Blessings in the Sun, & California-Bound.

Every so often when I'm driving home at 3 am on a Monday or random Wednesday or Thursday I think to myself, is this normal?  None of my married or parent friends are doing this right now.  And then I laugh and think thank you so much I love my life.  So I was a little late coming in to bloom--I haven't touched a drink or a drug in almost 11 years, and that is the central fact of my life--the choice I made to save my spirit.  To resuscitate me.  In my early twenties when most my friends were doing what I do now I was a sloppy drunk trying to insidiously control my drug use and the fear-clench always in my gut.  It was a lazy, dirty time. I had fun, and got down with unquestionably some of the coolest people on earth back then but honestly, I didn't like myself too much.

I didn't know how to like me, like really love me cuz I kept messing things up...I'm thankful for the re-set button in life.  For the enduring depth of wild spirit deep and abiding in me that for some reason I committed to learning how to trust.

It's solstice, longest day of the summer was yesterday--the sun peaks at its highest during the day today.  And whether or not people realize it, the high light-energy was totally catalyzed over the last couple 24 and for the next few, too:  Anyhow for me, last night the high energy out in the dance club was such crazy good fun.

Ha ha and so wild, too.

My sweet, sweet life, hand-whittled by choice.  Choice coupled with trust in the high harmony of putting my heart behind exactly what I love, and bit by bit eliminating what I dont.  Or learning how to be peaceful and accept.  I dance alot, I have such good friends, ohhh & all the all the light of the sun and surfing and salt water sea how I love swimming and to float and to be with the white wave breaking and pushing me, o music and yoga and doing body work and counseling people and being willing to serve.  There is so much that is full, as the sun on high illuminates all we love.

O sacred book and poems!  A year ago today I was at the Belmont Street Fair in Seattle it was cold and gray and I had just spent a month in the PacNW rejuvenating myself after two years of stressful burn-out at my job.  I stepped down and haven't looked back.  I am a waitress now!  How much has lightened, and changed.

On August 1 me and an old grl from highschool are driving 50 straight across.  I want to start under the sign in Ocean City that says Sacramento, CA 3073 miles and then hit the road.  We are going to Santa Cruz where she lives and I am staying with her for a month or so to get sort of relaxed and find my feet on the new ground of the West Coast.  Then I'll trip around a while, and find a place in the fall to settle down.

I am happy getting happier.  Why not?  A good meditation for the Solstice: what else could life possibly be about?

"More caffeine, so I can use my device faster." And other moments along the way.

I used a map to drive around Southern Oregon for 8 days.

The big creased and soft along the fold-seems paper kind. My music was tunneled, country or rock and roll. I smiled alot, the whole time, whether sun and big grey clouds or blue skies or Januaryrain.

I'd get a big meal a day, eat off the leftovers, crackers, water and fruit.

And coffee.

I drank coffee with my favorite people for hours in the morning. I tripped live and large along with them through the ensuing big caffeinated conversations. Paul, Beth, Gretchen, Jill.

I made unwitting offering to the Breitenbush, she took offering from me, sitting under the diamondbacked sky tucked around Paul and I on the rickety wood bridge in the cold, black silhouette of Devils Peak measuring our breathing and blocking out the ahead of us view of the stars. The river took bittersweet chocolate from me it fell right out of my pocket and between the boards in to the hard rushing waters of the river below, and the next day on a long hike she gave back her bittersweet gifts. She hushed us to her side, she sat us down. Then unwitting again I cried in Paul's arms, I let the past go, I dunked my head in baptism in the South fork of her before she joined the North and ran hard and high down past the spiral pools and cabins of the resident side.

I wandered in the all green forest, I sung songs of thanks and then stumbled on the fairee vortex as gold and rainbos spiraled out and around us past the veil of my common eyes.

I walked in the rain. I walked in the rain and slept deep half dreams tucked in the woods under down covers and the breath of good friend.

I ran out of gas for the first time. I came off I-5 on to the exit ramp giving a blogofriend a lift to a stop midway to Portland. I came down off my otherworldmountainhigh to the soaked fumes of petro permanent on my hands.

I soaked in Beth's bath and luxuriated with her on her couch in our comfies, doing nothing but old 90's movies on Netflix on demand while the rain made songs and laughter and loong long stories on her roof sliding down.

I kissed endangered white wolves, I got kissed and shmooped by them. I listened to them howl. I melted in my heart a little to watch the wise woman most true to me in her element, dancing and happy in the almost wild with the wolves she so loves.

I looked at pictures of Gretchen from the 70's and 80's, listened to so many stories of youth and mess-ups, of passion and memories and friends, of family and lessons passed. I went to Mill Street where I used to always go, smelled the lowtide mudflats left behind while the Alsea River retreated out to the sea. I had breakfast with Mandy and Gretchen and Jeanette on the corner in Waldport of 101 and high green trees.

I packed my camelback with poetry I found in used bookstores along the road, I packed it with journals and my camera and fruit and went out on the 804 in Yachats and laid my body across hot rocks and drenched myself in sun. I listened to the ocean and laid in green grass, tucked flowers again and again in my hair. I wrote poems with rocks on rocks at the base of the sea, let the spirit of forlorn travellers and muscle gatherers and merwoman fierce goddesses speak through me.

I followed the Oregon Coast Trail with Beth through the trees, along the cliffs. I stood in tree pose with her the other tree, I screamed and laughed with her at the startled bike rider and the peculiar cries of Crow. I birthed myself naked and clean in the Cummins Creek deep in the forest at the bottom of my old secret trail while she sister soul she is was sacred witnesser for me.

I listened to music and let Nye Beach run its rivulets of weird passion love at Mundo all through me and warmed at the love between Beth and her husband Ben.

I drove to Florence because the ache was so strong.

I stopped passed the Oregon House to listen to the crashing and the wind and let my heart beat. I stopped at Heceta Head. I stopped at the top of a dune in Florence, I fell in love with the again present sun.

I giggled at the way the yellow turned white shine dipped again and again beneath the surface of the ocean in hydroreflectionrainbowshine tripping and spinning on itself in mindless perfect glee. I fell in love with me again, again, again, in Florence on my last solo date. Eating seafood enchiladas with dungeness, a new book, and sheer crazy deliriousness of melty chocolate cake.

I laughed my ass of with Jill Brewer Bard. I laughed my face off with Jill Brewer Bard and Gretchen. I laughed with those ladies till our faces were red and lined and scrunched like fists our stomachs contorted our eyes wet and mouths dry. I laughed and part of it at least was so I would not cry.

I drove the curvey Alsea Highway with Jill and we laughed again this time trying hard not to laugh so as to ward off the stomach curvy travel wurvy feeling of wanting to puke. I assured her how fabulous 30 is, I behaved with her as fabulous women ought to.

I fell in love, I fell in love, I ached and fell in love with her daughter Laurel and talked forever, like I did before, with her amazing husband John.

I took the train. I felt strong and raw with the holy train pain of goodbye.

And then, I rediscovered Seattle.

I remembered how easy it is to blend right in with family and stood back a minute to sweat how fucking cool cousin Kate really is. I laughed, and have not stopped, with her man Micah. I am touched and continue to be at how soft he is with her, how much his walking love and adoration is shown in the little things he does. I walked the high hills with them to look out on the sound and the city from upper Queen Anne's.

I walked forever on my own.

I met Larry at his favorite Turkish spot at Pike, met Katie and ate Piroshky's then shopped and stopped and talked and talked and had happy hour at Mia's at Cyclops on 1st and Wall in Belltown.

I experienced music, I experienced music on nonstop roll at Micah's techsavy hands. I experienced music at the Seatttle Music Project, I experienced music live and in the streets. I loved how friends love other friends on first meeting, I sung with Kate as she celebrated and surprised us all with celebration for Larry who turned 33. I smiled and couldnt stop at our Friday night dinner party with Annie and Larry and gin rummy and dancing and grilling and then, late night heart sobs and truth and hugs.

I caffeinated I caffeinated I caffeinated and all the important caffeinated talks. I am, I was, I continue to be floored at how magnificent Kate is, at how funny and smart and alive Micah, at how good us three flow together. Knowing that chossing something to do for the day happens way funner when you then just fold it in to how you're being. I love and love and love and miss already my amazing cousin and friend.

I celebrated Solstice in Freemont naked bike riders and festivals and music and carny light from inside dancing in the street DIY all over the place and food that drips down your arms and wildness and permission, cuz even tho it doesnt feel it, summer is here.

And I anticipate what's next now, after Ballard today and Larry taking me to SeaTac tomorrow. I love and have, in hitting fully and completely the Karmic Reset Button, wiped clean and found even deeper acceptance and love of myself. I look forward to floating in Mama Atlantic and smiling and not doing but wholly being in the East Coast OC sun.

Happy SUmmer.

Kate, to Micah:

-God, I can't believe it's June 20th it feels like November.

-I'm sorry I'm sorry I bring you all the way over here and it's fall. Altho fall is told to be your favorite season I guess it's not fun without a summer first...

(really, it's hella crazy good fun)

~~
What we are listening to, compliment of Garrison this morning:
Jessica Lea Mayfield

Change is gonna come

Recently, I found myself catching up with two old friends. Lindsey (see post from May 10, That Girl) was my big-eyed sister who grew up in the woods with me from the time that I was 11 and she was 10. She was home from Florida last week and we hadn't spent any quality time together in over a decade. And Mandy, who became my closest grl when we were 19 and living at the Drift hood together in OC (see post from June 7, Ocean Pines) just recently moved to those same woods where Lindsey and I used to run. Near to the end of the Real Work as I am, these visits were absoloutey serendipitous. They were so meaningful and rich, and as Clarissa Pinkola Estes puts it, so very signifigant in gathering my bones.

So I been driving the backroads a lot, see, going over the old soil of where I'm from. Summer Solstice comes this weekend. The time when the sun is most close to the earth, our homeground. She breathes the sun, our mama earth, without its rays nothing would live. Photosynthesis wouldn't occur. Without the sun baking those leaf sugars into respiration our ecosystem would have no lungs to breath. No energy exertion on the trees parts would mean all the decay would no longer feed itself into the compost for new life. Life, simply, would halt. It would deteriorate into a mass of black goo. Holy primordial funk of what we're made of, but no actual making....

Like the sun, each of us has a light of consciousness, a quiet part in our heart of awareness. That wide silent space behind the chatter where I for one like to touch down find my self-connection. If you read me regularly you know this is my own understanding of God, the Deep Within. The place where I am aware of I Am, of that power of all that is....

I've been remembering the power of that light, and of the great cycles of life and rebirth.

And this is what our cells naturally remember right around this time of year. For the past two weeks everyone around me has been in one of two states: reorginization--which for some looks an awful lot like chaos-making; or dull low slump. I myself have been back and forth between the two. In our bones right now, implicit of the very air we breathe, the sun we crave and suck up, the ocean and river waters that cleanse us, the earth that at least here on the Mid-Atlantic Coast grows greener with every passing day, is the slight-touched knowledge: deep within us speaks the energy now that lay still unutilized or unfulfilled. And on the outside a hyper-awarenss of all that we have grown.

Sometimes, says Anna Quindlen, not to decide is to decide. In my opinion too many people slumber. They carry on with there outside lives endlessly ignoring the deep messagry from inside. And yet that is where the real power, that unquenched longing so much of us are searching for, resides. Those undecided decisions show themselves at a time like this. Soo too, the blessings. The quiet touching harmony of who we are.

Take heart, take stock.

Change is gonna come.....