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~

Whole-er now

It was one of the longest weeks I can remember.

Years ago, in the Nez Perce wilderness in Idaho on the river, I had my period and laid long for days on the rocks in the sun. The butterflies were nesting and we hadn't seen them on the return trip until then, not like how they showed up every day after day two on the road when they marked four corners next to truck, the blue sky morning after the protection ritual I did around the tent in Vermont that first night. In the Nez Perce it was a full moon and I cried for days, I cried deep, meaty throttling choking tears, we'd been on the road for 16, 17 months, for well over a year, I knew I was crying the river, and for the moon. For the great, deep, the retched Mama wound. In the tent on my back the mama staring at me her wide white eye I knew for sure in that airless clear way that when my heart broke the first time all the way back over a year before in the Black Hills, when Crow came to me and then the natives in the dream and then I was too scared to do the Sundance we encountered on the Res the next day(it all would have been different then, had I, this I know) that this, this in the Nez Perce, butterflies nesting there, full moon tears and me, was a continuation of what had been. God wasn't breaking my heart god was finishing that night, finishing making it whole. The breakdown that paves the way for breakthrough. Turkeys came, fat ones, big wild turkeys through the woods turkey the give away bird--you will give it away, your whole new heart grl, for the world.

Ten days ago I looked at houses in Baltimore to buy and start my boarding house. I was so syked and none of it came thru. Nine days ago the tears came in the wordless way. They fell for no reason and wouldn't stop and then my heart closed, and then I knew: it is happening again, not the breaking of the heart but the making of it whole. It hurts so bad when the thread and bandages go through. It chokes me and feels like sucking dust and I still haven't learned how not to shut down. But I am learning how to fight to re-open because if you dont do nothing well then months pass, you are deadened, grey inside, it's become you this new state of numb. Sooner and sooner each time after I close now, sooner and sooner I am able to re-open. I saw two concerts, two plays, and took myself by myself to the ballet. In these ten days with all that community and indy art I still lost my faith. I went through the motions tho, fed the vegetable body with all the food I know. On Thursday, the day before I signed my fate, Justin Sirois' book came by mail from Baltimore, and Erika's book she keeps telling me about a memoir she wants me to read that she didn't tell me she was buying me came, too. I kept trusting, I kept trusting that these were little pieces of me, of the river, of the eye of the moon. I kept breathing even tho I couldn't feel it or when I did it felt so hard. Even though I dont have anything to tie my lot to, to go forward, to catch me or latch on to when I fall. Or leap, I should say. Now that I've lept and can't see where I'm going. I kept going will keep going all the same.

I danced all night last night. All night long. I let the vegetable body transmute it all through song. I dont know what's coming, but I'm a little better today. I saw crocus' two houses down from me yesterday and more important my medicine most true, the first dandelion. I will keep going, I dont know where, but I'm for sure whole, or wholer now, and must trust in that. Must trust that I'm on my way must trust in all that I know. Must trust that all will be, or actually, that all is well.

Healing Prayer, in honor of the tide at last night's full moon

This is a prayer for wholeness, peace. This is for Carrot, that she travel well and trust her own deeds, for Kirsten that she and her family know peace. This is for Katie and sacrifices, her old ways offered to the vision and hope for what could be. This is for me, this is for me, this is for Poetry. This is for Susan and Emma and each generation stronger than the next, this is for Sis and Carol, mom and Maggie and the woman who've seen it all. This is for Kim and Patty who teach me, this is for every strong woman who ever challenged me, this is for Mom, this is for Dad. This is for Sean and Jamie content in their move, this is for Kate and Micah as they fly and learn to trust the tides. This is for Kelly and for all prayers for a home. This is for Mandy and Jessica and every sister I've ever known, this is for Laura and trusting her song. This is for Brooks and his patience and wisdom, this is for every man who ever fought with his heart, this is for Tom who loves and believes in being a friend. This is for Sam that he trust his way. This is for healing hands, this is for tea, this is for moonlight, this is for the ocean, this is for the drug addicts and those sick on booze, this is for violence and for poverty, this is for money and caves and islands and pain that still breathes. This is for Erika and believing you have a chance. This is for Reyna, Santiago, Umberto and Joel. This is for ancesters, this is for foul weather. This is for garnachas and black cherry sodas and dancing in the sun. This is for bonfires, this is for volcanoes, this is for stars, this is for family, and babies, and marriages and Meggie, and memories of who we love. This is for Amy who teaches every day. This is for the loving, breathing, healing earth. This is for alchemy, this is for ecstasy, this is for roots and bands. This is for madness. This is for sweet. This is for the tides. This is for Brandon and Brook, this is for music and gardens and tribes. This is for all of it, the heart and the loss, the love and the tears the laughing and music the fears and the coughs the hate and the anger the pain. This is for Chop. This is for teachers and presents, this is for students and awful hopelessness, this is for not having a voice. This is for Mike and Sarah, this is for Sarah and Tony, this is for Jackie and Chris, this is for Bernadette and her kids. This is for every boss I ever had, this is for Adult Ed Adult Ed Adult Ed. This is for Josh. This is for friends, this is for music, this is for beginnings, this is for ends. This is for the full moon and the planets and the stars and the apex and the zenith in every one of our hearts. This is for love. This is for him this is for him this is for Him.

Reprinted from We'Moon with gratitude, the chant & how I'll end this prayer:
by Mama Donna Henes 2006
We Are All in This Together
We all come from the earth and return to her belly. We are all made of the same substance, same as the sea, the soil, the stars. Birth, growth, death, development, change, adaptation, transformation, evolution, it is all really just about recycling.

We breathe the same air as our cave-dwelling ancestors--inhaling and exhaling, exchanging carbon dioxide and oxygen with our plant relatives untold billions of times over the millenia. And the same holds true for water. We drink the tears of the crocodiles and elephants. It rains, it pools, it evaporates, it rains. We drink, we pee. Again and again and again, in a grand scale cosmic round robin.

All borders and boundaries and separations are pure illusion. Each time we touch someone, we leave some particle of our skin atoms behind and pick up a parcel of new ones. Thus we merge, literally becoming part of each other. I am you and you are me and we are we.

We are all in this together, inextricably bound by our beautiful blue planet spinning though space. We are one family, one community, one world, one living, breathing entity.

A'jo & blessed be. By 3 by 3 by 3.