Steam could've come off my feet they were so motel-cold in to the Virginia corn-rows balm on my way six doors down for my free continental breakfast. Had planned on camping last night in Virginia Beach, at the State Park on the ocean, but was so high from my late sun drive over and through the fifteen miles of Chesapeake Bay tunnel that I had to keep going. It was that time of 7pm light I so love so I headed west with the intent of making my way towards the mountains. Besides my instinct is what I rely on in these matters, these road trip matters, these living life in the moment completely aware alive so alive matters, and my instinct, gold-fingered mass there raised up from my gut to my chest, was soft and aloft and most of all, full of a mmomentum which is the opposite of stop.
The moon was the gold hook capital letter C, largest letter in the whole alphabet so large had it been full the other letters would've gathered together to kick her out of their club. Who she think she is to shine so big and bright? She sat and led me quiet, just above the tips of the trees.
I drink too much caffeine and will have to switch to decaf. In the mirror when I returned with my honey bunches of oats and two cups of coffee this morning I saw my reflection tan and very blonde and thought who is that girl, woah, someone who's lived at the beach a nice good while now. And those days, every one, brought back to me what is important to me, made me joyous and concerned only with the joy matters of who I am. So much of life to love, of love to live, of people who are amazing and dancing, and writing, and the ocean and beach and being outside. Not one minute to waste on not appreciating this being alive. And for that my body is on a schedule kept livened by iced coffee and afternoon shots of espresso and night times fired by Rock Stars and Red Bull. I climbed in to bed thinking--yes! For the first time in two weeks I will sleep by 11 and get eight hours the way a common person should. Ha there is the laughable joke, never one to live by shoulds in fact should is my reddest devil--I lay there awake in front of HBO until close to 2 and then never really fell in to a steady sleep. The last week I was in town at the beach I didn't fall to bed before 4 am one single night, so here in my forty dollar motel room off Route 58 my body high-wired and pumping kept me in a fit caffeine-eyed half-way between sleep and when-i'm-gonna-get-to-california...
I haven't been someone who frets in a long while so to be mostly waking through out the night told me one thing. No more late night 32-ounced iced-coffee driving. I am heading to the Smoky Mountains today, and will camp, and be earthy rhythmic again, winding down long and elemental as it takes me to return natural to my own inside drums.
In the meantime my brother Sean and his wife are home from their time living in Memphis, Jotto made me sob with goodbye, so did Shankel. Justin, Ben, Kayla, and Erin and Eddie each made me cry. I am someone today who cries with her eyes open and heart wide, happy to be feeling what it feels to be alive. So lucky is the woman who is loved, and considered a good friend.
July 22, 2011
Spon-down. Starbucks, OTR, SoCal.
Starbucks just isn't a place I hang, my computer keys stick from sand grains, it is hot out. Pennsylvania hills hundred and five and climbing hot, I am on the road.
Not on the road on the road, not yet. I am here in PA taking care of family business, roadtripping as I always do on the East Coast to see to those I love. I leave for me, for wild me, for roadtripping for Kelly and No ONE no thing but me and the wild spirit in one week and two days. Starbucks is a place I want to hate. They were playing Billie Holiday when I walked in, then Feist. Billie and Feist!? And now a very sexy just dirty but clean-shaved enough dark-haired badass walked in. Come on life is this your way of saying get un-rigid get un-closed with your mind? Like the time I was so poor I had to eat from the food bank in Oregon and go back to shopping at Wal-mart, after years of Walmart-hiatus because all their goods were Chinese-therefor-workers-rights-terribly-abused-produced, and so I closed my mind to them, til I couldn't afford to shop anyplace else?
I've typed or sat down to write in a Starbucks exactly never, and I came here today because about five miles from grandma and pap's house was this local coffee shop next to a health food store. I stored this info in my vegetable body bank for future use years ago, but in those years since the local place closed and Starbucks came in, which greedy greedy logo is why I hate you in the first place. But here we are, and you know what, the my-aged or older sweet barista who served my double espresso over ice is probably making more hourly than I did all winter, managing our "local" java cafe. So what the hell do I know, really?
Mom and I said our goodbyes. Wednesday morning, it was hot out then but still with the salt-beach cool in the air. Minus the oppression. I hugged her goodbye and then she started to cry then I started to cry then we were crying and choking and clinging to the other, and then it was officially over, the time I lived with her, the time we were roommates and adults. My time being back home, me, mom and me, the beach. I cried like that, she did, we did when I left her in Crownsville when I was 18 in 1995 to move to the beach. I left her like that, us like that, same driveway at the same beach, in 2004 when my brother pulled me and him away so he could drop me back to Brandon, who then Upward and Onward drove he and I away across the country to Oregon. Mom is flying to Tennessee next week to move my brother home again. He gets back in to town the day I leave. He is texting me to stay. Little shitball the only thing that would hurt me worse would be if he didn't.
I got on the road towards Pennsylvania with the shallow full in my chest that tells you you are alive because oh lord how I can feel my heart. I didn't listen to music I just appreciated the draping green and sunlight of my for the last 13 years home which is the Eastern Shore. Eventually I got my phone out, Wallace had texted, this was when mom and I were hugging and crying our goodbyes. Thank you life I sighed to myself when I saw the text from him. The first thing that ever happened the night I left Brandon and moved out on my own, my first step first breath towards adult independent woman making choices for her self for her own heart real and beating and true, that very first night was the quiet. And I asked myself what, what is it you want? And the silence there was stunning. Extraordinary. So, so close. All the answer that was answered: quiet.
It was weeks before an answer came, when it did I rolled my eyes at it and called it too indulgent.
I just want to move to a beach where it's warm all the time and write. And maybe teach ESL again. That's all.
Haha that was two and a half years ago and when the answer strong and clear came I wrote it down in my dream journal and under it wrote Talk to Mike Wallace, who, right after college, moved to a beach in Southern California. Where it's warm all the time. After I wrote it down I saw in my head the quicksand of reasons falling in the no, no no's and that's too crazy an idea to ever entertain. But I held it in a little corner of my soul all that time even though it moved more and more away, distant like a fantasy island and the eternities of oceans between me and what I want. I still see it, far away as it became, me happy there on a warm beach doing my thing, easy as it is or was to mistake it for a mirage.
I got to Erika's and we cried, too. She gave me a present and I gave her hers, and they both were about letters. And letters are about marking the process, nous. The process, the holiness of which comes in signs from Life, and dream following is about the signs and equally about the confidence fired in our hearts to be willing to see, to say yes. Yes yes yes I see, I see oh Starbucks o family o roadtripping traffic and smudging my vision heat, I seeeeee
Not on the road on the road, not yet. I am here in PA taking care of family business, roadtripping as I always do on the East Coast to see to those I love. I leave for me, for wild me, for roadtripping for Kelly and No ONE no thing but me and the wild spirit in one week and two days. Starbucks is a place I want to hate. They were playing Billie Holiday when I walked in, then Feist. Billie and Feist!? And now a very sexy just dirty but clean-shaved enough dark-haired badass walked in. Come on life is this your way of saying get un-rigid get un-closed with your mind? Like the time I was so poor I had to eat from the food bank in Oregon and go back to shopping at Wal-mart, after years of Walmart-hiatus because all their goods were Chinese-therefor-workers-rights-terribly-abused-produced, and so I closed my mind to them, til I couldn't afford to shop anyplace else?
I've typed or sat down to write in a Starbucks exactly never, and I came here today because about five miles from grandma and pap's house was this local coffee shop next to a health food store. I stored this info in my vegetable body bank for future use years ago, but in those years since the local place closed and Starbucks came in, which greedy greedy logo is why I hate you in the first place. But here we are, and you know what, the my-aged or older sweet barista who served my double espresso over ice is probably making more hourly than I did all winter, managing our "local" java cafe. So what the hell do I know, really?
Mom and I said our goodbyes. Wednesday morning, it was hot out then but still with the salt-beach cool in the air. Minus the oppression. I hugged her goodbye and then she started to cry then I started to cry then we were crying and choking and clinging to the other, and then it was officially over, the time I lived with her, the time we were roommates and adults. My time being back home, me, mom and me, the beach. I cried like that, she did, we did when I left her in Crownsville when I was 18 in 1995 to move to the beach. I left her like that, us like that, same driveway at the same beach, in 2004 when my brother pulled me and him away so he could drop me back to Brandon, who then Upward and Onward drove he and I away across the country to Oregon. Mom is flying to Tennessee next week to move my brother home again. He gets back in to town the day I leave. He is texting me to stay. Little shitball the only thing that would hurt me worse would be if he didn't.
I got on the road towards Pennsylvania with the shallow full in my chest that tells you you are alive because oh lord how I can feel my heart. I didn't listen to music I just appreciated the draping green and sunlight of my for the last 13 years home which is the Eastern Shore. Eventually I got my phone out, Wallace had texted, this was when mom and I were hugging and crying our goodbyes. Thank you life I sighed to myself when I saw the text from him. The first thing that ever happened the night I left Brandon and moved out on my own, my first step first breath towards adult independent woman making choices for her self for her own heart real and beating and true, that very first night was the quiet. And I asked myself what, what is it you want? And the silence there was stunning. Extraordinary. So, so close. All the answer that was answered: quiet.
It was weeks before an answer came, when it did I rolled my eyes at it and called it too indulgent.
I just want to move to a beach where it's warm all the time and write. And maybe teach ESL again. That's all.
Haha that was two and a half years ago and when the answer strong and clear came I wrote it down in my dream journal and under it wrote Talk to Mike Wallace, who, right after college, moved to a beach in Southern California. Where it's warm all the time. After I wrote it down I saw in my head the quicksand of reasons falling in the no, no no's and that's too crazy an idea to ever entertain. But I held it in a little corner of my soul all that time even though it moved more and more away, distant like a fantasy island and the eternities of oceans between me and what I want. I still see it, far away as it became, me happy there on a warm beach doing my thing, easy as it is or was to mistake it for a mirage.
I got to Erika's and we cried, too. She gave me a present and I gave her hers, and they both were about letters. And letters are about marking the process, nous. The process, the holiness of which comes in signs from Life, and dream following is about the signs and equally about the confidence fired in our hearts to be willing to see, to say yes. Yes yes yes I see, I see oh Starbucks o family o roadtripping traffic and smudging my vision heat, I seeeeee
July 13, 2011
I love these women.
July 7, 2011
Note to self, reminder. Today's the day.
There will be a story you want to tell for no better reason than because it matters to you more than any other. You'll stop looking over your shoulder to make sure you're keeping everyone happy, and you'll simply write what's real and true...one day a long time from now you'll cease to care anymore whom you please or what anybody has to say to about you. That's when you'll finally produce the work you're capable of.
J.D. Salinger
In my dream I was too long in the ocean~heaven-sent blanket soft silken luxuriant thread on threads of blue. There was a box it was metal I was on top and had to get through, not made of wood tho it was the kind with umbrellas inside and also, evidently, Narnia out the other end.
Ed was there, so endlessly thankful for him.
I dont like boxes, never have. Dont like ever to have to figure out how to fit it all so cleanly in. Lovely, love this life, how focus actually is not about boxes, is circular, circles like water can pile all the beautiful while in on themself, circular is the process and the informing of the process all at once, arises it is organic is ever vitaliz-ing is like the difference between floating and having to swim. Also I dont like fear. That doesn't mean it doesn't come. I get it I'm afraid I'll miss my shot I get it I hear you crying sacred Call. Opportunity isn't about luck at all but showing up on time. That's not a box silly~umbrellas make sense with all that water, and also opened wide they can catch the wind.
I almost fell asleep out there, it's true!! But I have the tools I have the tools. Most important among them. The truth, and discretion. Self-discretion enough to no longer care.
J.D. Salinger
In my dream I was too long in the ocean~heaven-sent blanket soft silken luxuriant thread on threads of blue. There was a box it was metal I was on top and had to get through, not made of wood tho it was the kind with umbrellas inside and also, evidently, Narnia out the other end.
Ed was there, so endlessly thankful for him.
I dont like boxes, never have. Dont like ever to have to figure out how to fit it all so cleanly in. Lovely, love this life, how focus actually is not about boxes, is circular, circles like water can pile all the beautiful while in on themself, circular is the process and the informing of the process all at once, arises it is organic is ever vitaliz-ing is like the difference between floating and having to swim. Also I dont like fear. That doesn't mean it doesn't come. I get it I'm afraid I'll miss my shot I get it I hear you crying sacred Call. Opportunity isn't about luck at all but showing up on time. That's not a box silly~umbrellas make sense with all that water, and also opened wide they can catch the wind.
I almost fell asleep out there, it's true!! But I have the tools I have the tools. Most important among them. The truth, and discretion. Self-discretion enough to no longer care.
July 6, 2011
West OC Air
It's the air I love, outside the bar when the night's almost done.
I always make sure, as I am often the only sober one, to step back and take pause: the uninhibited moments of people, people I love, in their truest graces. Always a soft smile lit up by a cell phone screen, or a loud off-key hum, some tossed-off glance of content. The air in West OC is the most potent in town, salty as a marooned fisher's net, salty as a gull's shriek, salty as a crease on the brow so deep the sun cant even get in. One breath is a whole pocket of life, a whole city of air. Tonight my brother is in town, his wife, my cousin and his wife, my mom and dad. We walk to the car and I am sure to be the last one. I am surveying, I am my own quiet happy, I savor the last moment stolen glances: my family. The ones who mean the most.
They are on my mind, they are all I know. They are allowing of me to say goodbye, and so I think, could I be any more blessed than this?
Could I be anymore--late night, full bellied settledness still on our tongues, music behind us, harbor horns, terns swoop the ground, the way my sister-in-law carries her bag in one hand demure at her side, the tender way my brother finds her back with his free arm, the smile my mom can not hide, o the smell...the West OC air--could I be anymore alive?
I always make sure, as I am often the only sober one, to step back and take pause: the uninhibited moments of people, people I love, in their truest graces. Always a soft smile lit up by a cell phone screen, or a loud off-key hum, some tossed-off glance of content. The air in West OC is the most potent in town, salty as a marooned fisher's net, salty as a gull's shriek, salty as a crease on the brow so deep the sun cant even get in. One breath is a whole pocket of life, a whole city of air. Tonight my brother is in town, his wife, my cousin and his wife, my mom and dad. We walk to the car and I am sure to be the last one. I am surveying, I am my own quiet happy, I savor the last moment stolen glances: my family. The ones who mean the most.
They are on my mind, they are all I know. They are allowing of me to say goodbye, and so I think, could I be any more blessed than this?
Could I be anymore--late night, full bellied settledness still on our tongues, music behind us, harbor horns, terns swoop the ground, the way my sister-in-law carries her bag in one hand demure at her side, the tender way my brother finds her back with his free arm, the smile my mom can not hide, o the smell...the West OC air--could I be anymore alive?
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