The sun is this ridiculous red-orange ball and because of the haze today it is sinking behind Catalina but you can't see Catalina. So when it is almost gone it looks like a ruby mountain tip sitting there alone against this sheet of mute blue. I am laughing and the sea wind has wet my eyes. Already the sunset is a half hour later than it was at the peak of winter, the solstice. And yea, indeed, that was a whole month ago.
On my drive home I am delirious only the way January ocean air and beach mud can make me. David Bowie comes on and the windows are down and it is a remastered version of Unwashed and Slightly Dazed. I feel like the air is ruffled currents of ribbony light wilding up my hair. I laugh again and think what in the hell, this is where I live?
And my people back east don't understand. Hell most my friends in Calif don't. Magical Laguna. On Oak St where I go to write and do laundry and for pizza there is a totally out of place statue of Pan on the corner. Across the street on the other corner is the first place in Laguna I ever went. This is Olamendi's, frickn Wallace three years ago when I first got to town from Sonoma took me out that Friday night with pals of his from Billabong. We go to some private party at some rando Mex restaurant. Private DJ, makeshift bar, whole thing. We danced our asses off that night.
Today I finished my daily writing and cruised across the street at Oak. I walked forever, it was really low tide, I walked in my boots on packed mud, you could see the rocks where normally the water surges and flows. The rivulets making marble designs of the sand. I walked past the empty rich houses past Brooks, past Cress, past the Bobs Big Boy on the balcony of that one condo. All the way to where the big circle hole in the rock is close to South Laguna, and landed up at Woods Cove. I sighed and sat a nice while until I was no longer alone. By the time I got back that big orange sun was sinking low.
What a day, unlike all others and also just the same. God damn it when it does, seize how good it feels to be alive.
Showing posts with label wild wild women. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wild wild women. Show all posts
January 21, 2015
January 12, 2015
The silent prayer
The hobbit house is built in to the side of Laguna Canyon and for that reason at night with no heat it feels cozy and held by the earth herself. I have a space heater Annie and Tony gave me when I first moved in and that's all it takes to stay warm. With lots of soaking rain the soil is green and smells like life. Even the morning mist-gray feels right in an atmosphere like this, one that sings Allliiiiive!
Damnit even if the Gods themselves gave me a paintbrush I couldn't of hand-created a life more exactly specific to what I love. This I tell Serena to ensure her, this, this our hard fought independence, our always-there choice, to live. What Laguna Beach for us actually means. She has done it every step of the way as I have and I admire her fiercely and devotedly for this. We will always have this. I laugh then and say because they did! I took my brush right from the God's hands! Said gimme that I will choose the life I live! Serena laughs too, this our secret, what we treasure and hold dear in the other.
It has been a long road since she left the treehouse upstairs. Life, which in living gives us what we need. We are so blessed I also tell her, and yes, yes we are I know, she says back to me. I feel a gulp in my heart and for us both feel-say the silent prayer.
I am always so wrought through with home and the ties that bind. Spent two years studying the psyche of this, of these things, and am convinced more than ever of the continuum of earth, of how she uses her people to soul-speak for a place, and in this way keeps sacred the tides of the land. There is so much life outside any door. When I first got to California the best part was how new it was. I vowed never ever to take you for granted Holy California and even though sometimes I start to, in the end I never do. Or still haven't. And that's what life is. To keep waking up. Again.
I consider family, too. Back east, here. Derynne and Cam, the kids. We buried her brother in what for her I know was a long whir of endless sad. Pacifica family and blessing the sacred space for Eve and Kalen to wed. Visiting with Atticus, seeing clients again, waiting on Jasmine to get back for school. Through it all there are tacos at Feast, the hot counter in San Juan with the pounds of chilaquiles, the clerks at the market downtown who tell you they missed seeing you, there is mermaid beach and the other secret spots and burrito joints with surf boys covered in tattoos. It is amazing how our tiny rounds from day to day connect us in, make life, see us through the daily passings of grocery trips and recycling and take-out Chinese food. See us to the big ones. Death, marriage, birth, tears and laughter. The sighs in between where words can not fit.
So it life again. I come back to you. I let you in.
Damnit even if the Gods themselves gave me a paintbrush I couldn't of hand-created a life more exactly specific to what I love. This I tell Serena to ensure her, this, this our hard fought independence, our always-there choice, to live. What Laguna Beach for us actually means. She has done it every step of the way as I have and I admire her fiercely and devotedly for this. We will always have this. I laugh then and say because they did! I took my brush right from the God's hands! Said gimme that I will choose the life I live! Serena laughs too, this our secret, what we treasure and hold dear in the other.
It has been a long road since she left the treehouse upstairs. Life, which in living gives us what we need. We are so blessed I also tell her, and yes, yes we are I know, she says back to me. I feel a gulp in my heart and for us both feel-say the silent prayer.
I am always so wrought through with home and the ties that bind. Spent two years studying the psyche of this, of these things, and am convinced more than ever of the continuum of earth, of how she uses her people to soul-speak for a place, and in this way keeps sacred the tides of the land. There is so much life outside any door. When I first got to California the best part was how new it was. I vowed never ever to take you for granted Holy California and even though sometimes I start to, in the end I never do. Or still haven't. And that's what life is. To keep waking up. Again.
I consider family, too. Back east, here. Derynne and Cam, the kids. We buried her brother in what for her I know was a long whir of endless sad. Pacifica family and blessing the sacred space for Eve and Kalen to wed. Visiting with Atticus, seeing clients again, waiting on Jasmine to get back for school. Through it all there are tacos at Feast, the hot counter in San Juan with the pounds of chilaquiles, the clerks at the market downtown who tell you they missed seeing you, there is mermaid beach and the other secret spots and burrito joints with surf boys covered in tattoos. It is amazing how our tiny rounds from day to day connect us in, make life, see us through the daily passings of grocery trips and recycling and take-out Chinese food. See us to the big ones. Death, marriage, birth, tears and laughter. The sighs in between where words can not fit.
So it life again. I come back to you. I let you in.
October 24, 2012
Repost: Wistful and grateful on the night before I go to grad school to become a therapist...
(original posting 5.13.2009
Choptank, MD)
About a month or so ago I went to try therapy.
“Let’s see,” she said. “So you started using drugs regularly at 15. I am sure you have heard that whatever age you start using is the age that you basically stop growing. So we’ve got a lot of work to do. It’s time to grow up. You are still, essentially, 15.”
Hmm. Maybe it’s possible that this woman, who for the first 45 minutes of our meeting did not allow me to talk except to answer her pointed questions, somehow missed the part where I mentioned that for over eight years I’ve been on a committed path of recovery and self-help, learning to take responsibility for me and aiming for emotional maturity.
Of the “adult” skills I’ve actually focused on, one has been the willingness to allow others room to be heard; so normally this helps to curb any immediate reactiveness to asinine fucking comments like the one above. But that day on the therapist couch the blood curled around my neck even as I smiled graciously at her opinion, oh, uh-huh, mmm-hmmm. It was later in the session when the radical, albeit kind, honesty kicked in. When she tried to tell me that my wanderlust and great passion for traveling too were indicators that I needed “to grow up.”
One of the other adult skills I’m really working on is learning to integrate information from various different sources and in the end use them to supplement my own views with all the regularly outputting stimulus of the world. I am learning, in other words, how to trust myself.
Needless to say, therapy, this time, didn’t quite work out.
I was 15 when I first found myself saddled up with my bags and my trinkets, my combat boots and cigarettes, scowling from low down in the passenger’s seat of the blue hatchback my mom behind the wheel, my brother’s perpetual chirpiness behind us his head in the middle between the seats. Up the Baltimore beltway then down 295, on our way to Dr. Lessey in the city. He had an office on Park Ave. On the corner was a soul food joint with bars on the window and a yellow sign for Lake Trout. Across the street and to the left was a store called The Leather Underground.
I had my learner’s permit, I was almost 16, it would soon be my regular, weekly route. Soon enough it was just me in the car. I was never brave enough to try the soul food. The bemused gay men in the bondage store, however, eventually knew this pink-headed purple-booted riot grrl by name. It was the early 90’s and hard to find places like that were ahead of the soon to come piercing trend. Leather Underground was the only place that I knew of that you could go for a belly button ring, and they used a 10 gauge cow-ring, not a bar, and there was nothing girly or petite about it.
Dr. Lessey was soft and gentle with gold spectacles and a sandman peace about him. I always pictured him with a nightcap on, the kind that triangles down one side of the head with a little cotton ball on the end, you know faded cotton-white with light blue stripes. And a candle in his hands.
It was six or eight months that I went to the city to see him. I was touched in a way that I couldn’t get my words to say, I was touched by the kindness of this sweet, quiet little man. I never told him about the pot I was smoking or the drinking that was edging beyond exploratory. I kept us occupied by tales of the girls I hated at school and this new, daring guy who showed up one day by my side, grinning down at me delicious in his eyes, walking me up the stairs to my homeroom. He had just gotten kicked out of public school. I was entranced and a month or so later when the same guy got locked up at Harbour Hospital in South Baltimore, Dr. Lessey encouraged me to go see him. I trusted the good Doctor. I used to bring my friends there to meet him, my brother, my boyfriend even (the boyfriend that I had secured as result of a visit paid to him at South Baltimore’s Harbour Hospital mental ward.) Dr. Lessey looked on in amazement, the only adult who didn’t judge and seemed uniquely interested, when my friend Briana showed up with me in his office sporting her knew Leather Underground navel loop. I loved how much he seemed, simply, to care.
Around the time that I really did start to make changes and work to get my life cleaned up, this would be roughly the spring of 2001, I entered in to another therapist relationship, this time with Father Ed. His was, I think, the fourth “couch” I’d been on by then. He was supplied to me for free by the uber-conservative liberal arts college that I’d already by then dropped out twice from, both times as result of drinking and drugs. Father Ed had me do things like hold fake conversations with the air; the air of course was always a character and usually someone close to me in life. I had to hold pillows tight and close and pretend that they were me. He was the first therapist I ever cried in front of and lord did it make me feel so, so clean. I loved him, Father Ed, for the same reason as Dr. Lessey, he truly seemed to care. That, and one clear, new thing: I was capable, or at least so beginning, of being honest. Truly honest about me. No more hiding the extracurricular’s that were so much a part of my life it wasn’t that I was even purposefully hiding them before, just that I took them so much for granted as a part of how I lived my life. The drugs and the alcohol were, plainly, part of me, of who I was, as natural as air or water or food when it came to the things I did each day. I just never questioned any of it, no matter the consequences or miserable thin vein of fear that seemed to increase with each passing year, feeling like ice in my blood and a cold wall at the base of my heart, steadily growing.
The honesty made all the difference. Clarity is a mixture of willingness, or at least a capacity, to be honest with myself and then trusting me enough to know that my own truth is the one that counts. The therapists that I’ve gained the most from over the years, as I’ve sorted through and grieved out my humanness and wounds, are the ones who’ve made it clear that they care and you can’t fake that, caring is a quality that is or isn’t. I know when it’s true, and more, affront when it is false or faked. In an atmosphere of care one feels safe, and safety is what is required, at least for me, to get to a place where I am willing to get honest with myself—on whatever level, at whatever risk of responsibility it means that I am going to have to take. And good therapy, for me at least, has been no more than the process of showing up to witness that allowing. Good therapists ask the right questions and then let the process of discovery guide its self. I always end up being the one who sees what I need to see just by having a safe place to say it out loud.
So if I’ve learned anything at all over the years, it’s that the answers are indeed within; and that especially it’s not a sign of weakness to sometimes need another’s help in order to get them out. In fact I’d say that empowering oneself like that is all about being Brave. But that other person doesn’t get to tell you what to do. They definitely don’t get to yield control over your ideas. Self-trust is the goal to me, and so it was that over a month ago my life started to turn around at its darkest point: what I thought would be the beginning step in self-discovery when I took the plunge on to a new couch turned out actually to be the exercise I needed to affirm the ending of self-doubt. And now that I am here, doing the Real Work with a book and some close friends as my guides, I am realizing that the two concepts are actually one and the same.
Choptank, MD)
About a month or so ago I went to try therapy.
“Let’s see,” she said. “So you started using drugs regularly at 15. I am sure you have heard that whatever age you start using is the age that you basically stop growing. So we’ve got a lot of work to do. It’s time to grow up. You are still, essentially, 15.”
Hmm. Maybe it’s possible that this woman, who for the first 45 minutes of our meeting did not allow me to talk except to answer her pointed questions, somehow missed the part where I mentioned that for over eight years I’ve been on a committed path of recovery and self-help, learning to take responsibility for me and aiming for emotional maturity.
Of the “adult” skills I’ve actually focused on, one has been the willingness to allow others room to be heard; so normally this helps to curb any immediate reactiveness to asinine fucking comments like the one above. But that day on the therapist couch the blood curled around my neck even as I smiled graciously at her opinion, oh, uh-huh, mmm-hmmm. It was later in the session when the radical, albeit kind, honesty kicked in. When she tried to tell me that my wanderlust and great passion for traveling too were indicators that I needed “to grow up.”
One of the other adult skills I’m really working on is learning to integrate information from various different sources and in the end use them to supplement my own views with all the regularly outputting stimulus of the world. I am learning, in other words, how to trust myself.
Needless to say, therapy, this time, didn’t quite work out.
I was 15 when I first found myself saddled up with my bags and my trinkets, my combat boots and cigarettes, scowling from low down in the passenger’s seat of the blue hatchback my mom behind the wheel, my brother’s perpetual chirpiness behind us his head in the middle between the seats. Up the Baltimore beltway then down 295, on our way to Dr. Lessey in the city. He had an office on Park Ave. On the corner was a soul food joint with bars on the window and a yellow sign for Lake Trout. Across the street and to the left was a store called The Leather Underground.
I had my learner’s permit, I was almost 16, it would soon be my regular, weekly route. Soon enough it was just me in the car. I was never brave enough to try the soul food. The bemused gay men in the bondage store, however, eventually knew this pink-headed purple-booted riot grrl by name. It was the early 90’s and hard to find places like that were ahead of the soon to come piercing trend. Leather Underground was the only place that I knew of that you could go for a belly button ring, and they used a 10 gauge cow-ring, not a bar, and there was nothing girly or petite about it.
Dr. Lessey was soft and gentle with gold spectacles and a sandman peace about him. I always pictured him with a nightcap on, the kind that triangles down one side of the head with a little cotton ball on the end, you know faded cotton-white with light blue stripes. And a candle in his hands.
It was six or eight months that I went to the city to see him. I was touched in a way that I couldn’t get my words to say, I was touched by the kindness of this sweet, quiet little man. I never told him about the pot I was smoking or the drinking that was edging beyond exploratory. I kept us occupied by tales of the girls I hated at school and this new, daring guy who showed up one day by my side, grinning down at me delicious in his eyes, walking me up the stairs to my homeroom. He had just gotten kicked out of public school. I was entranced and a month or so later when the same guy got locked up at Harbour Hospital in South Baltimore, Dr. Lessey encouraged me to go see him. I trusted the good Doctor. I used to bring my friends there to meet him, my brother, my boyfriend even (the boyfriend that I had secured as result of a visit paid to him at South Baltimore’s Harbour Hospital mental ward.) Dr. Lessey looked on in amazement, the only adult who didn’t judge and seemed uniquely interested, when my friend Briana showed up with me in his office sporting her knew Leather Underground navel loop. I loved how much he seemed, simply, to care.
Around the time that I really did start to make changes and work to get my life cleaned up, this would be roughly the spring of 2001, I entered in to another therapist relationship, this time with Father Ed. His was, I think, the fourth “couch” I’d been on by then. He was supplied to me for free by the uber-conservative liberal arts college that I’d already by then dropped out twice from, both times as result of drinking and drugs. Father Ed had me do things like hold fake conversations with the air; the air of course was always a character and usually someone close to me in life. I had to hold pillows tight and close and pretend that they were me. He was the first therapist I ever cried in front of and lord did it make me feel so, so clean. I loved him, Father Ed, for the same reason as Dr. Lessey, he truly seemed to care. That, and one clear, new thing: I was capable, or at least so beginning, of being honest. Truly honest about me. No more hiding the extracurricular’s that were so much a part of my life it wasn’t that I was even purposefully hiding them before, just that I took them so much for granted as a part of how I lived my life. The drugs and the alcohol were, plainly, part of me, of who I was, as natural as air or water or food when it came to the things I did each day. I just never questioned any of it, no matter the consequences or miserable thin vein of fear that seemed to increase with each passing year, feeling like ice in my blood and a cold wall at the base of my heart, steadily growing.
The honesty made all the difference. Clarity is a mixture of willingness, or at least a capacity, to be honest with myself and then trusting me enough to know that my own truth is the one that counts. The therapists that I’ve gained the most from over the years, as I’ve sorted through and grieved out my humanness and wounds, are the ones who’ve made it clear that they care and you can’t fake that, caring is a quality that is or isn’t. I know when it’s true, and more, affront when it is false or faked. In an atmosphere of care one feels safe, and safety is what is required, at least for me, to get to a place where I am willing to get honest with myself—on whatever level, at whatever risk of responsibility it means that I am going to have to take. And good therapy, for me at least, has been no more than the process of showing up to witness that allowing. Good therapists ask the right questions and then let the process of discovery guide its self. I always end up being the one who sees what I need to see just by having a safe place to say it out loud.
So if I’ve learned anything at all over the years, it’s that the answers are indeed within; and that especially it’s not a sign of weakness to sometimes need another’s help in order to get them out. In fact I’d say that empowering oneself like that is all about being Brave. But that other person doesn’t get to tell you what to do. They definitely don’t get to yield control over your ideas. Self-trust is the goal to me, and so it was that over a month ago my life started to turn around at its darkest point: what I thought would be the beginning step in self-discovery when I took the plunge on to a new couch turned out actually to be the exercise I needed to affirm the ending of self-doubt. And now that I am here, doing the Real Work with a book and some close friends as my guides, I am realizing that the two concepts are actually one and the same.
December 28, 2011
Who needs to go places
There's an enormous amount on my mind.
I went to see Liz for her intuition and to get a tarot reading. Her shop is closing, in the morning I have a reiki client there and then that is the last I will ever see of Ancient Arts. I was staggered by what came out in the cards, sitting there open-jawed it felt like Liz had me cornered under a bright white light. It was true, afterall, what I saw laid out there between her and me. Hard to admit, plain out in the daytime like that, but even harder under Liz's wise eyes to deny.
Amy is driving me all the way to Conneticut tomorrow and then to get home Sunday I will take the train. Bebe has offered to let me stay in her cabin back in Cali for a caretaking exchange for up to seven months. I am stunned by the kindness of the people that I love and can not help feeling that these are things I do not deserve. So I will write... I spent most the day and even time after going out tonight sorting through my old room here at the beach. Trying to decide what of my writing materials needs to come back to California with me, what I can live without. Journals, notes, folders and folders. What I can fit. I feel horrible for long moments about leaving mom. And worse than that about leaving my niece. I'm confused about the reading I got, it was counter to all the work I felt like I've been doing. I am talking here about men specifically. Suddenly it was three years ago and I couldn't trust because I didn't know myself, all over again, and that was all before I got on the phone tonight with Josh.
Thank god for Jott, and a high-backed booth at our local bar. I haven't had a drink in 11 years but that has yet to change the fact that I'm the kinda girl who needs to go places, to drive in the dark when it starts to turn late at night to meet friends in the hush dead of winter with our faces lit by neon lights. That camaraderie, the magic of shiver-bones and tires on a cold street and then people who are warm, will always be medicine for me.
We drank club soda and red bull and ate chicken wings until our bellies hurt and there was nothing more to say. Thankfully that's when Tara turned up so the laughter started.
Thankfully life goes on.
I went to see Liz for her intuition and to get a tarot reading. Her shop is closing, in the morning I have a reiki client there and then that is the last I will ever see of Ancient Arts. I was staggered by what came out in the cards, sitting there open-jawed it felt like Liz had me cornered under a bright white light. It was true, afterall, what I saw laid out there between her and me. Hard to admit, plain out in the daytime like that, but even harder under Liz's wise eyes to deny.
Amy is driving me all the way to Conneticut tomorrow and then to get home Sunday I will take the train. Bebe has offered to let me stay in her cabin back in Cali for a caretaking exchange for up to seven months. I am stunned by the kindness of the people that I love and can not help feeling that these are things I do not deserve. So I will write... I spent most the day and even time after going out tonight sorting through my old room here at the beach. Trying to decide what of my writing materials needs to come back to California with me, what I can live without. Journals, notes, folders and folders. What I can fit. I feel horrible for long moments about leaving mom. And worse than that about leaving my niece. I'm confused about the reading I got, it was counter to all the work I felt like I've been doing. I am talking here about men specifically. Suddenly it was three years ago and I couldn't trust because I didn't know myself, all over again, and that was all before I got on the phone tonight with Josh.
Thank god for Jott, and a high-backed booth at our local bar. I haven't had a drink in 11 years but that has yet to change the fact that I'm the kinda girl who needs to go places, to drive in the dark when it starts to turn late at night to meet friends in the hush dead of winter with our faces lit by neon lights. That camaraderie, the magic of shiver-bones and tires on a cold street and then people who are warm, will always be medicine for me.
We drank club soda and red bull and ate chicken wings until our bellies hurt and there was nothing more to say. Thankfully that's when Tara turned up so the laughter started.
Thankfully life goes on.
December 16, 2011
All those people under all those little orange lights
The air on 28th street in Ocean City is warmer than the mountain air in Northern California. Warm beach air, is there anything better in the world? It's December, when I got home to mom's it was rustling the branches asking hey come on where are your leaves? I got out of the car and started to squat to pee. Cmon, Kel, I had to remind myself, no more outhouse living you're not on the compound now.
I cried when I left the farm Tuesday night and mumbled something in to the neck of Monique like "Dont tell Jon I dont want him to know he was right." He said for two days that I'd cry when I left, it's funny the things you think of when your emotions get the best. I did cry, but not til after all my little moments, all my little private goodbyes, after I was walked to the car and watched them all walk back to the cabin led by their headlights through the dark. It was as I was pulling away, Mo ran back, knocked on the window, and then neither of us said anything. Just started to sob.
It took 32 hours to get to Ocean Pines. Lots of driving, a motel stop, more driving, a car drop, a shuttle then airport rigamaroll. In between it all that warm California sunshine. Smiling and lots of I love my life. My transfer flight outta Vegas was empty, I had a row to myself and slept a funny plane sleep that was never quite all the way. I saw a shooting star out the window, right next to the big dipper which looked like I could touch it, or at least sing a song close enough for it to hear. In Maryland I stared at the lights of Baltimore as we neared the ground. I love to travel. And I especially love to fly home, all those people under all those little orange lights, in the middle of the night.
My brother surprised me at 8 this morning. He showed up at the Pines and laid my three month old niece on my belly in my sleep. I was totally startled then in a rosy-warm-baby-blanket-glow. All day I just kept looking at them, him and his daughter, thinking wow, he's really a dad. Tonight I went with Jott and Schank, my ol Yacht Club girls, to Mother's Christmas Party. The bartender from Peppers was guest pouring, Chico was there, Ryan was wearing a red tie. Life goes on, things change, and also they dont. All of it's so great, I feel like a spectator watching the peaceful way I get to enjoy myself.
We raised hell. I love the way beach air feels, it still smells that good-same walking out the bar room door. No tears now. It's rad, to be home.
I cried when I left the farm Tuesday night and mumbled something in to the neck of Monique like "Dont tell Jon I dont want him to know he was right." He said for two days that I'd cry when I left, it's funny the things you think of when your emotions get the best. I did cry, but not til after all my little moments, all my little private goodbyes, after I was walked to the car and watched them all walk back to the cabin led by their headlights through the dark. It was as I was pulling away, Mo ran back, knocked on the window, and then neither of us said anything. Just started to sob.
It took 32 hours to get to Ocean Pines. Lots of driving, a motel stop, more driving, a car drop, a shuttle then airport rigamaroll. In between it all that warm California sunshine. Smiling and lots of I love my life. My transfer flight outta Vegas was empty, I had a row to myself and slept a funny plane sleep that was never quite all the way. I saw a shooting star out the window, right next to the big dipper which looked like I could touch it, or at least sing a song close enough for it to hear. In Maryland I stared at the lights of Baltimore as we neared the ground. I love to travel. And I especially love to fly home, all those people under all those little orange lights, in the middle of the night.
My brother surprised me at 8 this morning. He showed up at the Pines and laid my three month old niece on my belly in my sleep. I was totally startled then in a rosy-warm-baby-blanket-glow. All day I just kept looking at them, him and his daughter, thinking wow, he's really a dad. Tonight I went with Jott and Schank, my ol Yacht Club girls, to Mother's Christmas Party. The bartender from Peppers was guest pouring, Chico was there, Ryan was wearing a red tie. Life goes on, things change, and also they dont. All of it's so great, I feel like a spectator watching the peaceful way I get to enjoy myself.
We raised hell. I love the way beach air feels, it still smells that good-same walking out the bar room door. No tears now. It's rad, to be home.
November 30, 2011
This was driftwood.
I almost lined up with a place in Topanga Canyon. In Oregon the last day it rained all day long. Soaking rain is what mom would call it, the kind we really count on back east in the late spring. I was at Gretchen's in her cottage so close to the coast you can hear the sea. We stayed in our pj's all day long, the pine trees outside bowing way down from the weight of the rainy wind. She handed me her Ipad on our third or fourth cup of coffee and said c'mon, that's what we can do let's find you your place in LA.
On Craigslist under sublets I searched Topanga. The only result was the exact place I see in meditation. At work someone said Mama you would love Topanga Canyon, Topanga's where you need to be. Soon after that knowing nothing about Topanga came the vision of me at a white cast iron table on a patio, surrounded on three sides by potted flowers and trees. That was the place Gretchen and I found on Sunday, exact pictures and all. I say almost lined up with it because in the end I said no. It was out of my price range.
Nikki assured me, as it was she that helped list the pros and cons, that this was driftwood. It's not her original metaphor, yet it bares repeating. If my heart's goal is an island, the paradise joyful island where I am heading, then little examples like the spot on Craigslist that I saw first in my head are signs from the island that my tide's moving me the right way. Little signs, pieces of driftwood, from the island. My enthusiasm was crazy high so applying practical decision making to this was hard. Nikki's example really helped.
Before heading south to park at Gretchen's in the rain, Beth and I forged our own paths through the woods on Saturday to pick chanterelles. The day before that we stood in the bead shop in Nye Beach where I used to work and get paid to make and sell jewelry. Both times I felt so like myself that everything even looked lined and clear, more defined, somehow crisper. Lit by light from my heart.
Driftwood.
This is my favorite part of the inventing process. Scariest, too. When you can just barely, happily and anxiously, start to feel the tides starting to pull.
On Craigslist under sublets I searched Topanga. The only result was the exact place I see in meditation. At work someone said Mama you would love Topanga Canyon, Topanga's where you need to be. Soon after that knowing nothing about Topanga came the vision of me at a white cast iron table on a patio, surrounded on three sides by potted flowers and trees. That was the place Gretchen and I found on Sunday, exact pictures and all. I say almost lined up with it because in the end I said no. It was out of my price range.
Nikki assured me, as it was she that helped list the pros and cons, that this was driftwood. It's not her original metaphor, yet it bares repeating. If my heart's goal is an island, the paradise joyful island where I am heading, then little examples like the spot on Craigslist that I saw first in my head are signs from the island that my tide's moving me the right way. Little signs, pieces of driftwood, from the island. My enthusiasm was crazy high so applying practical decision making to this was hard. Nikki's example really helped.
Before heading south to park at Gretchen's in the rain, Beth and I forged our own paths through the woods on Saturday to pick chanterelles. The day before that we stood in the bead shop in Nye Beach where I used to work and get paid to make and sell jewelry. Both times I felt so like myself that everything even looked lined and clear, more defined, somehow crisper. Lit by light from my heart.
Driftwood.
This is my favorite part of the inventing process. Scariest, too. When you can just barely, happily and anxiously, start to feel the tides starting to pull.
October 1, 2011
This keeps me from the obvious.
Waiting to go dancing. We're going to San Francisco tonight which in Oakland everyone refers to as the city. Even though Oakland is pretty city to me. This is what I do! Meet gorgeous women to dress up with and go be fabulous. Last weekend we were in San Jose, made tons of friends around the pool table and on the dance floor. Mo killed it on stage, later I did body work on Sage for no other reason then her energy was full of love and I wanted to support it, and the ittybitty baby she's got growing inside. Dory, Kristen, Mo and I dared each other to dress in ridiculous tiny outfits and pretend to be synchronised swimmers at the outdoor pool. I mean tiny. We did it, laughing while I hissed straight-faces, straight-faces the whole time.
More than anything I am having fun. It makes me giggle to think that this is my life, how lucky I am. But then I think, I'm not lucky at all I chose this. Any one could. Anyone at all. Just allow for the wonder of the moment to guide your way: it sounds silly and self-helpy but there really is no other way to put this reality. Just show up, eager to dig on the experience. Grateful you get to.
This keeps me from the obvious, for the most part...the I wonder where I will end up? Everyone here is in transition. Dory's home from 9 months on the road in South America not sure where she and her man will go, Jon's moving out Tuesday and Mo left her pad last week. Ale gave up her place and is staying with her ma. Who knows? I will continue to show up grateful for the experience, trusting in the alchemy of the process. Gratitude and no expectations other than digging on whatever life has to bring.
More than anything I am having fun. It makes me giggle to think that this is my life, how lucky I am. But then I think, I'm not lucky at all I chose this. Any one could. Anyone at all. Just allow for the wonder of the moment to guide your way: it sounds silly and self-helpy but there really is no other way to put this reality. Just show up, eager to dig on the experience. Grateful you get to.
This keeps me from the obvious, for the most part...the I wonder where I will end up? Everyone here is in transition. Dory's home from 9 months on the road in South America not sure where she and her man will go, Jon's moving out Tuesday and Mo left her pad last week. Ale gave up her place and is staying with her ma. Who knows? I will continue to show up grateful for the experience, trusting in the alchemy of the process. Gratitude and no expectations other than digging on whatever life has to bring.
September 26, 2011
The Adventures of Charlotte Bliss. Which are non-stop.
It's amazing how no matter what, here is the blog, and I come back again.
The flowers in California are beautiful and I want know to every one by name. I want to call them on the phone and find out what their favorite fruit is and where they'd go on vacation. Did anyone ever think to say~hey, that flower belongs some place pretty, somewhere natural and fresh and alive, easy as she is~I would do that for you flowers, in the tree code ocean worshiping language that I speak.
What a world, what a life, what a barrelled tumble of its wind. I got back here and there was some ill shit that happened to my car that had to get tended to, and it really bummed me out. There is little that can be done for your heart when the world runs amok in its most intimate places. My trust got rattled. I met a guy, he was amazing, the time we spent together was amazing. He lives far away. I live in my car which is everywhere and nowhere all at once. Life keeps happening. We moved Monique out basically overnight. We went to San Jose in a posh posh swank hotel with the whole band. Dancing and powerhouse women and the dirtiest mouth ever on Kristen. I laughed so much I had to borrow from my laugh account, which hurts your stomach after a while and makes your heart better where maybe it had stopped remembering for a minute how to work. I can't get over the good luck in my life and amazing strong and sexy and gorgeous and funny, deep powerhouse women. O did I say that once already? It's true! We were up til 5 Friday and 3:30 Saturday. Dorthea took me to Berkeley yesterday. Talking late night women's cycle talk in the kitchen with Aloe. The hills here, the shores, the ocean. The breeze. We were back to the beach by the night and it was damp and cold in the street. We used an Kristen's apps to name planets and look at the stars. I am going to Oakland tomorrow, the mountains by the weekend, there is so much to show up to, so much to do. Life! I want to live you! I want to know the names of all your flowers again. To be an active lover of your land.
I want to be surrounded by the people who care if I do.
The flowers in California are beautiful and I want know to every one by name. I want to call them on the phone and find out what their favorite fruit is and where they'd go on vacation. Did anyone ever think to say~hey, that flower belongs some place pretty, somewhere natural and fresh and alive, easy as she is~I would do that for you flowers, in the tree code ocean worshiping language that I speak.
What a world, what a life, what a barrelled tumble of its wind. I got back here and there was some ill shit that happened to my car that had to get tended to, and it really bummed me out. There is little that can be done for your heart when the world runs amok in its most intimate places. My trust got rattled. I met a guy, he was amazing, the time we spent together was amazing. He lives far away. I live in my car which is everywhere and nowhere all at once. Life keeps happening. We moved Monique out basically overnight. We went to San Jose in a posh posh swank hotel with the whole band. Dancing and powerhouse women and the dirtiest mouth ever on Kristen. I laughed so much I had to borrow from my laugh account, which hurts your stomach after a while and makes your heart better where maybe it had stopped remembering for a minute how to work. I can't get over the good luck in my life and amazing strong and sexy and gorgeous and funny, deep powerhouse women. O did I say that once already? It's true! We were up til 5 Friday and 3:30 Saturday. Dorthea took me to Berkeley yesterday. Talking late night women's cycle talk in the kitchen with Aloe. The hills here, the shores, the ocean. The breeze. We were back to the beach by the night and it was damp and cold in the street. We used an Kristen's apps to name planets and look at the stars. I am going to Oakland tomorrow, the mountains by the weekend, there is so much to show up to, so much to do. Life! I want to live you! I want to know the names of all your flowers again. To be an active lover of your land.
I want to be surrounded by the people who care if I do.
August 19, 2011
TAoCB. NorCal.
So, the grls in the north Cali woods have adequately blown my mind.
I mean, I just love when life contradicts your expectations of it. I am surrounded by majestic Redwoods, dark green pines far older than our Constitution, the Eel River is ribboning along side the soft quiet of the land. There are buckets of sunshine and a sky so blue it sings, men who talk about creating your own reality and the vortex of your own loving soul and women with uncut dreadlocks sixteen years long in tie-die skirts. The music never ends. People use composting toilets, at the farmer’s market way down the hills are cucumber lemons that you eat like an apple, in the outhouse there are crayons next to the toilet paper so you can draw on the walls while having a seat.
Now. Add to that, should you be able, the sight of two long-haired mellow hippie mamas rapping every single word to Kanye’s Monster. I mean all of a sudden out of nowhere first we were hula-hooping then they’re full-out rapping gangsta rough-neck style as if they never left the projects whaaat?? I was so off the chain with down to earth glee, so utterly delighted by this little bit of city in my temporary mountain home, so headchecked by such unexpected burst of spontaneity-keeping-me-on-my toes-ness of it that I still can not stop grinning. And as result, I now have two new grl-heros in my life, and so thank you Life for never letting me down, and thank you Bess and Ehm… This one’s for you~
I mean, I just love when life contradicts your expectations of it. I am surrounded by majestic Redwoods, dark green pines far older than our Constitution, the Eel River is ribboning along side the soft quiet of the land. There are buckets of sunshine and a sky so blue it sings, men who talk about creating your own reality and the vortex of your own loving soul and women with uncut dreadlocks sixteen years long in tie-die skirts. The music never ends. People use composting toilets, at the farmer’s market way down the hills are cucumber lemons that you eat like an apple, in the outhouse there are crayons next to the toilet paper so you can draw on the walls while having a seat.
Now. Add to that, should you be able, the sight of two long-haired mellow hippie mamas rapping every single word to Kanye’s Monster. I mean all of a sudden out of nowhere first we were hula-hooping then they’re full-out rapping gangsta rough-neck style as if they never left the projects whaaat?? I was so off the chain with down to earth glee, so utterly delighted by this little bit of city in my temporary mountain home, so headchecked by such unexpected burst of spontaneity-keeping-me-on-my toes-ness of it that I still can not stop grinning. And as result, I now have two new grl-heros in my life, and so thank you Life for never letting me down, and thank you Bess and Ehm… This one’s for you~
August 16, 2011
What's Rad. Kir-Russ & Tess. (Scim, too~!) YoLo.
These three women proved the Holy-Wonder-Awe Power of When-the-World-Takes-Hold-of-Your-Open-Heart. (If you let it!) They swooped in and saved my life last week.
Two of them keep snapshot blogs, entry-corners into the endless beauty of the passion in their lives. Check them out
Here (courierknew.tumblr.com) is Kirsten
and
Here (ourbeachbaby.com) is Tessa
YoLo!
Two of them keep snapshot blogs, entry-corners into the endless beauty of the passion in their lives. Check them out
Here (courierknew.tumblr.com) is Kirsten
and
Here (ourbeachbaby.com) is Tessa
YoLo!
May 5, 2011
April 27, 2011
One is as if everything is a miracle...
Haa...Einstein said this. "There are only two ways to live this life, one is as if nothing is a miracle, the other is as if everything is..." I like this, it's serendipity to me, or what Erika and I call Nous. My life just goes better when I center in the morning, gently love myself in to being and get to the still place to watch the crazy screen of my mind.
Afterwards, this was the first song on my Moon Poems, Mama of the Stars station on Pandora today. By the Be Good Tanyas, Opal's Blues:
Ain't lookin' forward
and I ain't lookin' back
Aint' lookin' forward
and I ain't lookin' back
Lordy, seem like every hour
sure gon' be my last
Minutes feel like hours
hours feel like days
Minutes feel like hours
and hours feel like days
well the wind is a-risin'
and the trees begin to sway
I wake up each mornin' and
watch the sun go down
I wake up each mornin' and
I watch the sun go down
I got find a reason just to hang around
I'm a sweet little rider
I'm lighter than the wind
lighter than the wind
I'm lighter than the wind
lighter than the wind
lighter than the wind
lighter than the wind
I been a sweet little rider
since I don't know when
Inside the still place, where the wonder lives, the joy is born, the poetry issues, from here I set intentions--and I am going travelling! So lately the intention is gratitude for the harmony I choose to let guide my day. In the past 24 hours I've made a decision that will impact all this, so let me tell you...Life. You're funny. Thanks for the serendipitous nod~
Afterwards, this was the first song on my Moon Poems, Mama of the Stars station on Pandora today. By the Be Good Tanyas, Opal's Blues:
Ain't lookin' forward
and I ain't lookin' back
Aint' lookin' forward
and I ain't lookin' back
Lordy, seem like every hour
sure gon' be my last
Minutes feel like hours
hours feel like days
Minutes feel like hours
and hours feel like days
well the wind is a-risin'
and the trees begin to sway
I wake up each mornin' and
watch the sun go down
I wake up each mornin' and
I watch the sun go down
I got find a reason just to hang around
I'm a sweet little rider
I'm lighter than the wind
lighter than the wind
I'm lighter than the wind
lighter than the wind
lighter than the wind
lighter than the wind
I been a sweet little rider
since I don't know when
Inside the still place, where the wonder lives, the joy is born, the poetry issues, from here I set intentions--and I am going travelling! So lately the intention is gratitude for the harmony I choose to let guide my day. In the past 24 hours I've made a decision that will impact all this, so let me tell you...Life. You're funny. Thanks for the serendipitous nod~
December 9, 2010
It's Been A Good Year (but dont make her lift her skirts or I'll be pissed!)
It's been a good year. I am sitting in conversation with this guy at the door of a coffee shop in this place called Severna Park and I have not seen him since no shit 1995 (oh my god, how funny I just remembered we were Class Partiers together in the year book, that's why he was explaining so bummedly and borderline apologetically about having to quit smoking! Holmes my dad's got lung disease c'mon! We're grown up now it's alright...) and all I can think is it's been a good year.
I am kind, and ground myself and remind myself to be present. It is genuinely good to see him: he is one of the only people from my high school, or the one near where I worked as a teen, that via facebook or some other networking means hadn't been found and labeled: Married, Divorced, Parent, etc and I tell him as much. I admit I do, now I can check him off in my head. Our funny little ways of keeping track of one another that get complained about but that at the end of the day matter, afterall. Me, I have a Mama-Soul as part of my spirit, and a tight-knit tribe of Family which marked me deep in the place that gets marked by how we are nurtured, so knowing where and how people are adds to my security. I grounded in this, and was happy to connect again to this guy.
But It's been a good year, and that is the line that has the little wick attached. It's the line that when gionng through my head while walking out of Brian's house this morning in desperate strides towards the nearest wifi-having local coffee shop, triggered the light inside to tell me the Muses are near. There is no other way to explain this to you if it is not your experience--the best I can do is what I always do when I sit down and write. Just tell the truth tell the truth tell the truth and follow that little feeling of light. I do not know when it started but I do know that it is real, it is the most real thing I know. It is a feeling that comes on inside that alerts me to the inner creativity the boundless place and my duty, my calling here on this earth no matter what else is to bring it to the surface, to midwife it and breathe in to it the life it needs to fly. And when I disregard it I get short and turn in to an asshole and so help me if you cross my way when I am in the middle of my dance with the Muse. So help me, that is, should you make her lift her skirts and high-heeled or bare-footed run away.
But what a superstition that is, too? Writing involves discipline and the most clear lesson I learned in the past two years is to not underestimate what happens by simple alchemy of action. Showing up, not bitching, and doing what the hell's got to get done, which almost always is what's right in front of me. It's more than just saying ahhh yea I will start with It's been a good year because that is where the little light is attached. It's also bringing in to the coffe shop two books that really turn me on and reading a while this morning, and even more it's about sitting down especially when the light hasn't or doesn't feel like it's going to come.
It's been a good year. In November it was the Harvest New Year and starting out--the first week of the new year!--my bank account was in the red. So what was in front of me was get a better job and get your finances re-ordered, no matter what. So I did because after the last two years of my life dont ever underestimate my hustle. Turns out now I get to manage this way hip, way mellow local coffee shop in the Pines where I live. It's brand new and the boss needed someone with experience in community building and coffee-shop culture, which has nothing to do with caffeine and everything to do with supporting and growing your local tribe. Even the business model functions that way and I brought to this my barista-ing for Peggy those years back at Play It Again in Chestertown, as well as the local art, food and music movement we grew around The Oregon Dialogue. So far sooo good. It overlooks the Bay and River on the west side of the inlet of Ocean City. I watch the sun come up every morning and breathe and exhilarate in how fucking rad it is to be alive.
And I am writing, and chilling a lot outside, and that is that. It's been a good year. In November 2008 I left my relationship of 6 years. Right after that Josh and I tried to be lovers after a decade of being Muse to one another. I still believe he was a true love, but we ended too because just because something's true doesn't mean it's meant to be. Losing him, and leaving Brandon and Chestertown and Anngar Farm all at the same time was the single most painful part of my life and from start to finish it lasted until around the middle of this summer.
It's been a good year.
I worked for Chesapeake College when I left Bran, I was one of four people who started the GED and community English program that now serves all five counties on the upper and mid Eastern Shore. I worked my fucking ass off while I was there, and stepped down in May after living in isolation for a year out on the Choptank River and licking my wounds. I was lonely and needed family and friends. I went on a month long sabbatical in the Pac NW in May and June and while there had more than one other-world experience of being Called again. I moved back to mom's at the beach after that and partied like a rock star all summer long and still found that I had one more hall to cross to transition my life from Brandon-Josh-Chesapeake to the one that lay beyond. This stuff cant be made up, you know? The light within is real, what if that is our only choice, to surrender to the myth of what could be and give it our all to bring it to life? How about learning that the only way to do this is to do it!? And what about the struggle of being a woman and feeling this is the work you're meant to do? This is subject matter for another post (or a whole damn book, ehem...) but what about that? I know plenty of artist men whose art is their main and only priority. What about when you're a woman with the same compulsion, what happens then? When the pain is that bad I know now that actually it's my only choice, to believe in this mid-wifing and keep breathing and trusting in the birth about to come. The pain is my spirit--not a religious thing I am talking about the place inside of I AM--calling out a red alert to listen the hell up.
It's been a good year. Tuesday night I watched Candace, Jessica, Shanika and LaShae walk in their caps and gowns and receive their Maryland State High School Diplomas. They were four of 43 graduates from Chesapeake in just the last six months! And at one time I held each of those girls hand in hand. I hooped and hollered from the audience because I dont work there anymore so now it's okay for me to be wild and exuberant and un-professional even if it seems I'm acting a fool.
It's been a good year. I dont live in fantasy anymore about a man who's love will finally change or set me free. I dont dream of someday when I get to do.....all these millions of different passion-fueled things. For the first time in my life I wake up now and just live today. Seriously. It's the first time in my life I've ever done that, you dig how crazy that sounds? The passing from then to now was long and great and so dark at times that I often forgot what path I was on. But I am me today and at peace with who I am. All I need to do now is trust in her day to day.
And pay attention to when the wick-light comes on, by listening and more, taking action on what's right in front of me. By practicing what I learned in those two years which is easy to say but takes a while to get the footwork right. It sounds silly maybe but what the hell is there other than saying yes ok, the next step is just be present that's how right now that I can Show up, and the peace is inside knowing that the rest will be what it will be.
I am kind, and ground myself and remind myself to be present. It is genuinely good to see him: he is one of the only people from my high school, or the one near where I worked as a teen, that via facebook or some other networking means hadn't been found and labeled: Married, Divorced, Parent, etc and I tell him as much. I admit I do, now I can check him off in my head. Our funny little ways of keeping track of one another that get complained about but that at the end of the day matter, afterall. Me, I have a Mama-Soul as part of my spirit, and a tight-knit tribe of Family which marked me deep in the place that gets marked by how we are nurtured, so knowing where and how people are adds to my security. I grounded in this, and was happy to connect again to this guy.
But It's been a good year, and that is the line that has the little wick attached. It's the line that when gionng through my head while walking out of Brian's house this morning in desperate strides towards the nearest wifi-having local coffee shop, triggered the light inside to tell me the Muses are near. There is no other way to explain this to you if it is not your experience--the best I can do is what I always do when I sit down and write. Just tell the truth tell the truth tell the truth and follow that little feeling of light. I do not know when it started but I do know that it is real, it is the most real thing I know. It is a feeling that comes on inside that alerts me to the inner creativity the boundless place and my duty, my calling here on this earth no matter what else is to bring it to the surface, to midwife it and breathe in to it the life it needs to fly. And when I disregard it I get short and turn in to an asshole and so help me if you cross my way when I am in the middle of my dance with the Muse. So help me, that is, should you make her lift her skirts and high-heeled or bare-footed run away.
But what a superstition that is, too? Writing involves discipline and the most clear lesson I learned in the past two years is to not underestimate what happens by simple alchemy of action. Showing up, not bitching, and doing what the hell's got to get done, which almost always is what's right in front of me. It's more than just saying ahhh yea I will start with It's been a good year because that is where the little light is attached. It's also bringing in to the coffe shop two books that really turn me on and reading a while this morning, and even more it's about sitting down especially when the light hasn't or doesn't feel like it's going to come.
It's been a good year. In November it was the Harvest New Year and starting out--the first week of the new year!--my bank account was in the red. So what was in front of me was get a better job and get your finances re-ordered, no matter what. So I did because after the last two years of my life dont ever underestimate my hustle. Turns out now I get to manage this way hip, way mellow local coffee shop in the Pines where I live. It's brand new and the boss needed someone with experience in community building and coffee-shop culture, which has nothing to do with caffeine and everything to do with supporting and growing your local tribe. Even the business model functions that way and I brought to this my barista-ing for Peggy those years back at Play It Again in Chestertown, as well as the local art, food and music movement we grew around The Oregon Dialogue. So far sooo good. It overlooks the Bay and River on the west side of the inlet of Ocean City. I watch the sun come up every morning and breathe and exhilarate in how fucking rad it is to be alive.
And I am writing, and chilling a lot outside, and that is that. It's been a good year. In November 2008 I left my relationship of 6 years. Right after that Josh and I tried to be lovers after a decade of being Muse to one another. I still believe he was a true love, but we ended too because just because something's true doesn't mean it's meant to be. Losing him, and leaving Brandon and Chestertown and Anngar Farm all at the same time was the single most painful part of my life and from start to finish it lasted until around the middle of this summer.
It's been a good year.
I worked for Chesapeake College when I left Bran, I was one of four people who started the GED and community English program that now serves all five counties on the upper and mid Eastern Shore. I worked my fucking ass off while I was there, and stepped down in May after living in isolation for a year out on the Choptank River and licking my wounds. I was lonely and needed family and friends. I went on a month long sabbatical in the Pac NW in May and June and while there had more than one other-world experience of being Called again. I moved back to mom's at the beach after that and partied like a rock star all summer long and still found that I had one more hall to cross to transition my life from Brandon-Josh-Chesapeake to the one that lay beyond. This stuff cant be made up, you know? The light within is real, what if that is our only choice, to surrender to the myth of what could be and give it our all to bring it to life? How about learning that the only way to do this is to do it!? And what about the struggle of being a woman and feeling this is the work you're meant to do? This is subject matter for another post (or a whole damn book, ehem...) but what about that? I know plenty of artist men whose art is their main and only priority. What about when you're a woman with the same compulsion, what happens then? When the pain is that bad I know now that actually it's my only choice, to believe in this mid-wifing and keep breathing and trusting in the birth about to come. The pain is my spirit--not a religious thing I am talking about the place inside of I AM--calling out a red alert to listen the hell up.
It's been a good year. Tuesday night I watched Candace, Jessica, Shanika and LaShae walk in their caps and gowns and receive their Maryland State High School Diplomas. They were four of 43 graduates from Chesapeake in just the last six months! And at one time I held each of those girls hand in hand. I hooped and hollered from the audience because I dont work there anymore so now it's okay for me to be wild and exuberant and un-professional even if it seems I'm acting a fool.
It's been a good year. I dont live in fantasy anymore about a man who's love will finally change or set me free. I dont dream of someday when I get to do.....all these millions of different passion-fueled things. For the first time in my life I wake up now and just live today. Seriously. It's the first time in my life I've ever done that, you dig how crazy that sounds? The passing from then to now was long and great and so dark at times that I often forgot what path I was on. But I am me today and at peace with who I am. All I need to do now is trust in her day to day.
And pay attention to when the wick-light comes on, by listening and more, taking action on what's right in front of me. By practicing what I learned in those two years which is easy to say but takes a while to get the footwork right. It sounds silly maybe but what the hell is there other than saying yes ok, the next step is just be present that's how right now that I can Show up, and the peace is inside knowing that the rest will be what it will be.
December 6, 2010
From When I Was Wild. OC & Coming Home.
It was spring time I was fine you looked finer with your brown hair long then and the body you still took care of we were eighteen I had bleach in my hair and a checked blue shirt tied at the belly I wanted to say was gingham, but was not, we were suburb not country kids and you took me on a picnic under the power lines so I tried to play the part. It was hot for the spring and the pot made it so we couldn't tell was that just the heat or was that melting in our minds. You loved Jesus but wouldn't admit it, and late at night we'd get in fights because it was a misogyny thing afterall for you who secretly didn't trust his mom, who thought the world was going on fire because the women were aloud to speak again the weird thing is you an Only Man back then...only one never turned on me but loved me better when I got to use my tongue. Voice people, this is about voice not sex. But we did that too didn't we, the hot kind the teenage kind wicked and innocent out back in the car at parties or the church parking lot or the one time under the tree in the graveyard on acid our bodys seemed so big, then small, our arms wavery my breath its own language echoing off the red coming off the trees.
I wore dark purple lipstick then, or red, and had the hottest little body remember I used to show off my tatoos.
There were all those others at the beach, it was never easy for me to talk about that. Part of it was how I hurt you when you and my one friend went off walking down next to the ocean. That was the night, or more next morning on the boards yellow mist of sun trying to make up its mind am I heat making dry this water or light making clear this new day from the dark that I knew that I was different for good that I had made my choice, without meaning to. Seeing what I was capable of. As if you'd ever cheat on me. You know that night--two of the four guys I was smoking with are dead now? We were on acid then, too. One of them I never even write about. He was a mean little fuck, we used to get drunk and I'd run my mouth and the one night over in the Meadows at that one place when they were living with RayRay we had a flinching contest where I let him hit me hard as he could, as long as I got to hit him back, and again and again we hit one another and I stood and took it all 108 pounds of me thinking I was a man. And that was the choice, there were always two in me la santa y la diabla, and that is the night I ran off with the devil holding my hand.
God damn did we have fun. I heard from someone on the periphery back then this week--this happens enough, private messages thanking me for this blog--that I would say it happens regularly and so thank you all publicly for reading it makes me feel so, so good and this is a shout to all you private ones reading along, and a specific story just for him. I remember you and some others were living uptown on 143rd doing the more mellow surf thing I only made it up there for example when Jesse or Kareem came to town because hidden in someone's wet suit was all the drugs! And anyhow one day I was off or likely just on break from hot assing on the mic to Big and Meth and Tom Petty and The Dead up at the peir (Jerry still alive in the beginning of that summer, dead by the end and vigils on the boardwalk and the 9th street squatters house still there, near where the old, old old Chat Street used to be) and you walked in I think with Mike? and we were in the middle of an all out indoor water gun fight, blue plastic dollar store beach sand buckets filled to the top with oozy automatics and us shooting water or late at night emptied-forties malt-liquor straight in to our mouths...The boys all shirtless only wore only baggies that summer that's how you knew the local rats downtown, so I was always like fuck it I'll just wear my bikini all the time! You who was always on your own buzz keepin it so chill had the most shocked look on your face when you walked in the house--front door always wide open bedroom me and Fannon's then me and Kev's once Brian moved out always closed
--and then it broke, the shock and you smiled like I'd never seen before a light of joy and radicallness breaking out straight from your mouth. You grabbed a seat way on the side of the room one of the bros tossed you a beer and then of course did we proceed. That might of been, but likely was not, the same watergun fight that wound up across the street running the outdoor halls of the Americana sneaking around corners and hiding behind doors when I camped out upstairs at the dirty frat guys (I used to stand in the alley out back and cus those fuckers out all the time even back then clear to me down the center how we were different and stood on different lines) on their front porch and waited until Jeremiah gave up and then dumped an entire bucket of water on his head when we was walking back surrendered to the apartment. Remember that shit? We kept a baby wading pool out on our front porch to chill in and would add ice in the afternoon to keep all the beers more cold.
Hahahaha. I live here again and barely ever think of that stuff, those times anymore. Fannon gone, Kev. Blugh Kev. Phil...
Una Santa, y Una Diabla. The poetic imagination and living our own myths. Last week I was chilling one night over with these friends of mine, hanging out with this girl from the county but who I never knew back then only met down here at the beach, an old friend's friend. I got to telling stories and of course because I am writing so much again and also because I am a McMullen and all those all those all those late night convos as a girl, or around the table basement at Grammy and Pop's or any single one of the aunts and uncles the Jameson and laughter and warm remembering every time, because of all that and because of my myth, my heart my spirit where the saint and the devil collide I am a wild women, full of the spirit and the ancient forbidden gnosis which is just know-how which, common sense people is just know thy self, this wisdom business that penetrates so deep within. And so for all of that of course I am storyteller, La Cantadora she who knows. And so chillin last Wednesday late night, and Saturday too I got to telling some stories of my own, I have a lot, and a lot of them some of the most important ones are from the beach they all, so much happened right here.
So without meaning to I am gathering bones again and doing it near the ocean in the northeast wind under the winter sky. It is so important, this archeology, these bits and pieces scattered everywhere it is the real work it is the poet's work it is the work always always always of recircling the brave warm or coolly shadowed places we continually label or even disregard that when we are still live deeply, live on, within. In the end these are known and called by that most powered word of words, home in the end I choose not to go with the howl scowl on my face but the wicked happy satiated smile of she who knows that peaceful all-knowingg grin, so right now today and tomorrow's today and each and every step I take I say Amen. Amen Amen. This is all real and really happenening, this is life it does and it did.
I wore dark purple lipstick then, or red, and had the hottest little body remember I used to show off my tatoos.
There were all those others at the beach, it was never easy for me to talk about that. Part of it was how I hurt you when you and my one friend went off walking down next to the ocean. That was the night, or more next morning on the boards yellow mist of sun trying to make up its mind am I heat making dry this water or light making clear this new day from the dark that I knew that I was different for good that I had made my choice, without meaning to. Seeing what I was capable of. As if you'd ever cheat on me. You know that night--two of the four guys I was smoking with are dead now? We were on acid then, too. One of them I never even write about. He was a mean little fuck, we used to get drunk and I'd run my mouth and the one night over in the Meadows at that one place when they were living with RayRay we had a flinching contest where I let him hit me hard as he could, as long as I got to hit him back, and again and again we hit one another and I stood and took it all 108 pounds of me thinking I was a man. And that was the choice, there were always two in me la santa y la diabla, and that is the night I ran off with the devil holding my hand.
God damn did we have fun. I heard from someone on the periphery back then this week--this happens enough, private messages thanking me for this blog--that I would say it happens regularly and so thank you all publicly for reading it makes me feel so, so good and this is a shout to all you private ones reading along, and a specific story just for him. I remember you and some others were living uptown on 143rd doing the more mellow surf thing I only made it up there for example when Jesse or Kareem came to town because hidden in someone's wet suit was all the drugs! And anyhow one day I was off or likely just on break from hot assing on the mic to Big and Meth and Tom Petty and The Dead up at the peir (Jerry still alive in the beginning of that summer, dead by the end and vigils on the boardwalk and the 9th street squatters house still there, near where the old, old old Chat Street used to be) and you walked in I think with Mike? and we were in the middle of an all out indoor water gun fight, blue plastic dollar store beach sand buckets filled to the top with oozy automatics and us shooting water or late at night emptied-forties malt-liquor straight in to our mouths...The boys all shirtless only wore only baggies that summer that's how you knew the local rats downtown, so I was always like fuck it I'll just wear my bikini all the time! You who was always on your own buzz keepin it so chill had the most shocked look on your face when you walked in the house--front door always wide open bedroom me and Fannon's then me and Kev's once Brian moved out always closed
--and then it broke, the shock and you smiled like I'd never seen before a light of joy and radicallness breaking out straight from your mouth. You grabbed a seat way on the side of the room one of the bros tossed you a beer and then of course did we proceed. That might of been, but likely was not, the same watergun fight that wound up across the street running the outdoor halls of the Americana sneaking around corners and hiding behind doors when I camped out upstairs at the dirty frat guys (I used to stand in the alley out back and cus those fuckers out all the time even back then clear to me down the center how we were different and stood on different lines) on their front porch and waited until Jeremiah gave up and then dumped an entire bucket of water on his head when we was walking back surrendered to the apartment. Remember that shit? We kept a baby wading pool out on our front porch to chill in and would add ice in the afternoon to keep all the beers more cold.
Hahahaha. I live here again and barely ever think of that stuff, those times anymore. Fannon gone, Kev. Blugh Kev. Phil...
Una Santa, y Una Diabla. The poetic imagination and living our own myths. Last week I was chilling one night over with these friends of mine, hanging out with this girl from the county but who I never knew back then only met down here at the beach, an old friend's friend. I got to telling stories and of course because I am writing so much again and also because I am a McMullen and all those all those all those late night convos as a girl, or around the table basement at Grammy and Pop's or any single one of the aunts and uncles the Jameson and laughter and warm remembering every time, because of all that and because of my myth, my heart my spirit where the saint and the devil collide I am a wild women, full of the spirit and the ancient forbidden gnosis which is just know-how which, common sense people is just know thy self, this wisdom business that penetrates so deep within. And so for all of that of course I am storyteller, La Cantadora she who knows. And so chillin last Wednesday late night, and Saturday too I got to telling some stories of my own, I have a lot, and a lot of them some of the most important ones are from the beach they all, so much happened right here.
So without meaning to I am gathering bones again and doing it near the ocean in the northeast wind under the winter sky. It is so important, this archeology, these bits and pieces scattered everywhere it is the real work it is the poet's work it is the work always always always of recircling the brave warm or coolly shadowed places we continually label or even disregard that when we are still live deeply, live on, within. In the end these are known and called by that most powered word of words, home in the end I choose not to go with the howl scowl on my face but the wicked happy satiated smile of she who knows that peaceful all-knowingg grin, so right now today and tomorrow's today and each and every step I take I say Amen. Amen Amen. This is all real and really happenening, this is life it does and it did.
October 7, 2010
Smoke and Flowers
Inside of what changes, which is everything, there are little things, too. These are the bones of who we are, what help us know how to comfortably flesh out and wear our real skin.
The weather today is so fabulous that to mar it with words would ruin my experience.
Last year when Mandy moved home she and her mom and her brother and his fiance all got a house in Crownsville, which is this heavily wooded suburb outside of Annapolis where we moved when I was 11 and where I grew up until I moved to the Eastern Shore in 1998. I clung to that, to her house there, to walking in knowing where the coffee mugs were, where food was, what her mom would smell like (smoke and floral fragrance) when she received my hello-hug. I never thought it would mean something to me, I thought I needed to see the world and that was what mattered. Mandy said that too the other night, leaning against her dishwasher, adding to her grocery list. Talking about where we are from. Talking about how good it feels to be with people again who get her. The little things.
She tosses me a towel yesterday morning and tells me to shower in her bathroom. It lands next to my head. It's almost ten, she's been up for hours with her kids and already's dropped Derek off at pre-school. I am laying in her bed, we slept there together and talked each other to sleep like we used to the winter we were nineteen and lived in my basement at mom's in Crownsville. When we would sleep on the pull out couch with the metal bar in our backs or spoon in my twin bed. This woman knows the story of every man I have ever loved. I know every one of hers. We make decisions now for practical reasons. We are still wild as the wind. She ate oodles of noodles on Tuesday while we talked across her table. Just like back then.
I've always looked up to her. Always looked to her for direction, looked not to what she says but to how she makes decisions, what she does and the authority which she uses when I cant find my own. Last year she moved in to that house in Crownsville and spent time with her family and her family's--her brother's--friends every day. I took that sense of familiarity to the Pines and rooted in to my own. Tuesday I drove to Pasadena to see my cousin play soccer, then met a bunch more other cousins on Edmunson Ave in the city to eat grilled cheeses. Then went back home, Mandy's home her own home she owns in Pasadena, in the County, to be with her.
I can't imagine being any better--any more arrogant, any more innocent--any more aware, anyway, than this...
The weather today is so fabulous that to mar it with words would ruin my experience.I have a lot to process. I returned from my trip over the bridge last night. I was exhausted. I feel like there should be periods between each of those words. I. was. exhausted. I couldn't even talk to mom about all that happened, it was too much.
Eventually I gave her some of the basics. What I was able to say I had a still moment of clarity that was the exact same as the night I taught my first ESL class. Remember I called you when it was over? I remember every detail, sitting in my car that night on the phone with you. Knowing I'd stepped foot on a new, totally unknown path. The big, calm feeling of it. Yesterday, sitting in my car, was exactly like that. But even this morning in the sun in my torn salt-weakened beach chair barefeet in the gravel of the front driveway at the Pines, sitting still, I just wanted quiet. I relaxed in to the tight feeling in my jaw and the thick-creased feeling of crippledness in my shoulders and neck that scream money!?!? and sat inside the bad feelings until it all released. I breathed in the sunlight and fresh air. I returned to peace and happiness of today, this moment, the sound of tree-breeze. Nothing but this, only this, only this. My smile was big and I didn't even realize it.
My alt boys station on Pandora is nailing it right now. What's really on my mind, what I came here to write about, is friendship and familial ties. Mandy bought a house in Pasadena over the summer. I cross the Anne Arundel County line and freak out she said, she is talking about crossing in to HoCo and I laughed because I get it. We are sitting across from one another at her kitchen table. We are thirty-somethings. She has two kids now. She told this funny story (she's the best story-teller I know, pulls out no stops just gets ghetto with it and then pushes it even past that so much so that I've sometimes questioned if she makes them up they're so often that over the top) about her cousin who lives on the line between Baltimore City and county and I am secretly smiling the whole time because that's what I want, that life, those I dont give a fuck we'd never call the cops 'round here people. I think of my family roots all Brooklyn Park inside the edge of the city prideful and blind and righteous, working-class Catholically-arrogant and equally innocent all of us, scared to get out, and more scared not to, too. Being a kid on Church Street, in my memories from that young time the sun was always shining. There was always sunshine on the side of the house, on the cement sidewalk, on Grammy's tablecloth. On Pop's records and tea cup. My uncles were twenty-something, wild-eyed, like their sons now. I was a baby-grl, three, four, six, ten. Enraptured with it all.
Last year when Mandy moved home she and her mom and her brother and his fiance all got a house in Crownsville, which is this heavily wooded suburb outside of Annapolis where we moved when I was 11 and where I grew up until I moved to the Eastern Shore in 1998. I clung to that, to her house there, to walking in knowing where the coffee mugs were, where food was, what her mom would smell like (smoke and floral fragrance) when she received my hello-hug. I never thought it would mean something to me, I thought I needed to see the world and that was what mattered. Mandy said that too the other night, leaning against her dishwasher, adding to her grocery list. Talking about where we are from. Talking about how good it feels to be with people again who get her. The little things.
She tosses me a towel yesterday morning and tells me to shower in her bathroom. It lands next to my head. It's almost ten, she's been up for hours with her kids and already's dropped Derek off at pre-school. I am laying in her bed, we slept there together and talked each other to sleep like we used to the winter we were nineteen and lived in my basement at mom's in Crownsville. When we would sleep on the pull out couch with the metal bar in our backs or spoon in my twin bed. This woman knows the story of every man I have ever loved. I know every one of hers. We make decisions now for practical reasons. We are still wild as the wind. She ate oodles of noodles on Tuesday while we talked across her table. Just like back then.
I've always looked up to her. Always looked to her for direction, looked not to what she says but to how she makes decisions, what she does and the authority which she uses when I cant find my own. Last year she moved in to that house in Crownsville and spent time with her family and her family's--her brother's--friends every day. I took that sense of familiarity to the Pines and rooted in to my own. Tuesday I drove to Pasadena to see my cousin play soccer, then met a bunch more other cousins on Edmunson Ave in the city to eat grilled cheeses. Then went back home, Mandy's home her own home she owns in Pasadena, in the County, to be with her.
I can't imagine being any better--any more arrogant, any more innocent--any more aware, anyway, than this...
October 4, 2010
I'm Making Something Special
...and it happens to be what I always envisioned myself making when, if, finally, I ever actualized authentic life as I saw it in my gentle laden sometimes madly wild imagination.
In addition to my novel, I am making a chapbook. I am mad excited about having a project to actualize before my book is even done. Wahoooo! Meantime I am in all my old journals, transcribing magicmaking loving every minute of all of this
from composition book 2, oct 09-june 10
5.31.10 Newport, Oregon Beth's House
the girl w/ one star in her eye
We talked long about generational heritage & the vegetable body: I told her that's my take on god, the other 93 or so %, the part running on involuntary. Proof. Proof is the wonder of mystery. She read to me out of a celestial goddess book which was pulled off the shelf to find a pic of Kwan Yen--who I paid homage to bc she called me to kneel down. Turns out she's the archetype of service, pure service, first thru the art of self care then that bares altruism to its fullest range & realm. But Kali Ma made herself known, too, & how happy I am to be here, on the coast, at home. Sometimes I still think & see him & a home meant for us. A place we will come to get away.
Kali Ma Kali Ma come to me again from way back when. She dark mother, she me she I crofton hoochie mamas til now--til then anyhow--Truslow Road when we used to cram the living room full of 20 heads. Oregon woods detritus of death--Kali Ma, dark mother. And this is the theme song the whole long time with Beth.
The underbelly--generations of wounds, subjugated, degraded, this unspoken darkness saddled to the necks, to the low backs, to second half--of us all. Dark mother--comes out in our broken sex ways, our broke ma's, broke pop's, our codependence & control. Kalima she is destroyer, great rebirther--she forces sight--
rememebers all.
So, too~the great turn. Also long talks of progress taking long, long times. Emily who I met thru Mark thru Ben thru Beth told a story of Maya Angelou speaking--she said how sorry, how very sorry she was to give children today this earth, this society, these contexts, yet
she said also, I promise you it's better this world we have to give than it was when I was your age--
& so it is & all things ebb & so they flow again--& now in time of greata ever loving western ebb is now for us peace makers, is time for us mythlivers, is time for us hearttrusters to again lay our seeds~
September 21, 2010
List: What's Rad. CarrotCore.
In my Book of Awesomeness in my imagination we are building a dream world of subversive ever-ongoing creative flourishment and this is the new reality, pre-dawn, ahead of always creating destiny, we are shapeshifters this our amusement and our only prayers... O imagination o imagination, o blessed holy sacred tribe of cool...
O only religion that I have...
Meet Carrot, from I'M NOT AFRAID OF WINTER. Look at this amazing poetmadness movie she done made!
O only religion that I have...
Meet Carrot, from I'M NOT AFRAID OF WINTER. Look at this amazing poetmadness movie she done made!
May 1, 2010
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