I was gone fifteen days.

Not really sure what happened other than I slept eight hours last night, almost to the exact minute, and felt clean and clear waking up in my bed in the loft in the canyon.  In the California mythos of sunshine-wintertime.

I was gone fifteen days but the truth is it was way, way longer than that.  On Friday Uncle Tim, who is my godfather by the soul way, called in the morning.  It was Ocean Pines gray out which is its own special prison that keeps the winter folk away.  The thing is with sock-in like that marsh gasses keep the soil tender-moist and smelling green.  So we took a four mile tall tree walk on a path he tends for the Rec department and I cried those hot soul-cleanse tears that are meant only for God-ppl and wise women, which of course are the same thing.  Helped me to take serious the karma I have between me and my own god-kids, too.  Later I found out about Derynne's brother and couldn't see straight again.

So Konan came through winding us up at Cork Bar downtown which in a million different scenarios if I had to hand-pick that would be down towards 9 hundred ninety thousand on the list.  But here's the thing, the Wild proclamation:  you just never know you know?  We wound up late night in WOC and that there was the only place in the world I needed to be, kicking it w his real home grls and seeing myself in them in a way I haven't seen me in Way. Too. Long a time.

The next day I stayed in pajamas til 7 pm and watched the Red Tent and ate the soup broth I'd made/been making since the first night at home.  Witchy bitches make witchy brew.  We watched the Ravens rock Pitt like we all knew was coming.  WILD card that's Baltimore, that special Baltimore one-eyed medicine some mistake as bad (false-pride).

And that's what's up, tracking home, the special tendencies that run the soul of who you are cuz of the land peopled through of from-where-you-come.  If you can read and track this, good for you.  If you can't you need help dark-seeing which means between the lines.  Linguistics.  Can't be studied. Someone should tell Pacifica that.

Point is this all happened or started back the night I went to HB to meet Yasi and Konan started blowing me up--that's the thing about WILD, all cards eventually come a calling and that's the thing about one-eyed medicine.  It's your duty to rise up when the reminder comes: you CAN see.

So now Humboldt makes sense, the long 101 journey home again to the earth and the tides that rise.  I come living back to the canyon, no food in my hobbit dwelling just coffee and no phone charger to keep me tied to time and ties and all that hell.  I write these words and The Light comes on which is Erin Mac back there in Baldamore making her next moves saying wutsup.  She comes through as WILD does, like I useta say and always will, Poetry is my only religion.



That is what's up.

I know Who I am.   I need little else than that.

Prayers that all ppl get right. Or Wild.  Either or is the same.  Go listen to some good music if you're dead!

I'm going for a swim.

The dark comes and then like a switch

Bob Weir shouldn't be singing about don't you want your daddy to feel alright because I haven't had coffee yet and it makes me think eecchh no bluch what's up with this version of this song?  It is a studio version, clean version, Shakedown Street version.  The dark comes and then like a switch too, the cold is here.  I am adjusting to winter in the canyon.  Which means my windows are still open but in the morning I need fuzzy socks and sweaters and live recordings of the Dead that make me think of the dreams of California before California was actually my living dream.  You know yellow sunshine cliffsides and PCH.  Not mustache muffle you can hear too well bc of over-production.  I mean. Sheesh.  Also I will need a wetsuit now.  At Mermaid Beach it was the blue and gunmetal color on the twists and turn-unders that make the lips break so stunning white.  Which if you know the sea like me you know that means cold.  I was right and even though past the pound it was clear and turquoise underneath, still it was goosebumps soon as I got out and my hands took several hours to warm.  It was the same before on Tuesday, just that it didn't look cold yet.

Haha this, my life.  I spent at least six hours yesterday cleaning up my online presence.  Online presence!!? Isn't that a trip?  When I wrote that I saw in my head my old bedroom when I was a young teenager where in the corner I had this sittin-chair, like a futon armchair thing. It made me feel like, you know.  Adult.  And it's where I would sit and paste pictures on the wall of cut-out magazine poems and surfer boys.  And ohhhh lawd feel the angst of gahhh but life is sooo hard.  Then smoke a cigarette out the window and think of all the reasons I needed relief.  Back of hand on forehead.  Dear me.

I went to San Juan to meet ppl down there to celebrate a birthday and the 73 was like driving through a technicolor scene.  Like sunshine batches you could actually reach out and touch and make into braids to ribbon through your hair.  Clouds the size of bonnets for the Angel-Queens that ride in the sky.  What this land would look like if we got more of this once or twice a year rain!?  Come on world you're so beautiful it is devastating.  You crunch me apart like I have glass insides.

Hand to the forehead.  

Again.

When I got home after that I spent another five hours on business cards and brochures.  It was 2 when I turned in.  The flat pat of rain outside.  The holy surrender cry of plants that long ago had quit.  It amazes me the instinct--where does it come from--to press on and on, and do what we have to do.

Life you strange beast.  I adore and…also grit my teeth at you.  Plants sing better than Weir does out my window. Ahhhhhh ohhhhhhh mmmmmmm yea

thank you waterrrrRelief.

My first house

It's one of the girl's birthdays, on Facebook my students arranged a hilarious broken-english thread arranging the details of yesterday's surprise party.  Hilarious because they get jokes not because of their misused pronouns and verb forms.  Getting jokes says a lot when you are learning a language.  It is cheesy I get it but that's my first focus, we speak heart in my class.  Lots of laughter so that even if the words don't translate the spirit does.

We are all homeless I am thinking when I walk through the door of class and see the hopeful looks of the two Japanese girls in the corner decorating Maiko's chair with gifts and streamers, they are relieved to see that I am not the birthday girl.  What is a home?  Is it the knowledge that, say, you have to be turning on to Fairfield by quarter of if you want to walk in to class five minutes before class starts?  Is it the way your bed feels on Friday mornings, pillows stuffed with the zion of sleep and still cushioning your awareness when you settle back in with your first cup of coffee and books and blank pages?  Is it the way the air, through the screen when the sun is almost down and you are drying your dishes, reminds you that there is life outside?  How it makes you grateful, reminds you to pay attention?

There was sad news from the East Coast that came after other sad news from the East Coast.  The kind of news that jolted my routine and knocked me off balance for a while, after already being a tiny bit off balance because my cousin was here for ten days.  I had to pause and be firm enough with myself, my sleep was a mess, my caffeine intake off the chain.  My diet for shit and no yoga.  But totally obsessed with writing and studying, so really the past two weeks have been a madness of the poetic kind.  Frenzy.  The Poetry finally came back to me the night before last.  So I am proud of myself.  The golden tail tried to slip away under the door.  I went after it.  Wriggly little bastard.  I mean seriously, I didn't let up.  My poem muscles must be so lean and strong now.  Poetry sounds like palm trees and feels like the sea.  Or big bright magical flowers that only live in California and must have sparkle names.  It feels like the bald light of the moon.  Like the way that light must put invisible magic on your skin.

We're floating through space Brooks reminded me, a long talk under the palm trees them witnessing me letting him be my witness through the sun roof of my car.  I sat under my purple mexican blanket because it was cold out and night but I needed the fresh salt air.  That's when I felt the untying, when he said that.  That's what made it all good...this is life is what he was saying.  Which was enough for me to say, ohhh yea and I get a choice in the matter, to make it holy.  To make it holy with my own special sunshine and rain.

We are all homeless and speaking a second language.  I make a home my own home.  I do it for us, using language, my first house.  Also I don't really know what I am doing.

There is beauty in the knowing that no one really does.

This time moving all the way through

It's so easy, the easiest way indeed, to be "depressed."  What I mean to say, to live inside that autopilot function.  I woke up this morning at Bebe's after a day of rain.  Rain like soggy riversides, rain on everything, trees made of rain, air-rain breath-rain rain in your speech.  Rainy Ravens rain day, we watched football and ate potpie at the local bar called Blue Heron.  I processed all morning first, rain cry, for the poet all things round the labyrinth again.  Chestertown a weepy sigh.  Bebe's house is made of magic, since I'd come then gone again she re-arranged so everything glows light now.  In the Cazadero Mountains I did magic for two weeks and you can not do magic with fifty people for two straight weeks and then not see the energy of all things when you get back.  So high so high.

I met two fairies they live in Cazadero tucked behind the woods.  They have friends with a cabin where I may indeed go.  Eager for warm potlucks under the deep redwoods.  The writing is ready, the hearthands of my skin digit processors are ticking.  I think about Jon at Vipassana so far south, I want to tell him his Giants made the Bowl.  I think of Gracy and my brother and sister-in-law both away at new job trainings missing the first mobile motions of their little girl.  I miss her it feels terrible but I am alright, alive, where I am meant to be.  Sad words reflexive, they are how I smile...

Meaning it could be easy to be but I'm not depressed. I'm brave enough to express all the way through!  Bebe helped me.  I learned so much at training, 9 hours of class a day and at times up to two of ritual, at least.  We'd learn then process by going out to play.  There was a time in my life when I had a home and a community and a partner, peopled through by what we'd built on our love.  Permaculture, holy permaculture took me back there again so for two weeks my heart is what my eyes were on.  Poor little closed door. I watched it surface then hide.  Surface tweaking then blocking reeling hide again.  How could I have let so fully go of who I used to be, where did the man go who helped so strongly grow these roots of me? I watched.  I kept learning and playing.  Trancing ritual praying. I am good at loving everyone, I am good at loving myself.  But my past, that bridge back there, back to me, I am good too at keeping that blocked.  Tight and closed.

O Bebe, who helped me.  Today I woke in her big sweetness, bed lush warm cabin hugging me and all the dripping trees and air outside.  I knew it was time, here I am circling again, this time moving all the way through by willing to go back.  I can open to let go, that's how to fuel the moving on.  I chopped kindling in the rain, added wood to the fire, heard it crack and cackle and came happy with the words and the morning back in to my whole life again.  This fire different here, not like the woodstove I learned when he taught me once years ago.  And Gillian sings, and Brandi sings, and these are words I eat whole to taste my own words yet unspoken but starting the first movements of dance in my mouth.  Sacred tongue.  Brandi, back again, and gillian O poet gillian poet women who I love...and I would really love to hear your voice sometime to close a little distance in my mind...


I'll go back to Cali where I  can sleep out every night...

O time.  Blessed time, the revelator.

Poltergeist Love, the power-full prayer. & the hokey pokey.

Ha ha when the people say you're still writing?What's that book about anyway?  Yes I'm still writing yes I'm still writing what's it about?  Well what's life about?  Up to your own two eyes.  Human hearts and the poetic voice oh unfair unjust world.  Ha, the sun.  We rose up out of the primordial goop-funk amoebic then with gills then feet then thumbs.  Now voices.  Sing, speak, speak the earth the roots and the moon.  About this stuff.  That's what it's all about.  That's what all this is...

??

I walked in to my room two months ago with the vaccum cleaner in my hand and smelled the most real smell of him one of the many many hims in the long list of powerfull hyms oooops did i mean that, misspell of course of course (i have devil eyes!) i did.  I have poetry leading up to this.  I smelled him and laughed, there was a shadow on the wall this happens so often with the openness the other side of the creative wall that i laughed but also, angered, quick chased him off.  started to rerun the vacuum then had to tell someone so of course i told kel.   now this:

i have written so long, so long so long (nights at truslow first time back room paul asleep in sleeping bag down coated warmness of woodstove heat trapped inside tall pine trees at truslow spring-truth please those long, terrorizing days o would you come voice or death something, be raised all those terrible days at anngar farm.  o and let's not forget oregon?  the time first, knelt on my knees ordered a used computer over the internet came in a box banged up set it in the corner of the trailor on a small table barely a foot off the floor beach days so much sun tree afternoons so much rain and i would kneel there, write and of course pray) i have written and written and waited so soo long for this and now i am here, having written it out every step and abracadabra open sesame code it took to bring me this far.

erika printed out all i'd given her by the end of august 14 months of submish.  hundred plus pages?  nothing congruent.  now congruent as a dream! funny how that says as a dream as if in the sleeping sense with only one eye opened and not knowingly de dos mundos there is ever anything relevant to see.  as if sight is relevant without it too.

Finally, i am there, this is not a dream. i can smell pine strong as spirit it is real right here with me and on fb another stooopid sign, i say to the muses


ooo holiest of holy all things as one all dark and light all encompassed version of all things encircled and the encirclement of all that ever was and this voice and the outter that handles it, and ever on, and the still uncapsized moment prior to breath, o all love and creation and loss, set it all aside now as i poool from this flood as i pull under and go down to come up with all i have within, set is aside let me do thou work holy of all most especially of my name you have the quality just help me with quantity show up to the page

i am set up now, my ducks in a row.  this is fun, the most exotic strange poetic-practical place i have ever been.

It is pertinent as hell. Words.

I don't remember the year I spent at Choptank.

I don't remember anything specific, it just sits more as a memory of sense, gray and swirly with the occasional feeling of peace thrown in to the thicket of my reserve filed back then.

I moved from Anngar Farm the first week of November 2008, it was a Friday and I stopped my car at the edge of our 400 acres of feed-corn and soy to talk to two flannel-clad surveyors parked on the side of the road. The farm, they confirmed, had been sold. For all I know it happened that very day.

I talked to Brandon on the phone for about one minute. Then I called mom. I cried most of the way to 301.

Choptank was an hour from Chestertown by the backroads, which are the only roads I traveled back then, it was something about the soothing lay of the road against my tire tread. It was calming, all that farm country, all those trees, the changes of fall seizing the land. I was working for Chesapeake and had roughly ten sites in two rural counties spread out between well over 100 square miles. It was the something I could count on--I'd been on the Eastern Shore for a total of eight years of my life by then. I counted movement by the markers of farmhouses, wide turns in the roads and fields.

Besides leaving Brandon, I left behind a town of friends. A movement of local culture centered around both homegrown food and music, one that I personally worked hard to motivate and set within a momentum. It was sudden, to all of them, my departure. It was sudden and wrecking to him. It was like death, a numb whack of shock to the chest, to me. It was a miracle those first three months that I could even breathe.

I can say only that I was depressed back then and that is why I had to leave, and in a large way this had to do with being incapable of stating what I wanted. I knew what I loved but was too frightened to cultivate it or own it. I really believed it was something I did not deserve and so I went back on things all the time. My truth was changing because so much of my truth included lodges of fear, no dissipating no moving through, therefor no knowing for sure what I thought I thought for sure I knew. For months after I left Anngar lived in me with a filter of dull over it, but the fall is here now, the geese are calling and the trees have that certain subtle whisper in their departing leaves. I remember now so much. The fields that shivered purple at dusk. The yellow light on the barns and the half-there outbuildings and the way the birds carved the air inside. The sounds my kitties used to make in the high camelia bushes right out front. Old time records through the speakers at night, night after nights of dinners and the high chaotic laughter of our most amazing friends. Unannounced drop-ins from Sam. Coffee in the morning hot on the throat and cup hot on the hands, on the weekends the cool side-porch view of the shady hardwood trees against all that green. The quietness there with my love. Holding hands.

Last week, or maybe the one before that, I found my journal from the year I spent on the Choptank River, out in isolation renting a room in an 1800's farmhouse, talking to the water and laying in the grass. Over the years, since the early 2000's anyway, I've kept a practice called morning pages--writing three pages of longhand mental minutia download. Just getting the crud out of my head. It's something, a trick I've relied on with consistency that came my way via two different helpful books, that simply is the one true tool that's led me through. But I forgot about it: when I took up writing a novel morning pages were replaced with stronger doses of honesty on my blog. How I used my blog changed then, for sure. Literally this became the place of truth-telling, of writing my way through and thank god for it. It's helped codify the process, helped me shave down at the edges and in the great balancing act of writing for self versus convening with the audience, it's been the primary vehicle of me establishing how best to tell what I know. So it shocked me anyhow, discovering the hundred or two pages of writing my way through while at Choptank. Page after page of the same old horrible stuff, literally so much grief. Some of it ancient, some of it pity-pot, some of it contextual and some of it nameless in ways that kept me deep in the dark hole. Oh god the bravery it took for me to write all the way through! I had no idea, literally no recollection, of those pages being there.

There are loads of things I would different if I had the experience to do-over, and aint that the funny thing of it--I'd do it different now because of who I am now, but becoming who I am today had everything to do with going through those mistakes and casualties the hard way. Ultimately it comes down to that's just the way it goes. I stand poised in her today though, the woman who didn't know how to firmly say who she was or have the strength to stake her claim in the world. It is my own tiny miracle, my own heaven that is mine and mine alone and meant for only me to understand. It is pertinent as hell. It is the ground beneath me and it is the country of wild within me labeled not only what I want, but who I am. I hope the people that I hurt through it have forgiven. It has been a long hall, that one where forgiveness is gentle and blame retreats itself and lets open the next door, that one dark eddy of grave self-sin. I hope they all know how much love there is within. I am moving on from the chapter, the words falling like clean rain or leaves funny and quiet, but imminent, all the same. I am trying to convince myself in my most silent parts that the words are worth all I have, are at least as important when translated in to what I've come to give, from what I've lost and equally come to learn I own.

poem. unedited. candle-burning.

Winchester Bay, OR. June 3, 2010

What if these leaves are unread, or worse, dry, not mighty, by the ambiguity of refusal
Ever after, what then, becomes of Crow~
Perched first in shadow, waiting, waiting
My returm, waiting on the wind, waiting on the sea moss that hangs
From armfat branches of so many coastal trees from the armfat moss
And mold that fight each other in the longest dying, the trying of death is what’s timeless, and means nothing, other than arm fat breeze. Ground squirrels and chipmunks come and go this is home, make this home with their rodent breath fat on chanterelles and lichen, and mud. The sea breeze and sea trees grow in Lane County right out of the dunes, as if sand were enough. NO!! No I rattle my fist in it the painted gourd from Bobby Rays, invisible, no it is not enough, it is not enough to grow merely in sand
But that is elemental. Sea breeze incense air, salt seems too much but is enough, sun is fire & now,
Crow flies by window and says I’m ever in the shadows shadows are elemental your name is made of rain

Scathach, goddess of Celtic Warriors, come to me. O Goddess of birds, o trainer of men, come to me. Come to me now by cry that you are bird goddess, that you speak the words and know the magic names of all that takes air, that take to air, of all power and medicine that flies. In the magic hills top of Willamette Southside of the Breitenbush I spoke your name but first in silence, first in the powerful spell. hush of wet pine and mats of leaves did to me I knew only for one minute what it meant. Wolves travel hilltops for you, wildness speaks the power kernelled inside your breath Scathach, Scathach do you see what I can see can you see the speak the dry bird tongue rasp of cry that shakes the forest down drops loose leaves too the ground forces detritus above and under, constant change, constant turmoil of exile tension of self upon its self, blundering up the side walls, blundering up the scurried harried walls of herself, herself an extension of river breath and mist, can you speak the black bird name? Can you speak his voiceless vocabulary the yearnful calling? Is it just emission, do you choose it only as a game. I spoke your name. I spoke your name once for the yearlings cry, I spoke your name once for the pear tree, I spoke your name once for the mist of muse that blurs in the fog impenetrable banquet net gathering and catching and harnessing the sky I speak your name once for the buddhafull belly of the land once for the boulders built in highway categories out of words from the land I speak your name for fear of the Detroit damn I speak your name for the spell of India and the death of cartoons I speak your name for the tongues of the river tongues drunk on their own breath drunk on their own licks drunk on their own current drunk on their own madness drunk on their own cities drunk on their onw joy drunk on the belief of their own ecstasies I speak your name, I am drunk on your myth

O Scathach, if birds do not come to me? Do not come to train, do not come to be trained by me?
What then? These flowers I laid bare at your door out the Winchester Harbor fishing boats moored decks wet by nets tangled inner cabin dry and nestled boatopened bellys trying to scoop and save the sea. What then? I burn a candle not just for the lost poet sister, this morning, love, I burn a candle for me.

For Sam, and Ben. At Witching Hour, Winchester Bay, Oregon.

It was 11:37 west coast time when I knew it was soon time to burn the candle again. This is modern ritual and I do it so it lasts 7 days, the burning of the white candle that one may pass the bardo. But this is a new age, we are creating new myths, our tribe is our tribe and the new rituals matter only when so moved by one's own individual moment: therin, or where-in of course, is one's own truth. Which is why for Molly, the secret code words of power aren't Tibetan at all but live in poems. Make them read poems. She was a poet, and a painter, that's how she goes. Purity reigns here, reigns free, in poetry. These are power words then that will source her home.

We are creating new myths, here? Read this every one of you and scared, superstitious, alight, trust-full, heart of grief whatever you are trust that the choices you make matter. Raise your power, realize it is love. Love more. Think of love like fire. Fire transmutes, turns wood in to ash. Ash feeds earth, grows life again. Fire is like love, love changes things. Think of love like it's fire. It's a pure and real thing. Raise your love inside you start with the feeling in your heart of your own beam. Direct it at love, direct it at her.

From the back end of my eyes where the second sight lives I saw movement several times about my motel room here, it started an hour or more ago but it was 11:37 when it stirred in my heart. It must be close to 12 I thought when I felt the clear stir, bc no matter what midnight is a special time. The best name I've ever heard for the consciousness shift at midnite is, yes, the witching hour.

Everything is sacred, and profane. This is life. This is life god damn it! It's all sacred, it's all shit, that's the funny irony. She lived this. May her life be exemplary of this. As such, I didn't want to pray yet, Steven Colbert was on and I paid good money for this shitshack motel. I paid extra for wifi and still am stealing it on slow low one bar, unsecured, anyway. But then the time was right, it got closer to 12, I lit the candle and fell right in to prayer and she was here, in and out in and out of this room, more than once. I asked the Archangel Michael to be near, but as I write this Gabriel's name almost came out and so now, too, in that the candle's still burning I will pray to draw him near, as well.

Blessed be sister and friend. From the love beam place of grace that is the smile on her face I lifted up this prayer, I asked that she guide me in love to the poem/s she most wanted. I read aloud, I read fast, I read these leaves in and to the open air:

...O that man might take this secret, of which the world is full even to its littlest things, more humbly to himself and bear it, endure it, more seriously and feel how terribly difficult it is, instead of taking it lightly. That he might be more reverent toward his fruitfulness...Therefor, dear sir, love your solitude and bear with sweet-sounding lamentation the suffering it causes you. For those who are near you are far, you say, and that shows it is beginning to grow wide about you. And when what is near you is far, then your distance is already among the stars and very large; rejoice in your growth, in which you naturally can take no one with you, and be kind to those who remain behind, and be sure and calm before then and do not torment them with your doubts and do not frighten them with your confidence or joy, which they could not understand. Seek yourself some sort of simple and loyal community with them...

from Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, Worpswede, near Bremen, July 16, 1903

I asked that she guide me, smiles and love, and this was my favorite, for ecstat and ecstat love and I could feel her, feel her! beaming and near:

Revolutionary Letter # 49 (read loud and fast, see her smiling, whirling round)
Free Julian Beck
Free Timothy Leary
Free seven million starving in Pakistan
Free all political prisoners
Free Angela Davis
Free Soledad brothers
Free Martin Sobel
Free Sacco & Vanzetti
Free Big Bill Hayward
Free Sitting Bull
Free Carzy Horse
Free all political prisoners
Free Billy the Kid
Free Jesse James
Free all political prisoners
Free Nathan Hale
Free Joan of Arc
Free Galileo & Bruno & Eckhart
Free Jesus Christ
Free Socrates
Free all political prisoners
Free all political prisoners
All prisoners are political prisoners
Every pot smoker a political prisoner
Every holdup man a political prisoner
Every forger a political prisoner
Every angry kid who smashed a window a political prisoner
Every whore, pimp, murderer, a political prisoner
Every pederast, dealer, drunk driver, burglar
poacher, striker, strike breaker, rapist
Polar bear at San Francisco zoo, political prisoner
Ancient wise turtle at Detroit Museum, political prisoner
Flamingos dying in Phoenix tourist park, political prisoners
Otters in Tucson Desert Museum, political prisoners
Elk in Wyoming grazing behind barbed wire, political prisoners
Prairie dogs poisoned in New Mexico, war casualties
(Mass grave of Wyoming gold eagles, a battlefield)
Every kid in school a political prisoner
Every lawyer in his cubicle a political prisoner
Every doctor brainwashed by AMA a political prisoner
Every housewife a political prisoner
Every teacher lying through sad teeth a political prisoner
Every indian on reservation a political prisoner
Ever black man a political prisoner
Every faggot hiding in bar a political prisoner
Every junkie shooting up in a john a political prisoner
Every woman a political prisoner
Every woman a political prisoner
You are political prisoner locked in tense body
You are political prisoner locked in stiff mind
You are political prisoner locked to your parents
You are political prisoner locker to you past
Free yourself
Free yourself
I am political prisoner locked in anger habit
I am political prisoner locked in greed habit
I am political prisoner locked in fear habit
I am political prisoner locked in dull senses
I am political prisoner locked in numb flesh
Free me
Free me
Help to free me
Free yourself
Help to free me
Free yourself
Help to free me
Free Barry Goldwater
Help to free me
Free Governor Wallace
Free President Nixon
Free J Edgar Hoover
Free them
Free yourself
Free them
Free yourself
Free yourself
Free them
Free yourself
Help to free me
Free us
DANCE

by Diane diPrima

Amen, amen amen. I hold you all in my arms, our arms are heart long, heart strong.

The Writing Life. A ramble. Onward.

I will do what I always do, I will write it out out out I will write it all the way out...

Truth is visionary, that makes it mutable.

This is scribbled sideways in the hardbacked spiral book Erika gave me for my birthday. My favorite kind of book the kind I use for poetry when I am writing longhand spontaneous download or Duende poems. I was driving to the beach on Saturday in the afternoon, it was gorgeous out blue sky and green sunny fields on the Eastern Shore and the words were coming and I was content to drive 62 in the right-hand lane of Gateway 50 and periodically even 58 alone on my side of the highway in order just to jot down the words. A story came together that was supposed to go on here, on the blog. A story of one of the first times I understood about friends and how everything passes, a story from back then and Crofton and loving a boy called Mudd.

Then I got behind some kid in a old beater Pontiac going 55 in the passing lane and chomping on a gnarly huge cigar. As soon as I got behind him and saw the silhouetted outlines of the map that he was looking at from behind the wheel like a great big story book there goes the tape in my head: Oh sure you come down here to the Eastern Shore to drive around and see all the quaint little people in the quaint little towns that history made-up you sure of yourself hungover got the world by the balls fuck Well we have lives too we have places to get to you know, we use the passing lane too for Christsake and I am off, adrenaline going and the second that happened I admittedly was a little appalled at myself for such pure white judgement, and I sped up, passed his fedora wearing cigar chomping beater driving hipster ass and then got myself back to the right lane, content not to go a minute over 60 in a painfully and also unabashedly aware of myself way of being surrendered to not taking myself so fucking seriously.

The story and the words that were coming were gone though. Later, maybe twenty minutes down the highway, one more seemingly unrelated line came out. Truth is visionary, which makes it mutable. This had nothing to do with Easter Sunday almost 15 years ago, the time I met Mudd's mom for the first time in his front yard on her knees digging in the fresh April green, nothing to do with sameness and differences and where they merge and with understanding roots and how all things pass but also somehow in different forms come again. Or did it?

This morning at work I read some info in an email from the state and just started crying. I have exactly one month, as of today, left at that job, at that job that I've been prostrating to and demonizing then laying down again and again before and on the behalf of for the last eight years. And when, about five or six weeks ago, the tears came like my spirit was an overused sponge not capable of soaking one more droplet off water--tears literally for three days fell from my eyes with out so much as a sob or whimper from my chest, with out so much as a blink or gasp or any form for that matter of automatic physical seizure that otherwise would cause tears--I knew then that something deep, something fundamental in me was shifting. That I was full, my cup was literally soaked with burden, and it was time to empty. At the end of that week I quit my job. Those tears they came again today, without warning, without the trite rhyme, without the trite soul of any sort of reason.

Just an email forward from the state. And I called Gretchen, who is wise woman to me, and I wept on my drive home because I barely had the strength to get in the car that's how spirit-ed the tears were. Wow I sort of barely thought to myself, this really is bad.

You cant change it Kelly she said and then the sobs really came and I knew it was the same thing that was going on five or six weeks ago, the same source of all these today real to me tears. And we hung up and every instinct in me was to pack my shit and walk in the sun down here to a lovely safe corner in the coffee shop window and write and write, and somehow I knew it'd be peaceful here. And when Rudy and KJ showed up I sighed because they are part of it, for some reason lately I've been able to talk to them and so soon enough I was saying it out loud. Because it is huge and important to me not to have it witnessed by another so much as to have someone witness me witnessing it and I felt silly when I said it aloud: I really thought I could change it. I thought I could change the fucked up shit of the world. This is my idealism breaking, this is life is unfair and me finally willing to let go and finally willing and getting it, this is me understanding there is so much you can not change.

Rudy who they call Satva started in on me the way I do on most people most of the times and it felt good to be on the receiving end of some treatment. He went on about his approach to life and he is someone who has good stories and good experiences to pull from and most of all he is like I told him once before a bone collector--he gets peoples true parts. Could just be a flip of a switch in perspective Kel is all he said.

O yea right, I tried to change the world but found the only thing one is capable of changing is them self. Again.

Please Gretchen help me not have to learn this one over.

The World Truth is mutable dependant on the self truth. selfTruth/Selftruth. Yes, visionary. Yes spirit's mutability. Yes to the writing life, the one and only true steps I only ever for sure for sure know is the right step on my path to helping me see.