To hug them, and live my thanks

There’s this stretch of the 5 that runs the vast central plains of California and it starts past the mountains that mean you’re finally out of LA and you drive it a long, smooth time and when you’re done you know now I’m in the corridor that marks the change between south and north.  Where the air, the trees, nothing smells the same.

I have lived 18 months of my life on the road.  More if you count the ten months I house-sat and the few I even paid rent to pause a minute and take breath once upon a time ago on the Oregon Coast.  That means my car or the earth has been my only address, it means surfing couches and beds and floors of friends, doing work in exchange for a place to rest my head.  It means the priority, the choice of showing up day to day flexible and open to the experience of only and just what Today will bring.  It means especially living and loving and learning the land.

Coming out of the San Gabriel foothills yesterday I felt so whole and calm you could’ve stretched me around the face of the planet all the way and back again and still there would’ve been more of me to give.  The power of the road:  to have no agenda.  To be in the moment.  The lesson of being here now which is also, as the tires run the pavement, the pure power of action with no stress.  The dichotomous Zen no thought: I am in control only of the fact I am out of control.

 I have been so utterly contented since second period got out yesterday in Irvine/Santa Ana/Newport at my university where those towns and sprawl all blur and seem to cross.  I filled up.  My phone was almost dead.  I turned it off.  Got on 55 and in minutes was on the 5 and here is the thing:  the-in moment-bliss, the magic of contentment with any and all.  The preciousness of it just hit.  That’s a grace thing.  It’s a deeper part of the spirit, of the unconscious part of me.  I have practiced a lot to cultivate it but it doesn’t always come.  But when it does, ahhh god it is right on time.

The oil smell in standstill traffic in LA while the sunroof lets the sun in to shine white on your skin.  The first moment that topographic transition comes and bushes green and round roll the mountain sides like the land is letting them show off their broad bumpy chests.   The circles of black birds etch-a-sketching patterns again and again above the brown mountains.  The 5, forever and ever two lanes all the way south, all the way north.  The easy glide to the passing lane then back again and the way the IPOD accompanies foot on the gas acceleration or foot off the gas slow down for full hours at a time.

There is nothing else like this, this simple bliss, in the world.  It has made me strong and supple in an adaptive sort of way, it has made me aware that the only one to confront, in truth, is me.  And the open-handed meeting of and reliance on others it’s equally taught me has instructed me more about relationships than any other chance I’ve had so far since I’ve been here.  Here, on earth I mean.  This great awing mystery beyond our living room.

I’m in bed at a Motel 6 off the 101 in Rohnert Park right now.   I’ve stayed here a lot, this very one. On my way to meet Bess, north of here by 20 minutes for a minute she let me live.   The smell of redwood last night was so fresh and stunning I felt like I’d been zapped by a starburst of light when I got out of my car.  I took that for granted last time I was here.  Last year in October during the first north rains I was going up the 101 and crashed and totaled my car.  It was terrifying.  It royally shook me.  I’d been living in my car.  And so I lost my last connection to things, to the “stuff” that connects us to what we think we are.   I met myself every morning in quiet time every day during that time and got through that.  It would be silly to try to explain here what, through losing, I was able to find.

I have not much to show in the form of bank accounts or hard assets. But I can describe for you exactly what route 50 is like in Colorado heading towards the San Juan’s.  I can try to help you understand that when the sky opens on 90 in South Dakota only then can you honestly comprehend the American association of West.  I can tell you without doubt that you will never be the same once you sleep on a mat of pine needles off a dirt logging road with not a single other human around.   I can put into words and images the specific curve of feeling, the exact encircling of homecoming that is different and precise for each individual spirit of every last one of my family members or friends.

I can not wait to get to Humboldt today.  To be surrounded by my spirit family.  They get the things I don’t know how to say.  I can not wait to be surrounded by the experience of trees that drink fog and give us back clean air.  To hug them, and live my thanks.  To celebrate the chance and choice to go up the 101 and to be aware of what that means.

The s-h coming-together-sound of the teaching sea

My apartment seriously looks how it used to when I was a drunk.

This is funny, happened in less than two days, is because the place is so hobbit-small and on my mind because I have a teleconference with Erika my writing partner today.  My 30 some pages of submission are creative non-fiction circa 95-96.  When I lived with and shared a room with Fannon or Kev or Kareen.  The days of sour boy stink on the air and layers of wet towels, insides of cigars, empty bottles to wade through on the floor.

Not that my floors are covered with blunts and empties now.  Today it's clothes and books.  All I own, all I came to California with and all I've spent my money on since I've been here, too.  Clothes and books, travel and food.  The essence of this girl.  Very little I need beyond a splotch of land, the words and close proximity to the sea.

And my little room of my own.  This I firmly believe:  a girl needs a small crafted space that's just hers, where she can have and relish her stillness.  Mine's a 2x6 spot only big enough for a desk on the back end of my closet!  But it's from this sense, the stillness and silence that a woman, that I, that she can be.

I've had little motivation to do anything these days then snuggle on the couch and eat or sit cozy in a coffee shop and write. Or to be quiet beside the sea.  My soul is wanton. Longing and turning flat if I try to ignore its mercurial wants.  I stress easily at any demands other than these.  It is winter:  this is the way.

So I walk a lot.  With Serena up the canyon to the Top of the World.  Around the curves and corners of  Newport's marshy back bay.  From the free parking lot on Forest all the way to Thalia Street on the beach.  Last Saturday someone shaped kelp in to a heart bigger by twice the size than my quiet little room.  It stilled me, gave me pause just a minute, glistened my own heart as it pushed me on.  When I got to Thalia I sat a long time watching the surfers there.  The water was aqua green even folded again and again by its rippy whiteness.  It was shadowed in spots by great seaweed blooms.  There are two breaks and I studied them and also just listened.  Listened and felt the sea. The sound of s and h come together.  This consistent noise that is hushhhing or rushhhhing depending on the state of the soul that hears.

That's how I feel, like there was one life behind me with it's own distant sound.  And that there's this other one I am headed towards but can not see.  I can almost feel it though, the way you do sometimes with a sound just before you get to hear.  And that's what I soaked in last Saturday on my walk to Thalia street. The s-h coming-together-sound of the teaching sea.

After Erika calls I'll clean.  Then relish a day to be quiet with me.  This is the in-between.  Being quiet and still, waiting.  The tide will grow and later move me forward towards the next me that I will be.

When the dark time of year gets here

This is the second Friday in a row I have spent with no agenda.  Today and last week included time on my little square deck that's built into the canyon wall.  I deeply soaked in to the feel of the land around me.  The trees, the exotic green, the breeze out of nowhere then gone again, the happy dance it did on my skin.  The sun, on its fall retreat.

Yesterday my cousin Erin called.  I was on my way to the grocery store in Laguna Woods, where everyone is over 70 and more than once I had to help an oldtimer pick out food or manage what was directly in front of them.  I followed my inner knowing it said cook something golden delicious and fatty for me that's what I so, so need.  Erin laughed, totally understanding and in the same spot.  She lost her mom three months ago.  Her mom Mary was young, a teacher, loved the sea and nature, loved her family and to be active outdoors.  In the last year of Mary's life much of those loves were taken from her--that is she had to give them up.  She raised her head anyways and walked with courage and grace through it all.  These past three months I've tried to do the same.  I've been so grief-struck though I couldn't even comprehend the grief itself.

Erin and I found one another on similar shores last weekend, having both finally stopped the ceaseless running, willing to slow down.  How significant  I thought, same weekend as the time change.  No fighting it a second more, and indeed we talked all last weekend in grateful surrender--we had to enter the season of the dark.  It was time.  My body, yesterday, begged for more of the same.  I cooked the most delicious verde enchiladas.   Baked my cousin Erin in.  Laid on my couch and ate them in front of netflix all night, with black cherry soda and red velvet cookies to wash them down.  I was seized, out of nowhere, by the most rapid tears in the middle of a movie of vignettes about different women.  I let them come out and snuggled deeper on my couch. The rain made fat airy sounds on the concrete from out my window screen .  This, this aloneness, this powerless over life's biggest swings and atrocities, this is why people fear the night.  In my Women Who Run With the Wolves book, since Mary died I've drawn the same thing.  The story about Baba Yaga, and the girl who because of her motherlessness must face the dark, hard sides of life.  Those are her psychic tasks, her work in her own personal inner or under world.  To confront the dark or fearfulness that lay within and gain the ferocity of strength that comes by completing that part.

This is what we do on a spiritual level when the dark time of year gets here.  We look at how we are human, often so connected to what we fear.  Tuesday in the afternoon the moon is new... it is Lunar Samhain, or Lunar New Year.  The dark moon after the final harvest of fall.  When we look if we dare at the kneedeep shit, all that detritus that will grow the new seeds in us through this winter's dark.  My gain and blessings this year have been enormous.  Because this is life: the way of circular, spiraling path, of the balance within of human and holy being kept--my loss and pain have also been profound.  I enter the dark hallow now--we all do.  I bless it all, surrender to the hard with the light and good.  It is not good it is not bad, it is rather the seeds of both from inside the same.  We are where we need to be, right on time.  The end, and also, how to begin.

It's just the beginning

It was a long weekend and I ended it hugging Gretchen with wet eyes, in front of a fish and burger shack under a white moon in a place called Summerland.  I drove her to Pacifica so she could see it and feel the silence there for herself.  Gretchen, who has stood by me through every bit of this year after year, back when everyone else thought I was senseless--the days of moving out of Chestertown because I was following my heart but didn't know towards what.  All I could think coming up to this weekend, it all makes sense now...all I could say again and again when we saw one another...I've only just begun.

Brian who's never written poetically once in his whole life texted There are two tragedies in life.  One is to lose your hearts desire.  The other is to gain it.  Some think the latter is worse.  They think once you gain your hearts desire, what you truly want, then life becomes pointless.  There's nothing left to strive for.  You become scared and fearful once you've gained it you will lose it.  Scared to give in and let yourself feel everything amazing that comes along with gaining one's hearts desire...these people are punks! They're wrong!  The tragedy of gaining one's hearts desire isn't the realization that this is all life has to offer.  That life is pointless from here on out....The real tragedy for some is once you've gained your hearts desire you don't stop and realize that it's just the beginning and NOT the end.  The beginning of something amazing we human beings get to feel.  A feeling that's intense and truthful.  A feeling that's painful and exciting.  A feeling that allows you to love someone or something more than yourself.  To be scared to give in to those feelings is where the tragedy lies.  I called him and we talked for an hour.  He is in love and she is afraid to lose her independence.  I called and talked to Paul almost as long, back to back phone calls about the exact same thing.  Dear Paul who is returning north to the hot springs to live in the forest again before Kalani.   I thought, how lucky am I to know these men.  Oh 2012. Time of new roles that never have been.  These two men loving like they never have before.  New roles everywhere.  Willing to love and getting hurt and keeping their hearts open the whole while.   How proud I am to know them who can be so brave.  It's not all golden in the Age of Female Wisdom.  All of us women and men we are struggling and learning every day. I am inspired by my brothers and try and learn from them.

I did laundry for the first time in a month.  The TV on the Radio station on Pandora rocks.  So does listening to sorta old school The Lonesome Crowded West.  My students are brave and beautiful.  I sat at my favorite beach Sleepy Hollow.  Had a taco from Loco's while I read the book I bought when Josh was here.  In other news while puttering around my house I pulled the salsa verde out of the fridge and was touched in that sudden, merciless way that brings unexpected tears to my eyes because I was so grateful to have a refrigerator, a closet full of lovely clothes.  Life is incredibly simple like that.  To see so clearly how abundant and blessed we are. There is so much for which to give thanks.  Life is ridiculous and complicated, too.  Intense and painful, breaking down defenses growing new roles. So it goes.  I've only just begun.

Repost: In Memoriam.

(original posting, september 2009.  So I can feel connected this far away from home during Hurricane Sandy)

Suzette had this raspy voice and a laugh entirely unanticipated. It used to shoot out of her mouth and hit you in your chest then explode up your neck and down your back, cacophonous echo blast of megaphone and hot air.

She worked the Fool the Guesser one stand up from me on the Pier.

In September the tourists went home, it all sort of started when Felix came in early August which was also the time I kicked Kevin out of the house for the PCP. This left us, Suzette and me or the hot Tico Kiki who was way older which then meant like 35, with lots of time to holler back and forth to each other on our mics. Hurricane Felix was a big one and I got on the local news screaming kooks go home--the reporter was on 9th street, three up from us where the old deadhead house was, we learned from them early on where not to buy our drugs. Jerry died that summer, it was almost omen-ic: Deadheads by then couldn't be trusted a lot of them were tweakers, everybody knew. I imagine the reporters edited me out, we didn't have a tv so I never knew. We didn't even know the hurricane was coming. I got off for my afternoon break and came home for a puff or jay and a swim or some food hopefully someone had some otherwise it was soft-pretzels from the Pier for free the only place I could surely get hooked-up. Sparky was the only dude around though, he was a squatter one of those 9th street kids. Besides Black Mike and Little Kid, the only ones still down to hang after I kicked Kevin out, there was Sparky. Sparky I never trusted cuz of the deadhead squatter thing but we still hung cuz my roommate thought he was the shit. He never had anything to offer he just came looking. We had nothing though since Kevin and the boys went, nothing at all. So instead me and Sparky just took a swim and it's the only time I ever remember the Ocean slamming me again and again like a hard wood board. I swam hard but never never got to a place where she was settled and smooth so I could just float and roll. Like I said the Hurricane was coming but we didn't know. No one else was on the beach though! Mom somehow got in touch with me and said to put all the stuff on the floor up so really that just meant my books and music on the lowest shelf. The pots and pans earlier in the summer, since we didn't ever wash them, all got thrown out.

After Felix it was all different. Like I said, then it was just Black Mike who slept on the couch every night and also suggested we each sleep with a little switchblade under our mattress. Which is funny to me now, cuz like cousin Joey says a weapon will end up getting you in even more trouble if you dont know how to use it. And I for one, didn't, no one ever taught me how.

But luckily we never had trouble. Kevin moved out, he and his boys trashed our house broke windows and the outside porch lights and tagged all over all our shit, then Felix came and after that everything changed. The alleys were more quiet, there was a lot more of the large grey sky. And when the sun was out it was ethereal again, funny yellow glow. I didn't know it yet but that was the summer I first started to learn: there are tides that come and they move as one and they bring a certain power all their own, and they effect us all.

And the earth is where and how we learn.

By September it was cool already I had the greatest snaked Hoodie I lived in with holes down at the edge for my thumbs. Everyone was gone. Just 14 years ago, that's all, but OC didn't have the condo weekenders it's so full of now. Even my aunt and uncle and grammy who lived summer here were gone, they had to go home to the county to teach school.

Which meant we ditched 6th street for my family's house at the Pines, the girls and I, because it scared us being alone like that with just the beach rats who were hating on us and the ghosts that we heard again and again--no lie, the old fashioned player piano music or loud foot steps upstairs on the outside deck when for sure no one was there, or even the radios in our house that would go on without reason sometimes. Local folklore said the Broadripple on 14th, and our place too on 6th, were the original Bordellos from back in the day. It was mid-1800's that the town came to be. But Wikipedia says the original Pier burned down in a fire in 1994, which isn't true, the fire happened in the winter of 1995, winter after Felix, I remember because we drove over that winter to see. The fire took Morbid Manor and the waterpark, too; I smoked pot everyday in Morbid Manor in 95 then got to ride the water rides for free since I worked there, ran a betting game for the same guy who did Fool the Guesser, Suzette Kiki and me. And that fire took everything, all that, down. 1995 last of the Pier and the Manor, the Riptide Park and Jerry, too.

So me and Chrissy who worked Morbid Manor and loved a guy, Johnny, started hanging at the Pines. It was cool and vacant in town and I learned all at once to love September, the sheet clear blue sky, the white clouds puffy and bright as a smile. The way the water looked suddenly so navy blue. September, goddamn I learned to love you.

Suzette invited us over for for spaghetti that's how I found out she was into selling and smoking crack. She got arrested later that winter which I learned the same night as I heard about the fire at the Pier. It sucked cuz she had a little one, I dont remember his name anymore he had brown hair with flints of yellow curl, he was three-years-old. Guess he'd be 17 now hope he's not in jail. That night over spaghetti when I first found out about her drug of choice, it was the first time I ever got that gut-twisting sweaty-necked premonition-chill. It was September, the streets were flat and empty but she lived all the way downtown so the air from the inlet was coming off the water and was damp with a terrible cold. The sky was low and hung with thin grey clouds.

Addiction is a hell of a fucking disease.

In September now I come here every year weekend after Labor Day and have a reunion with old friends. Last night we were up to 3, boardwalk, dancing, talking, laughing and lots of quiet on the cool, white sand. Round 2am I walked past sixth street, Kevin is dead, I'm 9 years clean.



Everything is changed. And also, September, the clean earth and shushing sea, is just the same.