My bed here is the most comfortable I've ever slept in, but every so often I can't help it--I want the floor.
I want the floor like when I was little, when my cousins, all eighteen of them, were babies and it was cots in the living room and blow up mattresses on the bedroom floors. When my Grammy, when even my Pop was still alive. Breakfast would go for hours, the uncles all were still full of testosterone enough that the basketball court was theirs and bets would start the night before. The bathtub when it was dark out and time to come in would be full of water the color of dirt, and I would go to sleep sunburned with tired legs but still happy because when the house is full of family and bedtimes on the floor even sleep turns in to more time to play. This house, now my father's house, was our family house, my grandparent's house, the beach flophouse for dad and all six of his brothers and sisters and every one of their kids. It's family reunion weekend, today's family reunion day, and that's how it used to be.
Today was beautiful, soft, easy-going. There was food on the grill most the day, a nice breeze, relaxed horseshoes under the shade of tall pine trees. Lots of sweet relaxing in low-sat beach chairs. It was the first reunion that didn't have lots of little kids. Just two little ones of my second cousin Bern, from Newport News, her grandmother was my great aunt Frida--my pop's sister. Pop and Aunt Frida are both gone, so are the rest of their nine brothers and sisters. Besides Bernadette's kids it was just my cousin Joey's son. Joe was born in Africa to my dad's sister, and raised in Germany, and just moved here to Ocean Pines with his wife and fifteen month child. The first, for our clan, of the next generation.
And so life goes on. We have additional bedrooms in this house now, but even so my two aunts and their husbands and the kids live a street from here and my uncle and his wife and kids live over on the other side of town. I sat at the head of the table next to dad last night when we kicked it all off with steamed crabs and corn on the backporch here. It was a mellow night, the aunts and uncles early to turn in. Dad's the oldest of his generation, I'm the oldest of the next. I looked out over it last night a long while with a swift awareness: time is passing, it is a joy, it is bittersweet. I wish the house was still uproarious, loud and full of laughing squealing little kids. And I am grateful too that I am adult, with so darn much love to show, and a place no matter who's around that will always be home.
June 26, 2011
June 21, 2011
Blessings in the Sun, & California-Bound.
Every so often when I'm driving home at 3 am on a Monday or random Wednesday or Thursday I think to myself, is this normal? None of my married or parent friends are doing this right now. And then I laugh and think thank you so much I love my life. So I was a little late coming in to bloom--I haven't touched a drink or a drug in almost 11 years, and that is the central fact of my life--the choice I made to save my spirit. To resuscitate me. In my early twenties when most my friends were doing what I do now I was a sloppy drunk trying to insidiously control my drug use and the fear-clench always in my gut. It was a lazy, dirty time. I had fun, and got down with unquestionably some of the coolest people on earth back then but honestly, I didn't like myself too much.
I didn't know how to like me, like really love me cuz I kept messing things up...I'm thankful for the re-set button in life. For the enduring depth of wild spirit deep and abiding in me that for some reason I committed to learning how to trust.
It's solstice, longest day of the summer was yesterday--the sun peaks at its highest during the day today. And whether or not people realize it, the high light-energy was totally catalyzed over the last couple 24 and for the next few, too: Anyhow for me, last night the high energy out in the dance club was such crazy good fun.
Ha ha and so wild, too.
My sweet, sweet life, hand-whittled by choice. Choice coupled with trust in the high harmony of putting my heart behind exactly what I love, and bit by bit eliminating what I dont. Or learning how to be peaceful and accept. I dance alot, I have such good friends, ohhh & all the all the light of the sun and surfing and salt water sea how I love swimming and to float and to be with the white wave breaking and pushing me, o music and yoga and doing body work and counseling people and being willing to serve. There is so much that is full, as the sun on high illuminates all we love.
O sacred book and poems! A year ago today I was at the Belmont Street Fair in Seattle it was cold and gray and I had just spent a month in the PacNW rejuvenating myself after two years of stressful burn-out at my job. I stepped down and haven't looked back. I am a waitress now! How much has lightened, and changed.
On August 1 me and an old grl from highschool are driving 50 straight across. I want to start under the sign in Ocean City that says Sacramento, CA 3073 miles and then hit the road. We are going to Santa Cruz where she lives and I am staying with her for a month or so to get sort of relaxed and find my feet on the new ground of the West Coast. Then I'll trip around a while, and find a place in the fall to settle down.
I am happy getting happier. Why not? A good meditation for the Solstice: what else could life possibly be about?
I didn't know how to like me, like really love me cuz I kept messing things up...I'm thankful for the re-set button in life. For the enduring depth of wild spirit deep and abiding in me that for some reason I committed to learning how to trust.
It's solstice, longest day of the summer was yesterday--the sun peaks at its highest during the day today. And whether or not people realize it, the high light-energy was totally catalyzed over the last couple 24 and for the next few, too: Anyhow for me, last night the high energy out in the dance club was such crazy good fun.
Ha ha and so wild, too.
My sweet, sweet life, hand-whittled by choice. Choice coupled with trust in the high harmony of putting my heart behind exactly what I love, and bit by bit eliminating what I dont. Or learning how to be peaceful and accept. I dance alot, I have such good friends, ohhh & all the all the light of the sun and surfing and salt water sea how I love swimming and to float and to be with the white wave breaking and pushing me, o music and yoga and doing body work and counseling people and being willing to serve. There is so much that is full, as the sun on high illuminates all we love.
O sacred book and poems! A year ago today I was at the Belmont Street Fair in Seattle it was cold and gray and I had just spent a month in the PacNW rejuvenating myself after two years of stressful burn-out at my job. I stepped down and haven't looked back. I am a waitress now! How much has lightened, and changed.
On August 1 me and an old grl from highschool are driving 50 straight across. I want to start under the sign in Ocean City that says Sacramento, CA 3073 miles and then hit the road. We are going to Santa Cruz where she lives and I am staying with her for a month or so to get sort of relaxed and find my feet on the new ground of the West Coast. Then I'll trip around a while, and find a place in the fall to settle down.
I am happy getting happier. Why not? A good meditation for the Solstice: what else could life possibly be about?
June 15, 2011
Cheesesteaks, beach days. Weitzels.
Today was a chicken cheesesteak day. I can't explain what this means, but trust me, it's more than just being hungry.
When I was a kid there was a sand on the floor plastic-seated restaurant on 51st street called Weitzels. We went to the beach on 50th. My mom started going to Weitzels in the early 70's, when her grandparents still had the big farmhouse and little cabin boarders across from Decatur, when Route 50 was a two-lane and the land next to the high school was a peach grove. My pop, dad's dad, when he was still alive got grilled cheese with tomatoes for dinner. Grammy, his wife, would let me drink chocolate milk. And on certain beach days--the long kind--six, seven, eight hours of salt and sun, sand stuck between the lining of my suit and skin, total dried-out white-blond hair shiny cheek satiation...we'd get Weitzels for lunch. I always got cheese dogs. Mom and dad and the aunts and uncles all got cheese steaks.
Weitzels closed some years back, it happened while I was living in Oregon because the following summer when I was home again and it was summer and I felt not myself living up in Chestertown in the hot Marilen mug I found out it was gone, and I felt distinctly like someone had stolen something from me, that powerless dark feeling that embarrasses you a little with its strength.
This morning by 9 I was on the beach hoping for an hour of waves before the guards came out. The waves were knee-high and breaking on the shore, but the reason I didn't get my board from the car was the wind. The waves were blowing fast towards the inlet, or south, and choppy as hell. Otherwise it was clear blue out, and gold, from the sweet June sun. I planned on staying til maybe 10 just getting a swim and some heat, but fell right in to the easy, laid back groove. Four and a half hours, thoughts of my novel and poems whispering at me, I barely willed myself to leave and only really did because what I wanted was what you're supposed to eat on a glorious day with nothing but dried skin and saltwater hair. I wanted a cheesesteak, the chicken kind, and not cut up breast meat but with shaved meat that soaks up all the grease.
Turns out Mitchells, the mini-mart we used to go to when we all lived on second street in a place that's long since been condemned and torn down, still has killer subs. And breakfast, too.
It's a hard life, I know.
Good beach day? Mom asked when I walked in a half hour ago, that subtle satisfaction on my face. There was a beach chair in the front yard so I knew where she'd been all morning. Ma I just had the best chicken cheesesteak is how I answered her.
You did you little devil?! She grinned large. And I was just about to ask you if you wanted to go get one, too~
When I was a kid there was a sand on the floor plastic-seated restaurant on 51st street called Weitzels. We went to the beach on 50th. My mom started going to Weitzels in the early 70's, when her grandparents still had the big farmhouse and little cabin boarders across from Decatur, when Route 50 was a two-lane and the land next to the high school was a peach grove. My pop, dad's dad, when he was still alive got grilled cheese with tomatoes for dinner. Grammy, his wife, would let me drink chocolate milk. And on certain beach days--the long kind--six, seven, eight hours of salt and sun, sand stuck between the lining of my suit and skin, total dried-out white-blond hair shiny cheek satiation...we'd get Weitzels for lunch. I always got cheese dogs. Mom and dad and the aunts and uncles all got cheese steaks.
Weitzels closed some years back, it happened while I was living in Oregon because the following summer when I was home again and it was summer and I felt not myself living up in Chestertown in the hot Marilen mug I found out it was gone, and I felt distinctly like someone had stolen something from me, that powerless dark feeling that embarrasses you a little with its strength.
This morning by 9 I was on the beach hoping for an hour of waves before the guards came out. The waves were knee-high and breaking on the shore, but the reason I didn't get my board from the car was the wind. The waves were blowing fast towards the inlet, or south, and choppy as hell. Otherwise it was clear blue out, and gold, from the sweet June sun. I planned on staying til maybe 10 just getting a swim and some heat, but fell right in to the easy, laid back groove. Four and a half hours, thoughts of my novel and poems whispering at me, I barely willed myself to leave and only really did because what I wanted was what you're supposed to eat on a glorious day with nothing but dried skin and saltwater hair. I wanted a cheesesteak, the chicken kind, and not cut up breast meat but with shaved meat that soaks up all the grease.
Turns out Mitchells, the mini-mart we used to go to when we all lived on second street in a place that's long since been condemned and torn down, still has killer subs. And breakfast, too.
It's a hard life, I know.
Good beach day? Mom asked when I walked in a half hour ago, that subtle satisfaction on my face. There was a beach chair in the front yard so I knew where she'd been all morning. Ma I just had the best chicken cheesesteak is how I answered her.
You did you little devil?! She grinned large. And I was just about to ask you if you wanted to go get one, too~
June 7, 2011
On Writing. Technique. And Learning to Commit.
Spon Down, when you see that referenced or titled here, is short for spontaneous download.
It is the unedited depositing of minutia out of my head on to the screen, and an idea that came first to me via the daily meditation book Simple Abundance. In it she suggests morning pages, or the discipline of three unedited longhand pages when you awake. That book changed my life, but that's for another deposit.
I write one of two ways on this blog. I either catch the words or I spon down. By catch the words I suppose I am referencing the Muse, that undefinable shiny momentum...how the words will just roll by, a sudden sweet chug of auditory illumination. If I happen to be in-the-moment astute enough, disciplined or paying attention, I will grab a pen and jot them down. From that, a blog post will often, on the mere embryo of a couple lines on a napkin or receipt, birth itself full and fleshy here for you to read.
Otherwise I get on here and spondown.
Somewhere in the center I suppose the two techniques have evolved, and taught me. Ahhh, sacred process. I am dipping the cup with the tool of SponDown, the first thought best thought aesthetic the Beats popularized that suggested Life as the prime perfect substance and that is happening in this exact moment, unedited. The discipline of showing up, committing again and again to write whether or not the zest of the muse is throwing echos in my mind, is what's taught me that spondown can lead to the words coming on their own. And then there is the importance of the edit: in the end I am the one responsible for truly finessing the subtleties of my Voice. Editing is how I hone.
The only way to write is to write, to just do it. Over and over, again and again. A lot of it is shit. So what? So's a lot of life. Recently, to focus and move my way forward through a psychological stall in my book, I took up the technique of morning pages again. That, and surfing, are the main reasons I've not been on the blog. I needed the accurate privacy of only my own eyes. I needed to shake lose the debris growing up there along the high ridges of my mind. I needed permission to sift.
It worked. I have not only begun again--but I have successfully moved through subject matter that felt at once dense and dull. Impossible to traverse. As result, I now also have chapter outlines for the center AND end of my book ANNND!!! Last week in the shower the Muse came on, and delivered me the last three lines of my story.
IF YOU WRITE, YOU KNOW THIS IS FREAKIN HUGE!
The other thing I realized? Last fall I decided I wanted to surf, like really learn and get good. I hadn't been on a board since the mid-nineties, and never regularly. The whole story of that process is awing and super-cool, but also for another post. The point is, it's writing that's self-taught me: just show up. Keep going, keep going, keep going, even when it isn't good. Writing, like with surfing, is a practiced discipline. One part letting it out, one part keeping an eye on what you're holding in, one part always willing to fine-tune, and all parts paying attention so you're certain, no matter how frustrated, not to quit.
It is the unedited depositing of minutia out of my head on to the screen, and an idea that came first to me via the daily meditation book Simple Abundance. In it she suggests morning pages, or the discipline of three unedited longhand pages when you awake. That book changed my life, but that's for another deposit.
I write one of two ways on this blog. I either catch the words or I spon down. By catch the words I suppose I am referencing the Muse, that undefinable shiny momentum...how the words will just roll by, a sudden sweet chug of auditory illumination. If I happen to be in-the-moment astute enough, disciplined or paying attention, I will grab a pen and jot them down. From that, a blog post will often, on the mere embryo of a couple lines on a napkin or receipt, birth itself full and fleshy here for you to read.
Otherwise I get on here and spondown.
Somewhere in the center I suppose the two techniques have evolved, and taught me. Ahhh, sacred process. I am dipping the cup with the tool of SponDown, the first thought best thought aesthetic the Beats popularized that suggested Life as the prime perfect substance and that is happening in this exact moment, unedited. The discipline of showing up, committing again and again to write whether or not the zest of the muse is throwing echos in my mind, is what's taught me that spondown can lead to the words coming on their own. And then there is the importance of the edit: in the end I am the one responsible for truly finessing the subtleties of my Voice. Editing is how I hone.
The only way to write is to write, to just do it. Over and over, again and again. A lot of it is shit. So what? So's a lot of life. Recently, to focus and move my way forward through a psychological stall in my book, I took up the technique of morning pages again. That, and surfing, are the main reasons I've not been on the blog. I needed the accurate privacy of only my own eyes. I needed to shake lose the debris growing up there along the high ridges of my mind. I needed permission to sift.
It worked. I have not only begun again--but I have successfully moved through subject matter that felt at once dense and dull. Impossible to traverse. As result, I now also have chapter outlines for the center AND end of my book ANNND!!! Last week in the shower the Muse came on, and delivered me the last three lines of my story.
IF YOU WRITE, YOU KNOW THIS IS FREAKIN HUGE!
The other thing I realized? Last fall I decided I wanted to surf, like really learn and get good. I hadn't been on a board since the mid-nineties, and never regularly. The whole story of that process is awing and super-cool, but also for another post. The point is, it's writing that's self-taught me: just show up. Keep going, keep going, keep going, even when it isn't good. Writing, like with surfing, is a practiced discipline. One part letting it out, one part keeping an eye on what you're holding in, one part always willing to fine-tune, and all parts paying attention so you're certain, no matter how frustrated, not to quit.
June 1, 2011
Dear Blog~
O, neglected blog...
What excuse have I?
You, about whom I have said aloud are the only thing in my life I have ever stayed committed to~
Where have I been??
I mean there's sunshine, late night dancing, the cute cute hella fine guys, the ugly tropical shirts I wear each day when I clock in at paradise, good friends, and then there's this picture, which should give you the rest of the story. Look closely, I'm in love with a lot right now, it all resounds and is my life, and the two main parts are featured right here. I trust we've known each other long enough that my book and the poems getting all my words wont make you jealous...but proud...?!
C'mon, dont be mad I still love you, too. And promise I'll be more devoted again, soon. It's just that the season changed, and there's so much to be light and happy, and living about for right now...
So anyhow, I wanted to let you know: I think of you often and am in love with you, still, and hope I still mean the same to you. Enjoy your rest til we're together again xoxoxo and as always, be well~ xoxoox
What excuse have I?
You, about whom I have said aloud are the only thing in my life I have ever stayed committed to~
Where have I been??
C'mon, dont be mad I still love you, too. And promise I'll be more devoted again, soon. It's just that the season changed, and there's so much to be light and happy, and living about for right now...
So anyhow, I wanted to let you know: I think of you often and am in love with you, still, and hope I still mean the same to you. Enjoy your rest til we're together again xoxoxo and as always, be well~ xoxoox
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