This Hotel Uptown. Where I've been and where I'm going.

My friend Cindy is the bravest person I know.

She is a renaissance woman of the truest type, baker, teacher, traveller, sailor.  Also artisan, which has been amazing to watch emerge.   She took information on intentions and affirmative thinking and put it in to such masterful, unrighteous practice and results that I sparkle just to be around her and consider her one of the most sacred and wise karma-sisters in my life.

Before meeting her I woke up at Sam's after falling asleep the night before pretty quickly.  We wanted to stay up and watch Starwars and drink tea like we said we were going to do but we were both really tired and surprised by all the snow.  There was snow everywhere in the morning, so meeting Cindy at 7am got pushed back.  I had to make room for scraping it all away and for driving really slow.  It wasn't as bad driving as the night before in the storm tho, driving Amy from downtown Chestertown back to her country house in the woods.  It reminded me of being on acid years and years ago in my little blue hatchback feeling like I was driving through outter space.  Except for in the snowstorm space was entirely white and all the stars and aesteroids whirling and wizzing past me were really crazy numbers of little pieces of snow.

Cindy is amazing and I aspire to be like her. I have only ever said that about one other woman who wasn't famous some sort-of way and once about one man. Cindy prooves that independant, open-hearted, passionate and joyful, creative and honest soft and strong are all possible all at once; and that being an authentic to yourself being true woman is possible to do while also being wife and mom. She also has helped me re-define the idea of "settling" down.

We had the kind of breakfast over coffee talk that made spontaneous joy-tears and feeling overflow from my eyes.  Laughing and tender experience of life-talk.  We used to teach ESL together, we hosted a huuge conference once together, she is the one who introduced me to Teena who is the one who owned and invited me to live at Chop.

transgendered ginger cookie!!

She shared a funny quote with me as we recapped the last several months.  "Good luck, as we know, can be fickle.  Good friends are not."

She is a good friend.

When I left her house I went to Proc's for a slice they've still got the best margharita around and I ate in my car because it was lunch time and if there is any place it's easy to be seen it's Chestertown at Proc's or the coffee shop at lunch.  And when I was done  the same song came on that one by Mumford and Sons, once on RNR and immediately following on XPN.  I was moving fast out of town on 291 on the backroads towards the beach speeding along between the wide farm fields and all that white sun.  I had mean tears trying to blink out of my eyes, Chestertown still feels too tight for me and most of all it's frustrating for me sometimes, what seems like such a long waste of time and love.  I know it wasn't at all not at all a waste but to know and to feel are two different things.  Also sometimes I still get so angry at Josh, who showed up this morning in my email and also last Wednesday on the phone, too.  I hope he is happy and peaceful and I pray often lifting him up.  But far as contact goes, those prayerful intentions are moooore than enough.

I am home now it is my second day off, or my Sunday anyhow.  I took a second job at a big uptown hotel in town, one of the oldest ones I even remember my head spinning in excitement when I was a child and we used to walk in--the atrium large and with an ice-skating rink in its full-bellied middle.  I am making money now, lots, which is so good.  I will work this funny demanding schedule two jobs at times 17 or 18 hour days from Thursday through Monday til I have enough by the summer to go on the road and do nothing but be outside sleeping under the stars swimming in rivers and laying on the earth under the sun and moon.  Writing, visiting friends and poems.  By the end of the summer I will settle on the West Coast, somewhere I am guessing between Santa Cruz and Baja only Harmony and Time will show.

I feel so good, peaceful again and happy.  It's nice to have direction, to feel comfortable and in the know around your own home land, to ready your self and get all your duckies lined up in a happy row.

Date Weekend with Me, Ashland

Hey goodlookin, how bout a date weekend with me?
Sounds awesome!

downtown, Ashland

I have this ring that Katie surprised me with for my birthday. It is fabulous, strong, gorgeous. I. Love. It. It came from this store we were literally gaga over called Laila Rose, I got woozy and she had to lead me by my elbow out in to the mall. It was nothing but glorious sparkly girrrlie wear all over the place. They played vintage Madonna. They had bright pink knee-high rain boots and matching head-wraps. And the store was sparkle color-coded. Pinks, purples, yellows, light blue. Sections of ribbons and long dangling crystal earrings all the prevailing shade of that part of the store. Hand-painted bags, elbow-length ruffled gloves.The theme of turning 33 this year was The Jesus Year, or better in my friend Paul's words: the year of magical thinking. Truly, I believe I've lived ten lives already, and it's only been 2 months.

Ashland has been unreal. I followed a yearning to pay in advance for three nights here, thinking how great it would be to wake up and not have to go anywhere if I didn't feel like it. What I only sort of anticipated was how great it would be to just wake up, roll over, and decide for the rest of the day to stay in bed...until my evening date at the Shakespeare Festival. At about 3 or so that first day, laying here, writing, reading, watching tv, eating take-out, somewhere in between all of that it occurred to me: I put my resignation in the week before my birthday and then began the planning stages of ending that part of my life. Now I knew all of that as I walked through it, understood even as I was going through the motions that not only was I resigning from Chesapeake College, but too I was closing a chapter that for all basic summation began in 1998 when I moved to Chestertown, on the eastern shore, to go to school. 12 years, in other words, of living on the midshore was coming to an end. Age 21 to 33. 12 years of growing up.

I spent literally two months tying up those loose ends. Finishing what was obligatory at the job and packing. And in all, recognizing in slow pieces, as I recollected and reviewed it all, the woman I have become. I got sober in Chestertown, embraced my intelligence, accepted acadamia even as I stalwartly fought institution, I got a degree, then a profession. I fell in love. I started to grow up, and I started to grow away from myself. I fell out of love. I had to challenge myself to be a big girl and pull up my big girl pants. I moved out on my own. I got my heart broke. I became an adult. I learned that being an adult means being yourself, and learned that really learning to be true to you is a one day at a time loving and nurturing type of thing. A literal deeper and deeper experience of surrender to me, of saying yes to me by accepting how I am feeling and what I need each and every day. It was a hell of a lot to review in two months, and until Saturday, I literally did not have a single day off within that process.

So that yesterday, when I did finally just sit, propped against the pillows writing, reading, sighing, listening, breathing, easing in to me; it was just so simple, and so, so buoyantly sweet. The evening got here and I took my time showering and getting dressed, I listened to funk hop on my Shuga station on Pandora and danced slowly and smilingly all around this little suite, and decorated myself, and celebrated me. I am in Oregon, where I lived for a year with Brandon after we lived out of a truck in the National Forests all over the US for five months. I am here, on the road, on my own. I got seated in the front row of the outdoor theatre for Henry IV within two minutes of curtain. Let me say that again. The theatre, from the outside, looks like a normal theatre, but it has no roof: the ceiling is the sky. Can you even imagine the smile on my face when I discovered this? It was like 70 degrees out 8:30 pm and I could feel the breath coming off the top of the green mountains all around us. The riverwater has lithium in it here. I could here it sing. The sigh in my chest, as I settled in, I believe may have been the most contended moment of my life. I did it!!!!!!

Today I woke up late, called Beth, received a call from Amy. The three of us have been trying to talk since Wednesday. We talked about different things, we talked about the same things. Becoming women. Being ourselves, striving for authenticity, for integrity in this. We talked about sisterhood. They are both married, they are both mom's. I admitted to them each my fear, the one I am allowing to pass away now, that I couldn't be both. That somehow it wasn't possible to be true to myself, to be an independent woman and be in love. I understand now that all I ever really wanted was the faith, and the experience to back it up, of being me. It wasn't about being independant so much as just being given the time, and the room, to grow in to and get to know the true me inside. Sober me, out of school me, me with out man and seperate from job and identity shared with friends. And while I needed to own my Independence to do that, it's not something that I could ever have done alone. Being me is something I have the courage for, and have explored in powerful, feminine ways that I never gave myself permission for before. And as result I will feel the familiarity of knowing how to maintain, in any circumstance, from now on, even if I lose my grasp here and there. But I am redefining now just what "independant" means, maybe getting used to new ideas of it... I was hesitant to say all this until now, I guess because of that one fear of not being able to maintain this way of being and also being able to eventually fall in love again: of having the capacity for both. Being afraid was blocking my acknowledgment of the reality of how simple and peaceful a place I am in today, made it seem to good to be true. But really, there's nothing to have to do or be or try to figure out... I dont even know when or where or how exactly it happened... I am on the verge of my whole life, of anything I want to do when I get back home and recognizing that gave me clear, and almost staggering perspective, on where I just came from...I lived on my own in retreat out in nature for a full year, I lived on my own in a sweet apartment just my size where I could walk to work or to town any time of the day or night. I helped a small handfull of people undertake and innovate a large fantastic program for the community college. I became a strong woman on my own, and the relationships with the other strong women in my life is the number one thing I have likewise grown. I am so, so proud.

I've long said that Sex and the City, the series and subsequent movies, gave permission to women beyond 30 to be more than what convention painted for them. More than just soccer moms or career women or harried modernists stretched between both. That Sex and the City gave value back to the grrrly parts we love the most, and did so specifically by emphasizing our sex. Our sex, as gender~us as women among women and planting that in Western consciousness as a real and valued and tender and important experience~and us as sexual beings, too. Sensuous beings. Not body sex, that colt-like perky curvy thing of giggles and high shrill of the late teens and early twenties, but intuitive, full-bodied, embodied sexuality, alive from within. Sex and the City gave women in common society permission for both. Today I saw a 2 o'clock matinee performance of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and wept. I mean wept. For people, for women and for men, for how twisted we are, how imperfect. Then I went out in the sun and glistened, and remembered, I have this moment, and I am, if I so choose, alive in it. I delighted in my power ring from Katie, one of my fabulous sister and best friends. I meandered around Ahsland, bought myself a gorgeous power necklace and laughed aloud when the woman read to me what kyanite the stone in it was, I smiled a lot at the sun and green mountains, treated myself to a ridiculously delicious dinner at an Italian restaurant reading a new book, then had an evening date with me, my gorgeous aliveness, and Carrie Bradshaw and the girls.

I am here, on my own, just with me~glorious me!!~and loving each and every moment of it!!! It isn't too good to be true at all, it's better than that!

What does a girl do when she gets to the top of Crater Lake? Well that's easy, she goes back down again. What does a girl do when she embraces herself, and then finds herself fabulously in love with the her that she embraced? Well that's easy, she just keeps showing up....No matter where she is, where she goes, no matter what happens. There she still is, in love. And with a cast of fabulous women all around, reflecting that new found love back at her again again and again from every glowing, precious direction. Wow, how cool is this? Who am I to doubt that whatever coming next could be anything less than totally, and wholly, blessed.