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.  

It's Been A Good Year (but dont make her lift her skirts or I'll be pissed!)

It's been a good year.  I am sitting in conversation with this guy at the door of a coffee shop in this place called Severna Park and I have not seen him since no shit 1995 (oh my god, how funny I just remembered we were Class Partiers together in the year book, that's why he was explaining so bummedly and borderline apologetically about having to quit smoking!  Holmes my dad's got lung disease c'mon! We're grown up now it's alright...) and all I can think is it's been a good year.

I am kind, and ground myself and remind myself to be present.  It is genuinely good to see him: he is one of the only people from my high school, or the one near where I worked as a teen, that via facebook or some other networking means hadn't been found and labeled: Married, Divorced, Parent, etc and I tell him as much.  I admit I do, now I can check him off in my head.  Our funny little ways of keeping track of one another that get complained about but that at the end of the day matter, afterall.  Me, I have a Mama-Soul as part of my spirit, and a tight-knit tribe of Family which marked me deep in the place that gets marked by how we are nurtured, so knowing where and how people are adds to my security.  I grounded in this, and was happy to connect again to this guy.

But It's been a good year, and that is the line that has the little wick attached.  It's the line that when gionng through my head while walking out of Brian's house this morning in desperate strides towards the nearest wifi-having local coffee shop, triggered the light inside to tell me the Muses are near.  There is no other way to explain this to you if it is not your experience--the best I can do is what I always do when I sit down and write.  Just tell the truth tell the truth tell the truth and follow that little feeling of light.  I do not know when it started but I do know that it is real, it is the most real thing I know.  It is a feeling that comes on inside that alerts me to the inner creativity the boundless place and my duty, my calling here on this earth no matter what else is to bring it to the surface, to midwife it and breathe in to it the life it needs to fly.  And when I disregard it I get short and turn in to an asshole and so help me if you cross my way when I am in the middle of my dance with the Muse.  So help me, that is, should you make her lift her skirts and high-heeled or bare-footed run away.

But what a superstition that is, too?  Writing involves discipline and the most clear lesson I learned in the past two years is to not underestimate what happens by simple alchemy of action. Showing up, not bitching, and doing what the hell's got to get done, which almost always is what's right in front of me. It's more than just saying ahhh yea I will start with It's been a good year because that is where the little light is attached.  It's also bringing in to the coffe shop two books that really turn me on and reading a while this morning, and even more it's about sitting down especially when the light hasn't or doesn't feel like it's going to come. 

It's been a good year.  In November it was the Harvest New Year and starting out--the first week of the new year!--my bank account was in the red.  So what was in front of me was get a better job and get your finances re-ordered, no matter what. So I did because after the last two years of my life dont ever underestimate my hustle.  Turns out now I get to manage this way hip, way mellow local coffee shop in the Pines where I live.  It's brand new and the boss needed someone with experience in community building and coffee-shop culture, which has nothing to do with caffeine and everything to do with supporting and growing your local tribe.  Even the business model functions that way and I brought to this my barista-ing for Peggy those years back at Play It Again in Chestertown, as well as the local art, food and music movement we grew around The Oregon Dialogue.  So far sooo good.  It overlooks the Bay and River on the west side of the inlet of Ocean City.  I watch the sun come up every morning and breathe and exhilarate in how fucking rad it is to be alive. 

And I am writing, and chilling a lot outside, and that is that.  It's been a good year.  In November 2008 I left my relationship of 6 years.  Right after that Josh and I tried to be lovers after a decade of being Muse to one another.  I still believe he was a true love, but we ended too because just because something's true doesn't mean it's meant to be.  Losing him, and leaving Brandon and Chestertown and Anngar Farm all at the same time was the single most painful part of my life and from start to finish it lasted until around the middle of this summer. 

It's been a good year.

I worked for Chesapeake College when I left Bran, I was one of four people who started the GED and community English program that now serves all five counties on the upper and mid Eastern Shore.  I worked my fucking ass off while I was there, and stepped down in May after living in isolation for a year out on the Choptank River and licking my wounds.  I was lonely and needed family and friends. I went on a month long sabbatical in the Pac NW in May and June and while there had more than one other-world experience of being Called again.  I moved back to mom's at the beach after that and partied like a rock star all summer long and still found that I had one more hall to cross to transition my life from Brandon-Josh-Chesapeake to the one that lay beyond.  This stuff cant be made up, you know?  The light within is real, what if that is our only choice, to surrender to the myth of what could be and give it our all to bring it to life?  How about learning that the only way to do this is to do it!?  And what about the struggle of being a woman and feeling this is the work you're meant to do?  This is subject matter for another post (or a whole damn book, ehem...) but what about that?  I know plenty of artist men whose art is their main and only priority.  What about when you're a woman with the same compulsion, what happens then? When the pain is that bad I know now that actually it's my only choice, to believe in this mid-wifing and keep breathing and trusting in the birth about to come.  The pain is my spirit--not a religious thing I am talking about the place inside of I AM--calling out a red alert to listen the hell up.

It's been a good year.  Tuesday night I watched Candace, Jessica, Shanika and LaShae walk in their caps and gowns and receive their Maryland State High School Diplomas.  They were four of 43 graduates from Chesapeake in just the last six months!  And at one time I held each of those girls hand in hand.  I hooped and hollered from the audience because I dont work there anymore so now it's okay for me to be wild and exuberant and un-professional even if it seems I'm acting a fool.

It's been a good year.  I dont live in fantasy anymore about a man who's love will finally change or set me free.  I dont dream of someday when I get to do.....all these millions of different passion-fueled things.  For the first time in my life I wake up now and just live today.  Seriously.  It's the first time in my life I've ever done that, you dig how crazy that sounds?  The passing from then to now was long and great and so dark at times that I often forgot what path I was on.  But I am me today and at peace with who I am.  All I need to do now is trust in her day to day. 

And pay attention to when the wick-light comes on, by listening and more, taking action on what's right in front of me.  By practicing what I learned in those two years which is easy to say but takes a while to get the footwork right. It sounds silly maybe but what the hell is there other than saying yes ok, the next step is just be present that's how right now that I can Show up, and the peace is inside knowing that the rest will be what it will be. 

The Impulse, Itself

Mom and I watched Grey Gardens last night, the one with Drew Barrymore that HBO did. I never knew about it, the two Edith Beale's their relationship to Jackie Bouvier or the 1970's documentary about them. The madness of a woman, or women, when dreams get deferred.

Creative madness. Genius. How it levels you, pummels you, brings you to your knees--your knees the only place, of course, and credit here to Erika for the reminder--that, so humbled, you may find your redemption?

The Impulse to me comes on in many different forms. Which is to say, despite the Muse or not, life shutters me sometimes it just does. Ahhh god and to feel that shutter. To feel for that shutter! In meditation It said that is true desire. Photos that capture the lines of distinct, but wordless. Longing or wonder, or boredom. Sacred human fucking boredom! Colors, no matter what form or aesthetic: clothing, a painting, a tree dropping leaves or the grand fall sky. Music that makes me feel like a bullseye by what, or how, it's said. (Right now in fact that would be Cant You Hear Me Knocking by the Stones) Certain people. Conversations. Late night fires. The way the air breathes. Kir and LDubb do it for me a lot of the time. For a long time it was this guy, his name is Josh, he still does it for me but it hurts to feel him gone so most times I just dont know what to do with that. I told my mom today that I remember being 15 in the Goodwill, the smell of the books and the way the little blue corduroy jumpers from the 70's made me feel Like I actually heard the little bells ringing, the spheres of heaven grind in unison on axis' gold in their tilt, I mean the soft moths of my heart fluttered aloft--the Goodwill closet!! I'd discovered myth! I found me! Being on my moon, that too is Muse, or sacred certain Impulse, to me. Being so fervently swelled when my Moontime is here. I mean there are times, like today, that I actually talk like that!

And more, I do things like I did tonight, with a vintage apron on that I found last week and a scarf around my neck that I bought today at an Antiques/Bookstore located on the dusty bottom floor of someone's old farmhome, I waltzed around the kitchen. The scarf is the most gorgeous shade of ivory that I have ever scene, it makes me feel royal, or sophisticated and that is because it is made of lace. It is from 1962. I got it for a ridiculous cheap price. And the paisley apron still had the original tag on it. Mom came in and there I was dancing with the arms of my scarf up off my chest and in the air in either hand. She grinned at me, me back at her. Then we were laughing our asses off cuz, my god, were like the two Edies? That cracked with the madness or the love?

No no, I've been there before. Cracked with the madness. But when it comes from disruption, fear. Repression. I mean I been there. It's like Joan Burroughs said Either you know now what I know (and dont ask me just what that is)...or you just dont. And that's the thing I hate how long it's taken me to trust what I know. I mean, for years creativity was struck up by madness to me, the bad, scary might not make it back kind. Period, it just was. That's what happens when you really follow that clean kissed line far, far out there. Sometimes, it's amazing, but you dont get all the way back. Or safely that is. And then, if like me you do make it back, you do get let down from that lone tree well ever-after you struggle: do you walk the clean Safe line rather than the kissed one? Cuz then like a stubborn ol asshole you still pride your self on your aesthetic, on your discipline, but at the end of the night unwittingly you court the madness anyway cuz you're not being true to yourself and besides no one wants to be a asshole. For me it was never so stable, I had to fight for it, have to. Just for the conviction of kissed. It's easier now, I trust it. Trust the conviction. Trust the moony witchy psychic thing, too, just as much. For me there's no separating either of it out. I can trace back to when I first came to the gate, face to face to claim my own conviction in a open-eyed way. Can look back to the fall of 2006 and a car ride to Baltimore with Patty who gave me the book that I studied on Christ and our conversation about Gandhi. A party in Philly. A night all night long with the poetry it was Fishing Rock still in those days and my friend Paul asleep in the next room all the way from Oregon. A conversation with Kelly Johnson and a prayer, specific, beseeching on my knees. The spiral way I've revisited that lesson of then, of conviction at the far side between the gaping space at the end of my hand, again and again since then.

And that's it. Miserable clean KISSED line. How very fucking hard I've fought to take the kissed, golden, one. How I'll fight for it, now that I'm actually starting to live it these three turns of years flick flick swish goes the page, these three years later. How I'll fight, and surrender, and fight again to surrender, just to keep up now, and maintain....

I'll fight, smiling, even. Gladly!