The s-h coming-together-sound of the teaching sea

My apartment seriously looks how it used to when I was a drunk.

This is funny, happened in less than two days, is because the place is so hobbit-small and on my mind because I have a teleconference with Erika my writing partner today.  My 30 some pages of submission are creative non-fiction circa 95-96.  When I lived with and shared a room with Fannon or Kev or Kareen.  The days of sour boy stink on the air and layers of wet towels, insides of cigars, empty bottles to wade through on the floor.

Not that my floors are covered with blunts and empties now.  Today it's clothes and books.  All I own, all I came to California with and all I've spent my money on since I've been here, too.  Clothes and books, travel and food.  The essence of this girl.  Very little I need beyond a splotch of land, the words and close proximity to the sea.

And my little room of my own.  This I firmly believe:  a girl needs a small crafted space that's just hers, where she can have and relish her stillness.  Mine's a 2x6 spot only big enough for a desk on the back end of my closet!  But it's from this sense, the stillness and silence that a woman, that I, that she can be.

I've had little motivation to do anything these days then snuggle on the couch and eat or sit cozy in a coffee shop and write. Or to be quiet beside the sea.  My soul is wanton. Longing and turning flat if I try to ignore its mercurial wants.  I stress easily at any demands other than these.  It is winter:  this is the way.

So I walk a lot.  With Serena up the canyon to the Top of the World.  Around the curves and corners of  Newport's marshy back bay.  From the free parking lot on Forest all the way to Thalia Street on the beach.  Last Saturday someone shaped kelp in to a heart bigger by twice the size than my quiet little room.  It stilled me, gave me pause just a minute, glistened my own heart as it pushed me on.  When I got to Thalia I sat a long time watching the surfers there.  The water was aqua green even folded again and again by its rippy whiteness.  It was shadowed in spots by great seaweed blooms.  There are two breaks and I studied them and also just listened.  Listened and felt the sea. The sound of s and h come together.  This consistent noise that is hushhhing or rushhhhing depending on the state of the soul that hears.

That's how I feel, like there was one life behind me with it's own distant sound.  And that there's this other one I am headed towards but can not see.  I can almost feel it though, the way you do sometimes with a sound just before you get to hear.  And that's what I soaked in last Saturday on my walk to Thalia street. The s-h coming-together-sound of the teaching sea.

After Erika calls I'll clean.  Then relish a day to be quiet with me.  This is the in-between.  Being quiet and still, waiting.  The tide will grow and later move me forward towards the next me that I will be.

Summer skies stars are fallin all along the injured coast

My coffee in my hand and the sky a colorless balm 6:30 am I was ready.  Then at my car Nici texted nothing out there.  Which I was like shit I know but it says glassy and where we surf midway between here and HB is this sweet small break that is perfect for me who cant surf but is obsessive about learning.  Knee high Kelly waves!!  Boo.

So I am blogging because that is the second best way to unfurl my muscles and soften my stress and relax my bones.  It does not cease to amaze me:  the effect the salt and sun have on my soul.  This is not just hippiedippie as it sounds it is also true.  It is the solitary reason I moved here, all the way away from my family and friends and the land that raised me and the sea that is my own.  Because I need the elements in a bodily, active, daily way.

I am listening to Paul Simon on Spotify, The Rhythm of the Saints.  So remedying for the poet in me and it's been a good year or two since I've started a day with the glory of The Obvious Child.  Should I not have the ocean this morning, I shall instead have this the other tide that moves me.  Words, and muse, which is its own flow all the same.  oooo aaa ooo aaaahhh Summer skies stars are fallin all along the injured coast...In the sixties he just let it out the words the flight the heart of America he moved us on.  I am backstepping now because of all the new which there is to start and it feels scary and huge and insurmountable when it wakes me up in my new bed in my new loft with the peepers chirping out the window their nighttime canyon song.  Surf I don't have to think about.  Just feel and float then rock that shit along.  Just be and let the do happen.  Naturalness surge easy flux of retreat, be still, now move on.  Again, again, yet again.

There is a bonus track called Thelma on Spotify this is re-released, a nice surprise.  I will get the hang of this,  work and school and so on.  I am quite good at in-between I remind myself alot that's what all this is.  It just feels cramped and like I can't move.  That's so not me.

Gratitude goes a long way a day at a time tho.
See~!

The grls,: Annie, me Nic and D in HB

Gray's 10th bday party 9/9/12 xo

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.

Laying in between

There are at least thirteen traffic lights between me and where I work, and that is a number randomly made up because unlike the side streets between me and the ocean (five), I haven't actually taken the time to count.

(Walnut; Olive; Orange; Pecan; Acaccia.)  (And, at least three lemons trees, five different kinds of succulents, one JimmyBuffetHead, three chimneys that look like ornate brick columns--though that may be because everything in Southern California looks ornate somehow, more precise--and enough sidewalk-side veranda patios with bright or bold or soft or subtle arty tiles to know for sure: this is paradise.  I have arrived.) 

I love walking. I love driving, I love the stillness within that comes with motion.  I especially love this part, the on foot or sunroof-down exploring of my-new-place to live.  My favorite town to walk was Easton, I loved Easton, loved the quaint cottages and pretentious historical show-houses and the alleys and side streets in between, the magnolias I would climb at night in secret.  The patches of violet and chickweed that I would harvest from stranger's lawns.  My favorite place to drive, besides the redwood Avenue in Southern Humboldt, was in Maryland.  Kent County's countryside.

I have lived since August me and my car.  Me and my little happy car-home, since the week I left Ocean City southbound across and through the Chesapeake Bay tunnel it's been us, rolling together to wherever we could based on the whimsy of the road.  The number one thing about living planless on the road is abandoning the need to know what's next in favor of just showing up, being present, open to whatever.  Being open to whatever makes it really simple to enjoy.  There is so much that we miss going day to day over and over again in our rounds....so much to pay attention to...

So that when, just like that, a home shows up, well then you have an object lesson.  Practicable, applicable.  When the changes come, when life comes with a time to buckle in or down, it can still be the same thing.  Just show up, try not to miss anything. Thirteen traffic lights between me and my ESL students, or is it eleven, or maybe fifteen?  

There is so much to learn, laying in between.