On the shoulders of Giants

Being a human is hard, right? There are no instruction manuals on this thing, this great big boundless craft we're all busy trying to navigate, encompassing-as-all, this engine of Life so raring to go that sometimes it's sweet enough just to feel the wind through our hair, and then others, ooooo the rotten goodness of stagnation or of storm....I love it, right? But it's hard, too.

Relationships are hard, being yourself and then allowing yourself and others room enough for the same. Like how bout when your close with people in that intimate way so that they know you even for your ingnorant parts reserved typically for mom and dad, sis or bro or your kids. And you know the same of them. And not judging anyway. Not having expectations. I wish I could say I was always loving enough. Ah, but human as I am that's just not my case. I get confused, too, youo know all the what's right and what's not, what calls for standing up for yourself, what's the total tao of easing back, being still, or letting go. Gosh for me this is a lifetime of defining work, I walk it and learn through it and drive my craft along in my professional life, with close friends, with casual friends, with family, in my material life, my consumer life, my emotional life, of course with love. I dont know if I'm doing the right thing. At the end of the day I just try to recollect, be thankful, keep my eyes open in review. I used to be a hard ass and an asshead. Today I try to just keep these things in check.

Who knows at any given moment how truly well I do??!

I did dishes today, cleaned out the fridge, my car, did my bills. I made some important calls, did an itty bitty thing for work. It's amazing what taking a little action will do. I caught up with two old friends, too. It's funny how with some people it's so easy for me to be at peace and, even after big chunks of timelapse, contented with take me as I am. And with others how I fall in to certain roles--Voice of Wisdom or of Hope, so god-damned close to know it all? How these relationships always make me question myself. If it's true we're all mirrors of one another, just playing out our scripts of soul and growth through the vantages of these roles--than I am always teaching what I need to learn.

Later today I took a long luxurious swim and reveled over the Mystery of this Life. The blessed simple peace of everyday. I did loads upon loads of laundry. This is something that, during the years that I would use the laundramat in town, used to make me resent the hell out of life. Can you imagine!? A thing simple as cleaning up in a regular way after myself. Being human is so simple, so funny, so strange... I am sitting at the coffee shop in Naptown now, on a date with, in full glorious revel of me, and in all today and as now, I keep being humbled by the repeated experience of this is it, This, this is my Life, no place to get to but here, and I keep smiling in a sweet inner way just to me.

Here is a song in Celebration and Serendipity. For the little things, for Erika's post today quoting the same thing that my morning mediation did--Hemingway's line about writing the truest sentence you know, the meditaiton itself reminding us that artist's are charged with living life in truth, no matter what the truth of the current moment is, challenging ourselves to be brave enough just to live, in order to, by virtue of that Life, have the natural fodder from which to create. And for hearing this week, a week when I really needed it, from not one, not two, not three, but ALL FOUR of the people that I consider to be spiritual giants in my life, whose shoulders I to this day give thanks for the oppurtunity to stand on. I mean, I haven't heard from two of those people in over a year, and the other two in months...and at random each of them on their own just happened to shout out for one reason or another to me this week.
They remind me right now that we never know the greater picture of this tapestry in which we are so blessed to be getting the chance to together weave...Bless them each, bless me...

O, coffee life....

thank life for you coffee cat, even tho when you changed from coffee east how i hated your name. thank life for you erika, and your practical approach to things. thank life for you date book: and the hour and half penciled in three times a week assuring i come here, sit down, and do just this....

thank life for you and all these young people, for rob and kj in seperate frames here on the walls. thank life for you funny aching beautiful minimal songs by huskyvoiced fellas and breathy womyns--i was a senior in college when i added to my agenda "barista" and worked a year at the local spot in chestertown, the one you learned to avoid if you had to get somewhere on time. because everyone there you know, and everyone you know is always there.

easton is bigger, the country surrounding her more spread out. (yes yes where ctown was a man, sweet easton is definitely a woman. i can hear it at night in the silence of her streets and how her trees and flowers sing. a chorus of sweet, while chestertown was always so flat, or thunderouosly barritone...o shamanmamaearthofmineheartandsoul, thank life for thank life....) and so while the poverty here is more spread out, and class in general more specifically profound, there is a far greater sense of lower middle class around here....o eastern shore, o employment office and family centers where i call my home, yes these too, thank life for you

why did i avoid it here so long? so much of my good times of the last 10 years have come out of coffee shops the late night dc ones after the clubs or meetins, all those all those 49 west nights, and o chestertown, where my moments came together for more than one love and now on to this one, center of a far larger town, all the people with smiles like they already know me, all the people who i'm sure really do already have me figured out...o writing life, o coffee shop opened til 10... with Rob and KJ on the walls how their local heroism delights and joys me and cracks me up, o faces here and the music i've never heard of but always always makes me groove....i am so gloriously glowing right now i dont know quite what to do....

what i'm listening to: gwendolyn

my heart grows bigger

the heart is a good, and plenty, and bountiful thing. i am so blessed with its consistancy, in all things up and down, all things concentric on this spiral path so round and round, for every time it pains me it lightens me equally, what would i do without you o wellspring of life, o precious window-light of me? i bless you kelly and spin gold around everything you have been and all that you so beautifully yet will be, i walk you round this path sure as the river, the earth, that blessed thunder and sun in the morning sky of birth sing well and long to me....

fall is coming and the full moon is here

i woke up this morning after the deepest, most satisfying sleep i've had since i moved to chop. and it was only a three hour long sleep because just before 5 i awoke with a pillow hugged to my chest in the middle of an intense dream, which is the only time i can ever remember awaking on my back hugging a pillow. and i got out of bed realizing that i have been dreaming the same recurring dream since the weekend and puzzling over what it might mean. then i turned on the window fan got back under my soft sheet and in the grey morning light lay there an hour half-awake. until the next thing i knew it was 9 am and i was sleeping but waking slowly and feeling so, so satiated from my deepest depths within. like i had been wrung somewhere on my most essential level entirely clean.

and i had no thoughts of angst over work and my future, over where i am going to live next, over any of it. merely i felt complete, and settled in a way that i actually forgot is possible because its been absent for so, so long. i almost giggled out loud, and thought of the most random, exciting things: i love over-medium dippy eggs with whole grain pancakes with fruit cooked in and to eat them in front of the tv with regis and kelly. or to make jewelry because of all the different pretty colors and styles of the beads. i love fashion and exploring clothes that are just right for me. i love the quiet beach in late yellow september. i love to be in the woods, to swim in wild streams, camping. i love camping. i love to cozy cozy read books in the morning in bed when i've got no place to go....

and then it struck me, fall is here--or so i mean that on the wheel of the axis of the year, the preceding week or so has been the quickening of the tide of the change...tonight's full moon is traditional Lunar Llamas, the apex, the surge of bounty...we celebrate lunar llamas the first full moon when the sun is in leo and it signifies for all of us the passing of the year. intuitively we reassess what we've accomplished this year, what our harvest has brought to pass, what we didn't do to well at growing, where we have been fertile, futile, full of meat or just of bones.... oh god oh god life i love you so, so much!

sure as we are here people our cells, our dna move with this ever changing earth, and sure as this movement is tracked only by the sun there is a rightness, a depth of completion and union to it all in that it never truly ever ends, simply slows or quickens, and begins again. take heart, take stock...life recycles, we turn within, we radicalize, dive down deep, come to birth again....

Man Bait

I so, so luckin fove this grl. She is gorgeous, talented, and full of fire and love, which she is now generating in to absoloutely excellent yummmmmmmmmmmmmms. I know, her solstice present to me this past december was a batch full of baked goods, which kept me full all those quiet creepy first nites at Chop....Rubbin her tum...............Read all about it: Man Bait and grow to love her as much as i do