What else could I do?

It took almost three times the amount of time that it took to get there to drive home from Santa Rosa tonight.  I drove the mountain roads pretending like I knew what I was doing.  Finally, driving down in to a valley with a night sky to the left that I could just tell was near the ocean, I pulled in to a Whole Foods.

The Whole Foods alone was enough to know that I was far from home.  I got out my GPS and wound up going the long way, down the creepy all black magicy feeling Bohemian Highway and finally back to the cottage in the woods.  It's funny to me, I live right now 100 yards from one of the sunniest corridors in Sonoma County; the river across the street is a fork off the Russian several miles away, and driving along side that river through the pastures and rolling hills is one of the sunniest delights I've ever seen.  Sonoma Scenic Route 116.  But where I am, 100 yards away, under a tall redwood canopy, I sit in the breathless waterfall of the trees busy drinking up their fog.  It is always cold, and I am getting expert at building fire.

Friday I hiked an hour along the coast.  Yesterday I went to the beach late in the day.  I have seen water explode over rocks in ways that make me want to fall to my knees.  But I have never seen water explode on a shore, merely from the force of its shallow undercurl break, the way I witnessed yesterday.  The blast was so powerful it shook the ground and my breath had trouble going all the way in to my lungs.  The ocean was so fiercely, repeatedly slamming itself that it was churned to a froth thicker than shaving cream.  Here's the thing, driving along the coast highway looking all the way down to the water, the sets were perfect timed tidy rollers.  In the ten minutes it took me to switchback all the way down then walk over the dunes to the sand, that's how quick it changed.  It was awing, I stood a long time motionless.  Probably my jaw was hanging a little down.  That's how much I was in utter trance to the sea.

On my way, later, back up the mountain towards the coast highway there was the white moon, in the blue sky.  Night blue sky, that lovely dusk blue.  Deer were pitched all up and down the crags of rock, having little grassy chews.  Two times different deers looked right at me.  I smelled like salt and my cheeks burnt red from the salt air and late sun.  I walked a long time up the beach both ways, I watched children, I watched lovers, I listened to seals, I watched the ocean, I heard the waves.  I read what Eudora seemed to have prepared just for me to read.  Today I wrote all afternoon in a cafe, tonight I drove to Santa Rosa for a movie and enjoyed getting lost on my way home.

I am satisfied.  It's an odd feeling, to be so subsumed in the experience of fulfillment, of actually doing it.  Gratitude goes unsaid, I am quenched in it.  It spins off from me, it's the light step I have, the contentment in watching, listening, feeling the sun on my arms, the mark of charcoal on my jeans.  It's more like, wow, I did it, what else could I do?  There is wondrous stillness knowing that there will never come a day that I may say I sure wish I had taken the chance and just gone after the artistic life I think I might love.

So, wow, what else could I do?

"She's a mystic in the sense that she's still mystified by things..."

Luke Doucet is singing those words that terrorize my heart and that also make me smile meekly with a chest full of shine, like this dream I once had that I remember blogging about where the whole symbolism of the thing was me beating the shit out of myself, really beating my self up--I had all these missing teeth and a big cartoon sized swollen purple and blue eye but was dumbly smiling, and felt whole and shiny and free. This song, and that Sea Wolf one and the one by Sandro Perri all make me feel the same. Haha and Cardinal Song. They all played this morning, Larry was on my mind off and on all week and his new stencils also broke my heart in that free glistening way, and in all this there is the cohesive feeling like the end of October ought to bring. And yes it always does.

Things are changing, things that change must also virtuously stay the same. What is all this, and where are our choices? Do we choose or just pretend to by acquiescing or enjoying or bitching along the way? It all is choice. I took the cushiony fold-out chair on to the front porch, it's like the one grandma and pap had on their motorhome before gram's sisters died and they used to go to Florida all the time, and I sat in the sun there. No one ever sits there because that's where all the plants are in the summer, they are in the house now though because the frost at night has already begun to come. I sat in the sun, I did as told--soak in the sun, listen to the trees. When or if there is the sense of being numb this works, go outdoors find your back-breath, your second-half, and let this part just listen and relax. Store sunshine, for light. Happens all the time...

That is our choice, to go out through the doors...

So, do I need school for all of this or what? It is so funny to me how easy I am now with all these songs that I used to have to stay away from because of him. Every station turned his way instead and ok, god it's all so fucking good! At least there's no more dislike button all the time now at least I say the holy yes yes yes this is all true and that's not all the time. Nothing extreme in one direction or the other. Just is. So it should be, this is the time of the year of Hecate--wisdom of the underworld, a whole entire harvest year now past, all the blessings, all the gain, all the loss. And I am ok! Not looking for prophecy though no thank you. I am good, whole it feels nice to see myself in this way. It feels nice to be myself in this way. Ha, and writing like mad. In less than three weeks 12, 000 words. The story now telling itslef. It took me 14 fucking months of pressing the stones, carrying the rocks up the god damn hill with nothing to base it on but that decision made years ago that no matter what else this is what you'll do...I took yesterday and Friday off from the words, had waitressing to do, and tonight too, all it further proved that I am only really good when I have primary focus on just the one or two things. I didn't get to Chico's art show and I felt really bad. Just him having it has me thinking about Brook's and I and all our scene-dreams. I will be impresario scene-chic no matter who's in my life that I also know for sure. What next, what next what next is I will finish my book, that is all I truly know. Jotto and I sat out back at work yesterday waiting for tables to come in. What do you want? I asked my self. I was laying on the flat old wooden deck. White sun and the salt water smell. In order to dissect the fears from the truth at this crossroads. Acknowledging all, making room for all parts of the whole. Institution, I have such gnarly bad aversion to it. Had to sit in it, sit through it, I did this morning for over an hour also while in the sun. Money and taking out loans to become later one who has money seems so fucking counter intuitive. I am glad I will not be sitting with this decision for too long.

The moon came over the sea last night like magic. Soooo big and a yellow so faded and not bright it was like someone erased half of her. We sat far out on the peir and I listened to the ocean crash and just let the sound swallow me. I breathed the terror-glee of it and smelled the smell. Ahhh god I felt so clean.

Now if Danny Schmidt would just show up with my favorite song lyric ever this would be the conclusive end. To what? Just this one single prayer, which really is one small strand hard to say where it ends or where all the others begin...

Ocean City in the Storm

I thought I'd post something a little different. OC got a foot this weekend. Check out this link. Sounds like we're in for even more tmrw?? Lots of writing for me.......

Last Day on the Beach

In 2004 in October I was living temporarily on my buddy Larry's floor in Seattle. This was after five months living in the mostly undeveloped sections of the National Forests across the US. There was a fierce and bitter election going on, and I felt more at home living in the woods. It's the most patriotic I have ever been: connected as I was to "my" land. After all those days of dirty corduroys boots and bathing with a plastic bin, Seattle was a good time. We went to China town everyday, took long walkabouts that lasted for hours and hours along the Puget Sound and between the red brick alleys and up the long, long steep hills with the yellow leaves falling over the streets. At night we brought back harvest foods for dinner from the market. First time I ever tried honey crisps and homemade apple cobbler was our desert most of the nights I was there.

After about three weeks of that the land was calling us again, so we planned a camping trip in to the Olympic Mountains. It was glorious a blue and green day and clear mountain air when we ferried over the Sound and got on the road to Port Angeles. I was ready. We hiked 21 miles in 2 and a half days I had what felt like the most heavyass pack on my back since it was the gnarliest uphill back country trail I'd ever done. We gained several thousand feet each day on switchbacks but the alpine meadows and icy streams, the ponds and the fresh pine smells made me happier than I'd been the whole trip, all five months. I felt like what I was doing, step by step slowly slowly slowly uphill, was reviewing the whole of my time on the road. Conquering the path before me just by picking up and putting down one foot in front of the other, over and over, again and again. When I finally got to the summit I sat with the most satisfied, satiated exhaustion that I think I have ever felt.

It was glorious. I had done what I came to do, and there was nothing left now other than to carry on with the path ahead. I reveled in it, in that quiet settling peace that encompassed me and everything about me. It was the kind of satisfaction that sinks in without you knowing it and becomes a larger part of who you are.

A week later I was home on the Atlantic Coast to visit my mom. She took me to the beach so I could say hi and take a swim. It was gray, the end of October and only the surfers were out. It was colder than I remembered, but nothing like the feeling of freezing that numbs your toes on the North Pacific Coast. I changed on the beach and jumped in.

The Atlantic raised me. I love her the way I love inner calm. I've always, since I was small, ritualized my first swim of the season--it's the kind of info that my brother and I call one another with just to affirm the specialness--Had my first swim today--you been in yet? Usually I mark the end of the season with tears, just a few, but they always come. That year, right after my hike, and after spending months away from my Mama the Atlantic, and my mama, at home, what I needed was to reconnect, to bathe in something eternal and sure to me as me. What I needed was to take the plunge, to rinse it all off, to remind that at the end of an uphill climb what comes is rest and rejuvenation.

Every fall now I try to take that plunge, and today was the day, and sure as I am sitting here now at the Pines, I believe today was the most glorious beach day that I saw, all summer long. It started out with thick fat fog. Grey-white and the dark line of the ground.

Season's over, I am clean. I am at the summit, looking all around. I am contemplating, getting ready to take the next step but in which direction? From here I can see, all around....

Getting Rid of it All

Cleansed again of a season of funk by the Great Mama, this is our ritual now

Amen. Amen amen amen!