Let the earth find them whole again

Full moon mama in me all spirals of nag champa hippie oils lavender and sage...The sun was out yesterday morning in yellow single beams only for an hour.  It cut between the steel hanging of the marine layer the sky the color of dolphins,  the dolphins so close to Nici and I on our surfboards that I could see the shine and divots of their skin.  I could not contain my sounds of glee.  I got pummeled when I tried to catch a wave and came up smiling with some crazy headless determination.  I say headless because the white waves aren't good enough I want to ride real waves and it has nothing to do with fixated mentality, it's a total body thing.

Just like the draw to the ocean always is, my whole life.  It's a peace that satiates me from a wordless place inside but that I can feel run through as real as I can feel the tides of the moon.  And I am living in it now, like that feeling is one big orb I have stepped into, or am born out of.  From deep inside.

Today's the first harvest, holy holy sacred life blessed be.  Me and my religiousity.  My contempt for it, too.  I taught a private english lesson last night that had me jazzed way after it was done.  I watched Kelly Slater surf the men's heat at the Open and stood it awe, I listened to Best Coast on my phone last night, laying in bed.  We are taking our students to the Fair.  I live on the beach in California like I always saw and felt only this is real not the inside bliss feeling that was only a dream.  This morning it strummed in me, my book again, and I told it ok I am coming thanks for letting me know.  I want to worship this earth and her rounds on my knees, I want this majesty of gratitude to pour out in dusted gold ribbons and magnify the love of all the people that I know.  Let their love light the way around the hearts of those they love let the whole world kindle on that flame.  Let the earth find them whole again finding her let them have reason to be grateful under sky.

Lunar Lammas again, we turn we turn, these are my thanks. I'm Amazed~

How amazingly rad.

It felt good to take a breath--my roommates did a 48-hour crusade to Chicago and back and having a house to myself was just that.  A big long breath out.  Steel Pulse was so fun. Major surprises there, too.  Barefeet on the lawn dancing and the moon.  At 6:30am Saturday my phone started buzzing Nici wanted to surf and Derynn wanted to know if I was going to the Open with her boys.  It went on like that for an hour me laughing all the way.  There was nothing like cruising across PCH at the pier that morning.  I had that sense about my life, of fresh and at-one-ness at once and this is really happening.  That hasn't happened in a while.  We got to the Open and the boys had to stand on line for an hour to get their passes to swipe so they can win prizes all week.  Last year Jayden won hundreds of dollars worth of stuff.  Just in the first ten minutes we'd gotten hats for free.

After a while we went to Tower 8 and Nici was in the water and after another while she convinced me to go out.  I was like no way not a chance am I surfing California for the first day at the kick-off of the US Surf Open.  I felt like a big kook but she forced me and turns out she's an awesome teacher.  I was up in the white water in an instant and like that my whole pulse for it was back.  I rode white waves for a good bit til she forced me to paddle all the way out and in the line up she was teaching me all kinds of little great tips, confirming my original instinct all the way back to last year that I needed a woman to teach me.  After an hour I was whipped and was like I'm going in and started to paddle and next thing I knew I was right inside the wave and it moved me right and then I was up and rode it all the way to when it reformed and still was up and going, and it felt like yoga, that union, and I saw how to be in control and let it happen at once.  It was RADICAL.  I hope to start going with her in the morning before school.


 Der and I tried to go to the movies later but that didn't work out so instead I made us dinner.  We wound up at Barnes and Noble on the floor of the poetry section reading the little hymns out loud. I slept well then was up early again and got all the errandy house things out of the way which always makes me feel at peace.  Today I spent the day with a cutie which was rad.  Finally talked to Erin too so I feel connected again. Erika tagged me on Instagram with a picture of a Crow on the beach in NC.  Fannon's anniversary just passed and  this is the final loop before the season begins to round out.  Meaning Crow made good sense. My interview at Pacifica is Friday.  I am going to jam out at the Open all week.  I have a date tonight.  I want to write an essay on being a woman for Holly.  Book, no worries, I'll soon be back.  


My life is becoming what I always saw in my heart.  Part of this is because I was willing to let go of a lot of ideas jammed up in my head. 


How amazingly rad.

Maybe we should just get married

Dear Huntington Beach,

If I haven't told you yet, I think you're so cool.  I get a little silly-hearted over you and I'm thinking, maybe we should just get married...?  Since I always want to be near you and already need your breath to breathe....

Thanks for the banner week...Spring came, all the prophecy and vision with the Equinox and how it turns.  My heart is moving my muscles in all new ways with my yoga practice...I turned 35, on a new moon.  It started a whole new wisdom cycle for me, too, according to the wise woman ways.  Cycle 5.  I can't even believe it and hope such beneficent fortune is here to stay...

To celebrate your delirious flowers and countries of sand and palm tree wind...and the timing of it all...
I published my first e-book of poems.

5 Poems, available here   


It's dedicated to Erika, but was inspired by you.  I like being available on Amazon, and most of all I like this momentum, its slow steady build.

Thanks, Huntington, for this, for the poems and mornings in bed, the street fairs and yogi bliss, your library and the beach in my hair.

I love you forever,
kel

West OC Air

It's the air I love, outside the bar when the night's almost done.

I always make sure, as I am often the only sober one, to step back and take pause:  the uninhibited moments of people, people I love, in their truest graces.  Always a soft smile lit up by a cell phone screen, or a loud off-key hum, some tossed-off glance of content.  The air in West OC is the most potent in town, salty as a marooned fisher's net, salty as a gull's shriek, salty as a crease on the brow so deep the sun cant even get in.  One breath is a whole pocket of life, a whole city of air.  Tonight my brother is in town, his wife, my cousin and his wife, my mom and dad.  We walk to the car and I am sure to be the last one.  I am surveying, I am my own quiet happy, I savor the last moment stolen glances: my family.  The ones who mean the most.

They are on my mind, they are all I know.  They are allowing of me to say goodbye, and so I think, could I be any more blessed than this?

Could I be anymore--late night, full bellied settledness still on our tongues, music behind us, harbor horns, terns swoop the ground, the way my sister-in-law carries her bag in one hand demure at her side, the tender way my brother finds her back with his free arm, the smile my mom can not hide, o the smell...the West OC air--could I be anymore alive?

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?

Cheesesteaks, beach days. Weitzels.

Today was a chicken cheesesteak day.  I can't explain what this means, but trust me, it's more than just being hungry.

When I was a kid there was a sand on the floor plastic-seated restaurant on 51st street called Weitzels.  We went to the beach on 50th.  My mom started going to Weitzels in the early 70's, when her grandparents still had the big farmhouse and little cabin boarders across from Decatur, when Route 50 was a two-lane and the land next to the high school was a peach grove.  My pop, dad's dad, when he was still alive got grilled cheese with tomatoes for dinner.  Grammy, his wife, would let me drink chocolate milk.  And on certain beach days--the long kind--six, seven, eight hours of salt and sun, sand stuck between the lining of my suit and skin, total dried-out white-blond hair shiny cheek satiation...we'd get Weitzels for lunch.  I always got cheese dogs.  Mom and dad and the aunts and uncles all got cheese steaks.

Weitzels closed some years back, it happened while I was living in Oregon because the following summer when I was home again and it was summer and I felt not myself living up in Chestertown in the hot Marilen mug I found out it was gone, and I felt distinctly like someone had stolen something from me, that powerless dark feeling that embarrasses you a little with its strength. 

This morning by 9 I was on the beach hoping for an hour of waves before the guards came out.  The waves were knee-high and breaking on the shore, but the reason I didn't get my board from the car was the wind.  The waves were blowing fast towards the inlet, or south, and choppy as hell.  Otherwise it was clear blue out, and gold, from the sweet June sun.  I planned on staying til maybe 10 just getting a swim and some heat, but fell right in to the easy, laid back groove.  Four and a half hours, thoughts of my novel and poems whispering at me, I barely willed myself to leave and only really did because what I wanted was what you're supposed to eat on a glorious day with nothing but dried skin and saltwater hair.  I wanted a cheesesteak, the chicken kind, and not cut up breast meat but with shaved meat that soaks up all the grease.

Turns out Mitchells, the mini-mart we used to go to when we all lived on second street in a place that's long since been condemned and torn down, still has killer subs.  And breakfast, too.

It's a hard life, I know.

Good beach day?  Mom asked when I walked in a half hour ago, that subtle satisfaction on my face.  There was a beach chair in the front yard so I knew where she'd been all morning.  Ma I just had the best chicken cheesesteak is how I answered her.

You did you little devil?!  She grinned large.  And I was just about to ask you if you wanted to go get one, too~

Lunar Beltane. One Love Perspective.

Google or bing have brought 12 hits to my blog in the past four days via the search words lunar, beltane, or new moon.

It got me to thinking.  When I was younger growing up at the beach in the summer there was a certain kind of local beach rat.  A morph of Slayer/punk rock kids who got drunk, got in fights, cussed out tourists and in general were rotten menaces as well as some of my favorite people.  I started smoking in the alleys off the sand with them at like age 11, and stealing beer before we could drive.   No matter how hard core though, regardless the drunk middle of the night piercings at the skate shop downtown or the kids-from-pennsylvania's-house someone stole all that pot from, no matter who you are or were or how you define yourself, the beach makes it so you can't escape the one mighty power bigger than you. 

I mean, at the end of the day isn't that what we're doing living here?  O holy ocean, where I watch and learn consistancy:  all that is rises and falls--every day there is the sameness inside of change.

I was coming off acid, I was 18, I was sitting in the dunes at the surf spot on 48th and the high itchy grass was squiggling up my legs.  The sky was grey and big stretching in a way that I could actually feel:  there was a pull to it, as if the energy was getting collected for something. 

Days later came a hurricane that I first saw written in the sky.

LSD or not,  it is a bottom line:  all things are connected.  This isn't mythical, magical, political or sacrilege.  It simply Is.  The same as certain foods give the ecology of your body heart burn or make you sleepy or fill you with fuel, this is the same as the ecology of the earth and its cosmos.   The house on your street delivers water to you from a local treatment facility, that water came once from the sky, where it was sucked up on the air out of the respiration process of the trees.   The trees in your yard, the farm field with feed corn growing a mile from here, they wither or wilt or become buoyant and green from the chemicals that enhance them and the hydrogen and oxygen molecules coming in and out of Your lungs, from the heat and light energy, the mineral and vitamin full fuel our life system calls the sun.  The new diner on the block with the sewer grate under the tire where you park and the pigeon picking at the gum wrapper on the cement outside, those runny underdone eggs on your plate and the potatoes with not enough salt--out of the chicken- feed pecked off the earth, the tubers grown in dark dirt, the eggshells full of calcium that will add nutrients back to the land...so you are, so you sustain.

From the oneness amoebic with gills for respiration we rose up, and back to the oneness each and every one of us, regardless our after life beliefs, will go back.  And the larger secret: Of the Oneness, we still are.  There need be no other truth than this, indeed to this grl it is simply Sacred as it gets.  We are one we are one we are one, at the end of the day chemically, molecularly, with skin trained to catch a back draft of spring wind or eyes only set on the tv, we are one.

So to be a wild woman, to be one versed or with inherent or even learned understanding of this oneness is to be of the wise woman ways.   It means the ego, that funny neuron-fired lapse of luckiness that makes one aware so deeply of his own belly button hole, really in the grand rapid flash of all things gets no more than a milisecond of say.

That sans the wirey brain's programming, the negotiations with yourself through whatever routines or practices or beliefs required, unnecessary, there is the still place, same as the trees or the earth, the pigeons or the chickens, the farm fields or the ocean, and it is within.  It is the same, but different, no more or less an impact though.  Each a microscopic sliver of the holy whole.

There is no truth that is single, single truths eliminate every other part.

The ocean teaches this:   the way the waves rise high, run in a certain direction, come with a specific wind.  She will tell you the weather if you learn to train you nose, your eyes, your skin to be open to such things.  How the tides roll so fat and wide, a roll I always feel in my stomach, when the moon is closer and closer to full.  The moon with the magnetism so strong she pulls at the water, pulls at the water which is part of the very blood, of the very magnetism you generate inside and outside of you.

There is no truth that is alone, there is only the All, that Is.  Our funny human ways of up and down within this process.

It is hailing out right now, ice balls popping like movie popcorn off the green bucket of my front lawn.   The air is buoyant in how it sits and lifts, and cool when it shafts in on a breeze.  So oneness is:  a process.  All things are, all that is, Is.

In the middle of the night, Monday into Tuesday May 17, the moon will be at her fullest, right around one in the morning here on the East Coast or four in the morning out West.  She will reflect totally the light heat magnetism of the sun, who is in the part of the sky that long ago was named Taurus.  This part of the whole, Taurus the Bull, brings to us a fixed but charging energy meant to bring matter in to form.  Your deepest yearnings will be about how to manifest--your deepest pangs will come from resisting the building process.  Not going, in other words, with the flow.    

The light will shine brightly on all that is.  Beltane is the conjunction of spirit and flesh:  bringing Life in to forms you can see.  As the moon readies and reaches her peak (only to diminish and disappear again) what is it, from within, you will see?

The Return of Sweetie Cream Cheese?

Marla's a friend of mine who works in radio.

I write that and as I do streaming through on my I-tunes live feed is WTMD outta Baldamore and they are talking about this event at the Rutger tomorrow night featuring Charm City Rollergirls and Gilded Lilly Burlesque performances and all I can ironically think about the music here at the beach is not exactly my kind of radio...but whatever works...

Guess who's back I tease her yesterday morning at work.  It is 6 am or so, maybe 6:15.  The orange light in the coffee shop glowing warm.  Peaceful.  I may hate, hate getting up that early because of the thin metal tiredness accompanying me at all times, but it is quiet in the morning there, waiting for the sun.  It is still.

WHO?  she scampers around in a whirlwind til she's turned sharp and petite in my direction and three espressos in, looks at me all Marla-wild.  I laugh I can't help myself, I love her so much and did immediately, she is one of those rare people who simply and unapologeticly is who she is.  She thinks I am referring to someone from work, one of our bosses or board members or some thing I can tell by the frozen way she stops.  Noooo no, no.  That's not what I meant!  I am smiling and full of ease. 

She calls me Feeney, as in Shirley Feeney.  Like from Laverne and Shirley because she is so brass and I am so often aiming for some unaimable tempering and calm.  Without realizing how, I've learned working with her that this is nothing to strive for:  it simply is who I am.  My nature to be loving and accepting, overexuberant and full of praise for all living or loving things.  It comes out so bubbly and innocent most of the time because I'm just being who I am.

I meditate, and have for years.  I practice several different techniques, from occultist trance to prayerful christian exaltion to tantric-mantra chanting to simple pranayama or minimalist buddhist watching.  The point is to go within, to be unfearful in confronting me.   The wisdom of Anicha, which is a sanskrit word I learned at a 10-day silent meditation retreat using the technique of Vipassana, means changing.  Change is the ego's, or self-talk always on rev and going going up there, way.  When our minds are full only of ego than the state of our consciousness is pliable, easy to be swayed.  AND, Anicha teaches that the state of our emotions and reactions are always in a state of flux.  So meditation helps us watch them but not BE them.  Hence, this too shall change, or pass...and therein: peace. 

Sweetie Cream Cheese I tell her.  Sweetie Cream Cheese is back!  Sweetie is the name I gave myself when she explained why I was Shirley to her Laverne, and the only reason I was even aware of Sweetie when Marla pulled out youtube clips and laughingly started calling me Feeney is because that particular day, after many that felt just like it, I was full of the dry, tired irreverence that is the underside of having Feeney-nature.  So I could see the fluffy cream cheese Shirley Sunshine part that day really, really well.

And that's the thing.  Changing.  I was driving along yesterday listening to Marla's radio station.  A hair-rock, one-hit wonder band was on it reminded me of Skid Row and Sebastian Bach (my first long-haired 1980's crush, followed by Slash of GnR ha!)  My ipod's battery was dead, my hair smelled that fabulous ripe smell of hormony sunshine because I was laying on the beach in 60 degree weather for an hour, I was on my way to cook dinner for Valentine's dinner with a girlfriend.  The sun was low in the sky and yellow in that burnt way that makes the clouds edges look bluer than they really are.  I had one of those moments--I've been exhausted lately, run down with the wintertime, and waiting for this phase of my life to pass.  But after several experiences that I had to make happen of quiet, of meditation and devotion to my own sacred-ordinary life, my perspective is centered again...until changing changing it isn't once more...!  Today I have the peace that is under it all, though.  The watcher's peace, the quiet ok.  It's all always changing, passing on by. 

Sweetie Cream Cheese, while maybe not so enthusiastic as she naturally is, always helps remind me that none of this, not one part of my funny random life do I ever want to miss.  It's precisely this cold, tired shit, these miserable 80's bands and me and Marla rolling our eyes at the watching eyes of bosses and board members and us sharing too much sugar and coffee amplifying our natures in the mornings that make me laugh.  And makes me get quiet, appreciative of it all.  Appreciating the burnt sun blue edges of all of it.  Sweetie Cream Cheese!? Marla screams in that loud funny way.  She slams her low-carb sugar-free but with one Splenda double shot 20oz drink she is not paying attention to me it is coffee and not smoking cigarettes on her mind.   Then she says I missed you Shirley Feeney and I am laughing again, life's not passing me by I am with it, with her and all the people I love and we are changing and trying to keep up or be still or work on moving on.

 

Catch up. February.

The sun stopped rising in the morning, they say that never happens that there is no mountain so high as to block out the sun.  But it did.  Day after monotonous day only grey.  Then finally after so long that I forgot that it comes out at all, there it was.  It was Thursday this week and my spirit gave a leap when I saw the first spot of orange.  I ran to take pictures.  I have so many pictures.  Like Mandy said over the weekend in that funny antagonizing way that she loves, how being friends with me means you get archived documents of all that you are and do, you get a memoriam in action of your ever living life one mundane or spectacular or mixed up as both day at a time.

I am so, so thankful for my mom and dad.  I came home this week there were roses waiting for me from dad.  He's lost 25 pounds.  He is my friend we text everyday.  Mom and I took him to Valentine's dinner to thank him so much for so much love, for being such a provider: the free place to live, the warm home, the soft bed, the heat bills that could otherwise feed a small village somewhere.  Somewhere where there's lots of sun but no food.

I talked to Beth said this is it, I said it last year but this is really it I will never, ever do this again.  I was talking about winter on the east coast.  She knows I'm serious, last night I finally told mom and dad.  I was flat out on the phone with her before I fell hard and deep to sleep at 9pm:  I fucking hate February.  I am so disconnected to myself, I cant even feel my body any more and it's totally seasonal and I know it and it doesn't help.  She totally understood but defended the sun:  it's gorgeous in Oregon on the coast right now, unseasonably so.  So much yellow light and warm breeze.  And yet still it's killing her too.  The February every year blues.  So what's the answer?  I know for me it's the option of being outside.  The year I lived on the beach in Oregon it was 60 and sunny through February, too.  And I never got blue.  In California there's always sun.

I've been writing, the book was stalled but came back to me this week but otherwise the cycle that brings the poems out got all screwed up from being sick.  I am still with the sniffles but the fever aches thankfully are gone.  So poetry time came and went and that pisses me off when I dont get my way to follow the words.  I am selfish?  Maybe.  I have nothing else to be...

I look over my shoulder right now the sun is sparkling white over the bay.  The water is moving in a way it hasn't been all week, all different directions classic fast moving river sway.  It was still and flat and rounded as a cup it just sat and didn't move except in the far corner near the marsh grass where the ducks bathe and play.  And that was just the ducks moving the water not the water on top of water moving the water in one great array. They chase after one another there is always lots of splashing and quacking and on Saturdays especially, why Saturdays I do not know, I go out there and they make me happy seeing them and hearing them in their silly duck language parade all around and quack out Hoooray!

Which I did this morning before it got all white out and gold.  I am on here to write and for no other reason than that, because even the weather didn't fill me with life.  Just hope, which sometimes is actually the most important thing.  And actually is life just not the filling kind but the thin line slight kind, like the words, perpetually right there Anicha Anicha one after the other in all its changing many same same forms stringing together in to long long day after days after days the ever continuous row.

From When I Was Wild. OC & Coming Home.

It was spring time I was fine you looked finer with your brown hair long then and the body you still took care of we were eighteen I had bleach in my hair and a checked blue shirt tied at the belly I wanted to say was gingham, but was not, we were suburb not country kids and you took me on a picnic under the power lines so I tried to play the part.  It was hot for the spring and the pot made it so we couldn't tell was that just the heat or was that melting in our minds.  You loved Jesus but wouldn't admit it, and late at night we'd get in fights because it was a misogyny thing afterall for you who secretly didn't trust his mom, who thought the world was going on fire because the women were aloud to speak again the weird thing is you an Only Man back then...only one never turned on me but loved me better when I got to use my tongue.  Voice people, this is about voice not sex.  But we did that too didn't we, the hot kind the teenage kind wicked and innocent out back in the car at parties or the church parking lot or the one time under the tree in the graveyard on acid our bodys seemed so big, then small, our arms wavery my breath its own language echoing off the red coming off the trees.

I wore dark purple lipstick then, or red, and had the hottest little body remember I used to show off my tatoos.

There were all those others at the beach, it was never easy for me to talk about that.  Part of it was how I hurt you when you and my one friend went off walking down next to the ocean.  That was the night, or more next morning on the boards yellow mist of sun trying to make up its mind am I heat making dry this water or light making clear this new day from the dark that I knew that I was different for good that I had made my choice, without meaning to.  Seeing what I was capable of.  As if you'd ever cheat on me.  You know that night--two of the four guys I was smoking with are dead now?  We were on acid then, too.  One of them I never even write about.  He was a mean little fuck, we used to get drunk and I'd run my mouth and the one night over in the Meadows at that one place when they were living with RayRay we had a flinching contest where I let him hit me hard as he could, as long as I got to hit him back, and again and again we hit one another and I stood and took it all 108 pounds of me thinking I was a man.  And that was the choice, there were always two in me la santa y la diabla, and that is the night I ran off with the devil holding my hand.

God damn did we have fun.  I heard from someone on the periphery back then this week--this happens enough, private messages thanking me for this blog--that I would say it happens regularly and so thank you all publicly for reading it makes me feel so, so good and this is a shout to all you private ones reading along, and a specific story just for him.  I remember you and some others were living uptown on 143rd doing the more mellow surf thing I only made it up there for example when Jesse or Kareem came to town because hidden in someone's wet suit was all the drugs!  And anyhow one day I was off or likely just on break from hot assing on the mic to Big and Meth and Tom Petty and The Dead up at the peir (Jerry still alive in the beginning of that summer, dead by the end and vigils on the boardwalk and the 9th street squatters house still there, near where the old, old old Chat Street used to be) and you walked in I think with Mike?  and we were in the middle of an all out indoor water gun fight, blue plastic dollar store beach sand buckets filled to the top with oozy automatics and us shooting water or late at night emptied-forties malt-liquor straight in to our mouths...The boys all shirtless only wore only baggies that summer that's how you knew the local rats downtown, so I was always like fuck it I'll just wear my bikini all the time!  You who was always on your own buzz keepin it so chill had the most shocked look on your face when you walked in the house--front door always wide open bedroom me and Fannon's then me and Kev's once Brian moved out always closed
--and then it broke, the shock and you smiled like I'd never seen before a light of joy and radicallness breaking out straight from your mouth.  You grabbed a seat way on the side of the room one of the bros tossed you a beer and then of course did we proceed.  That might of been, but likely was not, the same watergun fight that wound up across the street running the outdoor halls of the Americana sneaking around corners and hiding behind doors when I camped out upstairs at the dirty frat guys (I used to stand in the alley out back and cus those fuckers out all the time even back then clear to me down the center how we were different and stood on different lines) on their front porch and waited until Jeremiah gave up and then dumped an entire bucket of water on his head when we was walking back surrendered to the apartment.  Remember that shit?  We kept a baby wading pool out on our front porch to chill in and would add ice in the afternoon to keep all the beers more cold.

Hahahaha.  I live here again and barely ever think of that stuff, those times anymore.  Fannon gone, Kev.  Blugh Kev.  Phil... 

Una Santa, y Una Diabla.  The poetic imagination and living our own myths.  Last week I was chilling one night over with these friends of mine, hanging out with this girl from the county but who I never knew back then only met down here at the beach, an old friend's friend.  I got to telling stories and of course because I am writing so much again and also because I am a McMullen and all those all those all those late night convos as a girl, or around the table basement at Grammy and Pop's or any single one of the aunts and uncles the Jameson and laughter and warm remembering every time, because of all that and because of my myth, my heart my spirit where the saint and the devil collide I am a wild women, full of the spirit and the ancient forbidden gnosis which is just know-how which, common sense people is just know thy self,  this wisdom business that penetrates so deep within.  And so for all of that of course I am storyteller, La Cantadora she who knows.  And so chillin last Wednesday late night, and Saturday too I got to telling some stories of my own, I have a lot, and a lot of them some of the most important ones are from the beach they all, so much happened right here.

So without meaning to I am gathering bones again and doing it near the ocean in the northeast wind under the winter sky.  It is so important, this archeology, these bits and pieces scattered everywhere it is the real work it is the poet's work it is the work always always always of recircling the brave warm or coolly shadowed places we continually label or even disregard that when we are still live deeply, live on, within.  In the end these are known and called by that most powered word of words, home in the end I choose not to go with the howl scowl on my face but the wicked happy satiated smile of she who knows that peaceful all-knowingg grin, so right now today and tomorrow's today and each and every step I take I say Amen.  Amen Amen.  This is all real and really happenening, this is life it does and it did.

Bliss-List. & Venus.

O my gosh.  This link is so on-time for me, it came my way via We'Moon which if you dont know about them--ladies especially--well you better ask someone.  No seriously We'Moon is a fabulous group of gals out in Southern Oregon whose collective puts out the We'Moon datebook, keeping us Wise-Soul-Livin/Lovin-Women (and men, too, or the ones who love us & who we love) connected to the earth and the moon tides.  This is the only way to be for me so their message on FB about Venus going direct yesterday was so in line with the boost of Free to Be Love and Light that returned to me in the past 24 after a nondescript time period of feeling sort of nebulous in that area, a little off or blahhh.

The point is.  I have a Bliss-List of 50 things I want to do in/with Life.  Do you have one?  My list is the raddest and it has things on it that have been checked off like: Re-Find your Music-Self; See Madonna live; Take Month to ReConnect to Earth and SOul on Your Own etc; as well as things that are in progress like: Write and Publish your book (to/about Tribe of Mad Genius' Following Their Own Code and Path); Engage in Ecstatic Alive Living in Unison with Life through Earth Cycle and Tides; Lovingly Focus Time and Energy on Family and Relationships etc; AND there are things on there that are yet to be braved, for example: Live in Mexico in a Village and Paint and Do Art and Speak Spanish with Amigos; Get Certified in Permaculture; Camp for a month or two or ten On Foot in the Woods or Mountains; Finally Just Surrender to Being a Beach Rat Surfer Girl and Never Wear Shoes.  Etc. 

I am writing my book, and remembering the infinite potential of lovelightpower-within.  I am totally avowed to one thing and one thing only (as I write this from the surf-shop in town with the guy who just educated me on everything I need to know to be out in the ocean the whole cold winter through...) and that is TO LOVE THE LIFE I am living, and Live the Life I Love.

I'm glad I have my Bliss-List, and those We'Moon gals, to reconnect me when I forget.

Youth is King

Matty walks in and in that throat voice of his barks whut up and who he is, blonde and suntouched and light but with that huge self fills the room and I am immediately so, so, soooo happy. Ahhhh whutup cuz is what he says when he rounds the corner in to the kitchen and sees me and he gives me that great wide open hug that he gives, like he's wrapping the world around you, then lets me go quickly too cuz that's part of it, how he do. We're here to watch the Ravens playa, he says, and gonna get pizza too if that's cool...

O god does this add to my happiness. His spontaneity, his freedom--it's part who he is, a 16-year-old-beach patrol go-with-the-flow surf's-up dude, the other part is allll youth. I saw earlier in the week on facebook that he'd be in town in hopes of Igor waves. I forgot tho, and I am making chicken soup, a harvest pot full of equinox blessings intentions and healing, for mom and I when he walks in.

They are low, fast slur-talkers, my cousin Matt and his boys and him. When they talk amongst themselves as we watch the game it is immediately this trait that makes me organically happy to be around them. It reminds me off watching Southpark with Sean, my brother, and his friends in the late nineties when it first came out. Sean was in highschool then and his friends were soccer players bursting with that fabulous big energy, on top the earth and against the sky, of male at the top of their game. They have always been good, clean, straight kids, and I was a potsmoker who thought Southpark was the most brilliant thing I'd ever seen, and I remember a whole afternoon of chililng with Seanie and them talking slur-talk amongst ourselves specifically because mom was in the room and she couldn't keep up with anything we had to say. It's a fast style of mouthmuck specific to fallout from Baltimore hon talk--you only hear it in kids from Anne Arundel or HoCo or Baltimore County and it's one of the reasons I love to be around Todd. Cuz we fastlowslur talk sometimes and don't even realize it when we do.

I've been thinking about this alot lately. About Sean, and his influence on me, and how becasue of us when we were little, how it was just me and him so much doing our thing together as kids, how much I look for that still when I crave comfort and security and to take care of myself and chill. Brian, my bro's bestie since kindergarten came to town a couple weeks ago, his mom raised us as much as my mom did when we were young, summer days every day in a row starting with breakfast than Team Bones in the driveway then swimming in the pool Back to the Future or Rad in the VCR every single afternoon. 'Intendo and the secret passageways in Castlevania and I was the first at SuperMario to save the Princess, too. This stuff's been on my mind since he came to town, what makes me feel most like me, most like who I truly am. In the spring I stayed a weekend with Brian and his bro, Little Sean, and all we did was chill. Lots of deep chill tv watching and laughing and busting on one another, exactly what is going on with my cousin and his friends right now, us laid out pizzabellys watching football on tv, exactly what Todd and I did and just the same as my brother when we are together always do.

Last night Chels, my nineteen-year-old cousin who just had a daughter in July, called to chat. It was the first adult convo we've ever had, discussing what her next move will be after she graduates with her two year next Monday. I love her so much, and my favorite part of being one of 20 some cousins who are every one like a bro or sis to me is that: moving into adulthood with them, but keeping that easy on the couch laid out chilling cuddle cool.

This is what to keep of youth. How to chill. The intimacy of being laid out, mellow, want of nothing. This is what to keep of youth: driving to the beach at random to catch waves and walking in to someone's house without a plan. Freshness of what could be. This is what to keep of youth: picking up the phone and not being afraid to talk about not knowing yet what comes next. This is what to keep of youth: openness of what's next to come...

And funny lowslurwords, our little ways of saying I get you and what's up right now. Our ways of saying there's so much right now that's still all good.

Season's over...

My window's only partway down and when I get in the car and get going, my wheels are smooth on the pavement and my ride feels so at one with the road that it makes me want to drive for a long straight shot through some farm country in some random central America land hundreds of miles away. Somewhere unknown with stars like crazy and flowing grain. Common is on, I downloaded tons of hiphop today and I've been listening to him for hours. At the stop light I switch over to Badu.

The hurricane isn't here yet. The air is balmy, the wind is definitely starting to pick up. Hours ago, before I left Ocean Pines to go out, the satellite showed it was already above us. Town is dead. It's 3:30 in the morning and there's no one at all on the road.

The guys in the car in front of me in the drive thru try to pick me up--it's been like that all night--some nights just are. They are from Jersey and actually get out of the car to holla. It feels good, I feel good, and Badu and me are jammin for sure. The guy at the window gives me an extra large soda for free.

When we got home from the second club she changed immediately and kept making that pouty thing she does with her face, what I always chop her balls about but what actually is the thing about her I most love. We walked arm in arm to the pizza joint but it's closed and this adds to her bummer. She's annoyed she keeps saying. At her man, at the fact that all her friends have left now, and because she has to work so much now that everyone at the restaurant have also gone home. Season's over is all I can think, and I secretly love this, this time of respite and pause. Time of in-between. It's the first time all summer just me and her have kicked it on our own and I am enjoying the hell out it, have all night. She's 21, gorgeous like a model is and hands down the most outstanding player I have ever seen, guy or girl. The whole room bows to her wherever she's at without even thinking about it, and she can easily take home any single man she wants strictly by virtue of the fact that she knows she can. Sometimes I just watch her go, it's unreal like you see in a movie or something.

It was fun tonight. We picked up a set of brothers for a while and she got drunk on shots and I cracked up at my guy's moves and then was struck by how much we had in common. I asked him a version of my standard set of get to know yous and was wowed, totally wowed by his answers. I told him so, and then felt bad later when we went from the bar on the beach back in to the club and lost him on the dance floor. The guy I wanted to talk to from earlier in the night was back in there creeping again but there were too many meatheads dancing up on us for me to make any kind of second move. In the end we danced a whole lot together, me and her, and I left smiling and so happy and ready to listen to hiphop on the ride back to her pad.

I read this article in Vogue last week about a woman in arrested development because she was going out with a much, much younger man. She is non-committal to the idea, as to whether or not it really is something about her psychology she is trying to work out by having such a young live-in lover. All she knows is that she is happy and her needs are met, and she long ago quit judging herself so it's just a passing thought that she bats at for a moment. My mom said something similar to me in the middle of the summer, asked what it was I was attempting to work through by hanging out all night every night like I was 22 again. I was unsure, and still am, though I must say it's made the subject matter in my novel much easier to delve inside of and write from the inside out. The real truth is I love my friends, I love my job here, I love my life.

Where I work is like a family and I haven't been surrounded by such intimate connections in a resteraunt since years ago at the pizza shop before Eddie died. I am fiercly loyal now towards my crew of young friends. The seventeen-year-old whose folks just split up, the other seventeen-year-old all the guys in the kitchen pick on for trying so hard. The big guy with the soft heart that I've never ever heard raise his voice or mutter a harsh word. The twenty-four year-old cutie with worlds inside of him that he ignores who's totally confused and uncertain about his next move in life. The 20 year-old who just said goodbye to his summer love, a nineteen year-old wilen ass girl who speaks in funny moosh mouth tongues and goes to raves except their not called that anymore and who loves her drugs. The fourteen year-old with the cruel stepdad who wears the flourescent shoes and knows too much. The suntouched highschool senior who never ever doesn't smile. The recent college graduate who works way too much and complains about it but never says no and who wants me to take her shopping for sophisticated clothes. The gorgeous mom going through a divorce re-finding her self much as I am, too. The nineteen year-old blonde bombshell who was like a little sis to me before she left to go back to school...They all are, like little brothers and sisters to me. It started with Eddie and Timmy Mac, my cous's, and hanging with them and then I got tight with all the others, too. When we go out at night I always drive so that everyone gets in safe, and also because I think it matters that they see someone in her thirties hot, still down, and chillin without any lick of drugs or booze. They are funny and loud and mellow, very mellow, and bitch alot and also show one another so much love. I am so, so blessed to get to be a part of the lives of each one of them I've gotten to know, if only for this minor fleeting moment.

And also, because it is fun, why shouldn't I live it up? On our walk back to her house tonight once we realized the pizza shop was closed she was talking about her last year and her different men and mentioned a point when her heart was vulnerable.

And I thought, when are they not?

When are we ever so lucky enough to not have them out and hungry, our fierce little hearts openmouthed to the world? And would that even be luck, to not have the awful and glorious misery of being here alive, showing up day after day to the fresh new world? No, it would be terrible. To miss out. Life is awful and it is beautiful. It is the calm eye of the hurricane and the whippin winds on the edge and the blue skies or rain in between. It is waiting, that still and silent waiting before the storm hits and changes the landscape again. It is full of greasy stale food and overtime and complaining retirees. And hunger and love and fucking and pain and laughing, and dancing and feeling sexy and beautiful and totally alive. It is going to bed alone or with another breathing, confused body next to your side. It is it is it is...

And oh, some nights, it just feels so good to ride.

Helllo, Lover...September September & ALL that I love...

Remember the Sex in the City when Carrie's walking down the street and in the window sees the pink Manolo's with the ruffles? When Miranda has Brady and Big leaves for Cali and they have that great dance scene in his empty apartment....but before all that, on the street in Manhattan, remember that fine epic moment of first sight, when it's just Carrie and the shoes...

Remember? Helllo, Lover...


I get that. This term came to me this morning, actually just now. First Sight. Here's what I mean--by first sight--and by the simple, breathy eloquence of Helllo, Lover when it comes to something seemingly unremarkable in the scheme of things, like a pair of shoes.

I believe that we all, inside the deep secret mystery of ourselves, have our secret visions. I believe we all have that feeling of, or picture of, who we are in our truest way, of how or who if ever the circumstances would just line up to accompany and support us, we are or would be at our most free. At our most happy, or content. I believe that most of us associate this idea of the inner contented self with things, with the house, or the right car, or outfit, or job or profession or relationship or city to live in or whatever it may be. And I also believe that it's this mistake, associating the secret inner dream with things or stuff that leads to endless discontentment.

But most of all, I believe in the importance of that inner dream, in that vision of happy. And I believe that on the road map of who we are it is those things, that stuff--ruffly, pink Manolo's on thin black stiletto heels that make your breath go woozy and your chest fall a little shallow on First Sight--that best help us approach who we are in that inside place. That best arise the inner reverent place of YES, this is ME. It's not, in other words, the shoes that count. It's the inner response of Aha, yes, amen! that does. It's the little guideposts to being true to ones self, to uncovering and being I am...

So that was me, this morning, first day of September. I finally, finally! Have two days off in a row, which hasn't happened since I got home from cousin Jackie's wedding in Maine on August 10th. I woke up. I am off today and tomorrow, my first submission of my novel is due to Erika today. The light was coming through my window, split by the chokes of the blinds, moving on my bed to the luxury of the leaf movement in the trees. It is that dark yellow light of fall, which has been here since mid-August and grows in momentum each day. And I woke up, and my eyes opened, and my spirit was singing with a literal inner smile I could feel~~Helllo Lover!! Ahhh, yes...Hello, Fall!

It's hooot out today, but that doesn't matter at all. Because September, same like Poetry with a capitol P, is something I associate with, something that directs me towards the inner vision of me. It's nothing I can own, just a sense of life, of vitality and emergence that counts. 2001. September. Second week of my senior year in college. I'd been clean for 10 months and was hanging in Ocean City with some friends. It was a Sunday, football was on and the air coming in the screen of the oceanside condo I was chilling in felt flirty like it was twirling the ends of my hair and whispering against my skin and also it smelled like the sea. And I was on the couch making out with someone for hours, and I left with a surfboard under my arm and I still remember the pavement on my bare feet and the soft way my longsleeve tee caught the twilight seabreeze. I picked up chinese food to take home and wrote for hours in my journal that night and showed up late for class the next morning, having stayed at the beach til the very last moment I could. It wasn't the beach, or the football, not the air or the late light, not making out with Joel or the surfboard or the luxury of affording take out Chinese. It's none of that still sitting with me now--it was the freedom of life that I loved, freedom of in moment living that is sweet as Fall Beach Air that makes me reminiscent, and most important: that holds me to the inside me of all that is still possible in the endless stream of I Am...

Mythic Imagination. Mythic Imagination, the only true thing (follow this link!!!! Click on Number 13!!!!!! LISTEN!) Mythic Imagination. The Only Truth. Constant Potential Source Capacity for Creation. It starts in stillness. Stillness is necessary to being awake. Being awake is how to recognize what stirs you. It has nothing to do with what you own outside yourself, and everything to do with what you say yes to within. It is why I devour my Vogue page by glorious page even though I doubt I'll ever own a single designer name. Mythic Imagination. The only truth we have, the only true tool that matters. First Sight. What stirs you? What says yes, makes you gasp or makes your breath fall short or your inner thermal rise? That's your first sight. First Sight is only so good as the innocence of staying yes to it than allowing to let it go as to say yes again! As Zen Masters teach with the Beginning Mind. Let it pass then Return Again, return again, return again. Let it arise and pass, anicha anicha changing changing. Let nothing dampen or grey this vision, this inner stir. Let it remain always Me, in my quest to be me~ that holy sacredness of Ahhhh, ohhh, Helllo Lover. That inner sacred harmony vision of the First True Sight of Me. Guidepost to all and Who I truly am, and can be...

Me, with the Advanced Copy of my writing partner Erika Robuck's next book!

Woooooooooohooooooooooooooo!!!

Island culture & the tribe of cool

Patrick my cousin was laughing this morning at breakfast. He's still a little drunk I think, and so it's that glowy slap happiness that is funniest of all.

When he laughs his voice distinctly reminds me of a ladder, this ascending quality that in my cousin Ryan sounds like ringing bells.

You know what Chris told me? Patrick laughs out, stepping up with each word and giggle breath.

Chris is Jackie's soon to be husband in the Carharts and rubber boots with the thick sandwich of New England mouthed around every word he says.

What?

That if you want to find someone here on the island the best thing to do is to just go sit in there house and wait for them to show up. Resounding steps of chortle and coffee gulps after this. It is true tho, Pat and Chris are right, and the B&B owner comes in and tells a story of coming home from errands this week to find the friend of her teenage son lounging around on the third floor of the house, waiting for her son to return. I didn't know this was island culture, she adds, til I got a teenage son.

Not being connected--no cell service and many without even a phone as over 70% of the residents here are just summer folk--is so, so nice. You forget what it means, how easy it is, to just be out and about. To not wait for life to happen, but to make for it yourself...

It reminds me of 1995, living at the beach, pre-cell phone and none of us had landlines. You went on a whim, and let shit happen. In The New York Years diPrima writes wistfully about this, about the tribe of cool to whom I've always sought after, the existence of which predates written history and is, indeed, the reason for expansion, poetry, artistry and all forms of adrenaline~those on the subversive edge of things~how in Manhattan in the 40's this tribe was so in tune with one another and the undercurrent of pure Life imbibing them each that they actually called it swinging, how they lived. Swinging meant get your work done: the clean white line of purity which so tapped in to this force, then allow for, submit to the natural movement of the day. Regular encounters with one another were natural and occurred by virtue of this discipline: wrestling the creative spirit to its hard line, then releasing its energy to throttle the crew back together somewhere on the lower streets say of the Bowery and beyond.

As if something magic, something big, something at times so shadowed and at others glowing in illustriousness so much so the whiteness may burn you apart, was webbing us all together no matter what. Wrestled in to its course, or hugely enormous and pushing us along...

What McClure meant by Writ in Eternity~and what I find most sacred among us mad genius'~the fine alchemy of grabbing for that eternity in a harnessed moment of transcendence and union, in which we get to write, at odds til it blends perfect in to the the mystery, fine, alluring, terrifying, of being written equally by the reverb of our own personal movement of the quill.... The conflicting dual, within the mass whole.

Island culture, no doubt, has been very very good for me....

Zeal-force vitality or loudass TV

This is it, this is the energy that had me so Bmore bound in the fall, in the winter, in the spring.

Driving to Mandy's, talking to Erika, chilling with Erin, crashing at my brothers.

This zeal-force vitality that comes with being in the swing, in the flow of my life.

WISDOM of Wildness~tell the people this, the ones who dont get it or dont know: our lives crash and throttle along, this is time of flow. Our lives too ebb like a far emptied flat mudbed dry of any current, this is time of rest and letting go. Too we go by our own Nature of things and STRESS comes from fighting your nature, meant to meld with Nature, so it is writ all things~Divine.

Time between summer solstice and first harvest is funny time of great friction stuck in void: it is peak growing season but the natural force-energy's begun to ebb. Stored sunlight for energy it is now especially that the winter, and how you cared for yourself or didn't then, will manifest and come to fruit in your spirit, your health mental physical emotional and more.

Maybe I'll go to Philly Wednesday? That would mean I'd miss out on hanging with my new 21 year old friends at Macky's tho tehe ha ha ho ho. Today I am going to the beach with Chrissy Shulka of Piezano's on the boardwalk 1996 history one of a million grrrls folded in to the mix back then of beach boys and the Crofton days. She has a baby now and I knew it but wasn't even thinking about it when I texted her deck-party Monday night? Got the little one with me she answered so even better, beaching it with an old and true grrrlfriend. Timmy and Ed and Tim's girl Sara and I will hit the deck party instead, and how funny is this, me 33 single girl in OC writing poems and putting pieces together of my novel and being an artist free spirit sunhead naturelover and for the first time in my whole life truly not giving a fuck?

Except for those few things.

I have a list of things to do today call Erika is number one, only behind opening a bank account. The small town local Chestertown one not gonna do for me no more. She said 12 whole years later what a relief, what a funny dream.

My landlord from Easton hasn't sent my securiyt deposit back. I'm in a wedding this weekend and my new baby neice-in (which is neice and cousin morphed as one) Savanna is already so old and I've already missed so much.

Beth and Paul live in my dreams. Like Josh did and does and now Micah and Kate and funny random people too, like Dominic and Jessica and Ms. Fran. But Beth and Paul speak only sweet allowance, o sacred air of deep soul breath breeze.

O life, and all your funny little schemes.

I tried to force myself in to sleeping but 33 hours of work in 3 days will keep you charged and get you awake by 7am. That, and dad's loud tv.

My favorite thing in the world is writing or reading in bed though, so the time is right, my nature is upon me, so here's to allowing it. To be.