that I was doing for him what my wise women teachers taught me to do by doing it for me over all these years until later, standing in Derynne's kitchen tonight.  Her friend, who I've never met til tonight, said 'that's really the best medicine, the vitamins and minerals cooked in from the whole foods.'  Then she took a sip from a plastic red cup of wine that already had her lips joker purple. And she grinned and added 'and all that bright white light~'

It made me raise my brow with my own little grin because indeed as she said that I was adding the last little dash of flavor and also putting blessings of so much love and thank you all over that soup.  This was the first thing she'd said to me directly all night.  I don't know if she saw my smile.  We'd been packing D's house for their move on January 2.  They are going back to the dessert where Cam's tattoo shop is.  Packing laundry boxing taping labeling drinking wine drinking wine making chicken soup.  And dumplings. This gal's either got drunk second-sight or is wild-intuitive.  Either one totally natural.  One homemade pot was macaroni noodles with broth just like Judy taught me to make way back even before I lived on the farm.  To that pot I also added kale and chard-pot like Teena used to make to heal me, when I lived in sabbatical with her those many long days at Chop.  Also tons of oregano because Igor's sinus' are sick and for sick sinus', well that's one of the first things I ever learned working with herbs.  Also back in the days that I used to salvage Judy's herb garden out on the side of her river house.  And cloves and cloves of garlic.  And other secret dashes and smiles.  The other pot was homemade chicken dumplings, the way grandma taught me all those different times standing behind or beside her or out of her sight but her not out of mine.  I didn't make hand-pressed noodles Pennsylvania-Dutch style though, but, with Grandma's recipe and a combo nod to Judy again, little butter dumplings that turned in the broth and before the roux to the warmest, fluffiest balls.  That pot I made for Laura another student of mine, or rather as I don't teach them now, for Laura a woman I know who's far away from her mom's countryside home in Romania.  My students, I mean my friends, so far away from family, during the holidays.

It is cold and clear the night before the last day of the year.  Pon Pon walked me to where I was parked on Adams.  He lives with Igor and Gustavo.  And Bob, who I've met several times through them, and Leo too.  Igor was in bed sniffling and laughing his wonderful Igor laugh.  I made all of them take emergenC's and zincs the way Maria did back when I was first learning to teach and got so sick right after Christmas that year.  Back when Judy first made me homemade chicken soup and showed me how.  And her, and Maria my mentor teacher, how both those good women took turns stopping by to give me care.  Pon Pon handed me a bag of Brazilian chocolates at my car and gave me a million kisses on my head.  We could see our breath.  I live in Southern California, it was almost midnight, I have a sweet artist's studio in the canyon that was calling me home.  All these darling Brazilians.  My sister D and her dear kids, moving away.   I made soup or dumplings for everyone who took care of me this year, for all this precious family here who helped me find my way.  My cherished friends.  I am eating a bowl now.  Thinking about the year that just passed.  Sending cosmic soup with thanks to Mike, my dear friend, on vacay in the BVI.  Remembering how in February in a panic I called him, then drove the Sonoma coast not sure what would be around the bend. Readying myself to leave and come here, all the way South.  The hand-cut life I've glistened up down here since then.  Crafted on nothing but pure love.  Love and lots of help.

Love and thank yous.  Which always work whenever you remember to cook them in.

Really guiding my way.

Siobhan sent a poem over our email chain.  She's in the gradschool cohort we all got blessed with. Our cohort, C, has its roots as the first cohort for In Depth Psych Counseling or so the legend goes, and since Pacifica is built on myth and soul and story I like that detail the best.  We are Ants--that's the medicine card we pulled our first session when some second year's came and got us and then led us out to the grass to have a little gnostic earth ceremony.  Ants: power of patience, persistence, working on behalf of the whole.

Standing on the little sundeck today against all the fat, full greens of the canyon it was that poem that came to me, the first line: Leave the dishes.  It is a poem by Louise Erdrich called Advice to Myself and it came when all us Ants were emailing about self and soul care.  I thought of it because after a week of school work new job work new job work study read quit teaching/work--well to be standing on the sun deck this afternoon about to sit and luxuriate and do nothing felt, for just that final second before sitting down, the tiniest bit indulgent.  Because the house is dirty, the dishes are piled up, the fridge needs cleaned out.  But I thought of that poem and sat down.  Way, wayyy down.

I am blissed out and quenched back up on my self and nice and relaxed now.  Full of California southsky sun.  Grateful in ways I can't speak because there are no words for the steady sobs of goodbye I shared with Chika or Loan, the tears of gratitude on the faces of Mayra or Yun.  My students who taught me more than they will ever know.  Dancing with the grls in HB last night for Annie's birthday.  Derynne about to move.  Me starting work, for myself.  And, maybe most of all, this other thing quietly going on.  How settled: I am dating, and not losing my self.

Which makes me see in my mind Krissy and I, also on the lawn at Pacifica.  Practicing empathetic listening with one another.  This was in October.  Not so far south sun.  I had told her about my time living in Ocean Pines with mom right before I came to California.  How I did nothing but wait tables and go out every night to have fun.  I told her how different that had been from the excruciating work at Chesapeake College being a Counselor.  The guilt I still had over this.  It's a large package I gave her to hold.  Her response was dead on--how I learned at the beach when I lived with mom really strong boundaries for myself.  When Krisssy said that I remembered: my motto back then was if it doesn't add joy I will cut it out.  I really did live that way, too.  With that much dedication to joy and having fun.

And so no effort is wasted.  That time at Ocean Pines I learned to carve out, and trust, my truest, brightest self.

Today I'm just sorta reveling...  She's really guiding my way.

Her true essence.

After yoga, which was with a different teacher tonight and one of the sweatiest, most energizing workouts I have ever had, my body was craving fresh veggie pasta with every vibrating cell.  I walked to Mother's and bought ingredients and came home and cooked myself a feast.  And decided I'm gonna chill and watch tv.  

So You Think You Can Dance.  It's the first time I've watched prime time in my house in Huntington but today on the phone mom said I needed to.  It makes me miss her.  This was our show.   When we lived together two falls ago she got me hooked.  I forgot how deeply dance moves me.  Good dance pangs my heart, catches my throat, covers me in chills.  Makes my eyes fill.   It makes me ache for Baltimore and home because Artscape, all that magnificent street art and dance, starts this week.

My kids are doing so well!  They are not kids by any means but some days like today when I give them a project and look up from my attendance book to see each of them concentrating I swell with something like parental pride and adoration.  In my eyes, it's true, they can do no wrong.  After school I applied for a second job.  It's a mile from my new house.  I can ride my bike, so I hope I get it.

My new house!  There is a hiking trail that leads up the canyon it starts in my neighborhood!  God I am thrilled.  Muller's coming down this weekend and Jason who I haven't seen since Kevin and I were 16 and 15-years-old.  Samba tomorrow night then Long Beach with Alison and who knows who else for dinner and dancing Friday.  Today is the new moon.  My meditation each morning has gotten more and more strong and the journaling has me really self-connected.  We were chanting in class tonight and my soul was so still, so engaged and filling up the vessel of me so presently that all I could think of was Hannah at Earth Activist Training when we did our New Moon ritual.  This was up in the Cazadero Mountains in January.  She said how connected she felt to the moon in her dark phase, when she isn't obliged to reflect the sun and can simply be her whole, pure self.  Her true essence.  That line came back to me on my breath tonight, it filled me whole with my self, it filled me strong as the two weeks of silence at Vipassana did, whole as Cazadero and the Permaculture kids.  I am feeling so sweetly quenched on the gratitude in my heart, on the walking blessings of my life, so excited to be here and on the verge of so many amazing changes.   So alive.  The checking in daily with me is paying off.

I am grateful, aware.  New moon sets a new cycle in motion, our own personal start anew.  Yes yes and thank you.

Breathe. Smile. Go Slow.

Yoga tonight, it was great, Derryne's mantra for practice was Breathe.  Smile.  Go Slowly.  On our last few rounds of sun salutations she really had us go deep in to our breath, which I would do all of class if I could (and wind up on my own endless bliss planet, Planet Kel.)   She said imagine you are moving through honey.  I did.  It made me smile, a lot.

Told my class today that the reason I call them my little chickens is because I am the Mama Hen.  I tried to explain what this meant.  Mama Hen doesn't translate so well.  I caught the Japanese girls calling me The Big Chicken.  With genuine affection in their voices.

This has made me laugh until I am wet-eyed no less than six times today.

Mom's birthday today, Beth yesterday, Paul the day before.   Season of Cancer, Mother Energy.  Talked to ma and grandma.  Thought about men, how I was raised to believe men behave.  What my experience has affirmed or changed of those ideas.  What ideas still need adjusting.

Thoughts are with Erika.  My novel's moving.  Grad school apps are close to complete--ahhhhh and so instead of writing this afternoon when the rare Southern California rain showed up I laid down on my bed and got snuggly and listened to the way the rain sounds in the alley right out of my side window.  Just like I used to love to do in Ocean Pines, the smack noise of rain on tree leaves on to the ground.  Ahhhh.

Tiki Bar last night.  Dancing in the parking lot at midnight. Cute.  I love my life.  Breathe.  Smile.  Go slow.

Check in.

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.

And this is what I am trying to get through to him

Yes, teacher, yes... I believe you, he says, but I don't quit because we're not at his edge yet.  I go on, certain to keep our gaze fixed.

Good, I'm glad you believe it, now try it.  I promise if you practice your negatives you will be a better fighter. Understand?  I promise~

From his gaze on mine I feel his whole sphere encompass then retreat and I know I got my in--that he's heard me.  What he does with it is up to him, but without question what I have shared will sink in.  The seed it waters, that may come later...maybe back home in Brazil, maybe in conversation with his mother.  Who knows?  But the concept saturated, and that's all that matters to me in the end.

He is twenty-something, with achingly good looks, the kind you feel in your muscles. He's easy to like and uses the charm of his smile and eyes, these gifts that have given him many passes in life, to keep class light.  I like having him as part of the dynamic and so do all the ladies, which presents a whole other all the time behavior lesson of keeping male and female energies equated.  Human dynamics and being in the heat of it, I love this stuff.  I am a natural educator not by my trade but because I am always, all the time learning. If this is the case for you than you get it--you are all the time also teaching, too.

And this is what I am trying to get through to him.  Plasticity.  The stretchiness of the brain, literally.  How when we challenge ourselves to a new concept, mental, physical, emotional, the details don't matter, it's the "newness" or "challenge" factor that engages a chemistry change.  With practice, this new opening actually impacts all our current rhythms.  We can even change our muscle memory, re-establish all new patterns this way.

So what I want is for him to learn the negative forms of contractions--this area where there is a gap just subtle enough in class for only I to see.  He just quietly scoots around negatives, so that's the place I want his eyes forced open, and I am challenging him, and he is a cage fighter, obsessed with MMA, and obsession--passion--of any kind impresses and excites me so I know to appeal to this.  And I know, enough to promise, that what I am saying is right.  I hated grammar, hated it, the only reason I ever took english EVER was to write.  Now, step by step with patience and quiet I have to learn each rule so that my students can understand.  It hurts my head.   And it's made my writing so damn clean but is it that or my commitment to the new postures in yoga I am coercing my body to learn?  The connections are stunning and clear, as I write long hours away until the dark threads its rightness, its ease of night finesse right into my skin. I have whole stories in front of me or poems completed, and new ones charging to begin. This is yoga, and grammar, and human behavior lesson 101.  So I take aim and he gets it.  Learn your negatives.  It will help you fight.

When I drop his gaze he smiles a to the side smile and gives me a pound.  I get it I get it teacher...Open your mind.

He gets the concept, what he does now is up to him.

To the pace of my body

There was green glitter all over my forehead when the popping noise sounded off and Laura started yelling for Clay.  I was trying on St. Patick's Day adornments for class tomorrow, sparkle hat and glasses to match, and the cornbeef and cabage had overflown and was running a thin stream in to the front burner.  Laura's stove is the original from 1950.  There were yellow flashes of electricity when I got to the kitchen.  And so I short circuited the oven's electrical wiring in my new house.  Because already I love my students so damn much.

It's been a long, full day and now I am up waiting for the corn beef to slow cook in the crock. I feel bad about the oven but Laura's boyfriend, who lives with us and dotes on her in a way that makes me want to be taken care of, assured me it's "not a biggie."  I still feel like a doof.  The good news is the food will flavor nicely in the crock, though my body wishes I was crawling in to bed right now.  Monday night I slept fine as a light wine that scents the side of the glass it's so rich, finer than I have in years.  I mean years.  I was asleep by 9:45, hours earlier than I usually turn the lights out, and didn't even blink until my alarm went the next day at 7.  It felt amazing.  And since then, since Sunday really when I refused to get out of my pajamas for the day, my life has been slowing down.

Slowing down to the pace of my body.  I lost my keys in plain sight Friday night, this was divined, my hike started and I had to cancel on attending because I didn't find my keys until in the meantime a ghost from the past called, I was meant for this call and we talked a two hour talk me and the ghost of me and him and the ghost of him, a talk writ by the fates, the accordance of my heart since then...since then and when I found out about Brandon...well.  I am three weeks in to my life in California and for the first time since I left Anngar Farm in November 2008--I am not walking away from something.

I am instead still, planted.  Hand-choosing.  Picking what I want for my life, plucking it like the sparkled jeweled fruit it's meant to be, right and clean out of the air. Except it's not from the air, it's fruit ripe from three years of growing strong and growing long underground.  And I watch as the swirls of land and dirt and funk and past in which this lovely orchard so painstakingly hibernated and grew, I see it backwash and swirl and swish away...I feel it loosen and fall.  Departing, I let the hulls go, I let the seeds break from me as the ground I am, the ground I was, the ground I can be.  Who I am meant to and still able to become mere mini blossoms now, soon to drip with fragrance fat with celebrated juices hung low on this thick and dusky and also taught and new ground.

It all falls away, it all is one.  Present as I've ever intended to be, my body asking me slow, still, quiet, rest.  My dreams dancing from me NOW NOW NOW .  I read yesterday the first pages of a novel from Aunt Sharon by Jed Rubenfeld.  He said "happiness" is living in the moment--overcoming the haunts that command us from the past, while "meaning" exacts something entirely different.  It is reinhabiting the past in order to live for our future.

I have both.  I am not lucky.  I chose this route.  Popping sounds and green glitter forehead, ghosts once inhabited swirling away, fruit and sleeplessness, seeds and all.  I will let my body be my lead, trust her as the deeper source of me, my body not so much stuck in the center but the actual center, taken for granted as it is.  Loyal always as I've moved through every stage and especially all the many times I do so only half-awake.  I will trust the timing of this body, as pure memory of the timing of all these seconds of this one little life that have led me to right here.  Dreams quaking and fruit-juicy as a birds chest in spring, surely breathing in and out doing in this moment the exact right thing.

Laying in between

There are at least thirteen traffic lights between me and where I work, and that is a number randomly made up because unlike the side streets between me and the ocean (five), I haven't actually taken the time to count.

(Walnut; Olive; Orange; Pecan; Acaccia.)  (And, at least three lemons trees, five different kinds of succulents, one JimmyBuffetHead, three chimneys that look like ornate brick columns--though that may be because everything in Southern California looks ornate somehow, more precise--and enough sidewalk-side veranda patios with bright or bold or soft or subtle arty tiles to know for sure: this is paradise.  I have arrived.) 

I love walking. I love driving, I love the stillness within that comes with motion.  I especially love this part, the on foot or sunroof-down exploring of my-new-place to live.  My favorite town to walk was Easton, I loved Easton, loved the quaint cottages and pretentious historical show-houses and the alleys and side streets in between, the magnolias I would climb at night in secret.  The patches of violet and chickweed that I would harvest from stranger's lawns.  My favorite place to drive, besides the redwood Avenue in Southern Humboldt, was in Maryland.  Kent County's countryside.

I have lived since August me and my car.  Me and my little happy car-home, since the week I left Ocean City southbound across and through the Chesapeake Bay tunnel it's been us, rolling together to wherever we could based on the whimsy of the road.  The number one thing about living planless on the road is abandoning the need to know what's next in favor of just showing up, being present, open to whatever.  Being open to whatever makes it really simple to enjoy.  There is so much that we miss going day to day over and over again in our rounds....so much to pay attention to...

So that when, just like that, a home shows up, well then you have an object lesson.  Practicable, applicable.  When the changes come, when life comes with a time to buckle in or down, it can still be the same thing.  Just show up, try not to miss anything. Thirteen traffic lights between me and my ESL students, or is it eleven, or maybe fifteen?  

There is so much to learn, laying in between.