Youth is King

Matty walks in and in that throat voice of his barks whut up and who he is, blonde and suntouched and light but with that huge self fills the room and I am immediately so, so, soooo happy. Ahhhh whutup cuz is what he says when he rounds the corner in to the kitchen and sees me and he gives me that great wide open hug that he gives, like he's wrapping the world around you, then lets me go quickly too cuz that's part of it, how he do. We're here to watch the Ravens playa, he says, and gonna get pizza too if that's cool...

O god does this add to my happiness. His spontaneity, his freedom--it's part who he is, a 16-year-old-beach patrol go-with-the-flow surf's-up dude, the other part is allll youth. I saw earlier in the week on facebook that he'd be in town in hopes of Igor waves. I forgot tho, and I am making chicken soup, a harvest pot full of equinox blessings intentions and healing, for mom and I when he walks in.

They are low, fast slur-talkers, my cousin Matt and his boys and him. When they talk amongst themselves as we watch the game it is immediately this trait that makes me organically happy to be around them. It reminds me off watching Southpark with Sean, my brother, and his friends in the late nineties when it first came out. Sean was in highschool then and his friends were soccer players bursting with that fabulous big energy, on top the earth and against the sky, of male at the top of their game. They have always been good, clean, straight kids, and I was a potsmoker who thought Southpark was the most brilliant thing I'd ever seen, and I remember a whole afternoon of chililng with Seanie and them talking slur-talk amongst ourselves specifically because mom was in the room and she couldn't keep up with anything we had to say. It's a fast style of mouthmuck specific to fallout from Baltimore hon talk--you only hear it in kids from Anne Arundel or HoCo or Baltimore County and it's one of the reasons I love to be around Todd. Cuz we fastlowslur talk sometimes and don't even realize it when we do.

I've been thinking about this alot lately. About Sean, and his influence on me, and how becasue of us when we were little, how it was just me and him so much doing our thing together as kids, how much I look for that still when I crave comfort and security and to take care of myself and chill. Brian, my bro's bestie since kindergarten came to town a couple weeks ago, his mom raised us as much as my mom did when we were young, summer days every day in a row starting with breakfast than Team Bones in the driveway then swimming in the pool Back to the Future or Rad in the VCR every single afternoon. 'Intendo and the secret passageways in Castlevania and I was the first at SuperMario to save the Princess, too. This stuff's been on my mind since he came to town, what makes me feel most like me, most like who I truly am. In the spring I stayed a weekend with Brian and his bro, Little Sean, and all we did was chill. Lots of deep chill tv watching and laughing and busting on one another, exactly what is going on with my cousin and his friends right now, us laid out pizzabellys watching football on tv, exactly what Todd and I did and just the same as my brother when we are together always do.

Last night Chels, my nineteen-year-old cousin who just had a daughter in July, called to chat. It was the first adult convo we've ever had, discussing what her next move will be after she graduates with her two year next Monday. I love her so much, and my favorite part of being one of 20 some cousins who are every one like a bro or sis to me is that: moving into adulthood with them, but keeping that easy on the couch laid out chilling cuddle cool.

This is what to keep of youth. How to chill. The intimacy of being laid out, mellow, want of nothing. This is what to keep of youth: driving to the beach at random to catch waves and walking in to someone's house without a plan. Freshness of what could be. This is what to keep of youth: picking up the phone and not being afraid to talk about not knowing yet what comes next. This is what to keep of youth: openness of what's next to come...

And funny lowslurwords, our little ways of saying I get you and what's up right now. Our ways of saying there's so much right now that's still all good.

Decision, have I made you?!

There is a red flower growing up out of the brown mud in the canal in our backyard.

It is wild, and there is only one.

There is a flower growing up out of the canal, I have been watching it for the past month, it lives longer than all the others, it's color is passion red.

There is a flower in the yard, there is a coffee mug I always drink from.

It's feeling is stability, this mug in my hand.

This is the backporch where I love to breathe and feel the air and here is the fall, it is right there, it is everywhere, it is inside of who I am. I am up early and thinking of the words I will use to write back to Paul.

There is Diane diPrima reading in Mass the first weekend of October and a road trip I can feel my soul taking down mid-Cali 101.

There are men. It is always there, there is always so much having to do with men.

Lust and attention-seeking. Sexual preciousness and being. Alive. Being alive and instinct to procreate and great fear and great nesting drive to settle down. Unity of balance. Life love game and every gentle sweet-soaked step. Not lying to yourself best you can even when for a while the choice is to quiet your self down.

And then, there is cutting down to the core. The true bones that pre-exist all else. The life-frame meant to call upon, own and name, before the acts of fleshing out your life's true matter of things can really begin.

And of course, there is waylaying yourself, pretending you dont have a say!

All of this making decisions. Integrity. Being human. Dishonesty. O loving human. Humility. O human heart. Breaking: finding your own swing, yet again.

There is the time in-between when it's perfectly right, when there is reason to be astounded within and say yes to the slip-slide away. To say yes to the long retreat, the acquisition of your self by allowing yourself to disappear. For purposes of re-generation. For means of which to germinate, sprout, steadfastly throw down roots, and grow.

It is fall out and things are falling. The sun retreats, turns yellow, puts its coat on but never truly says alright I'm out, I really gotta go. Just runs far away a while, to a sweet strung lonely corner where it can look its self in its own dim eye. All the while this is stillness, stillness the most complete, the most difficult, the most important of all the growing. These are the seasons. On the table there are flowers, cut and vased, and a checked yellow table cloth stained with summer's dirt. Mom has a broken foot. I have a cold that's moved to my chest and makes me strain with boxed pressure when I try to deep breathe. We all have duties to resume where they were left off, again. Always: again again again. My mom and I are so alike it makes me cringe and it makes me ache. This seed it goes on, this sun that shines sometimes it hurts my eyes.

A wedding is coming. Sean will be married in less than eight weeks. Less than seven, soon almost less than six. My stomach twists a little as I write this. I am selfish, jealous, human, imperfect. There is always this.

I thought I did. Want to be married. Thought I was looking for a man. I am, one to keep me company, have dinner with and be able to talk to and sometimes sit up all night in front of the tv. But it is true, I am not ready to settle down. It startled me, to come up with this, though I suppose I've known it all along. I thought I was, this is lonliness and giddiness of un-expectation? The truth, I've never not once not one time, not ever, seen a man with me in the when I've visioned the next stage in which I am about to take part. And the men know it first when we meet, when we're together, know it better than me. It always surprises me and shocks me and then the shock mildly turns me on when someone knows something of me better than I know it of my self. Which the reverb can then last longer than the initial passion itself was even worth. Which of course can be fun, or can be hurtful. Such is the game. That is the thing with openness, vision is better retrospectively. It's not always easy to see what you're doing when you want to be in the moment best you can.

And so there is this one last thing. All the plate clearing I've done, getting rid of everything so I can make my pick, my main and primary one.

All of this widening of vision, so that I could strictly funnel and tunnel it now and focus, with my own most direct and personal vision, my scope.

Kelly there is absoloutely nothing wrong with owning your own path, for you and just you, even if it looks solitary and you are 33! 33 is young today, kid. And I am a teacher, and youthfulness of spirit is so far the best way I've found to live.

And to live, what I finally and only know is that there is this. These words, sacred journeymates, sacred harbingers and detailed archives of my sometimes muddy soul. There are flowers, sometimes only one. There are roots, in the fall.

They get fed.

They run so deep.

Notes on Sin...from 21st & The Grand

I just lost the call with Amy, we were laughing a lot and she was trying to tell me about how good it is to breast feed Madilyn and I was trying to tell her that even tho I didn't get it, I did get the joy in her heart because it came out in her warm engagement on the phone...we laughed about other things too all while I changed clothes on the beach and put my stuff away to go inside where my favorite place to write and see the sea is and we agreed I'd come see her next week instead of tonite since my headcold is still here at least in the congestion part if not the fever, which I woke up this morning finally having shook. It is perfectly blue out. Blue sky, blue water, clean clear air. I came in here to write poems but Shankle texted Tacos? and now since I'm not going to C-town that sounds like the most perfect thing in the world. So a spondown on the blog is my medicine instead.

This is just right--I set out to have a day. Like how me and Larry and Bran did that month or so I lived in Seattle on his floor. Some days he'd just walk in, this was before texting or whatever, and be like Yo? Walkabout? And we'd pack a bag and off on foot around the city we'd go. I'm saying, some days for like 6, 7 hours. Miles and miles hoofed. Cheap ass food in alley walk-ups. Bookstores galore. Amazing shots with his 35mm on the streets. Hanging out in Chinatown or by the Puget Sound. No agenda, open to the flow~~~

The trip to Katie's was good. Seeing Josh was good. I woke up this morning and looked at my horosccope then theirs, and thank god I did it started me right again in a way that I like to be right--in the right wide-open fresh way full of zeal and contagious wonder and awe for the mystery and ever-living every-moment potential-of-life way that I always am after road trips. It was almost lost on me because of the funk of the headcold that hit on Monday on my drive home. I hate Delaware, by the way, it is one long ass Glen Burnie and I feel as though it should not exist. No offense Michelle, and Chico, who are the only two people I know who have any thing to do with that forsaken place. Anyhow yea, Rob Brezny and feeling right~which just means keeping the freshness of being alive~in walkabout wonder. Choosing this.

Here is what I read on his page this morning, it is sniped from his book Pronoia which is a book about how, if we so choose to believe (because belief is all that matters) the whole world could be at all times conspiring to shower us with blessings... It made me feel instantaneously alive and ready to be alive, ready to live. This is his replacement, new and improved, of the Seven Deadly Sins:

"But we have formulated a fresh set of soul-harmers, the Four Foolish Virtues. They are as follows:
(1) being analytical to such extremes that you repress your intuition;
(2) sacrificing your pleasure through a compulsive attachment to duty;
(3) tolerating excessive stress because you assume it helps you accomplish more;
(4) being so knowledgeable that you neglect to be curious."

Hell yea, feel the sparkle of that a while...I'm gonna go eat some tacos.

Season's over...

My window's only partway down and when I get in the car and get going, my wheels are smooth on the pavement and my ride feels so at one with the road that it makes me want to drive for a long straight shot through some farm country in some random central America land hundreds of miles away. Somewhere unknown with stars like crazy and flowing grain. Common is on, I downloaded tons of hiphop today and I've been listening to him for hours. At the stop light I switch over to Badu.

The hurricane isn't here yet. The air is balmy, the wind is definitely starting to pick up. Hours ago, before I left Ocean Pines to go out, the satellite showed it was already above us. Town is dead. It's 3:30 in the morning and there's no one at all on the road.

The guys in the car in front of me in the drive thru try to pick me up--it's been like that all night--some nights just are. They are from Jersey and actually get out of the car to holla. It feels good, I feel good, and Badu and me are jammin for sure. The guy at the window gives me an extra large soda for free.

When we got home from the second club she changed immediately and kept making that pouty thing she does with her face, what I always chop her balls about but what actually is the thing about her I most love. We walked arm in arm to the pizza joint but it's closed and this adds to her bummer. She's annoyed she keeps saying. At her man, at the fact that all her friends have left now, and because she has to work so much now that everyone at the restaurant have also gone home. Season's over is all I can think, and I secretly love this, this time of respite and pause. Time of in-between. It's the first time all summer just me and her have kicked it on our own and I am enjoying the hell out it, have all night. She's 21, gorgeous like a model is and hands down the most outstanding player I have ever seen, guy or girl. The whole room bows to her wherever she's at without even thinking about it, and she can easily take home any single man she wants strictly by virtue of the fact that she knows she can. Sometimes I just watch her go, it's unreal like you see in a movie or something.

It was fun tonight. We picked up a set of brothers for a while and she got drunk on shots and I cracked up at my guy's moves and then was struck by how much we had in common. I asked him a version of my standard set of get to know yous and was wowed, totally wowed by his answers. I told him so, and then felt bad later when we went from the bar on the beach back in to the club and lost him on the dance floor. The guy I wanted to talk to from earlier in the night was back in there creeping again but there were too many meatheads dancing up on us for me to make any kind of second move. In the end we danced a whole lot together, me and her, and I left smiling and so happy and ready to listen to hiphop on the ride back to her pad.

I read this article in Vogue last week about a woman in arrested development because she was going out with a much, much younger man. She is non-committal to the idea, as to whether or not it really is something about her psychology she is trying to work out by having such a young live-in lover. All she knows is that she is happy and her needs are met, and she long ago quit judging herself so it's just a passing thought that she bats at for a moment. My mom said something similar to me in the middle of the summer, asked what it was I was attempting to work through by hanging out all night every night like I was 22 again. I was unsure, and still am, though I must say it's made the subject matter in my novel much easier to delve inside of and write from the inside out. The real truth is I love my friends, I love my job here, I love my life.

Where I work is like a family and I haven't been surrounded by such intimate connections in a resteraunt since years ago at the pizza shop before Eddie died. I am fiercly loyal now towards my crew of young friends. The seventeen-year-old whose folks just split up, the other seventeen-year-old all the guys in the kitchen pick on for trying so hard. The big guy with the soft heart that I've never ever heard raise his voice or mutter a harsh word. The twenty-four year-old cutie with worlds inside of him that he ignores who's totally confused and uncertain about his next move in life. The 20 year-old who just said goodbye to his summer love, a nineteen year-old wilen ass girl who speaks in funny moosh mouth tongues and goes to raves except their not called that anymore and who loves her drugs. The fourteen year-old with the cruel stepdad who wears the flourescent shoes and knows too much. The suntouched highschool senior who never ever doesn't smile. The recent college graduate who works way too much and complains about it but never says no and who wants me to take her shopping for sophisticated clothes. The gorgeous mom going through a divorce re-finding her self much as I am, too. The nineteen year-old blonde bombshell who was like a little sis to me before she left to go back to school...They all are, like little brothers and sisters to me. It started with Eddie and Timmy Mac, my cous's, and hanging with them and then I got tight with all the others, too. When we go out at night I always drive so that everyone gets in safe, and also because I think it matters that they see someone in her thirties hot, still down, and chillin without any lick of drugs or booze. They are funny and loud and mellow, very mellow, and bitch alot and also show one another so much love. I am so, so blessed to get to be a part of the lives of each one of them I've gotten to know, if only for this minor fleeting moment.

And also, because it is fun, why shouldn't I live it up? On our walk back to her house tonight once we realized the pizza shop was closed she was talking about her last year and her different men and mentioned a point when her heart was vulnerable.

And I thought, when are they not?

When are we ever so lucky enough to not have them out and hungry, our fierce little hearts openmouthed to the world? And would that even be luck, to not have the awful and glorious misery of being here alive, showing up day after day to the fresh new world? No, it would be terrible. To miss out. Life is awful and it is beautiful. It is the calm eye of the hurricane and the whippin winds on the edge and the blue skies or rain in between. It is waiting, that still and silent waiting before the storm hits and changes the landscape again. It is full of greasy stale food and overtime and complaining retirees. And hunger and love and fucking and pain and laughing, and dancing and feeling sexy and beautiful and totally alive. It is going to bed alone or with another breathing, confused body next to your side. It is it is it is...

And oh, some nights, it just feels so good to ride.

Helllo, Lover...September September & ALL that I love...

Remember the Sex in the City when Carrie's walking down the street and in the window sees the pink Manolo's with the ruffles? When Miranda has Brady and Big leaves for Cali and they have that great dance scene in his empty apartment....but before all that, on the street in Manhattan, remember that fine epic moment of first sight, when it's just Carrie and the shoes...

Remember? Helllo, Lover...


I get that. This term came to me this morning, actually just now. First Sight. Here's what I mean--by first sight--and by the simple, breathy eloquence of Helllo, Lover when it comes to something seemingly unremarkable in the scheme of things, like a pair of shoes.

I believe that we all, inside the deep secret mystery of ourselves, have our secret visions. I believe we all have that feeling of, or picture of, who we are in our truest way, of how or who if ever the circumstances would just line up to accompany and support us, we are or would be at our most free. At our most happy, or content. I believe that most of us associate this idea of the inner contented self with things, with the house, or the right car, or outfit, or job or profession or relationship or city to live in or whatever it may be. And I also believe that it's this mistake, associating the secret inner dream with things or stuff that leads to endless discontentment.

But most of all, I believe in the importance of that inner dream, in that vision of happy. And I believe that on the road map of who we are it is those things, that stuff--ruffly, pink Manolo's on thin black stiletto heels that make your breath go woozy and your chest fall a little shallow on First Sight--that best help us approach who we are in that inside place. That best arise the inner reverent place of YES, this is ME. It's not, in other words, the shoes that count. It's the inner response of Aha, yes, amen! that does. It's the little guideposts to being true to ones self, to uncovering and being I am...

So that was me, this morning, first day of September. I finally, finally! Have two days off in a row, which hasn't happened since I got home from cousin Jackie's wedding in Maine on August 10th. I woke up. I am off today and tomorrow, my first submission of my novel is due to Erika today. The light was coming through my window, split by the chokes of the blinds, moving on my bed to the luxury of the leaf movement in the trees. It is that dark yellow light of fall, which has been here since mid-August and grows in momentum each day. And I woke up, and my eyes opened, and my spirit was singing with a literal inner smile I could feel~~Helllo Lover!! Ahhh, yes...Hello, Fall!

It's hooot out today, but that doesn't matter at all. Because September, same like Poetry with a capitol P, is something I associate with, something that directs me towards the inner vision of me. It's nothing I can own, just a sense of life, of vitality and emergence that counts. 2001. September. Second week of my senior year in college. I'd been clean for 10 months and was hanging in Ocean City with some friends. It was a Sunday, football was on and the air coming in the screen of the oceanside condo I was chilling in felt flirty like it was twirling the ends of my hair and whispering against my skin and also it smelled like the sea. And I was on the couch making out with someone for hours, and I left with a surfboard under my arm and I still remember the pavement on my bare feet and the soft way my longsleeve tee caught the twilight seabreeze. I picked up chinese food to take home and wrote for hours in my journal that night and showed up late for class the next morning, having stayed at the beach til the very last moment I could. It wasn't the beach, or the football, not the air or the late light, not making out with Joel or the surfboard or the luxury of affording take out Chinese. It's none of that still sitting with me now--it was the freedom of life that I loved, freedom of in moment living that is sweet as Fall Beach Air that makes me reminiscent, and most important: that holds me to the inside me of all that is still possible in the endless stream of I Am...

Mythic Imagination. Mythic Imagination, the only true thing (follow this link!!!! Click on Number 13!!!!!! LISTEN!) Mythic Imagination. The Only Truth. Constant Potential Source Capacity for Creation. It starts in stillness. Stillness is necessary to being awake. Being awake is how to recognize what stirs you. It has nothing to do with what you own outside yourself, and everything to do with what you say yes to within. It is why I devour my Vogue page by glorious page even though I doubt I'll ever own a single designer name. Mythic Imagination. The only truth we have, the only true tool that matters. First Sight. What stirs you? What says yes, makes you gasp or makes your breath fall short or your inner thermal rise? That's your first sight. First Sight is only so good as the innocence of staying yes to it than allowing to let it go as to say yes again! As Zen Masters teach with the Beginning Mind. Let it pass then Return Again, return again, return again. Let it arise and pass, anicha anicha changing changing. Let nothing dampen or grey this vision, this inner stir. Let it remain always Me, in my quest to be me~ that holy sacredness of Ahhhh, ohhh, Helllo Lover. That inner sacred harmony vision of the First True Sight of Me. Guidepost to all and Who I truly am, and can be...

Me, with the Advanced Copy of my writing partner Erika Robuck's next book!

Woooooooooohooooooooooooooo!!!