The Eastern Shore is the rural, country side of Maryland. It is flat but full of agricultural and watermen history, you can almost see its bias and charm in the fog banks that stack thick on a fall day like today. The Chesapeake Bay divides the shore from the stretch of urban corridor between Annapolis, DC, and Baltimore where I am right now. Over there, or the other side is what Shore people call it here.
The last time I was here in this shop I lived on the shore. I had edits due to Erika; her most recent submission of Hemingway's Girl. It didn't have a contract on it yet. She didn't even have an agent then. In such little time so much can change.
My cousin Erin drove us to Annapolis this morning. Last night sort of late we went to Ellicot City, my favorite place to go in the fall. Later of course it was Sex and the City reruns in her bed. We parted ways this morning at her car, she to the State House where she works me to the Hard Bean where now I can write and study and be the Kelly that inside me really is and needs to be. It's been a whirlwind, in San Antonio with mom and dad the Montezuma Cypresses hung over us on the river walk and talked low like they knew our names. A Mexican man fell in love with me and spoke in Spanish about the true ancient heritage of my tattoo. It made me laugh in a gentle way and turn red. It's the first time anyone has done that, ever, in spanish Los Indios, Los Aztecos...not one of my Mexican friends ever knew, not one. Coatalique in the eyes, lore of female divine still living in our unconscious but in the temporal from day to day she is dead. In Austin I stayed on a ranch with 26 other McMullens for the weekend. It was like being a child again at Gram and Pops at the beach. People on mattresses on the floor and every couch bodied. Kate looked like a Grecian princess in the times of the Goddess on her wedding day. We made a circle around them and I couldn't stop the hot tears that ran the whole time. Now I'm here, Maryland where I'm from, time at Uncle Tim's where I slept all night two nights ago, the first time I've done that since Mary went in the hospital. Time with Brian my brother in Canton and my family in Pennsylvania, too.
And now time with me today, before I meet with my brother Sean and Aunt Sue, to write poems and sing this soul of mine back to life. Out the shop front the boat show is setting up, years ago I worked twelve hour shifts at Pussers back to back because boat show weekend brings all the tips. I lived here then and was going to marry a man named Joe. Years after that I came here to the docks on my first date with Brandon, who I would spend six years with in a farmhouse deep in the country of the Eastern Shore. Growing veggies and swapping music and fresh eggs. Years after that I came up here to meet with Erika, begin this phase which has been all about the soul song, all about trusting that there is no arrival, just a path that presses and spirals, and cycles on.
Good for me to think on that today. To tame this head that really wants to know about ...Years from now...? That really loves to wrap up in the different experiences of home.
Showing posts with label passings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label passings. Show all posts
October 4, 2012
July 22, 2012
The only ones who get it
The week after next will be one year since I got in the car to drive to California. With no place to live and no real plan. I arrived at Mike's in Newport Beach on the 8th of August. I had my first breakfast with Mo on her backporch in Santa Cruz on August 15. Days later she took me north to farm and meet Em and Bebe and Nicky and Jon and everyone. These people who became my precious family in SoHum. I have messages saved on my VM that make me smile or grateful...Erika saying she's closing in on a book deal. Erin shhhmrrring....My brother repeating the word farts... My sohum fam, one from Em and one from Jon each calling me Mama in character, with a tone of voice that immediately draws laugh-based tears. That was one year ago. On August 15 this year I will move in to my own studio apartment in Laguna Beach. A mile up the canyon, surrounded by green trees.
I haven't had my own place since I officially left behind Easton, my job at the Community College, and the final remnants of life I'd created in Chestertown in May 2010. The next two years were intermediary. A long, major crossing. I went to my then love Brandon in April 08 and said I want to go to California for grad school. Four years later my application is now in, same school as the grad packet that was in my hands all the way back then. I am waiting. Awaiting. Primed to move, to lock things in. This next step so timely, and so long in coming.
One night this past week I watched the sun go down with Jott on the other end of the phone. I cried a lot and put some things to rest. Her friendship one of the prime bounties that came from those two years in-between. I talked to Gretchen another night and laughed the wild laugh the whole time. This women who continues, again and again, to see to my rounds. Bebe called Thursday and I lay on the ottoman in my room, my back half-hanging down, in the lavender-smelling orange-lit candled-air. My fan turning, Bebe and I in communion over the passing of her mom. Sonoma, my life with her, just one corner ago--just January--but so much living this year that it feels so long ago. I did little this weekend other than sleep on the clear blue beach. I swam, alot. Finally. I feel whole, rhythmic, much as I can connected and whole to the many different parts of all of who I am.
In Starbucks now a dad holds his baby girl on his lap in the most tender, devoted way. It's just the same gesture as my brother with his baby girl on Skype this morning. Not one part of me considers my life any differently than it is right now. Wishes that it had gone any other way. Here I am, with me, about to go whole-heartedly after me. My place, my book, my students and teaching, my avocation. The beach and bike rides the sun and palm trees. I am quiet, not in awe, just still. I wanted everything on the shelf. Every cake and muffin every tart and scone. Every last treat so I helped my self. A cookie and a donut. Sometimes a girl deserves more than just the one.
It's quiet, sometimes, the little marks and occasions that pass. How we are the only ones who get it, who really know.
June 2, 2010
Prayer for Life, in the wind. Storms come, road trips. Come together, ppl. Dreams.
Mandee told Gretchen the storm would be here soon and would last for 36 hours, and it made me laugh and reminisce on how I used to describe Oregon Coast weather when I first left here and moved home to Maryland in 2005. Coast storms? We call them hurricanes back east...
It was steady the rain, all night. I took a long, long lavender and Epsom salt soak in Gretchen's tub reading til past midnight and the rain by then had already taken on a soothing rhythm, like someone was steady going over and over the roof with a giant rolling pin. Now, outside my window the only thing that cuts the rolling hum is the counter beat of splats from the gutter overflow, and the tweet of some soaking wet birds. I woke up to the heaviest dream, heavy in content but also like sludge in my muscles that's how deep the sleep was. Jamie my brother's fiance was sedated and in my care which felt odd and irresponsible to me, it was her wedding day, we were all running late, I didn't have my dress and felt awful, my brother was detached and sad, we all were wandering the desert in fancy clothes trying to get there on time. But the last thing, before the dream switched and varied between Amy and Rudy who kept morphing to Jasper and back, was this sense in the desert that no matter what happened between Sean and Jamie with the wedding it all was ok, and they knew it, because they had each other. I saw it underneath the blankness in their eyes, there was the seed of shared heart beam. I wanted that myself, and chose to serve them out of respect for it, instead... I opened up my eyes eventually, and looked at my cell phone expecting the time to be around 8, thinking that I'd slept late since the time difference has me up by 7 am. Instead, it was almost 10. Gretchen was in bed, awful sick with a stomach flu that came in the night, I checked my phone and got a message from Sam, and called right back because I know what news stands behind messages like that. And the news from the east coast was startling and sad. Funny how much can change in the night...
Now I am in bed again, it is almost 12, waiting on my laundry to finish. We called Mandee again and found out this isn't even the big storm, with all this rolling rain and occasional wind. So I will start down coast today before it gets here, take Gretchen's little pickup south. I wont camp, I cant in all this rain I dont have the gear, the constitution for it or the desire. Thankfully, as timing does, my state taxes came today so motels and cabins it will be. I am going driving with the sea. I am going road-tripping, for the first time in my life with no destination at all, and with the only passenger: me. When the time is right, I will go in to the mountains. Tell ppl to burn white candles for her, I texted Sam. Tell them to send prayers of healing and light, and burn white candles, that's what she needs to return to her source she is loose right now, wandering but not free. I'll find a mountain side somewhere, some lake or stream, make offerings for her of flight and peace and make offerings for the tribe back home. Death scatters, but is the door through which we each, and especially the ones left behind, must go through alone in order to make whole, too.
The rounds they come, the rounds the rounds they go. We are always in some part of our own round. We are always in some part of our own journey to from or returning home.
I will go now to the road with the passings that came to urge me on in the night.
Prayer for Molly with White Candles, in the wind
Writing of fire on the slab of jade,
the cleft in the rock, serpent-goddess and queen,
pillar of cloud, and fountain struck from stone,
the nest of eagles, the circle of the moon,
the seed of anise, mortal and smallest thorn
that has the power to give immortal pain,
shepherd of valleys underneath the sea
and guardian of the valley of the dead,
liana that hangs at the pitch of vertigo,
climber and bindweed and the venomous plant,
flower of resurrection and grape of life
lady of the flute and of the lightning-flash,
terrace of jasmine, and salt rubbed in the wound,
a branch of roses for the man shot down,
snowstorm in August, moon of harrowing,
the writing of the sea cut in basalt,
the writing of the wind upon the desert,
testament of the sun, pomegranate, wheat-ear,
a face of flames, face that is eaten away,
the adolescent and persecuted face
the years of fantasy and circular days
that open upon the same street, the same wall,
the moment flares up and they are all one face,
the procession of faces of this calling,
all of these names are unified in one name,
all of these faces are now a single face,
all centuries are now a single instant
and throughout the centuries of centuries
the path to the future shut by these two eyes,
there is nothing before me, but a moment
recovered tonight, standing against a dream....
excerpt, at random by the heartcandledlight, from Sun stone (Mexico City, 1957,) by Octavio Paz. Italics mine.
It was steady the rain, all night. I took a long, long lavender and Epsom salt soak in Gretchen's tub reading til past midnight and the rain by then had already taken on a soothing rhythm, like someone was steady going over and over the roof with a giant rolling pin. Now, outside my window the only thing that cuts the rolling hum is the counter beat of splats from the gutter overflow, and the tweet of some soaking wet birds. I woke up to the heaviest dream, heavy in content but also like sludge in my muscles that's how deep the sleep was. Jamie my brother's fiance was sedated and in my care which felt odd and irresponsible to me, it was her wedding day, we were all running late, I didn't have my dress and felt awful, my brother was detached and sad, we all were wandering the desert in fancy clothes trying to get there on time. But the last thing, before the dream switched and varied between Amy and Rudy who kept morphing to Jasper and back, was this sense in the desert that no matter what happened between Sean and Jamie with the wedding it all was ok, and they knew it, because they had each other. I saw it underneath the blankness in their eyes, there was the seed of shared heart beam. I wanted that myself, and chose to serve them out of respect for it, instead... I opened up my eyes eventually, and looked at my cell phone expecting the time to be around 8, thinking that I'd slept late since the time difference has me up by 7 am. Instead, it was almost 10. Gretchen was in bed, awful sick with a stomach flu that came in the night, I checked my phone and got a message from Sam, and called right back because I know what news stands behind messages like that. And the news from the east coast was startling and sad. Funny how much can change in the night...
Now I am in bed again, it is almost 12, waiting on my laundry to finish. We called Mandee again and found out this isn't even the big storm, with all this rolling rain and occasional wind. So I will start down coast today before it gets here, take Gretchen's little pickup south. I wont camp, I cant in all this rain I dont have the gear, the constitution for it or the desire. Thankfully, as timing does, my state taxes came today so motels and cabins it will be. I am going driving with the sea. I am going road-tripping, for the first time in my life with no destination at all, and with the only passenger: me. When the time is right, I will go in to the mountains. Tell ppl to burn white candles for her, I texted Sam. Tell them to send prayers of healing and light, and burn white candles, that's what she needs to return to her source she is loose right now, wandering but not free. I'll find a mountain side somewhere, some lake or stream, make offerings for her of flight and peace and make offerings for the tribe back home. Death scatters, but is the door through which we each, and especially the ones left behind, must go through alone in order to make whole, too.
The rounds they come, the rounds the rounds they go. We are always in some part of our own round. We are always in some part of our own journey to from or returning home.
I will go now to the road with the passings that came to urge me on in the night.
Prayer for Molly with White Candles, in the wind
Writing of fire on the slab of jade,
the cleft in the rock, serpent-goddess and queen,
pillar of cloud, and fountain struck from stone,
the nest of eagles, the circle of the moon,
the seed of anise, mortal and smallest thorn
that has the power to give immortal pain,
shepherd of valleys underneath the sea
and guardian of the valley of the dead,
liana that hangs at the pitch of vertigo,
climber and bindweed and the venomous plant,
flower of resurrection and grape of life
lady of the flute and of the lightning-flash,
terrace of jasmine, and salt rubbed in the wound,
a branch of roses for the man shot down,
snowstorm in August, moon of harrowing,
the writing of the sea cut in basalt,
the writing of the wind upon the desert,
testament of the sun, pomegranate, wheat-ear,
a face of flames, face that is eaten away,
the adolescent and persecuted face
the years of fantasy and circular days
that open upon the same street, the same wall,
the moment flares up and they are all one face,
the procession of faces of this calling,
all of these names are unified in one name,
all of these faces are now a single face,
all centuries are now a single instant
and throughout the centuries of centuries
the path to the future shut by these two eyes,
there is nothing before me, but a moment
recovered tonight, standing against a dream....
excerpt, at random by the heartcandledlight, from Sun stone (Mexico City, 1957,) by Octavio Paz. Italics mine.
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