O Elvis, when to you I said the Prayer. Chester River Runoff @ Seacrets and other Myths and Dreams.

Mandy and I were in Memphis at Elvis'.  It was 2007 and we were on a 48-hour mission to get to an army base in Texas, I can't remember if Graceland happened before or after we stayed straight where we should've merged and next thing you know wound up in Alabama, or Arkansas, one of the A states not sure which but one otherwise not on our route.  We drove that route-not-really-our-route til the sun went down and purple twilight was everywhere and the road became a single lane, cutting through cotton fields with white puff-drifts breezing along the edges and high and thick in the side of the ditch.  Finally soon after that we were out of the car laughing, laughing so much at the middle of nowhere deep south cotton field that our road laid down before us, laughing and picture-taking and story-telling, a non-stop MandyKelly fury of redbull and flavored mini-cigars.

Mandy and me, before Red Bull existed.  Different Spontaneous Trip.  Domenical, Costa Rica.  Dec 1996.

Later, or before, or at any rate whenever it was that we made it to Elvis', I made an exaggerated deal about Graceland being my wedding gift to her.  It seemed right, it seemed epic, it seemed of the epochs, it seemed mythic as Mandy and I were then and always are to me.  To go visit the house of Elvis, the King, is what I mean.  Neither of us were Elvis fans, necessarily, but both of us found ourselves so moved by his timelessness, by the legacy of him, the specific honey-magic he generated that we were weepy again and again.

Last night Chester River Runoff played here in OC.  They opened for a band called The Electric Company's CD release and the whole thing started with the boys live on Ocean 98 playing the Live Lixx show. 

CRR, On the Big Screen.  Ocean City, April 2011.

In November, at the same big club, in the same corner up near the same stage where we always go Jotto and I were dancing like mad to a typical OC cover band.  I rooted my high-heeled feet down through the hydro-bouncing stage, I loosened my stance in Mountain Pose so my spirit hung gentle and witnessed easy and soft as a wild rose. O heart of moon and ocean, let me reign in with your song,  O mama spirit mama la mar mama la luna, mama the wise earth, o all she holds which is all that is here.  O, Life.  I raised my arms in dance, a dance prayer all dance is prayer and I rolled my eyes and beseeched holy Life, said help me dance this mediocrity away.  I twirled and twirled and twirled and whirled and frenzy danced so much like I love to do with Jen.  Later that night, at Mambo's, while Jott was busy in a textbubble that I was judging her for in a funny laughy way, Nate from the Electric Company walked in I didn't even know original bands existed here then and had never heard of his.  It was enough, that one night talk over the seat booth with him who knew and was friends with Sam, of witty, flirty talk.  Enough to keep me rooted in the deeper life myth, the Call.

Elvis is Here.  Graceland, Dec 2010.

O Elvis.  O ELvis, I said and would have grabbed Mandy's hand had she been standing near, O Elvis, we were there at his gravesight Mandy and me, out back of could be GlnBrnieBrklynPrk Memphis, Tennesee. O Elvis now got me Graceland touched, forever Graceland-bound. I wrapped me, wrapped the self the me that touches the timeless heart the heart of all things, touched in the heart of the emotions we felt, Mandy and me.  O Elvis and the sun shined and there he lay, and it was still and beautiful, O wrap my friends in the same big spirit myth the one you've evoked here today in me.  O Elvis and Angels who looked so happy on him bless them, bless them please. I brought them there, I summoned Walsh then, the boys from Chester River, I summoned The Took and Josh and his Parade, too. 

Rocking Chair.  Ben's Farm, February 2009.

Last night CRR played Molly's song. About too many sunny days and I went up near them close as I could to them, my old tribe of mad genius men, my old friends.  To have with them a moment for her where it was peace.  My friend of the precious wanderer tribe, poet-spirit sister of things too big for this world to see.  They wrote that song before death took her and I was in Oregon when that happened last June and couldn't be part of the ritual Ben and Sam arranged that said goodbye.  They played her song and I closed my eyes and kept them closed for long and let the song be a prayer of thankfulness for it all: and in that time there in Morley Hall with the songs and dance-prayers to follow me the wild grl me came back on me and in my happy bluegrass dancing in my wedge spring high heels I actually was the myth of then, the myth of us the myth of how it all came to be.  Country as hell, country wild as I used to be, I had barefeet and there a great bonfire in the mad brickpit with flames as high as six feet and there tall pine trees and there a stage in front of a late harvest corn field and there middle of the night christmas lights on the tree branches and on the grape arbor hung just so, and there all the music, all my friends, all the fresh grown food the pot luck kitchens the river the naked swimming, there the ever-witnessing big white full moon.  That one solstice at Ben's farms on our backs in her the Chester the river silk and moon milk on our summer tanned river skin. Running in the wild dark and leaping in.  Dancing and hamming and jamming and there two in the morning shadows on the backlit sky,  wooping the wild spirit wild as it used to be, fresh rockfish fresh corn fresh herbs bike rides coffee shops genius madness, poetry, wild as it still is because it Was and all that is is from, always, what used to be.

Goose Blind.  Chester River @ Ben's.  Febraury, 2009.

I thought of Elvis then, and my prayer to him back then for these my sacred friends.  I remembered November, same dance hall different dance--of desperation--the night that I first met Nate when I forgot but he was sent by Life as Reminder all that comes passes, to come back in different ways again.

I blessed Myth then, thought of Mandy and all my precious wild women-grls, I danced some more and loved my friends and loved even more the perfect timelessness in the heart, the Heart of the heart, the heart that lives inside us all and that I am thankful cuz I live it for sure, its gift of livingness inside me.

Spon Down. Living forever on yoga and sun.

Mom called to say she had a long day at the hospital. It's in Baltimore City where she works once a week as an operating room nurse, her case load long or intense or maybe her coworkers lousy--she called to say she's staying the night in Anne Arundel county at Deb's house instead of driving back to the beach.  She's worked there as long I've been alive.  I was writing, doing third edits on Part One of my book, so that Part Two comes with more consistency, when she called.  We talked a serious bit of talk about something that struck me last night, that I meditated on it struck so deep, and she agreed with the serious bit in the tiny little time that we talked.

Her call made me pause, there was lots of food in the fridge and I couldn't ignore my hunger when we got off the phone.  I peeled shrimp and added Old Bay and a little little dash of sour cream to make it shrimp salady.  Then I heated corn tortillas and got out arugula and limes and cilantro because everything's better as tacos of course.  I am writing again now, not on Part 2 or Part 1 third edits, just writing to write to acknowledge the time the good music on and to say goodbye to the ohsowarmtoday golden yellow sun.  I love the gold yellow of the spring, just before it turns summer orange.  I love that I am getting browngolden skin and yellowgold hair like twine Rapunzel spun.

Last week right now I was walking through a rich part of DC with a belly full of Thai food and my best friend Katie by my side our sandled feet on the uneven cement sidewalk squares.  It was chilly in the air but still we drove with the windows mostly down on our way to the hostel in Tacoma.  We met a girl named Shemma from the UK, it is hard not to meet people in hostels when you decide that where you are that night--a boarding house for passerbys--is where you will plant for the moment and stay.  Which is to say the next night at the hostel in my favorite neighborhood in Baltimore, Mt. Vernon, we didn't plant, just dropped our bags fitted our sheets and scooted back out the door to all the fun ways to explore the going-ons of my hometown city's streets.  Shemma is young, like 22 or 23, and from the UK and instead of on a round-the-world trip tic had one in which you can go right up to eight times.  Neat new concept I'd never heard.  They were on their last stop, her and her man who she just got engaged to, this happened in the beginning of their trip on a stop somewhere in Asia I think.  Now we are facebook friends.

The day after the hostel in Tacoma we went back downtown to meet Walsh and see the Gaughan exhibit.  I put all my intensity in to it until I was exhausted from the concentration. Later we laid on a blanket on the green mall under the shade of new fresh green leaves.  We talked inappropriately like women always eventually do.  Making the day irreverent and lovely. Today I wrote four poems I am sure came from time with my grls.

Last night I was driving home from yoga it was warm out so warm the air was like hot breath breathing off the trees and some song came on Ocean 98 that I can't now remember and I thought all I really need in life is music, yoga and sun.  I smiled a while and vibed whole and strong on the bliss of this, then funny ego twist thought: and poetry, too--poetry the ocean music yoga and sun.  And friends.  And sex...a man. I thought ohmylord like Marla would say...I laughed at myself....this too this too came to mind, what Dani Shapiro would say.  Always the ego and all its unsatiated needs.  I thought of Erika then, my published-by-Penguin writing partner sister spirit friend.  I thought of Walsh and Katie, of Josh and then Mike in California because Sean my brother was home all weekend so it's natural to think also of him.  Life is funny, ununderstandable, impossible to figure out and also so fleetingly crystal clear with certain truths.  I could live forever on sun, poems, yoga.  Music, fresh tacos, swimming and friends.  Road trips to museums and hostels in my hometown.  Best friends, sisters, grlfriends, men.  Like I already do now.

I am writing, I am happy right now.  I was going to save this post for tomorrow, some new day with all the new this too's it shall bring, but why bother when it's so luxuriously right now...

I vow to finish strong.

...and take extra, gentle care of me in the process...

"All that you have within you, all that your heart desires, all that your nature so specially fits for you--that or the counterpart of it waits embedded in the great Whole, for you.  It will surely come to you.

Yet equally surely not one moment before its appointed time will it come.  All your crying and fever and reaching out of hands will make no difference.

Therefor do not begin that game at all..."

~Edward Carpenter  1844-1929

with the grls, National Gallery, DC

Yes I am a dreamer

...for a dreamer finds his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.  ~Oscar Wilde

Oh god am I dreamer.

I never realized that this quality was significant.  That'd be like recognizing a handful of yourself if you were the ocean, I dont think really it can be done.

I am totally a dreamer and therefor prone to long diseased bouts of utter funk of thinking, that false truth of disenchantment that Neitzsche or Sartre, one of them, talks about.  Believing the reality that every other person buys in to has to somehow be yours, too.

I talked for a long time to an old friend last night.  His mom helped raise my brother and me so when I say old, I truly mean that.  We knew each other innocent: as kids.  The kind of friends that are always there and taken for granted so much so that re-discovering one another adds unexpected newness to your own self.  And indeed part of the reason you value that person so much is because you love the surprise of what it's like when someone holds your whole life in their own memory like that.  He was telling me what it was like finding a group of friends that were outside the circle of the gang we grew up with as so many of them are married with children now.  He talked about being 30 and finding a whole new home of friends in the city who are all in their thirties, childless, still single.  How it was tough at first, but he got the swing of it and now it's totally him.  He made his passing.

This has been an issue for me lately I guess--single, kidless, about to be 34, no prospects on the pink and gold line of my horizon of any special man.  It was sort of tough for me for a while, like I went through this weird period that it was really on my mind around Thanksgiving and the weeks after.  My large family saw lots of weddings this year, with several more to come, so I suspect that was a main factor.  I had to sit with the loneliness until I realized it to be totally normal. I had to shake off the shame I associated with it.  The truth is I'm pretty social and also sensual and very fly (seek ye modesty seek elsewhere, please~) and so of course there was credence to that kicky whiny voice of where is my man??   But I have to tell you, allowing that voice it's full strength eased me in to, as it always does, a new level of comfort and acceptance of my self.  And in that I am good again, and so the desperation seems to have passed.  Which feels a little scary--being alright as an independent single woman, being on the verge of my whole, unique life.  It's like being suspended on the edge of a cliff in some bunji gear.  Like I know I just have to find total trust in my harness but damn that's a wide open expanse just out to my front...!

And how amazing, how truly awing--that far, far off view.  Recently my friend Jotto shared a quote with me.    To live a creative life we must lose our fear of being wrong.   Yea, it's sort of like that.  Losing the fear of experiencing the fears that maybe this path is wrong...so that then I can get back on my path and keep moving! The world is what it is because of dreamers like me.  They're not everywhere, it's actually a very active part of my process--seeking them out, and doing so specifically so I continue to take action on my dreams, on the goldlit pink-skied passions that sing specifically to me.  Driving to Easton to see Sam open for the Spring Standard's show, allowing that live music to enter in to me until I was so alive and jamming that we were all still dancing an hour later in the street.  Big open talks with Laura Walsh and sharing songs in the car til 2 am.  Telling the lead singer about sitting out my window when I lived in the apartment on Goldsborough, letting my feet dangle to rest on the roof and me and my cold breath talking to the moon.

Who does that?

Who tells the hot indy artist about that?  And who talks to the moon, anyway?

Dreamers.  Dreamers do, and we tell on ourselves so that maybe you will, too.  

Or the one you said you'd hold on to for dear life.

It's early--not early as it could be.

It's early like 7:30 early, I've been up since 4:45 Sam texted at 5:15 to bring my laptop in so she could play me new music.  There is weather coming no doubt, the water told me so.  It wont be much though the birds are still crying and yesterday there were squirrels running through the dead woods.  Tyler is here, Sam, me.  He hasn't slept since last night, fresh home from Bmore as of a half hour ago he rolls hard like I like to, we're talking TV series she's defending Lost, he The Wire and there is music on my laptop which I am taking in like gulps of air.  I had no comprehension of how cut-off I'd be from the Muse when she went down--my laptop that is.  No music that I love, no poetry no links no blogrolling and most of all, no room for Kel fast as I can to spondown and get it all out.  The journals, they're full, but nothing to fill me back up with no music.  It's a process.  Reciprocation.  I HAD No IDEA.  I sat on the bed for three hours just listening to Pandora and my ITunes, feeling the life come back on deep inside me.  The poems finally emerged then, I spondown'd on here then pulled out the leather back journal Erika overnighted (with her most recent adv copy Hem's Girl which I can't put down--word!!!!) that was waiting on my doorstep yesterday afternoon and I wrote a full, whole poem in that.  I am re-setting my ways as result of not having this my core sustenance.  I have learned something yet again the necessity of filling up, and the absolute non-negotiable:  having a place to fill with the words, a place that remains the same.

Sam played me her man's music he is Philly local soon enough I played her Josh just one song an old one it's the first time I'd done that in a very very long time and that was enough.  We work together Sam and me long hours ten hours at a time and so she is on to me as me to her: we hold the other's stories already, having known each other less than a month.  Some of them anyway, a single bone or two but skeletal-enough. So that with sparing details or so many that they come out in mouthfuls a few bursts at a time we know what flesh were giving the other, which bone on which to hang this part. This was a new twist.  This had new gold.  Little light flecks on the skin.  Long shadows from underfoot aura big as the aururaborelias in the western sky.

I'm seeing my friend Laura Walsh tonight I told her, I play her Walsh's music.

And soon enough there is the response, I feel the throes of the words from somewhere inside my chest and had to get on here it was a matter of health.  Sam and Ty humor me, roll silver and we small talk and cut sidemouth cracks on one another especially about me on the clock.  Here it is the skeleton I am yearning for the one o holy loss the lac of which leaves me with out structure or faith, and happy enough to deny that even a boneyard exists.   How Charles Simic said.  Who can not howl will not find his pack.

I am sick.  Being packless sucks.

Tribute. Los Que Saben.

Last night Brooks and I were on the phone talking process and art and inspiration for at least two and a half hours. 

He quit his job the day after I did in March, we both worked in the same office and the idea was we were both moving to the city to follow our dreams.  He is doing amazingly well, is the host beginning tonight of the Balitmore Song Writers open mic in Fells and this is among at least four or five other big deal things.  When we used to work in cubicles across from one another every week we would talk high-energy, deeply riveting "Narnia" talk (Narnia a reference he came off the cuff with last night, talking about relationships with "normal", un-arty people.  We need them, he said, "to help pull the ropes and lead us out of Narnia.") I used to grab him and yank him towards Narnia--literally take him hand and run us out the back door of the employment agency and through the hard parking lot in the cold light of the sun.  I'd make us walk on a patch of grass-slanted hill, the only section in that area of Easton not paved.  Eventually he caught on and would do the same to or for me.  Yank me out the door when my head needed a check and take me out for duende talk, food and sun.  Our enthusiasm, talking Campbell's bliss-talk and serendipity and inspiration--constantly quoting philosophers or poets or musicians musicians musicians--was unstoppable.

I've tried not to think about it at all and the proof of that fact is it didn't even come up in conversation last night, but my laptop is down and it is killing me. The hardest part of not having it is staring me down this morning--all scowling face and fang-toothed today.  And that's going on the road.  Ahead of me is lots of uncharted time, 6 days in fact of road trip, that would normally be cleaved in to long swaths at various coffee shops between Annapolis and Baltimore working on my novel and blogging and so forth.  The thought of being without that sustenance is making my stomach turn.  The other thing about not having my laptop is not being able to write poetry, too, which I am used to doing at least once a week propped up in bed on a lounge of pillows in the most comfortable place in my world, letting the words drop and flow and come and come.

This all happened in Memphis the week before last when I went to visit Sean.  He has this intercom thing that runs radio stations all through the house and we listened to Christmas music from the moment my family stepped through the door.  So I was in my guest room after a shower and turned on my laptop and turned off the intercom and typed in the address for Pandora.  I'm all for being festive but I needed a break and the myth is always upon me these days, the creative life flourishing there beneath the surface at all times and I believe I need to nurture it much as I can, I believe this can be done through music and reading poems and being present in the still cold winter air and also by being brave.  There were ads that kept popping up on my computer though, and a commercial for Wal-mart that wasn't even connected to a pop-up but that wouldn't turn off.  Next just like that my adrenaline was already going and my head full of panic and memories of the late nineties and the computer at mom's infested with spyware.  I quick turned my laptop off and pretended it wasn't happening and I numbed the part of me that needs that nurturing same as it needs air.

A few days later Justin from work texted me through trying to remove it on my own.  It didn't work.  Full-fledged denial kicked in, this was last week on Tuesday.  I have literally glossed over the reality that my laptop is unusable.  This weekend my dad was home, rendering the computer I am typing on at this moment--in his bedroom--unusable.  I pretended like the urge to write just wasn't there. This is similar, for those of you unfamiliar, to say not having a tongue but trying to pretend you are able otherwise able to eat and speak. I laid in bed with library books all weekend listening to the radio. My music is on my laptop, too.  I kept telling myself, this too shall pass.

And therein, the point of this post.

Thank god for Brooks, for Sam, for Erika. The ones who need the nurturing as much as air.  I lived for years denying that part of me, and then wondering why I felt so consistently deadened inside.  I am writing an entire book about this struggle.  I dont feel crazy, or like it's something made up, anymore.  In the past month I have had extensive conversations with each of those people about this very thing.  It makes me miss Laura Walsh, who I spent every solstice with for years, and our talks.  Laura who sat for hours and hours in the Chestertown coffee shop with me discussing this struggle as I bit by bit garnered the strength I'd need to change my priorities.  So this post is for them, the crazies.  For Laura and Kat, Erika and Kirsten.  For Molly, who lost the battle.  For Sam and Brooks, the two most kind and gentle, glorious magician men I have ever known.  This holiday, at the end of this good year, I am so, so thankful to have such tribespeople in my realm.

So long as I have pen and paper I will have to be alright.

And that is all I know to say about that.  

Message in my bottle

There are common concerns I've heard, and usually shared, about moving up the time change and thereby forcing the start of spring. Screwing up our Circadian Cycles and what not. I am born one day after the equinox, and I mean to write it that way: I Am Born, recognizing this time of year always as a time of great rebirth for me. I am one day in to the start of spring, and my whole life, or long as I can consciously remember being aware of "within", I have cycled with the seasons. I am a sunhead, drawn to the light, but born under a Taurus moon, so ruled inwardly by the night. So I flow gently as I can allowing the seasons, and my own deep and personal experiences of them, to inform my soul. I'm born at the Equinox, a baby of perfect union of dark and light. I think these are the marks I came in to this world with, and I seek the balance of allowing them to inform me but only insomuch as trying recognize the "intuitive"-born pathways in to my soul. Last year at the timechange I remember feeling like Milly the Mole: someone turned the lights on too quick!! I was surrendered to my burrow, in deep hibernation doing an awful lot of resting. I wasn't ready to come out yet from my hole. But this year. Woah. I. Am. So. Ready.

This sickness I am just coming through--and by the way, thank you so much all my well-wishers who commented on this blog or facebook or via email, it meant a ton, truly--it was so much more than just a physical thing. I believe in the oneness of the body: the physical and the chemical and hormonal body, effected fully by the mental or emotional body, the subconscious body and the intuitive, the subtle energy body and the spirit. I believe in the full picture of all of these, and I can tell you for sure that my illness was symptomatic of far deeper imbalances than merely fluid in my ears. I was forced during that time of sickness (and time of snow-hostage!) (oh, and during all that, in case the message WASN'T LOUD ENOUGH, my phone got wet and stopped working!) to surrender and to fully hear me. And what I was saying was what I, my deep quiet voice within, has been saying for so, so long. I moved on to Anngar Farm with Brandon over a year and half ago, in fact in June it will be two years. And strangely, the moment we got all our stuff in to that castillo--or castle--which is what my Mexican friend Santiago called the six-bedroom farmhouse that Brandon and I were literally given in exchange for caretaking the several acres of landscaped lawn that came along with it, I began to experience a deep and nagging discontent. I had no words for it, but it kept me up late, woke me up in the dark with blank stares, and caused me endless bouts of un-named melancholy worsened by my own refusal to just listen to what was Within. I kept telling my self just to shut-it, and be grateful for all the gifts you have why don't you?! By October of that year, some four or so months after we'd finally settled in, I had at least allowed myself to hear my inner message: I just want some time to be alone.It made no sense to me. But intensified monthly. Now, here's the thing you need to know about me. I believe in our own deep Authenticity. That we each are alit with gifts specific to our own souls, unique to our own form of song. And it is our duties to listen and align with them and draw them out, and indeed this is how to evolve in to our best selves and serve this world. I believe in constant change, the power of intention, positive thinking and the law of attraction. And most of all I believe that we all are engaged by the same unifying energy, and that that energy exists in vibrations, and that everything, from a thought or intention to the rising-tide, the full moon the equinox a winter's snow or bad news from your best friend, vibrates at a certain level. And at any given moment my being, my holistic whole-bodied being vibrates according to all these many factors of Oneness. And my job is to stay the Conscious Witness so I can align and offer up those vibrations that are unique to me...I believe that in this way Harmony is possible...if even at times it looks like and feels like Divine Chaos. So in this Oneness of things, all movement has it seasons. And finally it came time for me to surrender to that deep yearning: it was all I could do to not scream it at the top of my lungs I just need to be Alone! It logically made no sense but I couldn't fight it anymore, and in fact, I often wonder if fighting that instinct for as long as I did instead of exploring the message of it contributed to the pain that it has greatly caused between me and Brandon. I literally was beginning to fracture inside, to feel depressed and more. And by the time I could take it no more what was left was letting down the person I loved most in the world. And frankly, I had no real reason to give to him.... But there is absolutely no denying that when I surrendered to the deep inner calling and said Yes to it--doors opened immediately. First a new job that afforded me enough money to live on my own, then a home in the vicinity of the new job. The first night I was here at Chop I was busybusy moving all my packed bags off my bed when something suddenly shook me and I stilled inside, and in the utter quiet of those surroundings the inner voice said: Do you hear it? This, this deep silence is what you wanted. And my friends, it is so, so quiet here.

So, I'd love to tell you that I've just honored that quiet since then. And certainly in my own little regular ways I have. But I've also quietly been trying to plot and plan my next move, and then getting frustrated when I can't seem to force those changes. Ping-pong, ping-pong. The more time passes, the more frustrated and full of plans I get. Only to feel exhausted and more confused that ever. I like Louise Hay's term for this--Divine Discontent--and here-in lay the message of my illness: to slow down and just do what I came here, what I quite literally was led here, to do. Be Quiet. Take time to be quiet, in silence, and alone. And trust what will come from within will come in its right time. As all things come as and when they should... Like a foot of snow after you've been home sick for four days. Or the vibrant buds of purple crocus' who so needed some snow melt to grow grow grow... Ahhh, what balance to continually learn and relearn how to strike: balance of the light of knowledge versus faith that in what you can't always see ahead of you in the dark...So it goes so it goes and so it goes..So might it be....

Inside Great MaMa Magnolia, Who Breathes Silence, late-night witching hour with Laura Walsh, Chestertown

Righteous and Dogmatic in my Ways

thanks goes to the astounding wonder that is laura walsh for this hot buy:

a close up of just what that says:find those shirts for sale here and check out the hauntingly lovely laura walsh, who will be recording all new material at the end of the month (support independant music peopl--that's what i'm talking about) here