Oakland

 These pictures are of memories, a fairy, & making friends.

In Oakland I sleep with the back door opened.  There is no screen just a second floor wood veranda that looks out to the right at Lake Merit and used to have green plants all over it but now just has Jon's tent, airing out.  The breeze is always light and cool, and steady.  It makes me think the music up the street or downstairs is a festival in the street.  Which means Oakland has carnival air.

Tonight after work we ate Italian food on a corner at a wrought iron table.  They drank wine.  I had a down feather in my hair that made me think of getting clean.  We are working a lot, which feels good.  At night I run next to the lake which smells like sweat, or fish, or salt.  Like home.  There are always tons of people, in the dark, walking their dogs, sitting in the grass, being romantic, holding hands. 

I love laughing, that is a theme of Oakland, that and the peace of being myself and having nights of quiet company.  I love how the air through the back door breezes me to sleep.  I am going through something very recently that makes me realize how much I've grown when it comes to intimacy.  Which is good, because back when I realized I needed it, growth seemed the hardest, most far off way.

I love Oakland, Jon wants to live here forever, to maybe never leave.  I get it.  I would feel the same, too, if I had a home with laughing and peaceful carnival air.

The Adventures of Charlotte Bliss. Which are non-stop.

It's amazing how no matter what, here is the blog, and I come back again.

The flowers in California are beautiful and I want know to every one by name.  I want to call them on the phone and find out what their favorite fruit is and where they'd go on vacation.  Did anyone ever think to say~hey, that flower belongs some place pretty, somewhere natural and fresh and alive, easy as she is~I would do that for you flowers, in the tree code ocean worshiping language that I speak.

What a world, what a life, what a barrelled tumble of its wind.   I got back here and there was some ill shit that happened to my car that had to get tended to, and it really bummed me out.  There is little that can be done for your heart when the world runs amok in its most intimate places.  My trust got rattled. I met a guy, he was amazing, the time we spent together was amazing.  He lives far away.  I live in my car which is everywhere and nowhere all at once.  Life keeps happening.  We moved Monique out basically overnight.  We went to San Jose in a posh posh swank hotel with the whole band.  Dancing and powerhouse women and the dirtiest mouth ever on Kristen.  I laughed so much I had to borrow from my laugh account, which hurts your stomach after a while and makes your heart better where maybe it had stopped remembering for a minute how to work. I can't get over the good luck in my life and amazing strong and sexy and gorgeous and funny, deep powerhouse women.  O did I say that once already?  It's true!  We were up til 5 Friday and 3:30 Saturday.  Dorthea took me to Berkeley yesterday.  Talking late night women's cycle talk in the kitchen with Aloe.  The hills here, the shores, the ocean.  The breeze.  We were back to the beach by the night and it was damp and cold in the street.  We used an Kristen's apps to name planets and look at the stars.  I am going to Oakland tomorrow, the mountains by the weekend, there is so much to show up to, so much to do.  Life!  I want to live you!  I want to know the names of all your flowers again.  To be an active lover of your land.

I want to be surrounded by the people who care if I do.

The Adventures of Charlotte Bliss. California, poetry & tidbits.

~Sebastopol, 9/18/11

In California everyone knows what an Americano is, the light still slants the same dark yellow in the fall, and asada always comes with cilantro and lime.

~

I told you help me remember this the body has a body all its own
The poems are back again, little do you know this is truth about us
already written
how timelessness aches to find someone
willing to come to life
the song

~
I love spontaneous shuffled-ipod moments that sum it up.  that cant be planned.

12 song round-up, driving out Ukiah down the 101.

1. Home.  Edward Sharp...
2. Sweetest Thing.  The Waifs
3. Tree.  Blitzen Trapper
4. Below the Hurricane.  Blizten Trapper
5. Lie Detector Test.  Sage Francis
6. No Dough.  The Mamas and Papas
7. Wasted.  Brandi Carlile
8. Dreams.  Brandi Carlile
9. Oh Dear.  Brandi Carlile
10. Speed Law. Mos Def
11. That Hump.  Erykah Badu 
12. Tiny Cities Made of Ashes.  Modest Mouse

ahhh, poems~
masquerading as mere sound

~
Nobody wants you when you're old and gray, they'll be some changes made
~

Bodega Hwy, The Russian River...
so what i dont have money.  i also dont give a damn.
~

"In San Francisco, everything is more bohemian, and a good deal like Paris." --Alfred Hertz, 1910

~

9/20/11

You met me, I want to tell him, when I had my at-home body.  Might as well of been my winter-weight.  Comforting, taking of food and tv.  Low light of evening, settling sounds of night in the comfort of mom's home.  It falls so easy in to flopping. In to not taking care of myself.  I ran yesterday for 45 minutes, the whole time next to the sea.  I walked around town twice, once before that to the market and once later, in the afternoon, to the beach.  California is the active high-bodied vitality.  Of how to live.

~ 

It's not cryptic!  Some things I just keep private on here

~

the girl w the pendant of her grandmother's also has genuine, kind eyes. 

~

maybe she is a student?  probably.  i want to tell her.  hold tight to this freshness.  the vitality will try to disappear.  the maintenance of which will be all that matters in your times to come.

this is not california.  just, soul.  that which can not be taught.  but practiced.  well-practiced in to a disciplined gold.

~

i love coffee shops.

it's hot in Central California,

& who cares the boys club

I may never get in?

~

Sebastopol, finally~these are my ppl.

groovy as they come.

TAoCB. Baby Grace.

It was a long trip off the mountain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Adventures of Charlotte Bliss. Bliss.

At night we laugh until our faces freeze red and there’s no sound left because we’re out of breath. Usually it’s cause Yalle is hanging out on the dating sight and she’s writing outrageous and shocking off the cuff responses to the unsuspecting dudes brave enough to email first. The rest of us are living through her. My favorite wine is whiskey. There’s one guy she really does like so those emails take at least an hour to write. We don’t have tv but there are lots of movies on dvd and also Mo figured out how to stream Jersey Shore. In the morning the sky is always blue and the redwoods are so tall I can’t see the dark tops from my bottom bunk when I first start to wake. I always can hear the music of the wind though, the orchestra of air moving through the high up bows. This is so, so good for me. I tell my friends here: for years I could see this wooded mountain place with yellow light and soft air on my skin. I could feel the deep rounded peace and how it was the mountains and the ocean was near. I get choked up periodically, especially in the mornings, doing yoga on the back deck of the cabin under the trees. Because this is it, I am here.


The woman who runs the house loves to cook and it’s joyous every night the way she feeds us all. She has a funny looking dog all muscley who behaves as if he’s really tough but curls in a ball on her chest whenever he can. Farm work is fun, the hours are long and the weather so fine, the company amazing. My body is always edged out, satiated from the regiment strength I give to this land and its bounty here, always pushing beyond what I think I am prepared to give. I sleep so well as if sleep is a brand new gift that I get to use as much as I can. The music, our music always plays. It echoes in the valley and the stories, then the silence…then the music then the sun-wind-music made by the trees. It all echoes, one lends to the other, it goes on and on. The stories. These people. The mountains and the sun.

This is so, so good for me.

TAoCB. NorCal.

So, the grls in the north Cali woods have adequately blown my mind.

I mean, I just love when life contradicts your expectations of it. I am surrounded by majestic Redwoods, dark green pines far older than our Constitution, the Eel River is ribboning along side the soft quiet of the land. There are buckets of sunshine and a sky so blue it sings, men who talk about creating your own reality and the vortex of your own loving soul and women with uncut dreadlocks sixteen years long in tie-die skirts. The music never ends. People use composting toilets, at the farmer’s market way down the hills are cucumber lemons that you eat like an apple, in the outhouse there are crayons next to the toilet paper so you can draw on the walls while having a seat.

Now. Add to that, should you be able, the sight of two long-haired mellow hippie mamas rapping every single word to Kanye’s Monster. I mean all of a sudden out of nowhere first we were hula-hooping then they’re full-out rapping gangsta rough-neck style as if they never left the projects whaaat?? I was so off the chain with down to earth glee, so utterly delighted by this little bit of city in my temporary mountain home, so headchecked by such unexpected burst of spontaneity-keeping-me-on-my toes-ness of it that I still can not stop grinning. And as result, I now have two new grl-heros in my life, and so thank you Life for never letting me down, and thank you Bess and Ehm… This one’s for you~

What's Rad. Kir-Russ & Tess. (Scim, too~!) YoLo.

These three women proved the Holy-Wonder-Awe Power of When-the-World-Takes-Hold-of-Your-Open-Heart. (If you let it!)  They swooped in and saved my life last week.

Two of them keep snapshot blogs, entry-corners into the endless beauty of the passion in their lives.  Check them out

Here  (courierknew.tumblr.com) is Kirsten

and

Here  (ourbeachbaby.com) is Tessa

YoLo!

TAoCB. Santa Cruz.

So it happened that we were on the back porch the high veggie gardens and butterflies pointed overhead when I fell in love.

Classic east-west hybrid of grease and health scrambled egg and cheese breakfast on toast with hummus and arugula and avocado, too, it was late in the morning what some people--not my people--would consider afternoon.  Monique's friend got here and fit right in and the three of us in our random wondrous rounds flitted about a bit than landed together in a circle wide enough for us all, but close together too, on the wood deck and stones, in the sun with breakfast in her backyard.

And it came out what a Sunday Funday football nerd I am--the roots in this, how it connects me to home, to south Baltimore home of dad and the McMullens and all the maleness, the males the males the men of my family my history and the industry and honesty of the blue-collar turned prosperous settled traditional hard-working people who grew me.  How it comes out for me now in shades of Ravens purple in the fall.

How it means all, when it comes to security that is.  We were talking then I was high energized light in my eyes talking about the exhibition game Thursday night.  Eagles and the Ravens on tv at the brew-pub in Santa Barbara just me and my Chestertown-who-arent-from-Chestertown and dont even live-there-now some Ravens-fans some-for-Philly eastcoast-friends.  And then I started to tell Mo's friend about our highschool football team, how bad they were in the nineties how it took them til our senior year before they won one game.  This is when Monique interjected with her own contagious personality of half-enthusiasm half-pure sweet Yes!! Yes we were so bad we actually got a day off school when they won the Homecoming Game! And then I was zeal-fresh with my own infected spur YES!  Yes! Because of course that is where I was going with the story--that we actually--did she remember--got a day off school.  So obviously.  That is when I fell in love.  So I figured I better tell her:  once I love you it's no more good.  You're sorta stuck with me, then no matter what may come.  Like...forever...

She is taking me north in to the mountains with friends.  Santa Cruz mellow as it is--on bikes all over town yesterday, volleyball on the beach happy hour tacos all her friends so sooo good--the smile and the yellow sun and my strong legs and sandy knees and the smile on me--oh did I mention my smile?  Non-stop?  Now we'll go north, than Oregon later just me. Maybe we'll chill in the mountains for the fall?  And also there's south again soon to Newport Beach and more of LA.  Where Mike is, where there's winter-sun.  Also where her everloving heart lives.  I am unconcerned with the details, actually.  Yo tengo mi rinconita...I have my little corner.  In my car!  And otherwise, all the land, alll the sun.  There is work to be done.  All else, the larger corner as of yet meant to be found, for my own great big and small at once sacred ordinary thumbrint of the world...will surely show itself as it continues to go.  Will surely just come to be.

TAoCB. Cali.

There is confetti all over the streets of Santa Barbara.  What else need be said?

TAoCB. Newport Beach, CA

Newport Beach is cold when you get out of the ocean at 6 in the evening, not like Maryland at all in fact in MD that is my favorite time to swim.  There was no sweatshirt in my bag.  All the surfers have wetsuits on here and the people chilling on the beach, other than one older guy who I spotted as soon as I stepped on the sand, are from out of town.  In OC I could always tell the locals, pick them out easy on the beach, in the water, in most any crowd.

Mike told me on the phone the only reason to live here is to surf.  He's right, obviously, and that was clear to me in less than twenty minutes strolling along the Coast Highway in his town.  There are other towns though, ones he's suggested, and ones I have a mind for all my own.  He is such a dear, he did and said little things last night that only someone who's known him as long as I have would've appreciated and my heart tickled with what it means to be "home".  How much it's people as it is zip code, too.  And my brother's friends and the charm and laughs they so easy blend have always granted me instant access to that settled sense.  He either is a good host, or good at anticipating needs, or both I guess because he gave me his room and let me drop all my stuff.  I needed, need, to decompress, to let out some inner-held outbreath, and recalibrate now that I am next to the California Pacific where I for so long have wanted to be. 

It was last night, riding bikes in the dark along a side street beside the sea, like being inside a waking dream.

Meeting Monique on the central coast this weekend, she has a gig at a winery turned to a combo Bon Voyage party for her sis who's exiting to Paris.  The adventures surely are more to come~  

TAoCB. I made it!

TAoCB. Amarillo, TX.

Beth texted, Where ya at?

I was in bed in a trucker motel off 40 in Amarillo, TX, mad at myself because I hadn't made it to Tucamcari. Also because I hadn't anticipated this many motels.

I think I have heat stroke I told her, only partly kidding, and like a dumbass literally had a palm against the forehead moment when she responded Gatorade, yoga.  Lots of water.  I had filled up on Gatorade and stretched as soon as I got the room.  But my gallon of water was sitting at my bedside mostly untouched.  I drank over half of it as soon as I saw her words--and never had to pee, but the chills subsided and my stomach settled down almost in moments.  Heat stroke it was.

A vision of my self in Arkansas, in the triple digit heat, on Friday.  Literally with so much sweat on my face it looked like someone splashed me down with a bucket.  Setting up camp, hiking like that.  I barely slept at Buffalo National River--the river was low, the granite cliff sides and caves high--but I swam and felt sleepy and mostly woozy, like sort of drunk, laying there listening to the bugs and watching all the stars.  I was happy. Yesterday I covered 400 miles, and about midway through the worst kind of longing hit.  I have for many years wanted to live in California, but never have felt it, physically ached with a pull that I could feel moving even the tips of my hair, until yesterday.  It commanded me on, it taunted me and made me feel like a competitor with my self.

Finally, out of Oklahoma, the terrain changed.  This is what I came here for I thought--the open expanse.  The high wide sky and endless horizon that is visual and sensual and only experienced on the actual highway, in the west.  The landscape browned, the sage brush spread the color of blank green, the dark almost black green of the junipers rose up with those frantic stuck arms.  This is what I came here for, and I texted Schanks and Beth about being able to see the storms to your right or left in the west, this was moments before I realized I was heading straight away towards a terrific thundering sky.  I texted them then check radar for me make sure there are no tornadoes.  And then the storm made me tired, and it was the heat stroke too, and the momentary forgetfulness that also comes with the open expanse.  How it makes you antsy, presses you on, makes you feel like there must be somewhere right now you must be.

After hearing from Erika this morning I meditated and got back on rhythm, out of competition, and felt my spirit lighten how up til yesterday it had been.  My spirit, which matches the odd even in the heat gently blowing wind.  In the lobby were free pancakes, which are my comfort food since I moved to the beach, and now in my room the coffee tastes way more like sink water than Arabica but I drink it anyway.  I've learned something about my self.  In meditation, or after, this morning I realized how much my routine, and the lac of it, was hurting my heart.  My want for a swim in the ocean and the physicality I've gotten so used to: surfing, waitressing, dancing for hours on end.  Especially the elements, feeling the sun and the surf, and the sand.  Feeling awake and alive in my body, expereincing of life.  Camping is a different kind of physical, not a lean kind but more brawn.  I was craving the lightness, every meaning of the word, of my life.  I was craving it.  It was this thought that gave me peace:  the remarkable knowledge of knowing I chose this path, I chose it, in order to, and specifically so that when the winter comes, I will not have to give up any of those things.   I will be light, I will be sunny, I will be alive in my body, I will be outdoors.  I will get there when I get there, I am satisfied with this.  It will be right.  It all is, right on time.  

TAoCB. Conway, Arkansas.

Living out of your car takes focus.

Which is to say: spontaneity and yes-frivolity, what one reaches for when abandoning themselves routeless to a journey such as the one I am on, require the utility of being prepared.

Everything in the car must have its place. This maintains peacefulness and ease, the sense that you can handle whatever needs handling.  I have a crate which is my kitchen, a heavy canvas bag which my pantry, a zippable on-wheels bag in the trunk which inside holds my house for each outdoor place I temporarily land.  It's important that the car remain tidy: even trash becomes a matter of practicality.  If it is paper-based and able to be burned then it is rolled, similar to all cloths from towels to sheets to tshirts and jeans, and stored in its own place.  Paper-based trash becomes what I will use, for example, tonight in the Ozarks to fire-start.

Many firsts.  So many firsts I thought to myself, one of the only thoughts to occur in the Pisgah National Forest camping for the first time earlier this week by myself.  Mountain single lanes made of dirt and gravel stones, two hours to travel 30 miles up and down on the forest roads.  Camping by myself, setting up the rain tarp, gathering wood. My first fire. I need a hatchet, remember that next time a Walmart's near.  Thankfully I had my mallet and lots of bunjis and rope--also the first time I used all these myself.  Even the single-burner propane stove, use of this on my own.  My first cup of campfire coffee, the best I've ever had.

Moments happen by my mind and I think with such joy and gratitude of Brandon.  So much gratitude, awe, to look back now and see clearly how good we were together, how strong our partnership was in our finest moments.  To sustain this way of life for any length of time demands from one another full tolerance of each other's neurosis.  A good humor, what an underrated survival tool.  Utility requires it.  We were so good and I learned so very, very much with him and I am so grateful too, aware of how much since then that I've matured.  

I love, absolutely love this kind of living.  It is clean, neat, simple.  Peaceful.  There is nothing to be concerned with other than my own abandon.  Yesterday I covered 800 miles, all the way across Tennessee.  It is psychological perhaps--but I hate that place.  Place that stole my brother!  However it is that I came to have such detest I plowed across its land with little thought other than Must Get West.  And anyone who's spent time in the car in this great land us patriots call home know:  west means one thing.  Mississippi, I was coming for you!  O funny scandalous spirit in the heart of Mr. Twain...  And then it was Memphis, and her! The river O Mississippi in excess, and then I was in Arkansas and the orange sun thick in love with her partner the 108 degree heat til the sun and the heat in a haze melted in the sky as sign of each others dedication to this place.  I kept driving I kept driving I kept driving.  It got dark.  I ate mexican food, spoke spanish.  Accepted happily the the bendiciones de los trabajadoros preciosos.  I worried: 800 mile stretch on the road yesterday oh god my yoga-waitressing-surfing-butt must be going to flab.  I am vain.  This does not embarrass me.  I talked to Gretchen a long while, I talked to mom.  In Conway I stopped, didn't even turn the TV on, just slept slept slept soo well slept a long time in a big soft king bed all my own.  There was my meditation this morning, yoga-time and hulahooping and Matlock on TV.  There was my cooler to clean, my leftovers from last night to transfer to tupperware and put on ice, and then, and then!  Out the window--there was a Starbucks.  Calling my name, in the already 100 degree 11 in the morning mid, almost south, west heat. 

I have already accomplished much.  Whatever comes next--Ozarks, Taos, Canyon country--will also so easily be part of all there is to love.

Erika gave me a shirt slash prayer cloth in the traditional fashion of exalted-Christians praying over garments as means of protection, a fabulous soft tee with a cartoon image of Kerouac on it emblazoned in the red with the words On The Road.  The tag of the shirt slash prayer cloth was made to look like the old fashion library stamp-punched cards in the slot in the back of the books, the last name to check out the "book" was Charlotte Bliss.  Hence the series of posts on this blog outlining or spondowning or processing the process of my adventure, will be titled with TAoCB.  Or The Adventures of Charlotte Bliss.  Dedicated to, and in honor of Erika, of course.