The tears were gratitude, every one.

In my morning time yesterday I was done with the sitting and done with the journaling so I thought I was done, for good.  Ready to start the day.  Thursday's have been thesis writing days so my head was a tumble of forward motion towards that.  Words on a screen.  Losing time down the rabbit hole of books into thought into books into new next thought.  Like little lights in a row each of which transmits power to turn the next one onnnn.  I love it.  I have never before been so plugged in to my real life on every end.

I got down out of the loft and went for my phone.  I keep it plugged in downstairs where I can't reach it.   Or that's when I don't have clients in the morning or need for the alarm.  That way my precious first glance at me in the morning isn't consumed by that dastardly little electric machine!  Those high-wires they so easily infiltrate my brain.

When I got down the stairs and peeked the time it was only 8:30, I don't write til 10.  Sighhhh, morning time.  I made a fresh cup of coffee and climbed back up to the loft.

Hoagy Carmichael on Pandora brings up muscle-ey memories that catch in my chest and stir my whole body to rise.  Coloring in bed for the next hour is what I did.  It let my body transmit memories.  I was alive, at Church Street, which is the house in South Baltimore, Brooklyn Park, where my grandparents raised 7 kids.  This little two bedroom and an attic space, the living room ahhh god the kitchen, a space so living in my earliest reverie.  I spent a lot of time there.  It's a body memory of orange-brown linoleum and yellow walls and my grandmother's round squooshy bosom where her hug got you lost. And my pop, his records.  Porgy and Bess.



It was amazing to me.  I had this new experience of re-living the love-light of back then, and feeling so happy my eyes brimmed with wet tears at least for half the colored pencil ink pen time.  All I could think the whole time was wow, it's never really gone.  What a secret to comprehend!  That we can revisit love-past at any time.

It wasn't bitter-sweet.  The tears were gratitude, every one.  Meeting the Self is endless in its inward reigns.  It's playful, a living sacrament we each get to make unto our own spirit and soul whenever we choose, each and every day.  There's so much joy.  There's so much play and life.  There's so much and it's so endless and precious and easy to access when we just--do.

In the early morning pain in 1997 when Grammy died I dealt with it in customary McMullen forward motion.  Shuffled the girls with their clumsy arms and awkward puberty hair and squeaky voices and braces mouths in to my car.  There were five of them, my five girl cousin that all came in a year or so of the others.  They were in middle school by then, except for Sarah, the babe.  I was 20.

We drove 97 through the county towards where Jackie lived.  At some point the car radio played Total Eclipse and that is our song, to this day.  Endless.  Reverie.  Church Street.  The bemoans of the aching human heart.  An eighties song so legit during the interlude you actually hear blowing wind.  Uhhhh yea.

This morning, bc this is the way of the heart when we let her open and sing--cousin Erin's text was waiting when I climbed down the ladder from the loft.  A group text to all the girls.  It said, Total eclipse on the radio!  Love you all-- with a million exclamation points to try to express the inexpressible.  We live in Seattle, Buffalo, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Baltimore, California now.  It was to me a nod from life that the heart is still home, endless in its ways which lead us both in and outside.

The oldest just had her first girl, last week.  Of the six of us, half are parents now.  Life goes on.  The heart keeps us golden, connected.  It eclipses, too, hell yea.  And also, overflows of blessings always there, always living and beating, pressing us to look a minute and recognize.  To just, see.

Wowed, again. Postcard from Vinyl Haven

Maybe it's getting old, if so I apologize, but this whole being-at-ground-zero getting to re-invent myself experience is just such a constantly enjoyable pleasure...

Right when I get to the siege part of over-shooting my range, right when I get to that overconfidence place that crashes me in to feeling like I blew it and have landed blindly in the forest again, right when I get baffled and anxious, full of totally not-trusting in the wild instinct and new treasury of openness, Life kicks in and doses me with inscrutable evidence of self-love and newness, gentleness and aha serendipity grace.

I love travelling, even when at first it totally stresses me out. Monday night I was up until 6am. Which was hella fun... But then I got up three hours later to work a double, the night time part of which included god-awful taco tuesday. After that I had to pack and drive over two hours to outside Baltimore from the beach. I was so resistant to the trip that I actually had to stop at a gas station on Kent Island and nap for 45 minutes at 1:30 in the morning. I got 3 hours of sleep that night at my cousin's house. Then we caught a plane to Boston, then we caught a scary much littler plane to the coast of Maine, then we caught a ferry to the Island where I am now chilling, in a Bed and Breakfast, three doors down from my cousin Jackie who's marrying a local lobsterman on Sunday. A lot has happened in my life since I was last here at Jackie's in July 2008, and I am comfied in my room here with my sister-cousin Erin, with whom I share the gift of never-feeling-judged-by, which is perhaps the most tender and invaluable gift of all. We slept 10 hours last night, stumbled out of bed for french toast by our host, then returned to bed and snuggled and talked til noon today, the Vinyl Haven fog out the window foraging more air more air more air to overtake and decidedly against burning off. At some point we dressed, listened to hip-hop, and walked the island with no agenda but to let the day greet us as it wished, and later met one of Jackie's bridesmaids-who-happens-to-be-a-guy at the dock when the 3:30 ferry came in. And then, can you say Lobstahrolls!?

The serendipity since we've been here has been endless, right in line with how I started off my week, my Monday-mantra, : Look ahead, for the Greatest Adventures are yet to come...True that. I found two books in the used bookstore today for a dollar each, one of them I just told the World over the weekend that I wanted to acquire. Mark Twain is following us around. I found two more books right in line with two original theosophy/social therories I am trying to intertwine in to my novel. My book (started fresh, no more memoir, now a fiction novel) keeps getting more and more vivid in my head. I am in the den of our B&B about to start writing. Brooks and Kirsten and Mildred all got in Baldamore touch within 24 hours of each other... Out my window there is Atlantic chilled and salty wind.

Hey blogoworld, can you feel me, my contagious smile?

Just wondering.

Long Letter to my Readers

Sometimes I want to start this blog the way I used to start my litmag Cantalma. Like I'm writing a letter. Dear Friends...Today it came out instinctively to write Hey Pals... so let's pretend that that's what I'm doing. Writing a letter to my readers, anonymous or otherwise, out there in the middle of the everchanging everthesame wide world of blogoland. Wherein I find comfort, and release.

Hey Pals,

It's something like 4:30 am. I woke up around 3 and couldn't get back to sleep, but didn't put the light on til a half hour ago. For a while I laid there, thinking the noises I was hearing are the giant fucking practically baseball sized roaches that have begun to show themselves at least daily since I started filling my apartment with cardboard boxes and all these magnificent little dark spaces for them to hide. God that ills me out blugghgghghghhgghgh but I am thankful for them because it's making it really easy to so want to leave this place. Then I imagined the bumping around was the ghosts of this old house that the across the hall neighbor Rebecca has seen, and often hears. In the end I turned the lights on to get some water and there were no bugs, and no haunts, at least that I could tell.

It was a long, sweet weekend. Friday was 12 hours long, I went in to my office for my last day and then up to the college for my exit interview which the HR person kept referring to in email as my Termination Interview. Which made me laugh but also mildly nervous to walk up there and turn my paperwork in, but wouldn't you know I came in and sat down and she said I hear you're moving home because your husband got transferred, I'm from Baltimore, too, Dunalk, hon. I explained that it actually is because really I have no friends or family here in Easton or on the midshore or a life really other than my job, and that I was originally from a town called Millersville outside Glen Burnie, that I am the exact oppositte of married and that first I am waiting tables at the beach to make money but before that going out to the PacNW for a month and then going to move home, then we got down to talking Hons. It was like talking to an old girlfriend that I didn't realize I missed even though Sue and me, the HR lady, had never really met before.

Later in the office trying to get my last bits of work turned in I finally gave up and just said I'd turn it in Tuesday when I have to return and give my work computer back. I was too excited and Mary's office on campus has too much of a blowing breeze. Soon it was almost five so Jackie the Executive Director of our whole department, and my immediate boss Elaine, and Mary they all drove me up to Kent Island for dinner on the water. Natasha came, and Carolee, and Jan all the way from Chestertown and some other teachers and of course Jason and Kim and Brenda, too. Then Cindy showed up, and she ended up taking me back to my car, where we sat and talked for two more hours while a nice round thunderstorm came through. Cindy is the woman I used to teach English with, nighttimes twice a week, at the elementary school in the country out near the Delaware line. This was 2006 and on. She also is the one who introduced me to Teena and had me do a catering gig for her back then, and Teena's the one who rented me the room on the Choptank River when I finally summoned the courage to leave Brandon and break his heart and move out and away to a place so isolated that even now that fast year I spent there still is surreal to me like a dream. Cindy and I, really, hadn't talked and really caught up since I very first moved out to Chop. We had lots, lots to catch the other one up on.

On Saturday I got up and couldn't get moving. I had to be in Pennsylvania first for a baby shower then a bachelorette party. The radio was danceable though and in moments it was so good and the sky was so blue, and I read this blog a long long while which I hadn't done in a long time. It made me feel good to have this, these archives of me because I, like all people, compelled as I am by my self and also very very deep, need to have a place to catalog and process me.

The drive up 83 especially was good. I listened to Rachel Sage and Ruut, both of whom I met last weekend when Brooks got to open for them. Rachel Sage especially is so deliciously good, and I thought how very much I like to hear the accordian. It makes me feel like a gypsy which probably is just to say it makes me feel more wild and whimsy and mystery like I really am. When I got to York I was proud of myself for knowing my way around even though my GPS got me lost at first, finally I just turned that bitch off and got there on my own instincts in the hot Pennsylvania concrete traffic and sun. I walked in to the basement at Aunt Lori's house almost an hour late and it was a huge commotion of people and when I walked in from the far side of the room I heard cousin Chels yell Wait where's Kelly? Chelsea is pregnant, and psychic like all the women in that family and I saw her in the corner and all the commotion was because she was about to open gifts. And I dont know how to put this part in words--that Chels, who's 19, is bringing our first grandbaby in to this world, or great grandbaby I mean, and my grandparents were both sick last year, but still are so robust. And when we are together, which we do more often now, mom her two sisters my brother and his fiance my grandparents and two cousins, we cry a lot and it is always hot and full in our chest because every breathing moment with them is awareness of life and how much we are blessed. So I walked in and Chels knew in her blood I just got there, and she waited for me to sit at her feet and then the gift opening began. Then a half hour later she goes Wait, where's Sean? and then of course we look up and he, my brother, walks in. We did well, Pap only really cried, which is what makes the rest of us bawl, really hard once and then we all were crying and gasping and laughing and wiping our faces with napkins and the other guests cried and laughed some, too.

Then I left, got out on to the rolling green hills and farmhouse lanes of Rt. 30 to drive to Fairfield right outside Gettysburg. My cousin Sarah on my dad's side, the Mc-clan, is getting married soon so next was to celebrate that. On Route 30 I got reminiscent but before it got overboard this song Lost in Pennsylvania came on and I laughed out loud, like really hardy belly laugh because Rt. 30 and me have history. York to Philly, Philly to York, York to Gettysburg and all that sky and green. I always always have such good reflection on that road and Saturday was no different. I was reflecting on the last time I made that drive and how much has changed since then. The last time it was July and Josh, who is the man that I fell in mad love with some years back and ultimately was the final reason I had courage enough to leave Brandon and follow me towards my own thing, called at the end when I pulled in to my cousin's driveway. I hadn't heard from him in like four months back then because of a hurtful falling out, and the thing about Rt. 30 is that's how I used to get from my grandparents over to his house. We always had that psychic thing too, Josh and I, among other connections, and so I was thinking back a lot on him. Next thing, over the glorious piano Ruut sings Lost in Pennsylvania and I'm like Whaaaaa? Did she just say lost in Pennsylvania because it was the first time hearing that CD. Then at that very moment mom called. Mom is from the PA hills and that was really on my mind, too, backroads and southern Pennsylvania and mom and her country people. She called to ask what I was doing. I told her driving and thinking about you and thinking about Josh and now cracking up becasue this lady is singing about Josh and I same time as me thinking about us. And mom reminded me of a time long ago going to work a bluegrass festival in those very hills and how she used to be in love back then with a well-known Nashville musician. Within moments I was at the very place, 8 miles east of Gettysburg, that the festival she was talking about is held. It was all so timely, and the conversation was good and sweet and I felt whole and clean, and happy to see Sarah the bride-to-be and the other cousins waiting to see me.

Now it is Monday morning, the birds are singing and Crow was just squawking, too. The sky out the window in my meditation room is blue and pink tinged so it's all resonant in that morning purple hue. Yesterday also was a long day and last night I wanted to finish uploading my old pics--late 80's through late 90's--on to my external hard drive so that when I move Wednesday and my couple things go in to storage that huge tupperware with all the old albums can just stay there. But I was tired, went late to Target to get a new swimsuit and that took a long time because for the first time in a long time I felt bad about how I looked which made me uncomfortable, but also grateful, because I almost never ever have to deal with that leftover teenage weirdness anymore. So when I got back home I went right to bed, didn't even keep my eyes open long enough to read my book.

I move Wednesday to Ocean Pines. Kelly Johnson, Sean, Bdubb and Brooks are going to help me. Thursday I'm taking Amy out for a pedicure to celebrate Maddie, her third child, due in July. Friday my cousin Timmy graduates college, Friday night we're all going dancing at Red Maple, Saturday's Eryka Badu. Then back to the Pines til Wednesday of the following week, when I fly to Oregon, and will be boundless, yet tall tree mountain coasts hot springs cities and hippies and Pacific ocean bound.

Yaaaaay!!!! When I get home it will be summer time and all that hotass Marilen mug. I'll be a waitress again, a writer for sure, babys will come, weddings will happen, and I will stare and smile a lot at the sea. I will swim. For now, I am sleepy, pals. Thank you for reading and always journeying along with me. Thank you all for the love and support even when you dont comment thankfully the blog counter tells me you still read. I am contented, awed, and eager because I feel certain the best is yet to be....

My wishes and prayers for the same to all of you xoxo.

Love, kel

PostCard to Boo

If there were room on the back for all a heart can hold, for all I have to say, I'd print this pic and put in the mail today so that it could get to you by the morning and you could tape it to your wallet or your suitcase and my love for you would go to Costa too, a talisman to guide you and protect you and keep you safe...

What would I do if it weren't for you? From that very first walk ions, whole LIFEtimes, ago. Cannon Drive when I first told the truth about Josh and all my heart had to hold and fear and still to give. How I talked and talked forever and thought the Catholics in me will never live this down. Talking out loud about my depression for the first time. How good it felt to know by blood and bones and a house that's home that you were those things walking, right there next to me: my own home, my own quiet steady place that will never disappear. That no matter what I had to say or changes I had to make you wouldn't judge, or leave me, or stop showing your love....

Remember our first big dip? Last year? I was barely myself back then, just cracking open that little precious egg of me. I didn't even tell you I was coming said meet at Dumser's for a surprise!! And you. You! Confused but still eager, willing, to jump right in! Still a baby, barely through gradschool by then, still with the bandage wrapped long around your arm named comfort, those visors that we all have to rip and rewear, rip and rewear... How I worried, but never ever once lacked my belief in you.

How amazing you are with your wide and boundless heart, your refusal to lessen or back down. How you stay so gentle, so tender and loving through this--through life! How you never let it harden you, just keep notching it up a step in return. How wonder-full you are, how centered on the wonder, the what next!!? in this life. How inspiring, how big and soft and fabulous you encourage everyone else to be---

It's sad about the house, it's funny we haven't talked just with each other about this yet. Usually we talk about it all, and before everyone else knows, too. But our rule, let our parents do their own thing? Keep Us to ourselves, not get caught up in the McDrama. I love you, Boo. What would I do? Without the walks, the swims, the frozen drinks?! Thank you. For the late nights, dark. The quiet tears. The lunchin skeezy jokes. For the dangerous dancing, thank you. For my spirit, found again. And the couch, again and again, night after night, all these years. But especially this year. Summer 09. For past midnite thank you darlin. For the waiting up. Cigarettes. Facebook. Tears. Laughter. Dark. The little nest of us. The love.

Mike, do you have ANY IDEA what a good thing you've got?

Travel well, sister. Shmunk-in! Friend. I love you more than words or a heart could ever say