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

My friend Cindy is the bravest person I know.

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

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

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

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

transgendered ginger cookie!!

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

She is a good friend.

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

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

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

Dogwood Motel, Idleyld Park, OR. North Umpqua River, June 3, 2010.

I am alive in the night, the night is nothing but rain.
The rain takes its time coming alive, it is a steady motion
and soon as it is living it comes apart. It quarters itself,
and I dive back again, driving along side the river, I jump in.
Umpqua Valley distraction, land without dust. The river runs high,
the rain runs the roof line it drips in the gutter and out back still
the coy fish silently swim. I swim, I swim silently, I imagine the body

of our bodies, I imagine
traction, I imagine depth, I imagine bodyless motion inside the waterless
sea. I imagine what must already be a dream, what must already be night
what must already be nothing. But rain. I imagine a hand, the hand of your arm,
it takes my chin, adjusts me. I imagine being pulled in.

I planned a trip back to where I was from.
I planned a trip back to where I was animated.
I planned a trip back to where I was drawn to life.
Land of moss on trees. The moss laces deep things out of me
I will never know. The moss drapes from trees and curls itself
into my toes. The moss dances down the stream. Dancing stream comes
from high tops of mountains where alder trees and first growth haven’t been born.
Sunlight stays there in the grass at the tops of mountains. Peregrines and hawks live
and shriek in circles imagining the sky. In the middle of the forest deep the air stays
under canopy, has a dream of sunshine and a meadow it never sees, it does not realize
it is dreaming itself. It does not realize it is dreaming nothing. The night is not animated
with anything but the night, the reflection of itself on itself. Voidless. The void with void
makes it without nothing, makes it without itself. Makes it eat itself, devour itself whole.
The night eats itself, because it is nothing, so too the dream dreams itself and makes it go away.
The meadow eats itself, eats elk, eats mice, eats snake and small beetles that burrow in dry dirt,
they never see the sun. The water makes its way all back to the yellow flowers of sawtooth.
Bath of river, bath of moss, bath of lichen and green algae so dark it looks like blood attached to,
dancing from the stone.

The same nite as our friend M’s death
I set the map about me on the counter. It was a map with lots of green.
It was a map I had little trouble trying to read. It was laid out before me
like a broad highway with easy lights and no traffic and the places to stop
already computed in to my autopilot vegetable mind. The mind part that knows,
knows how to drive, knows how to switch gears in rain coming down no matter
the foreign town, the mind part that knows how to ease up on the gas, slow down
with out brakes, how to make room for other drivers on the road. Molly died.
She was a sailor, a sailor, alone on the east coast, on an eastern shore of an east coast town,
a poet, a poet alone on a wordless continent in a voiceless town, she was a sailor poet magi,
a sailor poet magi god who died alone because she didn’t think she could die alone.
Is she dead? The bird outside the harbor asked the sea. Is she dead? The yellow sawtooth
from the high desert somewhere above Willamette poured out the side of a flat mountain wall
and asked me.

I went down to the bay, Winchester, to see for myself.

Molly, are you dead?

I lay down, see, your heart floats out on to the top of the sea.

I imagine being pulled in. I followed the Umpqua up from the sea, I followed the river up from the bay,
I followed the bird down to the harbor the harbor followed my longing out to the sea. I imagined you,
I imagined us, I imagined us naked as one string of water endlessly running inside the stream our bodies twirled together like sound, like invisible light that only water can see. I imagined you glowing, I imagined you naked, streaming and twirling alone inside of me. I imagined you hard, hard like mountain, hard like stone, hard like the hole the water pours out from on the side of the road. We were invisible to the other because only invisibility can see itself, can see the nothing in itself. We were invisible to the other. I came here came back from here back to where I was drawn to life. Water poured out from me, water poured out from the sky. I poured out from me, you were there. You were not there. I asked myself where you were, where you went. You said where I do not know. I came alive then, to the nothing, I came alive in the nothing in you.

The Return of Sweetie Cream Cheese?

Marla's a friend of mine who works in radio.

I write that and as I do streaming through on my I-tunes live feed is WTMD outta Baldamore and they are talking about this event at the Rutger tomorrow night featuring Charm City Rollergirls and Gilded Lilly Burlesque performances and all I can ironically think about the music here at the beach is not exactly my kind of radio...but whatever works...

Guess who's back I tease her yesterday morning at work.  It is 6 am or so, maybe 6:15.  The orange light in the coffee shop glowing warm.  Peaceful.  I may hate, hate getting up that early because of the thin metal tiredness accompanying me at all times, but it is quiet in the morning there, waiting for the sun.  It is still.

WHO?  she scampers around in a whirlwind til she's turned sharp and petite in my direction and three espressos in, looks at me all Marla-wild.  I laugh I can't help myself, I love her so much and did immediately, she is one of those rare people who simply and unapologeticly is who she is.  She thinks I am referring to someone from work, one of our bosses or board members or some thing I can tell by the frozen way she stops.  Noooo no, no.  That's not what I meant!  I am smiling and full of ease. 

She calls me Feeney, as in Shirley Feeney.  Like from Laverne and Shirley because she is so brass and I am so often aiming for some unaimable tempering and calm.  Without realizing how, I've learned working with her that this is nothing to strive for:  it simply is who I am.  My nature to be loving and accepting, overexuberant and full of praise for all living or loving things.  It comes out so bubbly and innocent most of the time because I'm just being who I am.

I meditate, and have for years.  I practice several different techniques, from occultist trance to prayerful christian exaltion to tantric-mantra chanting to simple pranayama or minimalist buddhist watching.  The point is to go within, to be unfearful in confronting me.   The wisdom of Anicha, which is a sanskrit word I learned at a 10-day silent meditation retreat using the technique of Vipassana, means changing.  Change is the ego's, or self-talk always on rev and going going up there, way.  When our minds are full only of ego than the state of our consciousness is pliable, easy to be swayed.  AND, Anicha teaches that the state of our emotions and reactions are always in a state of flux.  So meditation helps us watch them but not BE them.  Hence, this too shall change, or pass...and therein: peace. 

Sweetie Cream Cheese I tell her.  Sweetie Cream Cheese is back!  Sweetie is the name I gave myself when she explained why I was Shirley to her Laverne, and the only reason I was even aware of Sweetie when Marla pulled out youtube clips and laughingly started calling me Feeney is because that particular day, after many that felt just like it, I was full of the dry, tired irreverence that is the underside of having Feeney-nature.  So I could see the fluffy cream cheese Shirley Sunshine part that day really, really well.

And that's the thing.  Changing.  I was driving along yesterday listening to Marla's radio station.  A hair-rock, one-hit wonder band was on it reminded me of Skid Row and Sebastian Bach (my first long-haired 1980's crush, followed by Slash of GnR ha!)  My ipod's battery was dead, my hair smelled that fabulous ripe smell of hormony sunshine because I was laying on the beach in 60 degree weather for an hour, I was on my way to cook dinner for Valentine's dinner with a girlfriend.  The sun was low in the sky and yellow in that burnt way that makes the clouds edges look bluer than they really are.  I had one of those moments--I've been exhausted lately, run down with the wintertime, and waiting for this phase of my life to pass.  But after several experiences that I had to make happen of quiet, of meditation and devotion to my own sacred-ordinary life, my perspective is centered again...until changing changing it isn't once more...!  Today I have the peace that is under it all, though.  The watcher's peace, the quiet ok.  It's all always changing, passing on by. 

Sweetie Cream Cheese, while maybe not so enthusiastic as she naturally is, always helps remind me that none of this, not one part of my funny random life do I ever want to miss.  It's precisely this cold, tired shit, these miserable 80's bands and me and Marla rolling our eyes at the watching eyes of bosses and board members and us sharing too much sugar and coffee amplifying our natures in the mornings that make me laugh.  And makes me get quiet, appreciative of it all.  Appreciating the burnt sun blue edges of all of it.  Sweetie Cream Cheese!? Marla screams in that loud funny way.  She slams her low-carb sugar-free but with one Splenda double shot 20oz drink she is not paying attention to me it is coffee and not smoking cigarettes on her mind.   Then she says I missed you Shirley Feeney and I am laughing again, life's not passing me by I am with it, with her and all the people I love and we are changing and trying to keep up or be still or work on moving on.

 

Catch up. February.

The sun stopped rising in the morning, they say that never happens that there is no mountain so high as to block out the sun.  But it did.  Day after monotonous day only grey.  Then finally after so long that I forgot that it comes out at all, there it was.  It was Thursday this week and my spirit gave a leap when I saw the first spot of orange.  I ran to take pictures.  I have so many pictures.  Like Mandy said over the weekend in that funny antagonizing way that she loves, how being friends with me means you get archived documents of all that you are and do, you get a memoriam in action of your ever living life one mundane or spectacular or mixed up as both day at a time.

I am so, so thankful for my mom and dad.  I came home this week there were roses waiting for me from dad.  He's lost 25 pounds.  He is my friend we text everyday.  Mom and I took him to Valentine's dinner to thank him so much for so much love, for being such a provider: the free place to live, the warm home, the soft bed, the heat bills that could otherwise feed a small village somewhere.  Somewhere where there's lots of sun but no food.

I talked to Beth said this is it, I said it last year but this is really it I will never, ever do this again.  I was talking about winter on the east coast.  She knows I'm serious, last night I finally told mom and dad.  I was flat out on the phone with her before I fell hard and deep to sleep at 9pm:  I fucking hate February.  I am so disconnected to myself, I cant even feel my body any more and it's totally seasonal and I know it and it doesn't help.  She totally understood but defended the sun:  it's gorgeous in Oregon on the coast right now, unseasonably so.  So much yellow light and warm breeze.  And yet still it's killing her too.  The February every year blues.  So what's the answer?  I know for me it's the option of being outside.  The year I lived on the beach in Oregon it was 60 and sunny through February, too.  And I never got blue.  In California there's always sun.

I've been writing, the book was stalled but came back to me this week but otherwise the cycle that brings the poems out got all screwed up from being sick.  I am still with the sniffles but the fever aches thankfully are gone.  So poetry time came and went and that pisses me off when I dont get my way to follow the words.  I am selfish?  Maybe.  I have nothing else to be...

I look over my shoulder right now the sun is sparkling white over the bay.  The water is moving in a way it hasn't been all week, all different directions classic fast moving river sway.  It was still and flat and rounded as a cup it just sat and didn't move except in the far corner near the marsh grass where the ducks bathe and play.  And that was just the ducks moving the water not the water on top of water moving the water in one great array. They chase after one another there is always lots of splashing and quacking and on Saturdays especially, why Saturdays I do not know, I go out there and they make me happy seeing them and hearing them in their silly duck language parade all around and quack out Hoooray!

Which I did this morning before it got all white out and gold.  I am on here to write and for no other reason than that, because even the weather didn't fill me with life.  Just hope, which sometimes is actually the most important thing.  And actually is life just not the filling kind but the thin line slight kind, like the words, perpetually right there Anicha Anicha one after the other in all its changing many same same forms stringing together in to long long day after days after days the ever continuous row.

New Moon. Sleeplessness.

After crawling around the city of my bed rolling over its soft hills getting stuck in its hard concrete and pausing in the quiet sweet creeks of rest I kept almost starting to find, each time thinking this is it I can feel sleep right on the other side...I am up.  It is pointless for me to try to go to bed at 9 or even 10 even on nights before I have to get up at 4:45.  What good did it do me?  Three hours of sleep tonight and upupup by 1:45.  Here I am.

I got my phone to use the light to make it to the kitchen thinking water would be the trick and there facebook was all lit up with its little red star notifications on the plastic electronic face of my friend blackberry.  I hate you blackberry you are not my friend.  Sam posted the funniest awful picture of me from what I guess is back in the day.  2005 doesn't seem far away enough to say that about yet.  It made me realize: all things move on.

It is a new moon tonight--I mean now that it is Wednesday that were talking about.  She peaks at her void by 6 this eve so that is what the sleeplessness was all about.  It is Brigid's moon, the new moon of first seed or first  light--when the sap quickens and the seeds are sown or first start to yawn and awake.  All that river of life waking up from deep deep inside.  And all the things you want out of your life buzzing you humming you aching you awake.   So the tide flat there flat as the dark moon sitting there her dark eye on you rises after tonight rises a little bit a little bit more a little bit more at a time each passing day from tonight on and winter will take its last rotten lunge at the sky--sorry winter after tonight moves on nothing you can do to beat the changing tide...and spring shall come...

In the meantime it is raining here as if it never rained before as if all the years of all  Time that time was ever Time was kept on a great check board bulletin of life and decorated in country gingham and purple sparkles and timeless gold on a great big polka-dotted wall and suddenly Time itself said no! No more high-falutin fanciness for me lets get back to the basics pleaaase and so translated itself in to rainwater--all that time passed all that water and yesterday it began to fall, same as it fell last week, it falls and falls while all around the rest of the midatlantic they get snow and ice.  Our ground here is moist and muddy.  My heels sink three inches in.

On Friday I grabbed Sam girl Sam at Java Bay not boy Sam with the history of me and funny awful old pictures that aren't really too too old and I said come on I will show you the third sign of spring.  I led her to the front door where across the parking lot you could see all the many blackbirds making feasts of the lawn.  There had to be hundreds of them.  The day before that when I was sitting in my longjohns and sweatshirt and cords and gloves and hat on the back porch in my beach chair under my blanket and snuggie getting late day sun and lusting over the pics in Vogue, I wrote a poem it was a short quick one and came from all the sun confirming what I already know, what Brigid's moon by the wise woman ways used to be used to tell--how close spring is, how soon it truly is on its way.

there are, & have been:
squirrels chasing each other thru the woods
over fallen branches and across canals
filled with water
swelling preparing readying almost
to move~