like little bells...

i laughed out loud at me and then came my cousin's laughter a sound that since we were kids reminds me of elflight and glistens my heart like little bells. i dont have words to describe that feeling, why i even said what i said, we were walking around Canton Square the light of the night was orange from the clock glow and the neon signed resteraunt glare and all the mist from the crazy summer thunderstorm made for a haze and proved first harvest in-between the worlds magic literally was on the air. we were supposed to go see the O's in the allyoucaneat section we were stoked but then it was so wet and hot and eery out so no. we drove around the city in the rain and laughed and ate then got to walking and talking and laughing some more and it'd been a long, long time since we'd hung cuzin Ry and i and it was gold, and good, and so pure...

10 years is what I said followed by some self-deprecating remark and as always it was the self-judging that made us laugh so hard but it's not true i realized later, it's not 10 but 11 years since i've been on the shore. which is the same thing that i catch myself doing, saying i'm 31 when really i'm 32. 32!!! and how that feels not only to miss a year and then to puzzle for a sec and be like o yeah wait, that's not true, but to be an age that inside your head you have an idea about while at once living the fact that that idea isn't really exactly true. and it makes me think of martha, beautiful glamourous melancholy martha with the stories and the wistfulness that would make my heart ache when we would sit together back of the bead store nye beach, oregon, and bead and thread and talk and love. and the mirror she would use to look at the lipstick she wore and how much she still, at 60, loved pink floyd. and it made me also think

of being 19 and going to the community college my baggy shorts and hotgrl shirt and talking to the lady and saying a social worker, that's what i'm going to be. and realizing suddenly, again and again, suddenly each time, that that used to be my dream. and that that is it, that is what i now am....and how good, and hard, that's been....

and thank god for back porch of ocean pines and talking this morning with uncle tim and aunt mary the porch as always still enough, like a dream. and telling them for the first time of all those years ago when i a first year teacher with the beauracrats and how i got so screwed. and how that hurt but it was part of the job and so i learned...and now this year and how much i've learned from kim and also from my dad, but hearing the importance of what uncle tim said managers do it the right way while leaders do what's right. and it's a hard thing to learn, how to be, to really be, and at the end of the day to be at peace with yourself anyhow cuz you are you no matter what and that's what counts and too, where can you grow and where do you just rest, and back off, and accept and learn to love? and this is life yes and wow, how far i've come. and at all i've done and where i've been....and who i am.

and the city she is beckoning. four straight weeks i've run to her to feel the street at one with my flow and she is yearning and swift and i am yearning to go. and godalmighty first harvest is coming first harvest is almost here, it is the greatest, truest, fullest swell of peace i've felt all year... it started when i woke up wednesday sweetness in me a smile on my face cozy and content in bed just me....and the fabulous rustle non-stop in the trees. the whole earth alive with the buzz just like when taurus moon is above i recognized that movement come on deep inside of me: first harvest is here i thought, first harvest or lunar llamas is already here. and sure enough the moon had moved from waning to half-on/half-off and so with that i knew it was true and exalted in what one cant pretend but can only just kow and then could feel the tugging, the great turning of the wheel of the year. of course there was an ear of corn out front in the street when i went outside to take the recycling, go figure. and that night later, a black cat waited, then crossed directly in front of ryan and me. when i told him wasn't it great he got to expereince my little pagan walking dreams with me he said oh yea just great cuz then pannomined a gun to his head then quik with his other hand a splatter of explosion coming out his ear then we laughed again the tinkling bell kind cuz he's a poet and got the inner song like me and moves to the same ol tide....

and that's just it, all that ends begins again and the beginnings are just endings, in disguise.

so it goes, same ol song, silence and crashing, chaos and laughing, all life, sweetness and nothing, all life long....blessed, precious precious song

prayer

make mine a heaven of boardwalks and smiles o inner cascade of relief where silence dwells,
people who roam and wander nothing owned but their own hell look pure-faced people looks in the neon flash of lights not of fright, but this, o ecstasy, o sweet, o common common, life

cotton candy on the tongue or vinegar pucker. and sweat along the hair line that gets wiped away, like tears. i know i am hard to please. o simple dog of life, simple all there is, grain of sand between the toe, how it feels to see the sea. man who's loves as rich as me

o, make mine a moonlit light greased food greased shoulders a shirtless back the endless sea. loud music and all those screams. vanilla ice cream colors so much smiles children clapping fatted hands and make-out kids with the metal sticking out, tornado of merciless love make mine stopless make all this as all this is, as all there is to see, to gain

update

i was journaling this morning. it was quiet in my space and sort of grey but everything was still and the outlines of the furniture in my room were strong and solid. it was the kind of morning where i was acutely senstive to my space. my scarves hanging all around, the color they add in the dull light through the shades. the books on my shelves. the flicker of the candle and the shadow on the wall: to and frow. i was quiet, and aware. contented in the peace that comes in recovery after you've worked hard to get to a new inner understanding, we call it having our side of the street clean. it's been a long process.

i noticed the date on the top line of the loose leaf in my journal and felt a tug of familiarity in my heart. july 27. 9 years ago today i woke up in the afternoon in my dark windowless room in ocean pines. i had a mean hangover and had to get to work in town. the phone was ringing: it was cuddy, from crofton. our boy fannon had died. fannon was my lover. he was my friend. he was someone with whom i'd grown up. he had a heart attack and was gone at 23.

fannon and me, all of us, we liked our drugs.

i'd been arrested for the third time just days prior. it too had to do with partying a wee bit too much. burying fannon was a blur. i didn't cry until 2 months later. i mean really cry, like really let it out. but on august 5, cuz they told me a i had to, i took my last drink. some months later, my last drug.

yea, so, 9 years after all of that and i can barely remember, barely connect in to that way of life anymore, or who i used to be that i needed that--those elixers, as a way to live.

this book i just did this wild and deep, deep work out of, read it. read it, read it, allow yourself to unfold through it. actually take the suggestions and do the work. cuz drinking and drugs weren't my problem, they were my solution. my problem was me and my so badly injured heart. and so many of us have that, the badly injured part, in common. and this book got in to those roots and then at once helped me build my own deep character on which to climb out. i am so, so thankful.

here is a poem in celebration. in celebration of what its like to be of dos mundos, or two worlds. the outside, day to day life. and the inner, more powerful and capable of being so fully awakened life of the heart and spirit. of the calling, of the impulse, itself...

For Alva Benson, And For Those
Who Have Learned To Speak

And the ground spoke when she was born.
Her mother heard it. In Navajo she answered
as she squatted down against the earth
to give birth. It was now when it happened,
now giving birth to itself again and again
between the legs of women.

Or maybe it was the Indian Hospital
in Gallup. The ground still spoke beneath
mortar and concrete. She strained against the
metal stirrups, and they tied her hands down
because she still spoke with them, when they
muffled her screams. But her body went on
talking and the child was born into their
hands, and the child learned to speak
both voices.

She grew up talking in Navajo, in English
and watched the earth around her shift and change
with the people in the towns and in the cities
learning not to hear the ground as it spun around
beneath them. She learned to speak for the ground,
the voice coming through her like roots that
have long hungered for water. He own daughter
was born, like she had been, in either place
or all places, so she could leave, leap
into the sound she had always heard,
a voice like water, like the gods weavng
against sundown in a scarlet light.

The child now hears names in her sleep.
They change into other names, and into others.
In is the ground murmuring, and Mt. St. Helens
errupts as the harmonic motion of a child turning
inside her mother's belly waiting to be born
to begin another time.

And we go on, keep giving birth and watch
ourselves die, over and over.
And the ground spinning beneath us
goes on talking.

~Joy Harjo

i dont know i dont get it

I thought sun breaking through Sangre de Cristo Mountains was enough

She was not accustomed to taste the joys of solitude except in company

Be inventive, even sneaky, if you must

The day stretched out before me--not as I had hoped. But not, thank heaven, beyond redemption.

to pure bone and shell

where ocean has carved out

Chiron, Neptune and Jupiter are attempting to neutralize all maya

Do you feel as if your on a cross, divided intensely between four ways, standing in the middle wondering which paths to conquer next?

What begins as discordant is balanced and harmonized through love and cooperation. It just happens

The most radiant woman in the room is the one full of life and experience.

Schedule "home" on your calendar and commit to it

Be open to the unexpected

we educate ourselves, the veil drops, transparency appears

Reminder Kel

kim just called, just like in my dream. take solace in this: every one who you encountered today is grappling with the same things. what secrets in their darkness lay. tomorow is new moon, final dark seed before First Harvest. Of course. Winter Solstice i look at you at the seeds dropped then, where i have been wrong, where have i been true? now is the time that these come so intuitive, if painfully, in messagry to you dear soul. i am looking, we all are, at what we are beginning to reap now that the harvest is half way through.