Summer skies stars are fallin all along the injured coast

My coffee in my hand and the sky a colorless balm 6:30 am I was ready.  Then at my car Nici texted nothing out there.  Which I was like shit I know but it says glassy and where we surf midway between here and HB is this sweet small break that is perfect for me who cant surf but is obsessive about learning.  Knee high Kelly waves!!  Boo.

So I am blogging because that is the second best way to unfurl my muscles and soften my stress and relax my bones.  It does not cease to amaze me:  the effect the salt and sun have on my soul.  This is not just hippiedippie as it sounds it is also true.  It is the solitary reason I moved here, all the way away from my family and friends and the land that raised me and the sea that is my own.  Because I need the elements in a bodily, active, daily way.

I am listening to Paul Simon on Spotify, The Rhythm of the Saints.  So remedying for the poet in me and it's been a good year or two since I've started a day with the glory of The Obvious Child.  Should I not have the ocean this morning, I shall instead have this the other tide that moves me.  Words, and muse, which is its own flow all the same.  oooo aaa ooo aaaahhh Summer skies stars are fallin all along the injured coast...In the sixties he just let it out the words the flight the heart of America he moved us on.  I am backstepping now because of all the new which there is to start and it feels scary and huge and insurmountable when it wakes me up in my new bed in my new loft with the peepers chirping out the window their nighttime canyon song.  Surf I don't have to think about.  Just feel and float then rock that shit along.  Just be and let the do happen.  Naturalness surge easy flux of retreat, be still, now move on.  Again, again, yet again.

There is a bonus track called Thelma on Spotify this is re-released, a nice surprise.  I will get the hang of this,  work and school and so on.  I am quite good at in-between I remind myself alot that's what all this is.  It just feels cramped and like I can't move.  That's so not me.

Gratitude goes a long way a day at a time tho.
See~!

The grls,: Annie, me Nic and D in HB

Gray's 10th bday party 9/9/12 xo

Let the earth find them whole again

Full moon mama in me all spirals of nag champa hippie oils lavender and sage...The sun was out yesterday morning in yellow single beams only for an hour.  It cut between the steel hanging of the marine layer the sky the color of dolphins,  the dolphins so close to Nici and I on our surfboards that I could see the shine and divots of their skin.  I could not contain my sounds of glee.  I got pummeled when I tried to catch a wave and came up smiling with some crazy headless determination.  I say headless because the white waves aren't good enough I want to ride real waves and it has nothing to do with fixated mentality, it's a total body thing.

Just like the draw to the ocean always is, my whole life.  It's a peace that satiates me from a wordless place inside but that I can feel run through as real as I can feel the tides of the moon.  And I am living in it now, like that feeling is one big orb I have stepped into, or am born out of.  From deep inside.

Today's the first harvest, holy holy sacred life blessed be.  Me and my religiousity.  My contempt for it, too.  I taught a private english lesson last night that had me jazzed way after it was done.  I watched Kelly Slater surf the men's heat at the Open and stood it awe, I listened to Best Coast on my phone last night, laying in bed.  We are taking our students to the Fair.  I live on the beach in California like I always saw and felt only this is real not the inside bliss feeling that was only a dream.  This morning it strummed in me, my book again, and I told it ok I am coming thanks for letting me know.  I want to worship this earth and her rounds on my knees, I want this majesty of gratitude to pour out in dusted gold ribbons and magnify the love of all the people that I know.  Let their love light the way around the hearts of those they love let the whole world kindle on that flame.  Let the earth find them whole again finding her let them have reason to be grateful under sky.

Lunar Lammas again, we turn we turn, these are my thanks. I'm Amazed~

How amazingly rad.

It felt good to take a breath--my roommates did a 48-hour crusade to Chicago and back and having a house to myself was just that.  A big long breath out.  Steel Pulse was so fun. Major surprises there, too.  Barefeet on the lawn dancing and the moon.  At 6:30am Saturday my phone started buzzing Nici wanted to surf and Derynn wanted to know if I was going to the Open with her boys.  It went on like that for an hour me laughing all the way.  There was nothing like cruising across PCH at the pier that morning.  I had that sense about my life, of fresh and at-one-ness at once and this is really happening.  That hasn't happened in a while.  We got to the Open and the boys had to stand on line for an hour to get their passes to swipe so they can win prizes all week.  Last year Jayden won hundreds of dollars worth of stuff.  Just in the first ten minutes we'd gotten hats for free.

After a while we went to Tower 8 and Nici was in the water and after another while she convinced me to go out.  I was like no way not a chance am I surfing California for the first day at the kick-off of the US Surf Open.  I felt like a big kook but she forced me and turns out she's an awesome teacher.  I was up in the white water in an instant and like that my whole pulse for it was back.  I rode white waves for a good bit til she forced me to paddle all the way out and in the line up she was teaching me all kinds of little great tips, confirming my original instinct all the way back to last year that I needed a woman to teach me.  After an hour I was whipped and was like I'm going in and started to paddle and next thing I knew I was right inside the wave and it moved me right and then I was up and rode it all the way to when it reformed and still was up and going, and it felt like yoga, that union, and I saw how to be in control and let it happen at once.  It was RADICAL.  I hope to start going with her in the morning before school.


 Der and I tried to go to the movies later but that didn't work out so instead I made us dinner.  We wound up at Barnes and Noble on the floor of the poetry section reading the little hymns out loud. I slept well then was up early again and got all the errandy house things out of the way which always makes me feel at peace.  Today I spent the day with a cutie which was rad.  Finally talked to Erin too so I feel connected again. Erika tagged me on Instagram with a picture of a Crow on the beach in NC.  Fannon's anniversary just passed and  this is the final loop before the season begins to round out.  Meaning Crow made good sense. My interview at Pacifica is Friday.  I am going to jam out at the Open all week.  I have a date tonight.  I want to write an essay on being a woman for Holly.  Book, no worries, I'll soon be back.  


My life is becoming what I always saw in my heart.  Part of this is because I was willing to let go of a lot of ideas jammed up in my head. 


How amazingly rad.

And dance

Three weeks ago I decided it's time for me to see more live music again.  I was hanging out with this cutie lifeguard watching some surf punk band with a horrible drunk wannabe Morrison lead.  My company was far better than the band.  Since then I've seen Matisyahu and tomorrow Steel Pulse.  Steel Pulse!!!  Haven't seen good reggae since the old Sunsplash days.  Next week at the Surf Open Best Coast, Toro y Moi and TV on the Radio. Free Best Coast on the beach!  Tonight I'm going with Annie and like 10 girls to see a No Doubt cover band.  I am looking forward to a deep-fried avocado since we'll be at the fair.

To the hell yea.  I rode my bike forever today.   The headwind on the way back was hilarious. So much resistance that's the first time a  bike ride on the beach path made me sweat.  Like always I get a big smile when I ride, which makes everyone smile too.  Which makes me happy.  And smile more.  The Open started today, meaning even more than normal little skaters everywhere and all the registers now accepting money at every concession stand.  I don't think surf events happen til Saturday.  Jayden and I have plans to be down there at like 6am...I'm going to watch a lot of surfing and not move much other than bike to beach to water to sand.  Back to bike again.


Talked to Josh last night forever and it made me feel whole and clean.  That's been happening more often with him.  And so things move on.  The admissions counselor at Pacifica emailed me today, they presented my application to the board, I am freaked out.  And happy.  Sometimes there's nothing else than Wait.  This feels really good to me.  


A prayer now for Derynne, for what is to come.  What is to come, what has been, and the sacred in-between.  Which is a great time to go get Stefani on, dance and dance and dance...and be.

All those words I can't contain

Once Erika (click on that link!  watch her book trailer!!!) started an email with What a day, what a day...

It's a line from an Erykah Badu song.  In the frenzy of  my response, all those words I can't contain--I don't know if I ever got to the part of mentioning how often I find those words singing through my own head.

Under the palm trees in the dark, sweet breeze tonight.  In my car, sunroof open, just past 11.  On Instagram, which I tool around with at the strangest times....like standing in the middle of my room after a bike ride next thing for 10 straight minutes everything else but this damn dumb little phone dissolves like my brain has wires hooked to it, or I'll be on my feet in the kitchen ignorant to the dogs or my roommates me on my phone screen waiting for tea water boil.  In my car, after the longest most eventful day ever, in the front seat after the lights and engines are off tonight.  Smelling the cool, sweet breeze.  Hearing the palm leaves fan.  Tooling around on Instagram.  Thinking What a day what a day.

Sometimes, it just feels nice to turn your brain off.  To hit a button and then space.   My ears were wet after Shavasana tonight.  Seeping little leaky tears.  D rang the gentle chime to pull us from meditation and I realized it was my last class with her here in Huntington, and I thought of when I started in March and my intentions for healing my body and strengthening, and how strong I am now.  I laid there feeling my heart open from the center, feeling my energy running up and down the course of me smooth as if my spine were train tracks in a long looping line.   Mandy's wedding invitation came in the mail.   And this too, this too.  So much else.  These sisters of mine.  Me, single, alone.  Not at all alone.  Them.  Never at all.  This too, this too my god this too.  I can not even register today.

Life I thought, yoga tears wetting my face.  I don't get you.  Happy, grateful tears, and compassionate tears.  Some of each, so close to the same.  This too.  So many different this-es, so many, many too-s.

What a day what a day~

The only ones who get it

The week after next will be one year since I got in the car to drive to California.  With no place to live and no real plan.  I arrived at Mike's in Newport Beach on the 8th of August.  I had my first breakfast with Mo on her backporch in Santa Cruz on August 15.  Days later she took me north to farm and meet Em and Bebe and Nicky and Jon and everyone.  These people who became my precious family in SoHum.  I have messages saved on my VM  that make me smile or grateful...Erika saying she's closing in on a book deal.  Erin shhhmrrring....My brother repeating the word farts...  My sohum fam, one from Em and one from Jon each calling me Mama in character, with a tone of voice that immediately draws laugh-based tears.  That was one year ago.  On August 15 this year I will move in to my own studio apartment in Laguna Beach.  A mile up the canyon, surrounded by green trees.

I haven't had my own place since I officially left behind Easton, my job at the Community College, and the final remnants of life I'd created in Chestertown in May 2010.  The next two years were intermediary.  A long, major crossing.  I went to my then love Brandon in April 08 and said I want to go to California for grad school. Four years later my application is now in, same school as the grad packet that was in my hands all the way back then.  I am waiting.  Awaiting.  Primed to move, to lock things in.  This next step so timely, and so long in coming.

One night this past week I watched the sun go down with Jott on the other end of the phone.  I cried a lot and put some things to rest.  Her friendship one of the prime bounties that came from those two years in-between.  I talked to Gretchen another night and laughed the wild laugh the whole time.  This women who continues, again and again, to see to my rounds.  Bebe called Thursday and I lay on the ottoman in my room, my back half-hanging down, in the lavender-smelling orange-lit candled-air.  My fan turning, Bebe and I in communion over the passing of her mom.  Sonoma, my life with her, just one corner ago--just January--but so much living this year that it feels so long ago.  I did little this weekend other than sleep on the clear blue beach.  I swam, alot.  Finally.  I feel whole, rhythmic, much as I can connected and whole to the many different parts of all of who I am.  

In Starbucks now a dad holds his baby girl on his lap in the most tender, devoted way.  It's just the same gesture as my brother with his baby girl on Skype this morning.  Not one part of me considers my life any differently than it is right now.  Wishes that it had gone any other way.  Here I am, with me, about to go whole-heartedly after me.  My place, my book, my students and teaching, my avocation.  The beach and bike rides the sun and palm trees.  I am quiet, not in awe, just still.  I wanted everything on the shelf.  Every cake and muffin every tart and scone.  Every last treat so I helped my self.  A cookie and a donut.  Sometimes a girl deserves more than just the one.

It's quiet, sometimes, the little marks and occasions that pass.  How we are the only ones who get it, who really know.    

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.

Mine was clean

Drove to Laguna this morning.  Found my dream.  Spent the afternoon at Sawdust Art Festival--here is a free idea, someone figure out how to get Instagram pics to upload to Blogger--  Because the trees growing through the art booths built in to the canyon walls??  Come on.  You need to see it to believe.  Laguna I'm yours. Take my idea someone I'm sure it will make you a nice little egg.

Put some applications in today, finished my portion of grad school apps yesterday.  Started reading this bitchen essay on poetry while at the outdoor mall in the sun.  How academia in the second half of the century  made it a specialized art form. That devalued its primal social function of speaking for the people.  YEP yep and yep.  Making it so the only people who care about poetry are the "poets"--now defined as the ones who paid the money to go to school programs to gain access to who's who.  Reminds me of Gary Snyder's short piece on a man and woman who went up to spend a season together in a fire lookout.  When a co-ranger got up there to check on them he said but all that was left was two assholes jumping through each other.

Google it Dana Gioia Can Poetry Matter.

Picked up Greyson and chilled with him last night so Derryne could tattoo.  He was at Annie's, she fed me dinner with her fam then made calls to Newport friends to play whose who and who knows who and scoop out info and embarrass me.  Orange County is so full of all these insular small towns, and rivalries.  It's funny and odd.  Greyson is 10.  We took a walk downtown at sunset along the beach and I realized, as I always do, how easy it is to hang out with dudes between the ages of 10 to 20.  Like we just laugh and make fun of each other and I swear to god no other time in life is it easier for me to be myself.  The lady getting the tattoo, when we got back to 12th street, was like oh sure that's because it's all fun...no worries no stress.  You just get to be.

There was sun inland all day but the coast is still socked in.  Derryne cancelled on me for Duende Flamenco and dancing.  I have no plans and will probably take a nice bike ride then read.


Yes, that's just it, isn't it?  I just get to be.  Maybe the main difference goes: When Grey and I got back to 12th last night his face was covered in chocolate, covered, from sweet treats.  And I had enough self-consciousness to make sure mine was clean.  

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.

I can't get enough I can't get enough

I was trying to think honestly about moving from Huntington.  To be closer to work.  The realization hit me last week that it would be hard to leave the library here. I know it's as silly to me as it is to you.  Today coming up the concrete stairs it became my reality though.  I simply may love this place too much.

And here, on the lower level five feet from a fountain, another fountain and grassy woodland park out the floor to ceiling wall to my right, I know it's true.  And I get why.  It is quiet here, an indulgent, reverent, human quiet. This is the best library in the world.  Full with the sound of literally hundreds of bodies choosing to be silent, to be still.


Out my window on Main Street cars run all day and night long.  Dogs bark from the back yards.  That all the time whir and buzz has its effect on people.

Here at the library the downstairs study rooms are open-aired with two overstuffed comfy couches in the center.   In whichever study room you enter those cozy chairs always have people laid out like Jesus on the cross with their head all the way back and eyes closed.  And today, I got it.  The sacred sound, they like me come here to soak in it.  The aching, conscientious quiet.

I can not get enough of it.  That's not even to mention the satisfaction of the forever long bike ride all its hills and concrete, or the basement where the poetry stacks are and I can go and completely lose my mind its dimensions so opened that a library basement is my quaky heart drug.  I go there for the bliss,  I can't get enough.  I can't get enough I can't get enough.

So here's to my third daily check-in.  Got my morning pages done today, located my backpack finally (dear Dell, does the warranty cover damage done from transport in a bag with a bottomfull of sand?) and now here I am, at the library.  To finish my essays.  I talk with Erika about my latest submission tonight at 6:15.

Last night was super fun, too even though I wound up not chilling with Derynn and them.  I'm stoked to do it again~

In my swim suit with my wild ocean hair

On the 5 today I looked at the coastal mountains around Toro Canyon.  I call it Route 5 and pronounce it "root" like I'm from back east.  Which I am.  Derryn makes fun of me because that's how she says it too, like she's a British African.  Which she is.  I love my life there is nothing else to say and driving and seeing all the green and high white light and blue that's exactly what I said.  Man I love my life.  I must've said it ten times this weekend.  Moving here is one of the best decisions I ever made. I say this in to my headphone piece.  Driving on root 5 on the phone.  I know me too Muller says back to me.  Me too.

He is going back to Ocean City where we are from.  He goes next week.  He tells me all these guys from back then say hi Kel and I am like that's so crazy.  Because that's what I sit and do write about the beach and entertain their ghosts while I do.   I can not see the end of from here how will I ever finish this book who knows but damn am I enjoying the road.  I got three rejections letters this month.  BLAUAUAGHH I continue and will continue to go.  I am in Starbucks now after spending the weekend at Derryn's timeshare in Oceanside.  Assing up with her puberty-aged sons.  Laughing at Youtube videos they recommend.  Seeing how viley immature I am and my sense of humor.  Muller knows this part of me too.  I am sundrenched and peaceful from being sea-witness again and again.  I am full from sharing with a true wild woman friend.  I am full and satiated in that salty way of sand stretch skin.  I am happy especially to be beside my coffee shop window two blocks from my house in Huntington.  I haven't been home yet am still in my swim suit with my wild ocean hair.  I love my life the sun the blue skies the words the yoga bike rides the water good food and laughing friends.  It doesn't end.  

I am enjoying looking out the window you know?  Nodding my head at this life and this ride.  I've made a decision about some things ruminating in me which have to do with how to commit and how to begin.  I am 35 which is old to some but to me brand brand new, or anyway quite young.  I have the whole world in me and also around me and I see it and say yes to it and that is an amazingly fruitful way to be.  One I've had to learn and learn and relearn again.  I like to learn and am a teacher which means learning's my job.  So I will look out and say yes this is it where I am and also how cool, the view stretching so far in all directions, the view and all the where's and how's I still will go.

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.

The Hallelujah that counts

I had the genius idea of coming to Bella Terra to write. I could see myself after a preliminary dose of poetry sidled down in the corner of the Starbucks in Barnes and Noble--remember when I used to hate Starbucks I think to myself , not unkindly--apologetic in my own judgment of humanity, how to be human?  Relinquish unto the aspects deigned most unacceptable. I think how liberals or new agers are some of the most judging righteous people I know and I check myself.  My own isolated sanctity's.  An amen that I at least recognize some of my own small vengeance's.  That I am not active in at least some of my worst prejudices any more.

The morning I spent in the coffee shop near my house.  Writing poems til it moved in me that it was time to leave, that my novel was ready to speak and in that...precisely why I had to come here.  On the way I followed the singing to a used book store.  Do you have Emerson's Self-Reliance I asked cheery and foolish for all he knew.  No he shook his head slowly but I didn't even listen and asked instead where the poetry was.  Beside the poetry was "Literature", it is a British voice that pronounces that in my head, silly as I am on a sunny Sunday...I scoured the Li-trit-chore section one by one as if with metal tonged comb.  Nothing.  He was right.  I surrendered and let my bag fall to the floor and cozied in to study the poetry books when the first one jumped off, surrounded by the hallelujah light, Emerson's Collected Poems and Works.  What a find.  I handed over my ten dollars.

Here at the Starbucks at Bella Terra the line was so long and people so many you couldn't even see the front door. Mos Def on the stereo maybe, hard to say.  I spotted a dirty crammed table with straw wrappers and some kind of sticky mess visible from as far as I was away.  I headed towards it, a little man with a beak-nose and a beard of Jewish grey slid in and pretended to ignore me.  I hated him so much in that moment before I remembered to laugh and loosen up.   Just wait and be I reminded myself and within the ten minutes it took for my drink a table in the middle of the room opened up.  I promised myself that if someone hopeless and wandering passes by I'll share my unused part of the table top and push a chair their way.

Why is it I can flow so easily in so many sections of my life?  Why why why can I so easily open in to and happily contribute to the ongoing daily dialogue of the larger day?  And yet still want to force the littlest details, til I feel absolutely nuts?

Ask why, cuz you're gonna I told Erin on the phone this week.  But only ask that of yourself for one sec, don't waste too much of your time.  Don't focus on the why when it's the Hallelujah that counts.

Hallelujah, hallelujah.  Halllle freakin lujah, I say.

6 hundred thousand reasons

On fifth street I am happiest, there is a coffee shop less than a block from PCH and though it's a through-street people, mostly Latin kids with that clipped flavor in their voice and black t-shirted tattoo guys on skateboards or young blonds who are too skinny and dressed in ways I am sure their parents disapprove, or maybe that's 35-year-old me and my inner parent disapproving because I see 17-year-old me hot-assed and tight-titty-shirts in them, either way it's my favorite because it's Thursday night and all of them are milling around the street.  The pier is just a block from here too and that I love especially on a night like tonight when the sky is beach blue.

I notice odd things.  The kid behind the counter with the black plugs in his ears has nice teeth.  Wallace has nice teeth.  The woman in the accessory store today had a voice that reminded me of a wind-up doll.  The group of young dudes next to me must be Jesus guys because the only time a gathering publicly of that many different aged and kind people happens other than AA is for Jesus.  I was tight and shallow-breathing and disconnected, icky feeling when I got home.  Last minute care-package shopping after a movie with my students after school.  I paid bills on the Internet and was feeling sorry for myself.  The ocean is blocks away.

The ocean is blocks away.   I got in the car and came down here to make some calls.  Whenever I can especially if I need to I come not to look at but feel the sea.   I am drinking tea because caffeine will keep me up and a teacher's no good with no sleep.  I am thinking about all there is to know when you realize there is a lot that you do not know.  About people you think you know, about yourself.  I forgot the phone.  It's amazing that keeping fresh, even in paradise, must be a practice, become a discipline.  My friend is dull on his life after ten years of this, I see it in two months and the second I do I come to the sea.  Like anything else the rounds become our rounds so it is up to us to stay fresh, stay fresh.  Stay fresh.  Any given second there are at least 6 hundred thousand reasons to be grateful.  I pick one, I pick two, I move on.  We are finally exchanging again, I forgot my phone, there is lots and lots to say.   Erika my angel when I need one the most.  I come to do what I really came to do, to the coffee shop to write.  To the sea to give thanks.  To the page to reflect on what I think  I do and do not know.

Something new and beautiful

In front of my house where I park my car on the street there are two towering trees one is a pine and one is a palm.  I always said I would live at the beach with pine trees in my front yard.  When I pulled up tonight I got out of the car and had that unglued feeling, not a bad one, just this sense of not being connected to the moment, like there was a barrier between me and the edges of things.  I paused in the yard, its many shades of dark almost-black greens.  Checked myself, I wasn't just peaceful, not just content.  I actually feel happy, deeply satisfied.  Why were the outlines such a blur?

You got in your car and drove to California and now you live in Orange County and teach for a living.  I literally said this to myself, standing there, laptop in one hand empty coffee cup in the other.  The night blue sky.  Then I laughed, sort of out loud, because I forget sometimes that that's what I did, so caught up am I in the life I live now.  That was 9 months ago...it feels like an entire other world.

And so what happened tonight, out there in the yard after subbing for the evening class at school, was me catching myself in between phases...the old life and who I was behind me now, the forward and what will be entirely on the verge.  And me, for a millisecond, aware that I am in between.  Changing again, in a soft and gentle, entirely real way.  Changes that on a personal level I wasn't even aware had to be made.  Mom said to me today on the phone just look at all you've done in the past year, look how far you've come.  I used to be able to see, to see that rearview really easily.   But it's blurred now, and I am creative, and thoughtful, and layered in the richest ways.  I dive deep within, so that I can not see myself from the middle--unable as we are to look in on what we're looking at because we're busy looking.  Right!?  Periodically I dip and dive under and into myself, I resurface with something new and beautiful, or recycled and valuable, re-earthed from the endless depths of the cycles and processes of me.  It's so common for me to bridge both these inner and outer experiences of my self that full months will pass without me noticing that that's what's going on.  It is the most beautifully natural thing in the world, it is human, it will never end, and I am thankful I got a glimpse of it tonight.  I am at it again.  I can't see where I am at or where I am going.

But I know for sure I'm on my way.

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.

Maybe we should just get married

Dear Huntington Beach,

If I haven't told you yet, I think you're so cool.  I get a little silly-hearted over you and I'm thinking, maybe we should just get married...?  Since I always want to be near you and already need your breath to breathe....

Thanks for the banner week...Spring came, all the prophecy and vision with the Equinox and how it turns.  My heart is moving my muscles in all new ways with my yoga practice...I turned 35, on a new moon.  It started a whole new wisdom cycle for me, too, according to the wise woman ways.  Cycle 5.  I can't even believe it and hope such beneficent fortune is here to stay...

To celebrate your delirious flowers and countries of sand and palm tree wind...and the timing of it all...
I published my first e-book of poems.

5 Poems, available here   


It's dedicated to Erika, but was inspired by you.  I like being available on Amazon, and most of all I like this momentum, its slow steady build.

Thanks, Huntington, for this, for the poems and mornings in bed, the street fairs and yogi bliss, your library and the beach in my hair.

I love you forever,
kel

Your soulspeak companions

Lindsey, my dear sweet friend from way back then, confirmed that meeting in San Diego for the night wouldn't be feasible because her work load was so intense--she's been in town for five days but we couldn't make anything happen.  After she texted I left the 99 cent store, where I seem to visit once weekly for creative accouterments to aid in teaching, and cruised home.  The sun was burning the wildest poetic orange. The palm trees looked black against the nightening sky. I hit a left on Ellis from Brookhurst and whadya know, Ellis is the street that turns to Main which is where I live.  This I did instinctively, body knowledge, and when I realized it sitting at the light I had the most satisfied ease.  I have lived here going on four weeks.  I have slowed down, given over unto myself, allowed for the creation of my own rounds.  And so I begin to feel lovingly contented with my self, with this sweet little hand-crafted life I am whittling out piece by piece.

Laura and Clay eat dinner together every night, they were just finishing the ritual with their customary evening commentary on current events when I walked in the door.   He was a dj on college radio in the late sixties and again in the mid-seventies so his musical sensibility when it comes to soul and in general roots music is unstoppable.  Makes me wish my love Brooks was here because him and Clay would stay up musicing til well past the palms went black til well past them going blue in the moonlight all the way past, for sure, when they turn orange pink again in the earliest morning sun.  That's what happened, unexpected, with us tonight, we got talking music and the conversation had me so lit up I was on spotify with the finest Ray Charles play list I believe I have ever heard, back and forth back and forth to the rocking boat rhythm of some of the sexiest music alive.  Music that made my veins sweat on the inside, music that made me want to squat low on my haunches and let the very earth itself sway me side to side.  Music that made me think of Brooks, of dancing like no one on the planet dances because that planet made of soul is invisible it's one you can only feel through your feet someplace cosmic where they brush on the floor of your shoes it's a planet you inhabit from within, this the planet where Brooks and I live, and so Clay brought him near and Laura too, who brought Erika near by telling me she channeled Fitzgerald while writing this afternoon.

All is right with the world when your housemates, decades ahead of you, bring to you your husband and wife of the creative element, your soulspeak companions three thousand miles away.  When things are so aligned they meld that well to your inner atmosphere.  I love my life.  I love putting my energy in to exactly what I care about, exactly what turns me on.  I do so and it feeds me back at me, in this power surge of soul music over dinner and Fitzgerald wander lust fettering in and out.  I want to yell to Erika, yell to her a quarter-stretch across the globe The Duende The Duende it's alive it's well, but I don't need to because she is my sister my wife in this soul land so she already knows.  Tomorrow I meet Derynne for the Huntington Beach Street Fair   then we are going to an Equinox Bonfire also here in HB.  She too one of this tribe... I danced the best fun dancing with sweet Wallace and his friends this weekend they actually helped themselves to taking over the dj stand, I wrote poems all day on Friday and read in bed most the day long yesterday.  To feed the soul, any who would ever label this selfish how sad!  How much they miss out, how this life by very design sees to it that we serve others just by serving our own true self, that we empower others from the genuine source power when this is what we do.

Ah and for me?  This time, this quiet gentle precious time.  It's been a long time coming.  Life is good.

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.