When you come back down

Thursday was six months since I arrived to Cali.  Newport Beach down south at my old friend Mike's, I dropped my car off then walked several blocks to put my feet in the Pacific sand.  I was only there for two or so days in August before going North up 101.  Driving Thursday to Fort Ross State Beach, a 15 or so mile drive that took close to 50 coast highway minutes, I thought of my brother and I on the phone in 2002.  We were each about a week out of college, my old friend Dennis from Annapolis who I used to call Padre for his teachings and wisdom invited me and a few others to go to LA.  We red-eyed in, and then rented a car and drove straight to Hermosa Beach.  I changed in the street and ran to the sea.

My brother Sean called as soon as I got on the beach, said Sis whatcha doin?  We used to have this thing back then about calling one another to report our first spring dip in the ocean. I said I'm about to put my feet in the Pacific!  He was on the beach in Ocean City, Maryland, he had just moved back in with our dad.  Perfect.   My bro answered to hold, so he could run down the sand and get in the Atlantic while we stayed on the phone.  

Alot has changed since then, alot is still the same.  Fort Ross beach was closed for the season, but it didn't take away at all from my winding drive.  I actually came around one corner to a cow, walking up the center of Route One, just out for a stroll I guess to get some winter sun.  You never can tell what's around the bend, this is what I kept thinking, which made me grin when I showed up to the closed beach.  In fact, when I finally pulled off to just bask on a cliff at the edge of the sea, my happiness couldn't be separated out from the warm air, the black crows, Tom Petty on the radio. The green succulents underneath my faded yellow sheet.

In California there's a funny little battle between the north and south of the state.  Classic admirable regionalism.  Each end not only says there's is the best but especially that the other end sucks.  Well, I've been North now for six whole months.  The mountains have been wildly good, I speak Redwood now as part of my poetry. But just like the Buddhist's teach, it only matters what you learn in the mountains when you come back down.

So tomorrow I'm heading south.  Eager to see what could possibly be coming around my next bend, I'm confidant no matter what I'll enjoy the road.

TAoCB. Baby Grace.

It was a long trip off the mountain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Of two worlds, my brother Sean and I

Today I am reading Maloutas.  The Whole Marie.  She slips me effortless as a stream in to the poetry, the poetic dream.  The inside-imagination place stunning as it is sacred, the place where it all is: what could be.

It is an ordinary day, like all others that mean something to me:  I exhibited choice. Choice not just in my approach to the day but also, for Wednesday is my Sunday, my last day of my weekend, in what I would do.  Not just how and who but what.

Today I will be poet, I get to be one hundred percent me-poet-me. Engaged in the act of the dream, engulfed.  The poet dream, the miraculous consciousness.  In bed.  Today, I will not get out of bed.  The books the blank page the candles and oils burning the cozies the blankies the coffee, o the coffee, and me.

I've been out of bed five times.  The poet's life is tough, this is the silver grain, this is the seed that falls from the grail.  I love to be engulfed!!  I only ever want to be engulfed!  Even if it hurts to pull myself out again.  Even if Narnia and the traces of her magic wands linger in the fingerprints left on my work apron, my work clothes, my work tucked behind my ear up in bobbypins hair.  The fingerprints how they pain me.  This is the gentle, furtive discipline.  Knowing when to say when--knowing when to say it is time to give to the seeds, to palm them in repetitive warming, to crack them from the hull, to till their bed-ground, to lay open.  In 2008 at this time I thought the dream Craziness, illusory, not real. Thought myself half-mad and on my way to proving insanity wasn't worth it by fighting it every step of the way.  YIKES.  No one tells you the dream is what you give to it, the madness what you take away, or refuse.  You have to define that landscape for yourself.

The half and half.  I've been out of bed five times today, up for three hours and yet to write, til now.  When I first woke the waking was whole and real. With the inside peace, that all-knowing perspective place of knowledge, that round calm room easy to see as a door, opened.  The understanding, congruent feeling there sometimes is upon waking, the creation of which we have no control.  In the middle of the night I dreamt of my brother, it was raining out and what woke me in the center of the dream was the most delicious, monstrous thunder and flashes of lightening outside white as a beam.  Our first spring thunder storm. This part was real, not a dream.  Then when I woke from the thunder-sleep the rain in my dream had washed out the side of the house, and Sean and I were falling down the side of the rain-wave, floating, waving to the other, laughing at the oncoming crash.  Why haven't you talked to me? I was asking him.  Then I was awake it was morning and I wanted to write, nothing more in the world was there except to write, and not my book but from the poetryplaceallllday, but also there were all my dreams and I had to talk to Sean.

He texted this morning Nate Dogg died.  Turns out he dreamt about me too and in his dream he asked me wutsup with you how come we haven't been talking which of course meant we had to talk, and now.

I love him so much, my brother.  We are very, very different.  He is in a corporate job and in June of last year he and his fiance moved 2000 miles away in order to pursue the growth of her corporate position.  They live in an enormous brick home in the suburbs of Memphis the kind with interior decoration and an inground swimming pool, they married this past fall in a huge fancy affair, they are now expecting their first kid. And this is it, the half and half.  None of that lifestyle is part of me, but that life and those who people it are, and so on my slip-slide in to the poetry dream this morning I called him back because this is what it is to be de dos mundos or "of two worlds", the first world is the inner, the poetic dreamworld where myth is real, and reality bendable, and world number two is where most the other people always live, the topside world of responsibilities, obligations, where also our relationships and heart-ties lay.  I have an enormous amount of relationships and have always put a lot of myself in to my work.  It is a hard walk to keep the line of--being of two worlds.   I talked to my brother strongly, clearly, he is the only one now that I've told about all the inner quiet things happening.  The hopes, the action.  The topside realities blended with the inner poetry visions, the alchemy.  The blending of both worlds, the manifestations of my true dreams.  For most I dont have the energy or clarity to speak it all out, but I told it best I could to him, I told it all.  Likewise my brother, the man I admire and look up to most in this world, told me his. 

Sean and I were suburb brats raised in a coosh lifestyle, playing 'intendo and crossing the swingset and riding BMX bikes and hanging with the many other kids like us in the neighborhood.  Kickball in the deadend and playing games I'd make up like murder mystery or war games that would take us for hours out and about on foot.  Just miles away was Baltimore City, hon, its highrise projects and kitschy thrift-lovin stoop-hons and blue collar factory workers corner to corner from the other.  In the early 90's hiphop gave way to gangsta rap, 92Q and V103 out of the city were hot and here is the miracle of how poetry, the poetic dream does. I was becoming a drug addict then, just starting, and Doggystyle was Sean and I's shit and it felt so real!  All that funk us white kids were nodding our heads to, without even knowing it was the very soundtrack miles away in our own city.  Playing out from the bathroom boombox, shaping us and shaping me and our popular culture sure as we shaped it.   I watched 8 mile last night for the first time in a while, the battle at the end gives me chills.  That movie was supposed to be 95, the year I graduated highschool. Biggie and Mob Deep are all over the background while they drive beater cars and puff blunts and dream of some day.  I did that same shit in 1995.   But I went back to my coosh life at mom's at the end of the day.

I love that Nate Dogg, all these years later and from way different places, is where my brother and I meet in the middle of those two worlds.

Here is my fave most recent clip of Nate D. Be sure to check it out, 1:28. Listening today I realized what I always loved most about him, how his baritone voice was low enough to serve as a baseline interlude.    Ahhh god just hearing him makes me hottt

Also, for good measure.  A little Snoop Dogg, original shiznet for dat ass~
RIP Nate D (fb users go here)

Harvest-End After-Wedding Thoughts

Really, I wasn't expecting this.

Friday night is a cross-quarter though, the last holiday of the harvest year, lunar Samhain (which I still don't get that people dont understand this stuff about life, it's so simple a part of understanding to me it's commonsensical. How can one look at something easy for example as the rising and falling of high and low tide and not get the import of movement of sun and moon?? Anyway. Not here to soapbox or vilify or happily call movement magic, but it makes me roll eyes even so...) And so be Friday what it is, this time of year isn't about a quickening as much as a great still, in order to show what is just plain TRUE: what's before me now is the truth, on every level, try as I wish to or strain as fear causes me sometimes to, in order to see or choose not to see.

I am not the same woman I was when I left last week and yet somehow deeply, clearly, I am, through and through. Sean's wedding was beautiful, out of a story book. Perfection, all the clear crisp colors of love and loyalty and friends and family and Fall. He texted Saturday morning to hug Jamie, his almost-wife, we were getting ready she calm as a kitten her dad cooking for us and bloody mary's and all the girls giddy with hair in curls and make-up half-done running around in our robes. Then he texted minutes later that he was so nervous he was puking. I called Brian ASAP he said dad was freaking told me all the last minute unravelling stuff that was causing dad his red-faced growly take-control wild barking ways which is how he loves, and then Brian said too: Dad took Seanie off under his arm for a walk. And that of course set my nerves in and turned my tears on, too. Little brother, o god my little brother this one thing I can not do for you, I was sick with a twist in my stomach and it was us again in my heart us since he was born and I was three years old him this little perfect angel I would over myself love forever no matter what and take care of and protect, and on the party-bus drive to the chapel Sean called Jamie freaking out where were the rings and Jamie cool and collect handled it and my eyes heavy with tears because this is her job now and thank you life for making her so tender and right for him, so gentle and loving and beautiful and strong. And I swallowed the tears because she said NONE! and I knew that's what she needed, peace not emotionalism but I don't do well with that, quelling my emotions so during the ceremony hives came out on me and I wasn't right the rest of the night, which was ok, because the bubble of pure and love around them was. And not only was Sean always who I vowed to protect, but in older years he was more like a dad: showing me how a man could and should and can be, and so I guess this is how I learned to let him protect me. And he knows this, my gratitude, every chance I can I've thanked him for showing such important roles to me. I love him so, I do I do. And Jamie and her family, the tenderness of it all, how beautiful she was and they all are, how touchingly real and meant to be.

And at Erin's after it was all over and before we found the dark cafe for homemade Sunday dinner, my cousin-sister she let me lay next to her and let me cry and listened to the last two months of my life...Acupuncture school indecisiveness and book-writing and unemployment denied, Josh and closing the door on all that, and Sean too and living with mom and dad and when I woke Monday morning in her bed it was alright, I was peaceful again and felt so sure of my life. I pulled to the bottom of her hill and my logic telling me to drive to Ellicot City but instead, sitting there tree-yellow and red hill with peeks of blue brilliant sky between, I turned right because it felt right and drove Frederick Road the four miles or so the long industry and ghetto-lined old faces on the street sunshine drive in to the heart of the city where it meets MLK; and every song is a love-song when you say goodbye to someone and that morning I don't mean Sean. Which was happily puzzling to me but not in a way I had or have the energy to figure out because timing is what it all comes down to--but for the first time in a long time--maybe since ever? My heart is cleaned out of the people that command it, so maybe I finally am getting to be free and have new chances of the what is really best and meant for me.

I asked mom this morning, if Baltimore is what I really care about, and I do I do I love that city, I love it and know it the way I love how my own feet move or my own blood paces up or slows down...how to explain this other than it is where I was born, not perhaps where I specifically grew up but where I was born and where I went to be with family the first 12 or so years of my life so that is intrinsic enough. But this is shamanistic, also, what I learned for sure when I lived on the road after reading about it so many times in so many different indigenous, traditional writings. The land holds it's own energies, the very elements that make up the environment, and it is this that draws the personality then of the culture and the people: either in a way that draws people to flow with it in harmony, or causes them to fight against it because they are fighting, on an elemental level, themselves, their own "nature"...but anyway soapbox again, but is it? I am suddenly re-questioning that idea of home. I've made no secrets about the Baltimore-trance hold that I've been under, but if that is the case then why aren't I there yet? The whole thing with Brooks and Mike Cades showing up again this weekend and that Warehouse dream imploding how it did...

It is all flat, laid out before me now and I in the center looking side to side, like some book I am in the middle of both writing and reading. And that is all I know to do, keep writing. The only thing. My bills will pile up and my friends will continue to call where are you Kel and Seanie and Jame will come home from Mexico and go back to Memphis and finally have some time to relax and love will sit around me like a halo or some place that is waiting when I close my eyes and dream. I'll write this book til it's done, loooord aunts uncles everyone, dont ask me what's next because right now I am content with I do not know, or at least, I will write my book til the end that is all I know to do.

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.

Circles

It was like crashing chin first on boulders, coming home, and by the time I got to the Pines I was turned every kind of inside out and I knew it was bad when even the ocean didn't speak of home.

I felt myself falling down, too, which was the frustrating part, wanting so badly to hold on to something and knowing that it was the force of my grip complicating the motion, the vortex of energy, the circles, going around and around like a downtown highrise revolving door that all the fancy people walk through. Catalytic energy of my self, working against myself, and the anger at the whole damn thing unravelling simply because I didn't, I so badly didn't want it to unravel at all.

By yesterday evening the rain came though, and my soul was emptied by then and ready for the cleanse I was so soothed all the way through. I spent the whole day working peace, swirling circles, new circles of light at my room at the beach. All I originally intended was to set up my quiet spot, set up my candles and little things of magic and sacred and power in the corner in my room so I put the windows up to burn the sage and other oils and herbs so of course by then, by the time fire and all that summer air was involved it turned quickly, happily in to an all day affair. Mom got home in the afternoon and I was blessing herbs all over the counter and we laughed the crazy laugh when I caught her with her eyes closed, blessing them too. We were giddy, Chels was in the hospital about to bring Savanah in to the world and maybe that's what started it all, sending her reiki and peace and how powerfully psychic that early day opening made me, I literally felt the contractions in her back as I sung sweet quiets of peace from my spirit to hers. Sweet sweet peace I held her across the miles in my arms, allowing for the true steady and calm. Sean in the meantime texted he was at the airport waiting, having been bumped to a flight five hours later and they gave him $400 to wait, and so he ended up flying with his fiance on the flight her company booked for her and so at the end of the day serendipity, even on the east coast, the hard dismantled cement and gray and grease and ego-tapes of mean and goddamnits revving always in the people's head east coast, serendipity, light spirit, prevail. Sky's the limit I texted him and sent him the mind vision of us out front of his house in Columbia arms at the sky like Cindy always does chest open and hearts pointed at the sun. Laughing, laughing, laughing in knowledge of the wisdom truth that as the heart goes the Universe seeks to affirm.

The best picture ever came at 4:30 Grandma with the baby in her arms. By dinner my room was the fabulous messy of explosion that comes first whenever I clean or organize anything visual and magical as I am. Mom's health food tasted so great, the rains came in sheets, the sky looked yellow with hysterical late night sun battling the storm for its final chance to poke out. The McMullen reunion is Sunday, I start work Monday, tonight I hold Savanah for the very first time.

My laundry's almost done, Sean's folded in to the streets of Memphis, Dad is home early for the weekend from Lanham having graduated 130 students last night spouting anger and politics but I smile at him the face of quiet and the moon. Even though my homecoming was anything but smooth I myself am alighting again and maybe ready now to return all the calls and texts and messages that keep coming in. I love the moist way of muted morning light coming in through my room at the Pines. I love the magic of life, reverent, dirty, ebbing and crashing, re-surfacing again and again. There is a surfboard in our kitchen and out back the forest is full of summer green. My family is touching down in various different spectacular forms it is the reminder of stability, which is another means of saying the constancy of change change change.

Thunder, The County, Sean. Memphis. Rounded-out inside.

Wanna get breakfast? It's 6:25 am and one of the first things I say.

Well, not the first, I've already shared my upon waking deep thought for the morning about the big changes he's upon, and also greeted him a happy US-in-the-World-Cup Day.

Kelly you are a fucking dump truck he says and I say when I answer something like dude you have no idea, like you cant even comprehend the amount of food I ate on my vacation, or for that matter the canyon that must be in my gut it's got to be as big at least as one of those little ones in Colorado, you know like the ones next to a big mesa? I am laughing a little it is early but I am up inside, and the laugh is not the cry-ey laugh kind just a chuckle.

I dont get the irony of mesa meaning table til now.

Last night I think I was driving us both a little crazy. I'd been on his couch all day, and it was a big day, for him at least, and I was priming my self since 9 am to drive to Brooklyn and pick up my bridesmaid dress then make the final truck to the beach. Finally at like 8 at night or something I heard the thunder and went out to sit under the sky on his front step where I feel like I've sat a million times and had to take some time to make my case, which is to say just sit quiet a while with the Nature and me, which is to say the same thing. To sit quiet awhile, find the without, find the within.

The sky was blue but wild pungent yellow behind the clouds. It felt so Maryland and in all, it was good, satisfying to be home. It's funny when you leave a while you come back and see all the subtle quiet things you take for granted. Sitting in the thunder heat with that yellowgreen sky put me in mind of Mandy, who I've seen sit like that a million times. Just watching, feeling the ripe. I had the shift feeling of light air happen then, like some ether layer of me rustling about then settling back in to me again, which actually is recognition, and realized yet again how many little things quantify a place. I went in after a while and looked at my brother with must have been that blank look on my face which is how we do, me and him, without knowing it when we are trying to cover where we've been. What we dont ever get is blank for us means the same thing as transparent and the only one in the world who can read that layer of see-through on me is him. And maybe mom. He laughed it is the laugh that always made me used to feel embarrassed because I always confused it as laughing at me, but I am older now and get that it is just laughter because he knows. Do you want some ice cream I said and he laughed some more and then said Kel, why dont you at least drive to Brooklyn and get your dress? Get out and do something at least take a drive you dont have to drive all the way home. We are afterall suburb kids, taking drives is what he know to do. He doesn't say that part about suburb kids that is mine for right here. Yea yea that's good that's what I'll do I said But you'll have to go right now just get in the car and motor before it's closed he answered and so that's what I did.

I touched down at BWI the night before, texted him I'm here, still on the plane. His car was waiting outside the black and metal mechanics of the baggage claim, under the cement that feels post-apocalypse underground and smells stale and like gas and where you cant even see a single plane. I love it there though and am happy to see him and Jamie waving at me, then I get in, and Jamie apologized immediately for being distant which I didn't notice then went on to say she just got a call from the Vice President of her company in Texas, he needed to talk to her ASAP about an opportunity. I wanted pizza so Seanie immediately drove us to the closet mall, it was near 9pm, and him and me ate pizza from a woodfire oven while she sat in the car on the phone.

Memphis is a long way away, and it all happened so quick, and I can write about it on here becasue in an hour or so from now we'll meet his friends downtown to watch the US soccer game and he will tell them then, and by this afternoon I'm sure most of the family will have found out becasue dad will likely have talked to uncle Tim. They are leaving Thursday, wont even be at the family reunion this weekend. Yesterday I didn't feel a thing today I feel a little like my heart is being taken from me, but all the same I know without any question that for them this is the exact right thing. It all happened so quick, Jamie is in Manayunk CraigsListing their apartment and doing all she can in 48 hours to tie up with her current clients there. He and I sat on his couch most of the day yesterday tightening his resume and other contacts and cover letters and stuff, and watching soccer on tv.

When I got on to route a hundred to head towards Brooklyn Park I couldn't shake that huge rounded feeling of something about to happen, but being in the calm right before it is to come. I knew this feeling wasn't about my brother, that this is more about me and his news was precursor of what's to come. Memphis is his big thing and what they've been waiting for and what we've all been secretely holding our breath in hopes that it wouldn't come, which is selfish but true. None of us knew they'd get transferred that far. I support him a hundred percent though, like I said some things are just right and you know it, you can feel it the way the tide of it fits curved and rounded, and retreats when the energy of it finally comes to fruition, and feels like relief and peace in your soul.

I drove to Brooklyn Park next to the biggest Maryland clouds, full of thunder and white scary lightening smelling ripe as cloves but never dropping any rain. Just passed the beltway where you pick up the harbor tunnel I got of to go south on route 2, and curving round the roundabout I had the most natural sensation of being on my way to visit Gram. It took me a full few seconds to realize, no, no she's dead now, has been a full 13 years and her house in Brooklyn on Church Street sold that summer, 97, first time I went traveling right after in fact I'd gotten home. And there was instead of the sweet ache just a settled feeling of mmm-hmmm, of acknowledgement, of all things passing, and for way more than the first time I had the sense again of much my whole time on the Eastern Shore seemed like a dream. Not the surreal, make-believe way, but in the way of waking so that you cant remember a darn piece of what went on the night before behind your eyes. And how you know it was important, you can feel it, but it's over now so may as well go on and greet the day. And how if anyone or thing could go ahead and show you, hit repeat on the dream button so that you could watch your dreams with the waking thoughts of day, how you wouldn't believe it was in all true, anyway, because the regularly conscious part of you slept all the way through. It's how I felt coming home, like home back to Anne Arundel county, like it's not been a day or more since I've been away--forget those 12 years on the shore. It's how I felt, foreign, when I unlocked my car.

In the beginning of the journey that Liz Gilbert goes on in Eat, Pray, Love she spends a month or more, I guess actually like 4 months, eating her way across Italy. It's healing to her soul. That's how I've felt, where I've been, from the first night in Yachats at the Adobe with Gretchen when she ordered us, literally, 4 entire enormous plates of food. We laughed and ate and ate and laughed the rest of the month away. It's felt so good to just eat. Good, savory, sweet, ethnic, rich, fatty, delicious food. It feels good, too, to be home.

Snow, & New Moon

I've been trying to keep it mellow, but where I live right now is getting absolutely pounded with snow. My town got over two feet this past weekend, while my brother, over on the other side of Baltimore City where they're prone to the foothill mountain patterns got over three feet. Last night it sleeted all night and now it's been snowing all day. I've been in my pjs, frumpin, sleeping, snuggly, considering getting up to get a book to read but mostly just loving being this lazy. The college I work for is closed ALL WEEK! Sean my bro just sent this picture, of him on his front walk, with snow up to his shoulder!! Five feet! All over our state municipals are in emergency phases meaning it's illegal to even go outside! Oh Mama--you are something you are something you are something...!

Anyhow. I am safe, and thankfully warm and with my power still on. Tomorrow night is the New Moon. I woke up at 3 in the morning with the February blankness that comes to me. I slid right in to meditation, thankful for the technique of Vipassana I once stumbled on and got to learn, how it helps me keep the edges clean on my mindfulness when I need to sink deep within, remaining equanimous and accepting, just witnessing in deeper and deeper ways the levels of my emotional self. In there, in the deep quiet within, I sat in the February fear that is always lingering and hanging out...the February stunned blankness, easing in to a loving posture of myself much as I could all the way through. Then the Mama, the deep voice was there: all that self-gnowledge that is laying under the demons at our own inner gate waiting, if we want to, to be heard. This new moon is still full of Imbolc energy, and one of the most powerful times for prophecy/reflection/intention setting of the whole year. Now my fears are on the forefront, so I am happy to be being tender as I can with myself today. Loving loving snuggling frumping, and warm and safe, too.

Good time to be snowed in, to get to be still...

Just sayin.