So I am going to try to blog more.
(Got that Kelly, here it is, in contract!) I told Erika over email I will check-in on my blog as much as I can. I will rely on the only thing I've ever fully committed to--writing--as the frame to help me commit to the other new changes on the helm. Writing, which I once wrote is my tool, and my reward. How it keys me in, cuts my trail in to my inside. Then leaves an archive map, a way back, to who I am just behind.
Summerland on Friday was so rad. When I used to sit in my room in the Pines and relax and breathe and listen to my poemas de la luna on Pandora over and over again I would feel where on the map in California that I belonged. And it was always Ventura. All along.
Not that I'll move. Just, I can't wait to have this reason to go there where the trees breathe and the coast is quiet once a month. This reason, this commitment to myself. In a book I got at the bookstore at Pacifica on Friday it says They need to mature before they will be able to protect themselves. The book is about unfolding the sacred in women and the quote refers to symbology in the dreams of the two writers. Symbols speaking to the burgeon of understanding they were growing of their individual spirits. And I read this, and knew communion. And thought yes, yes. These next steps are about that. I know where I am heading, always have. But I must go make this deep passing now. I need to mature my vision so that I will know how to protect it. And in protecting it, allow it its process to grow.
Nick and Norah's was great. It made me want a boyfriend to run around in whimsy with taking random roadtrips up PCH stopping to eat ice cream and singing really loud out the windows. It made me relish the youth in me. Going to Derryn's today for a BBQ. Looking forward to yoga and a long bike ride in the sun. Talking to Beth tonight.
There. Check in, number 1.
July 8, 2012
July 5, 2012
Begin Again
Mmm. Vampire Weekend not crazy about this band never have been. But this certain song from Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist is on and not only is it fitting my whimsy but I like the Eleanor Rigby instrumental. Now I am reminded to rent that movie next time my legs need movement and my breath fresh air so that I walk to Blockbuster a couple blocks from here.
Feels like a long time since I've written. Now New Slang is on. Second time I've heard it today and seriously this is one of my top five favorite songs ever. That's a big claim I know. Not sure why. It just gets something inside me worked out whenever I hear it, something that otherwise is almost always wordless. I always feel better, more like myself after I hear it. Always.
And so that's what I'm on here to download today. About feeling more like me. Returning to center. Yoga today was so awesome. What. A. Return. My teacher during final relaxation said Let your outter body fall in to your inner body. Let you inner body fall in to your core. Now let your core fall in to silence. It's been a long time--over a week--since I've been able to sit in silence. Actually no close to two. For whatever reason I've been hectic inside and missing my center. Which is what happens all the time when I am going through changes since I'm human. No matter how many times I live the example I will also always, always forget that taking quiet time to connect to me in the morning is literally the best gift I can give not only myself but the whole world. I'm so much more inuitive, relaxed and also engaged then.
I stood up after shavasana--final relaxation--was over and thought yep, Begin Again. Which is a Zazen or Buddhist line reminding us to always keep a loosely open mind. When the chatter in mediation returns, Begin Again. But I'm an action girl, I care about applying and walking it the most. So to me Begin Again is just that. So what it's been close to two weeks since I've had, or should I say in truth, believed in my practice.
It's all good... Begin Again....
Feels like a long time since I've written. Now New Slang is on. Second time I've heard it today and seriously this is one of my top five favorite songs ever. That's a big claim I know. Not sure why. It just gets something inside me worked out whenever I hear it, something that otherwise is almost always wordless. I always feel better, more like myself after I hear it. Always.
And so that's what I'm on here to download today. About feeling more like me. Returning to center. Yoga today was so awesome. What. A. Return. My teacher during final relaxation said Let your outter body fall in to your inner body. Let you inner body fall in to your core. Now let your core fall in to silence. It's been a long time--over a week--since I've been able to sit in silence. Actually no close to two. For whatever reason I've been hectic inside and missing my center. Which is what happens all the time when I am going through changes since I'm human. No matter how many times I live the example I will also always, always forget that taking quiet time to connect to me in the morning is literally the best gift I can give not only myself but the whole world. I'm so much more inuitive, relaxed and also engaged then.
I stood up after shavasana--final relaxation--was over and thought yep, Begin Again. Which is a Zazen or Buddhist line reminding us to always keep a loosely open mind. When the chatter in mediation returns, Begin Again. But I'm an action girl, I care about applying and walking it the most. So to me Begin Again is just that. So what it's been close to two weeks since I've had, or should I say in truth, believed in my practice.
It's all good... Begin Again....
June 24, 2012
In my swim suit with my wild ocean hair
On the 5 today I looked at the coastal mountains around Toro Canyon. I call it Route 5 and pronounce it "root" like I'm from back east. Which I am. Derryn makes fun of me because that's how she says it too, like she's a British African. Which she is. I love my life there is nothing else to say and driving and seeing all the green and high white light and blue that's exactly what I said. Man I love my life. I must've said it ten times this weekend. Moving here is one of the best decisions I ever made. I say this in to my headphone piece. Driving on root 5 on the phone. I know me too Muller says back to me. Me too.
He is going back to Ocean City where we are from. He goes next week. He tells me all these guys from back then say hi Kel and I am like that's so crazy. Because that's what I sit and do write about the beach and entertain their ghosts while I do. I can not see the end of from here how will I ever finish this book who knows but damn am I enjoying the road. I got three rejections letters this month. BLAUAUAGHH I continue and will continue to go. I am in Starbucks now after spending the weekend at Derryn's timeshare in Oceanside. Assing up with her puberty-aged sons. Laughing at Youtube videos they recommend. Seeing how viley immature I am and my sense of humor. Muller knows this part of me too. I am sundrenched and peaceful from being sea-witness again and again. I am full from sharing with a true wild woman friend. I am full and satiated in that salty way of sand stretch skin. I am happy especially to be beside my coffee shop window two blocks from my house in Huntington. I haven't been home yet am still in my swim suit with my wild ocean hair. I love my life the sun the blue skies the words the yoga bike rides the water good food and laughing friends. It doesn't end.
I am enjoying looking out the window you know? Nodding my head at this life and this ride. I've made a decision about some things ruminating in me which have to do with how to commit and how to begin. I am 35 which is old to some but to me brand brand new, or anyway quite young. I have the whole world in me and also around me and I see it and say yes to it and that is an amazingly fruitful way to be. One I've had to learn and learn and relearn again. I like to learn and am a teacher which means learning's my job. So I will look out and say yes this is it where I am and also how cool, the view stretching so far in all directions, the view and all the where's and how's I still will go.
He is going back to Ocean City where we are from. He goes next week. He tells me all these guys from back then say hi Kel and I am like that's so crazy. Because that's what I sit and do write about the beach and entertain their ghosts while I do. I can not see the end of from here how will I ever finish this book who knows but damn am I enjoying the road. I got three rejections letters this month. BLAUAUAGHH I continue and will continue to go. I am in Starbucks now after spending the weekend at Derryn's timeshare in Oceanside. Assing up with her puberty-aged sons. Laughing at Youtube videos they recommend. Seeing how viley immature I am and my sense of humor. Muller knows this part of me too. I am sundrenched and peaceful from being sea-witness again and again. I am full from sharing with a true wild woman friend. I am full and satiated in that salty way of sand stretch skin. I am happy especially to be beside my coffee shop window two blocks from my house in Huntington. I haven't been home yet am still in my swim suit with my wild ocean hair. I love my life the sun the blue skies the words the yoga bike rides the water good food and laughing friends. It doesn't end.
I am enjoying looking out the window you know? Nodding my head at this life and this ride. I've made a decision about some things ruminating in me which have to do with how to commit and how to begin. I am 35 which is old to some but to me brand brand new, or anyway quite young. I have the whole world in me and also around me and I see it and say yes to it and that is an amazingly fruitful way to be. One I've had to learn and learn and relearn again. I like to learn and am a teacher which means learning's my job. So I will look out and say yes this is it where I am and also how cool, the view stretching so far in all directions, the view and all the where's and how's I still will go.
June 19, 2012
Your irreverent wild women crazy laughing friends
Northeast out of Bakersfield it's green on the map. The kind of green I learned a long time ago to give my attention. I took off from Huntington by 10 expecting to be setting camp surrounded by sequoias by 2. A road trip's a road trip tho--so it didn't happen that way.
I detoured off the 5 because of traffic just north of LA, did a bigass square in the desert and wound up in Tehachapi. Tehachapi I hate you all your ignorant dust and heat. When I go I will come back to haunt the dreams of the ones I have loved and I will do so in order to prove one thing. Those windmills, those dreadful mechanical prisons those things are living dismal proof of aliens among us and that will say a lot, because open-spirited as people will remember me a conspirator I am not. But they hardline me a panic that runs my blood and so Sierras your foothills with those mills I drove and all the whole time I did so I screamed. Man screams to maybe get that fierce knowledge out of me. Windmills are not of this time or land I know it in my blood aww, man. Tehachapi you are not my love.
Kern River Canyon would have to be where I'd lay my head. The camp host looked me through he said Alone? You're sure? I looked over my shoulder to my back seat, I poked at my purse next to me and checked under there. Yep I said, I'm sure of it, just me. I wanted nothing but quiet I just needed green and quiet and to feel the earth breathe. But that's not what I told him when he said well what do you need? Just a place to sleep...We're full he said. Then stared a long time at me, the joker in his eye. Unless you want to go to the overflow.
He told me follow him and go slow. We drove the canyon upstream. When we parked I listened when he said get out of the car. Pablo he called to a man supervising a small tent city being tucked against a yellow and saged earth wall. This is Pablo this is his camp he says to me to him he goes this girl's alone and needs to be fed and taken care of. I laughed at this point it was too funny and I didn't care what would happen. Pablo shakes my hand and looks through my eyes to way inside too. The host goes I been working these woods 20 years I know what people need when they come here. Pablo and his family are good you can stay for free with them this weekend if Pablo says...and if you want that is. Pablo nods then calls Maria! And over comes the woman who will be my tia for the next two days. If your tias like my aunts back east are also your irreverent wild women crazy laughing friends. Who in one breath feed you homemade food that makes you cry it's so good and in the next drop cold in on the truth in your heart you only half-see or want purposefully half-hid.
I have many new tias now a whole familia in fact because that's what she wanted of me, la mama tierra madre when she used her green breath all this time to call me back. We sweat together in the 100 degree heat in Kern River stream under canyon trees all twenty of us and I spoke spanish and them english and they fed me, and took care of me, indeed. So the road yet again leads me home to me, in a twisted unexpected way when I let it, the road whose funny trickery always gives me what I need.
I detoured off the 5 because of traffic just north of LA, did a bigass square in the desert and wound up in Tehachapi. Tehachapi I hate you all your ignorant dust and heat. When I go I will come back to haunt the dreams of the ones I have loved and I will do so in order to prove one thing. Those windmills, those dreadful mechanical prisons those things are living dismal proof of aliens among us and that will say a lot, because open-spirited as people will remember me a conspirator I am not. But they hardline me a panic that runs my blood and so Sierras your foothills with those mills I drove and all the whole time I did so I screamed. Man screams to maybe get that fierce knowledge out of me. Windmills are not of this time or land I know it in my blood aww, man. Tehachapi you are not my love.
Kern River Canyon would have to be where I'd lay my head. The camp host looked me through he said Alone? You're sure? I looked over my shoulder to my back seat, I poked at my purse next to me and checked under there. Yep I said, I'm sure of it, just me. I wanted nothing but quiet I just needed green and quiet and to feel the earth breathe. But that's not what I told him when he said well what do you need? Just a place to sleep...We're full he said. Then stared a long time at me, the joker in his eye. Unless you want to go to the overflow.
He told me follow him and go slow. We drove the canyon upstream. When we parked I listened when he said get out of the car. Pablo he called to a man supervising a small tent city being tucked against a yellow and saged earth wall. This is Pablo this is his camp he says to me to him he goes this girl's alone and needs to be fed and taken care of. I laughed at this point it was too funny and I didn't care what would happen. Pablo shakes my hand and looks through my eyes to way inside too. The host goes I been working these woods 20 years I know what people need when they come here. Pablo and his family are good you can stay for free with them this weekend if Pablo says...and if you want that is. Pablo nods then calls Maria! And over comes the woman who will be my tia for the next two days. If your tias like my aunts back east are also your irreverent wild women crazy laughing friends. Who in one breath feed you homemade food that makes you cry it's so good and in the next drop cold in on the truth in your heart you only half-see or want purposefully half-hid.
I have many new tias now a whole familia in fact because that's what she wanted of me, la mama tierra madre when she used her green breath all this time to call me back. We sweat together in the 100 degree heat in Kern River stream under canyon trees all twenty of us and I spoke spanish and them english and they fed me, and took care of me, indeed. So the road yet again leads me home to me, in a twisted unexpected way when I let it, the road whose funny trickery always gives me what I need.
June 13, 2012
But anyway here I am
Before I went east the week before last I had slipped in somewhere, not sure exactly where but easy as a veil so sheathy you barely notice it being placed over your eyes it had happened, I was halfing-it. Slipped in: to a way of thinking edged with doubt on the inside line of things. A tense feeling of having to try to figure things out, me fighting it and it gaining muscle because of my fight. I knew I was fighting it too which is the worst kind of strain. August, last year, when I got in my car with 800 bucks in a brown paper bag and my spirit full of good luck and set to head west it was a day at a time of bliss and wonderment that lasted almost entirely through til the middle of April. After living like that which let me tell you is a sweet and light way to live slipping in is painful. Erin my cousin came for 10 days, this was April, I flipped right after that and never was quite righted. A number of things in a row stacked up all at once all having to do with people back in Maryland I love. Suddenly I was feeling like my decision to be here, however grace touched and true, was wrong. So I was fighting the natural ebb of these doubts. It was the fighting that made it way worse.
California has helped tremendously since I've been back. The sparkle of the day when I flew in to John Wayne, Deryyne's smile and hug among all the fast cars and cabs that said so genuine I missed you! My ride that afternoon on my bike next to PCH was the kind of ride where my bike feels like its being compelled by the concrete, like my bike itself has a place to go and I just get to be along for the ride. The way the wind always is full of the sea. The way it communicates with my skin. That happiness of the light rolling around on the waves. It just felt so right to be back. Me and my book had dinner at what I know to be as the best little Mexican joint in Huntington Beach. It's tucked away you have to live here to know it. I rode to Deryyne's after for the Stanley Cup. That night I walked in to my little room on Main Street so contented all I could do was celebrate me: the journey I took and am still taking, the space of mine, my whole own little world animated by the tender small regularities of my Orange County rounds.
It was amazing to go east my soul needed it to feel calm. I had to see Mandy to look in her eyes, and dance with Jott for both of us, and I needed the green of the east coast hard wood heady hardy trees. I needed to sit a long time and just hush with my mom and cuddle with Erin and hug her mom, I needed to hear the high-pitch Grammy laugh of surprise come out of my dad. I really needed to be close to my niece, and sister-in-law, and especially my brother the new dad. I really needed to hug my grandma again.
But anyway here I am. It's so good to be home.
California has helped tremendously since I've been back. The sparkle of the day when I flew in to John Wayne, Deryyne's smile and hug among all the fast cars and cabs that said so genuine I missed you! My ride that afternoon on my bike next to PCH was the kind of ride where my bike feels like its being compelled by the concrete, like my bike itself has a place to go and I just get to be along for the ride. The way the wind always is full of the sea. The way it communicates with my skin. That happiness of the light rolling around on the waves. It just felt so right to be back. Me and my book had dinner at what I know to be as the best little Mexican joint in Huntington Beach. It's tucked away you have to live here to know it. I rode to Deryyne's after for the Stanley Cup. That night I walked in to my little room on Main Street so contented all I could do was celebrate me: the journey I took and am still taking, the space of mine, my whole own little world animated by the tender small regularities of my Orange County rounds.
It was amazing to go east my soul needed it to feel calm. I had to see Mandy to look in her eyes, and dance with Jott for both of us, and I needed the green of the east coast hard wood heady hardy trees. I needed to sit a long time and just hush with my mom and cuddle with Erin and hug her mom, I needed to hear the high-pitch Grammy laugh of surprise come out of my dad. I really needed to be close to my niece, and sister-in-law, and especially my brother the new dad. I really needed to hug my grandma again.
But anyway here I am. It's so good to be home.
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