The way I know it needs me

My favorite place to write is Panera.  Maybe it's silly but I figured it was an East Coast place so I didn't even bother looking for one last week.  It's where I used to go at least twice a week when I moved to Easton, after my year sabbatical out in the country at Teena's 1800's original farmhouse on the Choptank River.  Easton was my first place of my own, my only place all my own.  I loved it so, my own little sweet kitchen where I used to wile and dance every morning.  My own comfy couch and extraordinary windows that let in the best yellow sunshine, the magnolia out the kitchen that I knew like an old friend.  I could walk to the best local coffee shop and music venue in the world from that little pad with the light purple bathroom and the bedroom that I turned to my studio with the wall length book shelf. The coffee shop there was my all time favorite, but people like Rudy and KJ or my students showing up at random, just like how it's supposed to happen at the local place, made it hard to get my work done.  So Panera out on Route 50 used to feed me, next to its gas fireplace, it kept me caffeinated and with my heart in the work and the work in my head all winter long.  These were the days of the earliest drafts of my novel.  Imagine my great happiness driving to the strip mall in Newport today only to discover a Panera Bread right next to the Ross.

That's where I am now, hoping a coveted outlet opens so I can sit and get in to chapter four the way I know it  needs me to, gnawing at me to gnaw at it.  I'll warm-up a minute on this blog here, eat my salad and Vermont-cheddar-mac-n-cheese, get the facebook-spacing out of the way.  By this day next week there will be my very own room with a beckoning call, a perfectly fit desk against the front left wall.

There is nothing better in the world than knowing what you love and living it.  It keeps me grateful, and my feet eager to be on the ground.  It's true what they say anyhow, to thy own self be true...when I'm out there stumbling and adventuring around I always know I'll like what I get to see.  It's what happens, because I always remember to bring along me.

TAoCB. Newport Beach, CA

Newport Beach is cold when you get out of the ocean at 6 in the evening, not like Maryland at all in fact in MD that is my favorite time to swim.  There was no sweatshirt in my bag.  All the surfers have wetsuits on here and the people chilling on the beach, other than one older guy who I spotted as soon as I stepped on the sand, are from out of town.  In OC I could always tell the locals, pick them out easy on the beach, in the water, in most any crowd.

Mike told me on the phone the only reason to live here is to surf.  He's right, obviously, and that was clear to me in less than twenty minutes strolling along the Coast Highway in his town.  There are other towns though, ones he's suggested, and ones I have a mind for all my own.  He is such a dear, he did and said little things last night that only someone who's known him as long as I have would've appreciated and my heart tickled with what it means to be "home".  How much it's people as it is zip code, too.  And my brother's friends and the charm and laughs they so easy blend have always granted me instant access to that settled sense.  He either is a good host, or good at anticipating needs, or both I guess because he gave me his room and let me drop all my stuff.  I needed, need, to decompress, to let out some inner-held outbreath, and recalibrate now that I am next to the California Pacific where I for so long have wanted to be. 

It was last night, riding bikes in the dark along a side street beside the sea, like being inside a waking dream.

Meeting Monique on the central coast this weekend, she has a gig at a winery turned to a combo Bon Voyage party for her sis who's exiting to Paris.  The adventures surely are more to come~  

TAoCB. I made it!