Picture journal of Pac NorthWest. The only thing better...

...than tall trees

...is tall trees AND the sea!!

I forgot about how much synchronicity prevails over on this side...

Bring the sun they kept telling me, and so the rain stopped for the first time in weeks, the clouds parted and the sky and sea were blue the hour that I got to the coast...

it lasted for most the afternoon, than back to the signature grey...I pocketed an agate or two that were already gathered for me

O blessed, blessed loud crashing sea...

Your thunder's reawakened in me.

But the best gift was Gretchen's presence in my soul

Lincoln Beach and the myth that quick alive again in me

ahhhh Poetry and tall tall trees

and the healing waters, and mountain breath ahhhhh.

and cleanse, good sweats, and release

how good it feels to sleep in the clean outdoor breeze. to hear and know it's the mama speaking straight and pure to me.

and dear friends. dear friends speak language that is spirit,

and peace

At night we climbed in to the mountains up a path, we followed Paul. It was clear enough to see the stars, and at the cabin there was already a fire. His friends showed up slow at first then suddenly charmed and then everyone was smiling and bright and there, and then the drums and rattlers came out, and the songs started one by one.

I glowed and sung, and sung and we sung, and the songs and the drums were so, so sweet. I put songs that were prayers in to the pine and mountain and river air.

And I am full again of spirit and of peace. I smiled a lot and sat long times in the steam.
There is nothing like sisters, water fairies! Life is vibrant because of the medicine of good friends.

Tall trees and synchronicity and synchronicity and synchronicity is synchronicity. O whole pure healing and soaks and lying in the grass. I met my favorite blogger, we talked an hour she works with Paul. I didn't know she was here, but these are miracles and they are every breathing moment of life. Of course they are, why shouldn't they be?

Of course I didn't want to leave. But Beth had me go in the labyrinth which thank goodness she did because I was so blissed I had to be prompted in to what to do! It was a long, good and startling, startling true walk which reminded me evermore wherever you go there you are. And that this is ok, is right! Is good and I can trust in me. I can love.

Later, she played music which made me cry.
Good cries tho, good mountains good mountain songs.

On the road home I called mom but cousin Erin answered in spanish hola hola and hello. It confused me at first why does mom's voice sound just like me? I got to talk to Erin and it was so bouyant light and charm. She put mom on and when mom took the phone to dad I heard the voices and could tell she'd stepped on to the back porch at the Pines, aunts and uncles and family friends. About to eat steamed crabs. And dad said your brother just pulled up here let me put him on, and my heart bubbled over to be in touch with all them, my family, 3000 miles away and to know, to so know, I have a home and know who I am, and love, soo so love the place where I am from.

For now, I will love love love the Oregon Coast, all the wet, and the tall sweet trees.

For now, I will revel in the love of this sweet calm peace.

I mean, truly...

Could there be a better theme song for today?!



This is the version with the great breakdown in the center, too! Enjoy!!

Last words for Easton and Adult Ed

Oh, I am tired. But what a difference when that tiredness is just remnant sleep twinkling its way off from behind your eyes verses soul-deep, bonesludge exhaustion. Ahhh, it feels good to be light again.

I am moving today! Yea yea yea! I dont know what I want to write about, just that I had that little bit of line-feeling run through my body that always is precursor to the words. When I am paying attention, anyway. Do you know how amazing it feels to know that I am about to step in to a time and space in my life where I get to do that? Just pay attention? To my art? The emotional responsibility of my job, managing classes and responsible for new student intake for the GED program and the community English program at Chesapeake College was so huge and all-consuming, and thankfully was just the pressure I needed to shape me in to the woman that inside me I was yearning to be. I am so proud, so proud of the work I did there, of stepping up my game again and again, of learning how to really practice important things like diplomacy, practicality, picking my battles, trusting in taking the high road, treating others well again and again and not being afraid to stand in my truth. How to go to bed at night crazy or stressed or broken and trusting that this too will pass. How to learn to trust in the important stuff and to allow others to do their own good jobs. How as well to raise others expectations, and especially the students who I met each day, by keeping a high standard for myself. But learning the willingness and the ease with which I can be flexible. Seeing that at the end of the day no matter what I am still human, and fuck up! And beat my self up but also know how to love and nurture not just others but me, too. And then, especially, knowing when and how to let go, when to walk away, and to do so with my character gleaned whole and leading the way.

Easton you were so good to me. I love you, and will likely love you deeply and completely with no funny business at all like the way I love Waldport, Oregon with his Alsea Bay the Suislaw trees and the rush on the air of the Pacific sea. Where I lived in a funny little trailor a mile off the coast, funny little fishing village on the central coast and my first taste of the first catch of chinook and it actually for real melted on my tongue because first catch of the season is truly that sweet. The trailor with the rhododenron bush bigger than the ceiling of the place out back, and the apple trees, and homemade apple muffins and apple crisp. A compost bin. The little things that connected me to me that fall of 2004 in to 2005 and the green wet very wet spring. God how I loved it there, but when it was time to go it was time to go and that was that. And Easton that will be you and me, knowing how to love and respect one another in all our individual splendor and knowing no matter what returning here will make each of us once more just more complete in that. Oh my god my walks, your night air, your flowers. The market and all the little quiet spots where poetry lives on your streets. Nightcat! Your music will sing to me I'll always know when to be back for more. Coffecat my favorite, favorite part will always be just sitting like a cat on a fat cushion in the sun.

It feels so good to leave whole.

Ocean Pines can you believe I am coming home?

It all feels so smooth now, so easy. I guess that's what it is when it's right. I say in prayer this morning, in my sacred silence and checking in. Thank you thank you thank you and hello world. And this day I choose this gratitude, and my actions to be gratitude in motion.

And then, thank you life, I love you, good morning Kel, I love you. Ahhhh yes, amen amen amen.

PS Bob thank you for singing to me and being my smiling last loving look around my apartment from my bed this morning as I finish typing this you remind me that I want to post some mix tape lists again. Oh blue light and my fabulous curtains and all the full packed cardboard boxes everywhere and looking forward to my walk to the coffecat for b-fast xoxoo.

Long Letter to my Readers

Sometimes I want to start this blog the way I used to start my litmag Cantalma. Like I'm writing a letter. Dear Friends...Today it came out instinctively to write Hey Pals... so let's pretend that that's what I'm doing. Writing a letter to my readers, anonymous or otherwise, out there in the middle of the everchanging everthesame wide world of blogoland. Wherein I find comfort, and release.

Hey Pals,

It's something like 4:30 am. I woke up around 3 and couldn't get back to sleep, but didn't put the light on til a half hour ago. For a while I laid there, thinking the noises I was hearing are the giant fucking practically baseball sized roaches that have begun to show themselves at least daily since I started filling my apartment with cardboard boxes and all these magnificent little dark spaces for them to hide. God that ills me out blugghgghghghhgghgh but I am thankful for them because it's making it really easy to so want to leave this place. Then I imagined the bumping around was the ghosts of this old house that the across the hall neighbor Rebecca has seen, and often hears. In the end I turned the lights on to get some water and there were no bugs, and no haunts, at least that I could tell.

It was a long, sweet weekend. Friday was 12 hours long, I went in to my office for my last day and then up to the college for my exit interview which the HR person kept referring to in email as my Termination Interview. Which made me laugh but also mildly nervous to walk up there and turn my paperwork in, but wouldn't you know I came in and sat down and she said I hear you're moving home because your husband got transferred, I'm from Baltimore, too, Dunalk, hon. I explained that it actually is because really I have no friends or family here in Easton or on the midshore or a life really other than my job, and that I was originally from a town called Millersville outside Glen Burnie, that I am the exact oppositte of married and that first I am waiting tables at the beach to make money but before that going out to the PacNW for a month and then going to move home, then we got down to talking Hons. It was like talking to an old girlfriend that I didn't realize I missed even though Sue and me, the HR lady, had never really met before.

Later in the office trying to get my last bits of work turned in I finally gave up and just said I'd turn it in Tuesday when I have to return and give my work computer back. I was too excited and Mary's office on campus has too much of a blowing breeze. Soon it was almost five so Jackie the Executive Director of our whole department, and my immediate boss Elaine, and Mary they all drove me up to Kent Island for dinner on the water. Natasha came, and Carolee, and Jan all the way from Chestertown and some other teachers and of course Jason and Kim and Brenda, too. Then Cindy showed up, and she ended up taking me back to my car, where we sat and talked for two more hours while a nice round thunderstorm came through. Cindy is the woman I used to teach English with, nighttimes twice a week, at the elementary school in the country out near the Delaware line. This was 2006 and on. She also is the one who introduced me to Teena and had me do a catering gig for her back then, and Teena's the one who rented me the room on the Choptank River when I finally summoned the courage to leave Brandon and break his heart and move out and away to a place so isolated that even now that fast year I spent there still is surreal to me like a dream. Cindy and I, really, hadn't talked and really caught up since I very first moved out to Chop. We had lots, lots to catch the other one up on.

On Saturday I got up and couldn't get moving. I had to be in Pennsylvania first for a baby shower then a bachelorette party. The radio was danceable though and in moments it was so good and the sky was so blue, and I read this blog a long long while which I hadn't done in a long time. It made me feel good to have this, these archives of me because I, like all people, compelled as I am by my self and also very very deep, need to have a place to catalog and process me.

The drive up 83 especially was good. I listened to Rachel Sage and Ruut, both of whom I met last weekend when Brooks got to open for them. Rachel Sage especially is so deliciously good, and I thought how very much I like to hear the accordian. It makes me feel like a gypsy which probably is just to say it makes me feel more wild and whimsy and mystery like I really am. When I got to York I was proud of myself for knowing my way around even though my GPS got me lost at first, finally I just turned that bitch off and got there on my own instincts in the hot Pennsylvania concrete traffic and sun. I walked in to the basement at Aunt Lori's house almost an hour late and it was a huge commotion of people and when I walked in from the far side of the room I heard cousin Chels yell Wait where's Kelly? Chelsea is pregnant, and psychic like all the women in that family and I saw her in the corner and all the commotion was because she was about to open gifts. And I dont know how to put this part in words--that Chels, who's 19, is bringing our first grandbaby in to this world, or great grandbaby I mean, and my grandparents were both sick last year, but still are so robust. And when we are together, which we do more often now, mom her two sisters my brother and his fiance my grandparents and two cousins, we cry a lot and it is always hot and full in our chest because every breathing moment with them is awareness of life and how much we are blessed. So I walked in and Chels knew in her blood I just got there, and she waited for me to sit at her feet and then the gift opening began. Then a half hour later she goes Wait, where's Sean? and then of course we look up and he, my brother, walks in. We did well, Pap only really cried, which is what makes the rest of us bawl, really hard once and then we all were crying and gasping and laughing and wiping our faces with napkins and the other guests cried and laughed some, too.

Then I left, got out on to the rolling green hills and farmhouse lanes of Rt. 30 to drive to Fairfield right outside Gettysburg. My cousin Sarah on my dad's side, the Mc-clan, is getting married soon so next was to celebrate that. On Route 30 I got reminiscent but before it got overboard this song Lost in Pennsylvania came on and I laughed out loud, like really hardy belly laugh because Rt. 30 and me have history. York to Philly, Philly to York, York to Gettysburg and all that sky and green. I always always have such good reflection on that road and Saturday was no different. I was reflecting on the last time I made that drive and how much has changed since then. The last time it was July and Josh, who is the man that I fell in mad love with some years back and ultimately was the final reason I had courage enough to leave Brandon and follow me towards my own thing, called at the end when I pulled in to my cousin's driveway. I hadn't heard from him in like four months back then because of a hurtful falling out, and the thing about Rt. 30 is that's how I used to get from my grandparents over to his house. We always had that psychic thing too, Josh and I, among other connections, and so I was thinking back a lot on him. Next thing, over the glorious piano Ruut sings Lost in Pennsylvania and I'm like Whaaaaa? Did she just say lost in Pennsylvania because it was the first time hearing that CD. Then at that very moment mom called. Mom is from the PA hills and that was really on my mind, too, backroads and southern Pennsylvania and mom and her country people. She called to ask what I was doing. I told her driving and thinking about you and thinking about Josh and now cracking up becasue this lady is singing about Josh and I same time as me thinking about us. And mom reminded me of a time long ago going to work a bluegrass festival in those very hills and how she used to be in love back then with a well-known Nashville musician. Within moments I was at the very place, 8 miles east of Gettysburg, that the festival she was talking about is held. It was all so timely, and the conversation was good and sweet and I felt whole and clean, and happy to see Sarah the bride-to-be and the other cousins waiting to see me.

Now it is Monday morning, the birds are singing and Crow was just squawking, too. The sky out the window in my meditation room is blue and pink tinged so it's all resonant in that morning purple hue. Yesterday also was a long day and last night I wanted to finish uploading my old pics--late 80's through late 90's--on to my external hard drive so that when I move Wednesday and my couple things go in to storage that huge tupperware with all the old albums can just stay there. But I was tired, went late to Target to get a new swimsuit and that took a long time because for the first time in a long time I felt bad about how I looked which made me uncomfortable, but also grateful, because I almost never ever have to deal with that leftover teenage weirdness anymore. So when I got back home I went right to bed, didn't even keep my eyes open long enough to read my book.

I move Wednesday to Ocean Pines. Kelly Johnson, Sean, Bdubb and Brooks are going to help me. Thursday I'm taking Amy out for a pedicure to celebrate Maddie, her third child, due in July. Friday my cousin Timmy graduates college, Friday night we're all going dancing at Red Maple, Saturday's Eryka Badu. Then back to the Pines til Wednesday of the following week, when I fly to Oregon, and will be boundless, yet tall tree mountain coasts hot springs cities and hippies and Pacific ocean bound.

Yaaaaay!!!! When I get home it will be summer time and all that hotass Marilen mug. I'll be a waitress again, a writer for sure, babys will come, weddings will happen, and I will stare and smile a lot at the sea. I will swim. For now, I am sleepy, pals. Thank you for reading and always journeying along with me. Thank you all for the love and support even when you dont comment thankfully the blog counter tells me you still read. I am contented, awed, and eager because I feel certain the best is yet to be....

My wishes and prayers for the same to all of you xoxo.

Love, kel

Morning Dance Song for packing and cardboard boxes

Today is my second to last day at work!

(Insert wide-mouthed picture of me here with cartoon question marks all about my head.)

My house is 49.777654ribbonstrinketscardspaperscookbooksohhhsomuchclothes% packed.

There are lots, lots of empty boxes kindly donated from the Acme all over my bathroom bc that's the only place there's room for them.

My office is the opposite of cleaned, organized, or even a teeny bit packed. (if you know me at all than you know my office is aptly decorated with yes, ribbons, trinkets, cards and books.)

But hey, today! Hello today! My fave morning dance song by Edward Sharp and the Magnetic Zeros which I've posted here before greeted me when I got out of the shower. Followed by Bowie, Sound and Vision!

Yaaay morning dance songs and smiley out of the shower place half packed dancing. I mean, cmon. So long as we can dance, right...

PS
Today's New Moon, tonight anyhow around 9pm. Quiet thoughts in the void of what yet can be...