I was gone fifteen days.

Not really sure what happened other than I slept eight hours last night, almost to the exact minute, and felt clean and clear waking up in my bed in the loft in the canyon.  In the California mythos of sunshine-wintertime.

I was gone fifteen days but the truth is it was way, way longer than that.  On Friday Uncle Tim, who is my godfather by the soul way, called in the morning.  It was Ocean Pines gray out which is its own special prison that keeps the winter folk away.  The thing is with sock-in like that marsh gasses keep the soil tender-moist and smelling green.  So we took a four mile tall tree walk on a path he tends for the Rec department and I cried those hot soul-cleanse tears that are meant only for God-ppl and wise women, which of course are the same thing.  Helped me to take serious the karma I have between me and my own god-kids, too.  Later I found out about Derynne's brother and couldn't see straight again.

So Konan came through winding us up at Cork Bar downtown which in a million different scenarios if I had to hand-pick that would be down towards 9 hundred ninety thousand on the list.  But here's the thing, the Wild proclamation:  you just never know you know?  We wound up late night in WOC and that there was the only place in the world I needed to be, kicking it w his real home grls and seeing myself in them in a way I haven't seen me in Way. Too. Long a time.

The next day I stayed in pajamas til 7 pm and watched the Red Tent and ate the soup broth I'd made/been making since the first night at home.  Witchy bitches make witchy brew.  We watched the Ravens rock Pitt like we all knew was coming.  WILD card that's Baltimore, that special Baltimore one-eyed medicine some mistake as bad (false-pride).

And that's what's up, tracking home, the special tendencies that run the soul of who you are cuz of the land peopled through of from-where-you-come.  If you can read and track this, good for you.  If you can't you need help dark-seeing which means between the lines.  Linguistics.  Can't be studied. Someone should tell Pacifica that.

Point is this all happened or started back the night I went to HB to meet Yasi and Konan started blowing me up--that's the thing about WILD, all cards eventually come a calling and that's the thing about one-eyed medicine.  It's your duty to rise up when the reminder comes: you CAN see.

So now Humboldt makes sense, the long 101 journey home again to the earth and the tides that rise.  I come living back to the canyon, no food in my hobbit dwelling just coffee and no phone charger to keep me tied to time and ties and all that hell.  I write these words and The Light comes on which is Erin Mac back there in Baldamore making her next moves saying wutsup.  She comes through as WILD does, like I useta say and always will, Poetry is my only religion.



That is what's up.

I know Who I am.   I need little else than that.

Prayers that all ppl get right. Or Wild.  Either or is the same.  Go listen to some good music if you're dead!

I'm going for a swim.

Maryland in the Fall

Past the flat side of the Eastern Shore, past the Bay, past the sprawl of the Route 2 corridor, past the cities and burbs where I'm from...

...Come the hills.  Where the mountains start, Western Maryland where my brother and his lady and the sweetest ever little babe live.  I slept so full last night, long sweet talks with Sean and Jamie til our eyes were part closed, then the peepers out my window, Carl Jung on my chest.  Heee heee and baby cuddles all morning long....  

I Love Maryland in the Fall.

To tame this head

The Eastern Shore is the rural, country side of Maryland.  It is flat but full of agricultural and watermen history, you can almost see its bias and charm in the fog banks that stack thick on a fall day like today.  The Chesapeake Bay divides the shore from the stretch of urban corridor between Annapolis, DC, and Baltimore where I am right now.   Over there, or  the other side is what Shore people call it here.

The last time I was here in this shop I lived on the shore.  I had edits due to Erika; her most recent submission of Hemingway's Girl.  It didn't have a contract on it yet.  She didn't even have an agent then.  In such little time so much can change.

My cousin Erin drove us to Annapolis this morning.  Last night sort of late we went to Ellicot City, my favorite place to go in the fall. Later of course it was Sex and the City reruns in her bed.  We parted ways this morning at her car, she to the State House where she works me to the Hard Bean where now I can write and study and be the Kelly that inside me really is and needs to be.  It's been a whirlwind, in San Antonio with mom and dad the Montezuma Cypresses hung over us on the river walk and talked low like they knew our names.  A Mexican man fell in love with me and spoke in Spanish about the true ancient heritage of my tattoo.  It made me laugh in a gentle way and turn red.  It's the first time anyone has done that, ever, in spanish Los Indios, Los Aztecos...not one of my Mexican friends ever knew, not one.  Coatalique in the eyes, lore of female divine still living in our unconscious but in the temporal from day to day she is dead.  In Austin I stayed on a ranch with 26 other McMullens for the weekend.  It was like being a child again at Gram and Pops at the beach.  People on mattresses on the floor and every couch bodied.  Kate looked like a Grecian princess in the times of the Goddess on her wedding day.  We made a circle around them and I couldn't stop the hot tears that ran the whole time.  Now I'm here, Maryland where I'm from, time at Uncle Tim's where I slept all night two nights ago, the first time I've done that since Mary went in the hospital.  Time with Brian my brother in Canton and my family in Pennsylvania, too.

And now time with me today, before I meet with my brother Sean and Aunt Sue, to write poems and sing this soul of mine back to life.  Out the shop front the boat show is setting up, years ago I worked twelve hour shifts at Pussers back to back because boat show weekend brings all the tips.  I lived here then and was going to marry a man named Joe.  Years after that I came here to the docks on my first date with Brandon, who I would spend six years with in a farmhouse deep in the country of the Eastern Shore.  Growing veggies and swapping music and fresh eggs.  Years after that I came up here to meet with Erika, begin this phase which has been all about the soul song, all about trusting that there is no arrival, just a path that presses and spirals, and cycles on.

Good for me to think on that today.  To tame this head that really wants to know about   ...Years from now...?  That really loves to wrap up in the different experiences of home.

Like we were fairy blue

I don't know why it happened here but an outbreath just left me feeling soaked in and comfortable, almost relaxed, for the first time in over a week.  This is the coffee shop I used to ride my bike to all the time when I first moved here to Southern California back in February.  I remember the first time I sat in this comfy chair, with a poem book in my lap to put the peacock light on inside me (to reference--for Erika--Millay.)  Maybe that's why my soul nudged me here today.  Because it feels like a home base.  Where a keystone is set so that I can take pause.  And try to...breathe.

That was the most intense several weeks I have lived in a really long time.  Moving then Mary dying, getting accepted to school, then trying to prepare for school and beginning to teach at night, then school.  School.  Woaaaah school.  What the hell just happened?

In our group process session on Sunday I got all fidgety and couldn't sit still in my seat, next thing I was standing under the rafters out back of Pacifica where the whisper breeze lingers then stops with these two women in my group. Sobbing.  This feels like a blood clot, all I could think, a little spot of purple rot stuck in my heart trying to get out my throat, and it went all the way back to when I left my job at Chesapeake, that deep and devastating burn out.  We have to log 3000 hours of internship before we get licensed, meaning non-profits and the system all over again, and I could barely take it, the misery and reality of this.  And like that I was on the phone with Gretchen in April 2010 fumbling on my words admitting with my fool heart to her all that time I believed I could change it.   Feeling so embarrassed to say this out loud.

So that's in-depth, soul psychology.  Recognizing all change happens only within.  Woooooaaaah and here I go.

I swam Saturday night in the dark of the Equinox, the balance held.  For the first time on the West Coast, a night swim!  With my new friends from grad school. Covered in moonstruck phosphorescence like we were fairy blue. I am so grateful, already, for them.

Fly to Austin in less than two days.  Cousin Kate, ohhh!  Cousin Kate.   Then on to Maryland to be in Mandy's wedding, to officially celebrate the union of her and Dave.  I miss my family with a tremendous ache.  Doing all this, this commitment and follow through, is taking all of me.  My support system is back east and that's really hard.  I don't know what else to say.

The enormity of quiet gratitude

The keys for my studio in Laguna were in my hand like a talisman, some octagonal  proof of all I'd been running towards, all I left behind.  When did it change from that to this, to heading towards from leaving behind...Every throttle and instinct that propelled me dangling on a quarter-sized metal ring.  Two little keys pushed me out of Anngar Farm, out from my six year love affair with the boy with the honey eyes, pushed Josh out the door that sickening Sunday at Choptank, pushed me and Brooks to leave the Talbot County Employment Center because we knew, we insisted, convinced the other even when we didn't believe it ourselves that it had to be the Muse holding tight to those two keys.  Pushed me around Oregon in Gretchen's beater pick-up, pushed then paused, sighed deep in me, nestled me under conifers big as cities, tucked me in the mists of the Cascades, bathed me naked with Beth as I vowed, as we vowed yet again start again.  Held me tight as it cooked me clean the year and a half I moved back to Ocean Pines.  I stopped with Jayden at Rudy's Shake Shop where it looks out over the Pacific just south of Crystal Cove those keys still in my hand like a dreamscape whose designer I'd finally, finally finally! just met. Arrival!  All I could think.   That's when I got the message I was accepted to gradschool. I have done it, I have finally, finally arrived! I just kept thinking you did it Kel, you finally got here.  You have finally made those dreams come true.  It was the oddest feeling, so plain but also still.  It was right about then, that very day, when aunt Mary went in the hospital.

It switched then, my voice in my head.  Would only say this too, this too, this too.  Which is from Dani Shapiro.  I called my mom and sobbed then my dad and uncle Tim and did the same.  Then I talked to Aunt Mary, I wanted to be strong for her, I really did.  I wasn't.  It was bad I couldn't breathe.  My greatest fear about being so far from home, come true.  What happened from then to the end isn't so much private as it is a blur.  By Thursday I had a ticket home by Friday I was on the plane.  I never got to see her though, in our last conversation I was selfish and told her this sucks, exactly what I said was this effing sucks but I used the real word.  She was honest with me and direct about her pain and every little thing going on, which she knew I needed to hear because for so long she just lifted up from love and made me laugh on the phone or wanted to know about my life.  She knew I needed to hear where she was at though, to be able to have peace with her letting go.  At home it was my amazing cousins her kids who are stronger than I will ever be.  Erin my amazing sis.  Ed and Tim.  They are heroes and inspirations and I am honored they are my blood,  a testament, fully, to their mom. The pit bull in me wants to pummel something, some big shadow portion of life, for doing this to them.  I want to take them up like the puppies they are to my heart, I want to shield and shelter and take this all from them.  I am selfish and had to tell myself if they can do this so can you.  We all of us fell in line behind my uncle this amazing gentle man, we followed my dad,  they moved us gracefully through it all, we let the strength of  family lead us on.  What we've always done.  The Irish twins, eleven months between dad and uncle Tim they're calling themselves the Odd Couple since Mary's passed and it's only them in the house now, the Uncle Dad's.  Uncle dad!    All of my cousins and aunts and uncles every single one and every person ever touched by the enormity of love that comes from the combined McMullen heart.  It was homage to Aunt Mary's quiet steadiness, there and painting our edges with softness all those years, we could still feel her glow in the air.  The whole family together, all but Bernd who was unable to come from Germany.  It was the only family event since the 80's where everyone was there.  I am just so, so proud to see so clearly who I am, who I come from.  It's a hard way to come by it, but here, now, keys to Laguna and future in hand: it helps me so honestly and gratefully see where I will aim to go.

My aunt Mary was sick for three years and suffered silently until the very end.  She was an angel, the kind of person whose each day is a  triumph because she added to it the best of who she was.   She made manifest, daily, parts of the infinity of spirit within.  Irreverent but with the loving patience of a natural teacher's heart. So few rise up to that, few even try.  She did it her whole life, but especially at the end.  She raised me and my brother with her peace and easiness all those summers in Ocean Pines and those quiet nights at Shady Hill Lane.  The unconditionality of her and Uncle Tim.  She raised three awe-inspiring kids.  The safety.  They, she inspired in me absolutely some of the finest parts of who I, if I choose to step up to it, can be.  I can not take a step since she passed without seeing the footfalls left I feel now so compelled to trippingly try and fill.  When I got back here, used those keys to let myself in at midnight on Sunday, the boxes and bags packed but half-opened all around, I could do nothing but sit and soak in the shock.  Brooks said she was a Matriarch of the tribe and he told me you are, too, and when he said that it finally felt like someone got it the enormity of responsibility, the enormity of quiet gratitude at hand.  The loss.  I finally let out the twists of pain and shatter all stuck inside.

The days are passing now, will.  Life goes on.  Yesterday driving down Irvine on my way to the beach between my classes, I looked up and realized oh my gosh this feels like home to me.  Like in that merciless, taken for granted way.  This is my home, now.  I haven't said that about a place as an adult, not once, except for in Ocean Pines.  But that's what happens I guess when you walk through the open door.

Like I always do

Laguna.  It's like a whole new experience of being in California for the first time. A whole new bottomless new, all over again.  It felt impending as it got closer, full of locked dark fear, now I know why.  Paul came with Jill, Derynn helped me all day Friday, I try to concentrate on the grace of alignment and the little pleasures and joys and peace of place...and home?  I can walk to a world-known artfest.  There are trees out the window of my loft I can touch because in California no windows have screens.  There are private beaches and hippies and long-dressed ladies, rolling hills that remind me of Sonoma and nightime canyon air.   The arcs of earth twinkle like sighs or breath.  There is a friendliness here that I haven't found any place else on the West Coast.  Last night at a Mexican restaurant a man name Pete talked to me for an hour about Laguna's what what and all the where's.  I was grateful for the contact but left before I got teary because gay and emotional as Pete was proud to be it still would've been too much for him.  Since he was a stranger I'd just laughed a lot with over carnitas, afterall.

I got my keys for this place on Wednesday, got accepted to grad school that day, it was also my year anniversary of arriving to Cali.  I was riding glee and high.  Mike and I went out which was planned as a catch up not a celebration so it turned timely and perfect.  I am glad I have him right now--I needed Sean my brother all weekend and Mike who lives just north of me here was the best man in his wedding and just knowing he is here continues to anchor me.  And this weekend which has shown me again how quick it is that the spheres of earth can move...it is impossible to not feel isolated which is wickedly different than the cleanly feeling of alone.

Finally Sean and I spoke this morning.  I was sleepless at 5, could think only of surfing because I guess the flat surfaces and quiet slants of nighttime color where I sleep felt a lot in my mind like the ocean in the early morning, when all colors seem to emanate from and back to the same shade.  My brother and I who are psychic our whole lives with each other it was true came to each other today at dawn with things we only could understand together.  He was trying to communicate to Jamie and I to Mike it turned out the same stuff, though it was something he and I barely needed words with one another to get.

I don't want to teach today.  I want to be headed east.  I'm going to need a boyfriend I think I need someone who's just there.  I had five dates with a guy who disappeared after I wouldn't have sex.  I had two dates with a different guy who disappeared entirely the day after telling me he wanted to really get to know me and try to "do this thing."  I am tired.  I am thinking of my family and of my strength and how weak I feel and how sometimes what makes us who we are is not the beautiful part, but the pain.  How these so often line up with seemingly no reason.  Sean sent me a picture of a butterfly that landed on his brother-in-laws finger after they'd talked heart to heart about the mysteries in life.  I will choose the mystery, gratefully, which is what I always do.

It will take a while for my soul and heart tho.  Mysteries can hurt like hell.

But anyway here I am

Before I went east the week before last I had slipped in somewhere, not sure exactly where but easy as a veil so sheathy you barely notice it being placed over your eyes it had happened, I was halfing-it.  Slipped in: to a way of thinking edged with doubt on the inside line of things. A tense feeling of having to try to figure things out, me fighting it and it gaining muscle because of my fight.  I knew I was fighting it too which is the worst kind of strain.  August, last year, when I got in my car with 800 bucks in a brown paper bag and my spirit full of good luck and set to head west it was a day at a time of bliss and wonderment that lasted almost entirely through til the middle of April. After living like that which let me tell you is a sweet and light way to live slipping in is painful.  Erin my cousin came for 10 days, this was April, I flipped right after that and never was quite righted.  A number of things in a row stacked up all at once all having to do with people back in Maryland I love.  Suddenly I was feeling like my decision to be here, however grace touched and true, was wrong.  So I was fighting the natural ebb of these doubts.  It was the fighting that made it way worse.

California has helped tremendously since I've been back.  The sparkle of the day when I flew in to John Wayne, Deryyne's smile and hug among all the fast cars and cabs that said so genuine I missed you!  My ride that afternoon on my bike next to PCH was the kind of ride where my bike feels like its being compelled by the concrete, like my bike itself has a place to go and I just get to be along for the ride.  The way the wind always is full of the sea.  The way it communicates with my skin.   That happiness of the light rolling around on the waves.  It just felt so right to be back.  Me and my book had dinner at what I know to be as the best little Mexican joint in Huntington Beach.  It's tucked away you have to live here to know it.  I rode to Deryyne's after for the Stanley Cup.  That night I walked in to my little room on Main Street so contented all I could do was celebrate me:  the journey I took and am still taking, the space of mine, my whole own little world animated by the tender small regularities of my Orange County rounds.

It was amazing to go east my soul needed it to feel calm.  I had to see Mandy to look in her eyes, and dance with Jott for both of us, and I needed the green of the east coast hard wood heady hardy trees.  I needed to sit a long time and just hush with my mom and cuddle with Erin and hug her mom, I needed to hear the high-pitch Grammy laugh of surprise come out of my dad.  I really needed to be close to my niece, and sister-in-law, and especially my brother the new dad.  I really needed to hug my grandma again.

But anyway here I am.  It's so good to be home.

When she's ready to speak

The sea has its own language and if you know how to listen the trees give hints of when she's ready to speak.

I don't want to write today, that's the only reason I am.  This is discipline, what Beth and Amy have helped me learn with repeated reminders: No effort is wasted.  I woke up yesterday from a nap in the afternoon and could hear the tree-talk, the way the palm fronds were enlivening the air.  This is different from hearing them move in the wind.   It was raining, then it wasn't, then it was, then no.  There was a cloud-line of grey and gold light. There was dance on the air.  I got up, sad, unsure, didn't even comb my hair.  Just got my shoes and purse then drove to the beach.

I took pictures from PCH, thought of Aunt Lori.  Talked to Mandy in the spirit way.  Took off my flip-flops with my toes and walked down the stairs in to the sand.  And then there was stillness, and ocean-speak.  I just sat a long time and listened, the way the ocean noise is sometimes just like breath.

On Monday before my cousin Erin left to fly back to Maryland we took our annual dip in the sea to cleanse us of the winter funk. This is the first time it happened in the Pacific.  There will be more. After we got out, a pod of dolphins flipped and played in the ocean straight out in front of where we were.  Dolphins, who play just to play.  We laid there a long while, sang This Little Light of Mine, let the memories of her visit saturate.  We had burgers at a burger shack and then I drove her to LAX to say goodbye.  

There is nothing easy about this, it keeps saying in my head now, days later.  She reminded me of a memory in 1997, on the day our grandmother died.  Erin was about to be 12.  I was 20.  We were driving. I was driving--her, our four other girl cousins in my car--the oldest was 13, and Total Eclipse of the Heart came on and I explained that that's what happened.  Our hearts went dark just for a minute when Gram left, but now every time we hear that song it would be her saying hi and bringing her light.  I cried, fat funny tears sitting in the diner on Sunday, when she reminded me of that.  We both did.

It's amazing how family will always keep us tethered to who we truly are.  It's amazing how easy this is, and also how hard.

Through the tiny kitchen with our food

Dora and Leo are here, Dora made miso soup and delicatas for dinner, I did dishes, Bebe amazed us all by her fascinating processing and enthusiasm. It was just like being back at the farm.

At the training I thought often of my Humboldt family, missing them with a sense of magnetism I was sure they felt. I spoke to Em and Nick, Bucket and Dora Saturday night as soon as I left the hills and it was true.  We felt what we thought we felt.  That is the thing about California, there are already bodies here washed through with love for one another so strong it will forever be home.  

Dora and Leo are going to Hawaii in the middle of February, meandering slowly to San Diego than back before then.  Mo's in Nevada City with her honey, Jon's sitting meditation at Joshua Tree.  I am eager to see all the rest.  Which is not to say I am elsewhere uneager:  the rainy season is here, the river is fast and brown, the tires make the wet noise on the air.  We drink hot soup from bowls and I hunker in cafe corners, writing poems.  I have a whole new family, my fairies in the Cazadero hills, my mama mentor who Starhawk will now forever be.  There is so much to do.  A whole book to write.  Southern California beckons.  We circle around one another in Bebe's little cottage, circle round the woodstove, the loft, through the tiny kitchen with our food.  We meet in the hot tub, text one another what's next in the rounds.

The circles look like rainbows to me in the North California mist.  It all feels so good.

Of course a dance party broke out

It would have been easy to stay in bed with Erin and watch the entire third season of Bored To Death, sleeping half the time and with a lac-of-sleep headache the rest.  Grease nap.  At Double T the day after the party stories, when everyone's punch-drunk still and easy to make fun of, made breakfast fun.  I like Christmas week, always have, when I was a teacher or intake counselor and even last year at the coffee shop I had off and could travel and that's how I used to get my kicks.  Being on the road Christmas week.  Now, I'm just on the road, all the time. 

There's something to the clouds the last two days.  On the drive up 83 to Pennsylvania my mom said it's a cold front, all I know is the clouds and the colors up there keep capturing my attention and then next thing I know I'm engulfed, staring out the window or above the trees.  The gray and the blue and the white.  It's so striking, I forget it's Christmas and just think, Maryland, this is so your sky.

Em and Nicky were home from the farm too and drove down from Connecticut last night.  It was raining and balmy on the streets of Baltimore, Em was shaking it at me through the window from out on the street and of course a dance party broke out.  Sixty some years ago in a basement on Church Street in Brooklyn Park my grandparents started having Christmas parties for their brothers and sisters and all their friends.  My dad and all his brothers and sisters raised us kids on black and white pictures and stories from then, the dusty liquor bottles behind the sheet in the corner, the train that ran the floor on hand connected tracks.  Shiny shoes one pair a kid lined in a row.  It's a long time away from that little two bedroom house with the 9 people in South Baltimore, my brother and I still do what we can.  Our parties have people dancing on the bar and dancing outside, smoking in the streets.  According to the aunts and uncles, Grammy's and Pop's had them dancing in the basement under the stairs and sometimes, on the roof.  Singing at the stars...

TAoCB. Baby Grace.

It was a long trip off the mountain.

Through the redwoods, alongside the river trained against the sand and stone shores.  The sun beams literally were vibrating the air so you could see them.  More than once Yalle and I were holding hands, high up towards the ceiling of the car for no reason other than radiant joy.  She is a hero to me, in just one night I watched her hustle pool change a tire in heeled boots and skinny jeans and chug whiskey out the bottle.  Once the 101 turned to the freeway outside Oakland she took over behind the wheel because she's better at "stepping on it".  She got me to the airport Monday night in San Jose with enough time to get searched in security, by a ponytailed woman with an accent and rubber blue gloves.  My bra set off the buzzer more than once. I took it in stride, what else did I have to do?  When it was over I talked to Gretchen, wrote some on the travel piece I've been keeping and right before I boarded, texted the boy I'd see him when I got back.

There were four people I wanted to surprise the most, of course the number one was my brother the new dad.  It was 9:20 am when I flew in to BWI Tuesday morning and almost 10 when I texted my brother could he talk in 15 minutes.  When 15 minutes was up I was standing outside the door to the room of the hospital where my sister-in-law was in the bed with her baby on her chest both of them glowing the most tender new momma-baby glow.  I texted him Could he talk in person then dad opened the door and I walked in.

My brother and I, emotional as we are and hard as we've worked to learn how to communicate and be adults, were capable of nothing at that moment other than tears.  Tears and sobbing and smiling and laughing and hugging, and most of all breathless utter still staring at tiny baby Grace.

Tim and Mary showed up my godparents and they were number two and three to be surprised and there they were, the tears again.  Family, my family surrounding me.  My brother's closest friends, watching the hearts melt right inside these grown men.  I stayed at Erin's that night and spent the next day with Kelly in Catonsville then Brooks in the city and reveled in how very much I love where I am from.  Brian and I drove to my sister-in-laws house the day after that and the best part was the cuddle nest of all of us, the lights out and the baby hiding under blankets snuggled sleeping on my chest.  That night I drove to the beach with Erin who is my sister, we were dirty Burnie as we get when we're together eating junk food from the Wawa in Easton and making merciless fun of each other til we finally got to Ocean Pines.  We cuddled most the night when we did get there, settled in the house with my sleeping mom. 

Yesterday I went to the Yacht Club where I lastly surprised Jott.  She screamed like in a horror movie and then my trip finally felt done.  I came home after that and rested, talked to the boy a while and have been peaceful, smiling a lot, and enjoying my blessings.  September is my favorite time ever to be in the sun by the beach. 

Welcome to this precious ordinary world, my darling baby niece.

West OC Air

It's the air I love, outside the bar when the night's almost done.

I always make sure, as I am often the only sober one, to step back and take pause:  the uninhibited moments of people, people I love, in their truest graces.  Always a soft smile lit up by a cell phone screen, or a loud off-key hum, some tossed-off glance of content.  The air in West OC is the most potent in town, salty as a marooned fisher's net, salty as a gull's shriek, salty as a crease on the brow so deep the sun cant even get in.  One breath is a whole pocket of life, a whole city of air.  Tonight my brother is in town, his wife, my cousin and his wife, my mom and dad.  We walk to the car and I am sure to be the last one.  I am surveying, I am my own quiet happy, I savor the last moment stolen glances: my family.  The ones who mean the most.

They are on my mind, they are all I know.  They are allowing of me to say goodbye, and so I think, could I be any more blessed than this?

Could I be anymore--late night, full bellied settledness still on our tongues, music behind us, harbor horns, terns swoop the ground, the way my sister-in-law carries her bag in one hand demure at her side, the tender way my brother finds her back with his free arm, the smile my mom can not hide, o the smell...the West OC air--could I be anymore alive?

Reunion Weekend

My bed here is the most comfortable I've ever slept in, but every so often I can't help it--I want the floor.

I want the floor like when I was little, when my cousins, all eighteen of them, were babies and it was cots in the living room and blow up mattresses on the bedroom floors.   When my Grammy, when even my Pop was still alive.  Breakfast would go for hours, the uncles all were still full of testosterone enough that the basketball court was theirs and bets would start the night before.  The bathtub when it was dark out and time to come in would be full of water the color of dirt, and I would go to sleep sunburned with tired legs but still happy because when the house is full of family and bedtimes on the floor even sleep turns in to more time to play.  This house, now my father's house, was our family house, my grandparent's house, the beach flophouse for dad and all six of his brothers and sisters and every one of their kids.  It's family reunion weekend, today's family reunion day, and that's how it used to be.

Today was beautiful, soft, easy-going.  There was food on the grill most the day, a nice breeze, relaxed horseshoes under the shade of tall pine trees.  Lots of sweet relaxing in low-sat beach chairs.   It was the first reunion that didn't have lots of little kids. Just two little ones of my second cousin Bern, from Newport News, her grandmother was my great aunt Frida--my pop's sister.  Pop and Aunt Frida are both gone, so are the rest of their nine brothers and sisters.  Besides Bernadette's kids it was just my cousin Joey's son. Joe was born in Africa to my dad's sister, and raised in Germany, and just moved here to Ocean Pines with his wife and fifteen month child.  The first, for our clan, of the next generation.

And so life goes on.    We have additional bedrooms in this house now, but even so my two aunts and their husbands and the kids live a street from here and my uncle and his wife and kids live over on the other side of town.  I sat at the head of the table next to dad last night when we kicked it all off with steamed crabs and corn on the backporch here.  It was a mellow night, the aunts and uncles early to turn in.  Dad's the oldest of his generation, I'm the oldest of the next.  I looked out over it last night a long while with a swift awareness: time is passing, it is a joy, it is bittersweet.  I wish the house was still uproarious, loud and full of laughing squealing little kids.  And I am grateful too that I am adult, with so darn much love to show, and a place no matter who's around that will always be home.

Cheesesteaks, beach days. Weitzels.

Today was a chicken cheesesteak day.  I can't explain what this means, but trust me, it's more than just being hungry.

When I was a kid there was a sand on the floor plastic-seated restaurant on 51st street called Weitzels.  We went to the beach on 50th.  My mom started going to Weitzels in the early 70's, when her grandparents still had the big farmhouse and little cabin boarders across from Decatur, when Route 50 was a two-lane and the land next to the high school was a peach grove.  My pop, dad's dad, when he was still alive got grilled cheese with tomatoes for dinner.  Grammy, his wife, would let me drink chocolate milk.  And on certain beach days--the long kind--six, seven, eight hours of salt and sun, sand stuck between the lining of my suit and skin, total dried-out white-blond hair shiny cheek satiation...we'd get Weitzels for lunch.  I always got cheese dogs.  Mom and dad and the aunts and uncles all got cheese steaks.

Weitzels closed some years back, it happened while I was living in Oregon because the following summer when I was home again and it was summer and I felt not myself living up in Chestertown in the hot Marilen mug I found out it was gone, and I felt distinctly like someone had stolen something from me, that powerless dark feeling that embarrasses you a little with its strength. 

This morning by 9 I was on the beach hoping for an hour of waves before the guards came out.  The waves were knee-high and breaking on the shore, but the reason I didn't get my board from the car was the wind.  The waves were blowing fast towards the inlet, or south, and choppy as hell.  Otherwise it was clear blue out, and gold, from the sweet June sun.  I planned on staying til maybe 10 just getting a swim and some heat, but fell right in to the easy, laid back groove.  Four and a half hours, thoughts of my novel and poems whispering at me, I barely willed myself to leave and only really did because what I wanted was what you're supposed to eat on a glorious day with nothing but dried skin and saltwater hair.  I wanted a cheesesteak, the chicken kind, and not cut up breast meat but with shaved meat that soaks up all the grease.

Turns out Mitchells, the mini-mart we used to go to when we all lived on second street in a place that's long since been condemned and torn down, still has killer subs.  And breakfast, too.

It's a hard life, I know.

Good beach day?  Mom asked when I walked in a half hour ago, that subtle satisfaction on my face.  There was a beach chair in the front yard so I knew where she'd been all morning.  Ma I just had the best chicken cheesesteak is how I answered her.

You did you little devil?!  She grinned large.  And I was just about to ask you if you wanted to go get one, too~

SponDown. On reaching goals, and hulahooping

The sunshine is what woke me, yellow light through the house and it was only 7 am.  I slept all night on the couch, which I almost never do and it felt like a treat because Tuesday is my Saturday morning one of the two days of the week that my alarm doesn't go off at 4:45 so if I want to stay up late playing sonar til I pass out in front of the TV I can.

Now it's gorgeous out, I was thinking I would go running before I drive to Salisbury so Chico can finish my tattoo. I spent almost three hours fucking around on facebook and the endless zoom of the intraweb, which felt good just letting my brain work it all out that schedule schedule discipline of working two jobs in the service industry hello hello how can i help you oh let me get that for you mam oh no thank you SMILE SMILE LAUGH GENTLE (take it easy) yep you bet, have a great day.

Tribe was the first song on my Pandora, I am full with the things that make me full.  I am heartened by the heart that makes me love, I am loving the loves that hearten my loving heart.  I am full with my life, it is not even mid-March, it is sunny out, there is good music there are great fun frieds who are wild and learning to be wilder still and the first part of my book is done.  The first part of my book is DONE!

I can't believe I am going to say this because for some reason Jay-Z is my fave hiphopper to hate on which has nothing to do with him and most definitely goes back to funny teasy rivalry with my brother, soooo: D.O.A. and the guitar in it is siiick.   The serendipity of that is that it is a song against using the auto-tuner, which just lately I learned from my boy Ben is the mechanical device used to correct pitch and loop voice samples and so forth and that makes me sick, and is what I hate about contemporary music.  All the contemporary music shit and tv shit and so forth.  WHERE the hell is original thought original anything?  People are scared of originality (same ol boring ass story: people are SCARED of themselves.  People will always thusly fear what is sacred. ) I am mad in to rock and roll right now.  Last week we went to the Pub in town the one on 8th street which back in the day was sorta seedy but since the renovations is the place to be and the women rocked the shit out of that place and I felt so happy to be a grrrl, to be in to music as a grrrl hearing the grrrls who're also in to music and performance and their own bright shine, to be on top of my life, to have turned in 34 pages the day before to Erika.  That night kicked off four of running of lots of work and just little tiny snips of sleep.  My dad says "I'll sleep when I'm dead!" so maybe its an in the genes kinda thing.

Last night I told Terra I better get out of the way before I step on a small kid with my stilleto, we were at a baby shower for our friend and coworker and I had just set down the dip I made on to the table.  Stilletos and dip that's about what I have to offer a baby shower, that and the wise wild wisdom but it wasn't a gathering quite like that so I was just dressed up, clearly single, kid-less, and pretty in spring pink.  My other single gal friends were similar, on the outskirts, some drunk.  There are a lot of us and I guess the reason I am happy to be pretty and single in spring pink is because I went through this whole baby thing, after the marriage thing in the fall, this is because of course I am going to be an aunt, and each time some new tribal "next" gets tossed in to the ring I have to run the gauntlet of my self to make sure I am on the correct, or at least feeling mostly sure of the course in my life over which I am traveling, at least in this moment, being who I am. Thusly making happy the heart and loves of my life that equate what I "want."

And isn't that it, what we want, and it's funny little recipe made from what we love and who we seem to think we are or try to be.  After seeing Cindy the other week I was brought so clearly back to when I lived in Chestertown and was always, always on the go but not ever engaged in my daily acts, in my moments to moments.  Never having time to stop and chit chat head always running towards the next thing the next the...and most of all always with the underlying pressing feeling pushing me on gogogo by that feeling that there was something else which needed to get done, always this highwired tightness of not being able to relax and feel comfortable.  Never being able to find lasting comfort.  That is so, so gone now and I knew I've felt different for quite a while, peaceful and on solid ground instead of on the run, but it wasn't until my visit with Cin that I saw it for what it was.  That unsettled runningness comes up for peaked moments sure, when and only if I get in a self-hate frenzy of questioning where I am at right now or being too hard on myself.  But there is such adequate, simple relief found even in the challenging middle ground place between meeting and working towards my goals:   I have taken the time to identify what I want by being true to who I am and what I love.  So now I just take the time to engage each day moment to moment by being her.  I have goals and can relax and enjoy life as I be the woman bringing them to fruit.  It's so different, so real and bliss-full to live whole, right where you are.

It's a full life, my hours are busier than they probably ever were in Chestertown, but my energy is fulfilled and that's all the difference.  That is all to say about that now my head is sort of cleaned of original thought and also Dynamite by The Roots is on so I think I want to get up and hulahoop a while now.

To believe in this living...

Opposite Direction is playing in the corner it's half-time the Ravens are up and Jotto's on her way to meet dad and I for half-price pubgrup and orange crushes for them. They are Sue and Rich's favorite a talented band that plays mostly 70's covers. Last summer they were here listening to the music every single Sunday. John Prine is on right now. My heart tweaks, I look out the zipped-up plastic window-side at the harbor, the big local fishing boats, the seagulls fighting just above the water of the bay. It is perfect blue and gold out. The kind of day that makes people just stare wistfully at the sea. It's November in West Ocean City and when the sunlight goes low and yellow across the dusk sky I walk to the top of the street past the fish hauls and wharf boats to where you can look directly across the water to the inlet, the roller coaster and water tower of downtown each high on the horizon, and I take pictures in my favorite light of the day. It's cold out, my hands get so cold I cant feel my fingers walking back to Harborside to meet dad.

My cousin Timmy turned 21 here, Sean and Jamie and some of us spent the Sunday after they got engaged here, two Christmas' ago Seanie when she walked to the ladies room sat at these exact highboys and told me he was going to ask Jame to marry him. We told her we were crying about our Pappaw when she came back.

It's nice, these little places we find ourselves when we happen to find ourselves "in-between." Jotto and I sit at the corner and watch enough of the 4th quarter together to know that the Ravens are going to win, then she leaves to get her son. I happily agree to help her paint her new apartment later this week and yet again, as I hug her to leave, this feeling of absolute gratitude washes through me. This sense of utter thankfulness that is translating today as satisfaction, just simple in-moment satisfaction, for the good things that exist in my life. It's the same exact way I feel looking out the window, listening to Sue and Rich's favorite band cover John Prine. When she leaves dad grabs my arm and gushes O sis! I love this song. It's Ventura Highway. We turn on our stools, rest our backs against the bar and jam with the band. I am smiling, not wildly happy or sad, just smiling. Content with me and dad, the outside water and light, the music, with what is...

Smoke and Flowers

Inside of what changes, which is everything, there are little things, too. These are the bones of who we are, what help us know how to comfortably flesh out and wear our real skin.The weather today is so fabulous that to mar it with words would ruin my experience.

I have a lot to process. I returned from my trip over the bridge last night. I was exhausted. I feel like there should be periods between each of those words. I. was. exhausted. I couldn't even talk to mom about all that happened, it was too much.

Eventually I gave her some of the basics. What I was able to say I had a still moment of clarity that was the exact same as the night I taught my first ESL class. Remember I called you when it was over? I remember every detail, sitting in my car that night on the phone with you. Knowing I'd stepped foot on a new, totally unknown path. The big, calm feeling of it. Yesterday, sitting in my car, was exactly like that. But even this morning in the sun in my torn salt-weakened beach chair barefeet in the gravel of the front driveway at the Pines, sitting still, I just wanted quiet. I relaxed in to the tight feeling in my jaw and the thick-creased feeling of crippledness in my shoulders and neck that scream money!?!? and sat inside the bad feelings until it all released. I breathed in the sunlight and fresh air. I returned to peace and happiness of today, this moment, the sound of tree-breeze. Nothing but this, only this, only this. My smile was big and I didn't even realize it.

My alt boys station on Pandora is nailing it right now. What's really on my mind, what I came here to write about, is friendship and familial ties. Mandy bought a house in Pasadena over the summer. I cross the Anne Arundel County line and freak out she said, she is talking about crossing in to HoCo and I laughed because I get it. We are sitting across from one another at her kitchen table. We are thirty-somethings. She has two kids now. She told this funny story (she's the best story-teller I know, pulls out no stops just gets ghetto with it and then pushes it even past that so much so that I've sometimes questioned if she makes them up they're so often that over the top) about her cousin who lives on the line between Baltimore City and county and I am secretly smiling the whole time because that's what I want, that life, those I dont give a fuck we'd never call the cops 'round here people. I think of my family roots all Brooklyn Park inside the edge of the city prideful and blind and righteous, working-class Catholically-arrogant and equally innocent all of us, scared to get out, and more scared not to, too. Being a kid on Church Street, in my memories from that young time the sun was always shining. There was always sunshine on the side of the house, on the cement sidewalk, on Grammy's tablecloth. On Pop's records and tea cup. My uncles were twenty-something, wild-eyed, like their sons now. I was a baby-grl, three, four, six, ten. Enraptured with it all.

Last year when Mandy moved home she and her mom and her brother and his fiance all got a house in Crownsville, which is this heavily wooded suburb outside of Annapolis where we moved when I was 11 and where I grew up until I moved to the Eastern Shore in 1998. I clung to that, to her house there, to walking in knowing where the coffee mugs were, where food was, what her mom would smell like (smoke and floral fragrance) when she received my hello-hug. I never thought it would mean something to me, I thought I needed to see the world and that was what mattered. Mandy said that too the other night, leaning against her dishwasher, adding to her grocery list. Talking about where we are from. Talking about how good it feels to be with people again who get her. The little things.

She tosses me a towel yesterday morning and tells me to shower in her bathroom. It lands next to my head. It's almost ten, she's been up for hours with her kids and already's dropped Derek off at pre-school. I am laying in her bed, we slept there together and talked each other to sleep like we used to the winter we were nineteen and lived in my basement at mom's in Crownsville. When we would sleep on the pull out couch with the metal bar in our backs or spoon in my twin bed. This woman knows the story of every man I have ever loved. I know every one of hers. We make decisions now for practical reasons. We are still wild as the wind. She ate oodles of noodles on Tuesday while we talked across her table. Just like back then.

I've always looked up to her. Always looked to her for direction, looked not to what she says but to how she makes decisions, what she does and the authority which she uses when I cant find my own. Last year she moved in to that house in Crownsville and spent time with her family and her family's--her brother's--friends every day. I took that sense of familiarity to the Pines and rooted in to my own. Tuesday I drove to Pasadena to see my cousin play soccer, then met a bunch more other cousins on Edmunson Ave in the city to eat grilled cheeses. Then went back home, Mandy's home her own home she owns in Pasadena, in the County, to be with her.

I can't imagine being any better--any more arrogant, any more innocent--any more aware, anyway, than this...

Youth is King

Matty walks in and in that throat voice of his barks whut up and who he is, blonde and suntouched and light but with that huge self fills the room and I am immediately so, so, soooo happy. Ahhhh whutup cuz is what he says when he rounds the corner in to the kitchen and sees me and he gives me that great wide open hug that he gives, like he's wrapping the world around you, then lets me go quickly too cuz that's part of it, how he do. We're here to watch the Ravens playa, he says, and gonna get pizza too if that's cool...

O god does this add to my happiness. His spontaneity, his freedom--it's part who he is, a 16-year-old-beach patrol go-with-the-flow surf's-up dude, the other part is allll youth. I saw earlier in the week on facebook that he'd be in town in hopes of Igor waves. I forgot tho, and I am making chicken soup, a harvest pot full of equinox blessings intentions and healing, for mom and I when he walks in.

They are low, fast slur-talkers, my cousin Matt and his boys and him. When they talk amongst themselves as we watch the game it is immediately this trait that makes me organically happy to be around them. It reminds me off watching Southpark with Sean, my brother, and his friends in the late nineties when it first came out. Sean was in highschool then and his friends were soccer players bursting with that fabulous big energy, on top the earth and against the sky, of male at the top of their game. They have always been good, clean, straight kids, and I was a potsmoker who thought Southpark was the most brilliant thing I'd ever seen, and I remember a whole afternoon of chililng with Seanie and them talking slur-talk amongst ourselves specifically because mom was in the room and she couldn't keep up with anything we had to say. It's a fast style of mouthmuck specific to fallout from Baltimore hon talk--you only hear it in kids from Anne Arundel or HoCo or Baltimore County and it's one of the reasons I love to be around Todd. Cuz we fastlowslur talk sometimes and don't even realize it when we do.

I've been thinking about this alot lately. About Sean, and his influence on me, and how becasue of us when we were little, how it was just me and him so much doing our thing together as kids, how much I look for that still when I crave comfort and security and to take care of myself and chill. Brian, my bro's bestie since kindergarten came to town a couple weeks ago, his mom raised us as much as my mom did when we were young, summer days every day in a row starting with breakfast than Team Bones in the driveway then swimming in the pool Back to the Future or Rad in the VCR every single afternoon. 'Intendo and the secret passageways in Castlevania and I was the first at SuperMario to save the Princess, too. This stuff's been on my mind since he came to town, what makes me feel most like me, most like who I truly am. In the spring I stayed a weekend with Brian and his bro, Little Sean, and all we did was chill. Lots of deep chill tv watching and laughing and busting on one another, exactly what is going on with my cousin and his friends right now, us laid out pizzabellys watching football on tv, exactly what Todd and I did and just the same as my brother when we are together always do.

Last night Chels, my nineteen-year-old cousin who just had a daughter in July, called to chat. It was the first adult convo we've ever had, discussing what her next move will be after she graduates with her two year next Monday. I love her so much, and my favorite part of being one of 20 some cousins who are every one like a bro or sis to me is that: moving into adulthood with them, but keeping that easy on the couch laid out chilling cuddle cool.

This is what to keep of youth. How to chill. The intimacy of being laid out, mellow, want of nothing. This is what to keep of youth: driving to the beach at random to catch waves and walking in to someone's house without a plan. Freshness of what could be. This is what to keep of youth: picking up the phone and not being afraid to talk about not knowing yet what comes next. This is what to keep of youth: openness of what's next to come...

And funny lowslurwords, our little ways of saying I get you and what's up right now. Our ways of saying there's so much right now that's still all good.

Island culture & the tribe of cool

Patrick my cousin was laughing this morning at breakfast. He's still a little drunk I think, and so it's that glowy slap happiness that is funniest of all.

When he laughs his voice distinctly reminds me of a ladder, this ascending quality that in my cousin Ryan sounds like ringing bells.

You know what Chris told me? Patrick laughs out, stepping up with each word and giggle breath.

Chris is Jackie's soon to be husband in the Carharts and rubber boots with the thick sandwich of New England mouthed around every word he says.

What?

That if you want to find someone here on the island the best thing to do is to just go sit in there house and wait for them to show up. Resounding steps of chortle and coffee gulps after this. It is true tho, Pat and Chris are right, and the B&B owner comes in and tells a story of coming home from errands this week to find the friend of her teenage son lounging around on the third floor of the house, waiting for her son to return. I didn't know this was island culture, she adds, til I got a teenage son.

Not being connected--no cell service and many without even a phone as over 70% of the residents here are just summer folk--is so, so nice. You forget what it means, how easy it is, to just be out and about. To not wait for life to happen, but to make for it yourself...

It reminds me of 1995, living at the beach, pre-cell phone and none of us had landlines. You went on a whim, and let shit happen. In The New York Years diPrima writes wistfully about this, about the tribe of cool to whom I've always sought after, the existence of which predates written history and is, indeed, the reason for expansion, poetry, artistry and all forms of adrenaline~those on the subversive edge of things~how in Manhattan in the 40's this tribe was so in tune with one another and the undercurrent of pure Life imbibing them each that they actually called it swinging, how they lived. Swinging meant get your work done: the clean white line of purity which so tapped in to this force, then allow for, submit to the natural movement of the day. Regular encounters with one another were natural and occurred by virtue of this discipline: wrestling the creative spirit to its hard line, then releasing its energy to throttle the crew back together somewhere on the lower streets say of the Bowery and beyond.

As if something magic, something big, something at times so shadowed and at others glowing in illustriousness so much so the whiteness may burn you apart, was webbing us all together no matter what. Wrestled in to its course, or hugely enormous and pushing us along...

What McClure meant by Writ in Eternity~and what I find most sacred among us mad genius'~the fine alchemy of grabbing for that eternity in a harnessed moment of transcendence and union, in which we get to write, at odds til it blends perfect in to the the mystery, fine, alluring, terrifying, of being written equally by the reverb of our own personal movement of the quill.... The conflicting dual, within the mass whole.

Island culture, no doubt, has been very very good for me....

Family

Kelly? I can practically hear his thought after this: Is that you?

I am sitting on a bench, in the woods, on the side of a trail at the park. Almost to the end of my third lap, walking and enjoying the outside. There is a long stick in my hand and I am using it to organize broken pieces of a Corona bottle in to a pile, so that no one, barefooted like I prefer or animal on a leash, gets it stuck in their foot. I should feel more embarrassed, maybe, than I do getting caught out there, alone, seemingly drawing in the dirt with some wood.

It's my cousin Timmy, he is out for his morning jog.

He joins me on the bench and we chat for a while. The winkwinky part is that I had just been thinking about how good it was that even though there are all these outofstate people now who bring this funny new vibe to Ocean City, how great it is that places like this path in the woods still exist, and how not everyone knows about places like this. So it made me happy, of all people to encounter there, to run in to cousin Tim.

I spent the day yesterday with Aunt Sue. It was so hot at home that there was a haze on the bay between here and town, so much so you could barely see the buildings of OC on the horizon. We were nervous about how hot it would be on the beach and figured on spending most the day in the water, but la mama surprised us with the most fantastic off-shore breeze. We talked for hours took two gorgeous swims and a long walk that spanned at least 40 streets. Later, I texted her I made pasta come over for some and so when cousin Mat got out of driver's ed that is what they did.

Family has always held at least a little bit of contention for me, whether the immediate one at home or the larger, inclusive of aunts and uncles and cousins and more. It's just that there is so much of it, and also that the nucleus that raised me, the experience directly of mom dad and Sean when we were young was confusing and not too consistant much of the time. But then there was always the stability of the extended family, both on dad's side and mom's. So family is a huge definitive part of my identity: dad is one of seven and with only one exception, he and his siblings live close. Regular visits are a part of our experience and have been since before I even was a kid. And on mom's side for the past two to three years I've made a personal choice to delve more in to the dynamics of she, her parents and sisters by spending time with them that historically was equal to the influcence the McMullens for so long have had on me. As result I now understand so much more about who I quietly am and how I was raised.

On Monday night, late, I was driving us home from Deck Party in town. Eddie, eyes half-closed and jammin his head along to the music (Two Tickets to Paradise by Eddie Money, chosen with holy exuberance because, of course, Ed was the DJ) and Tim and Sarah all shmoop shmoop cute in the back. My window was all the way down, my arm hanging loose out in the green and salt summer air. I was so, so happy. There was nothing else at all I wanted in the world than that moment, with my cousins, my siblings, my friends. In the morning I leave for Pennsylvania, to see baby Sananah again and cousin Chels, then to take Rt. 30 across the state to Gettysburg for cousin Sarah's wedding weekend.

It has been so rich, of such deep value to me, growing my legs and blood strong by owning the history that grew me and runs in profound wordlessness to this day straight through all of me, and lands and floats in to the air around me and guides and graces, in both blessings and challenges, the me I get to become. I am proud of it, proud of me and my people, and more than anything so, so grateful for the gifts of self and love it's grown within.