The music of gypsy goddess sounds

This place was my first California home. I don't know how to explain this.  I suppose that partly means I can't.

Returning. What that is like...and.

The true magic in these hills.

It has rained since late Thursday. 

Which feels whole to me, like the heart's releasing ions of clouds.

Now I'm about to get on the road again, after such dear connecting again with Mo, Dora, and Brother Jon. I'm thinking that it's been a while since I've been so truly and clearly who I fully am.

Blessings are boundless. Endless as tree breath, light as giggle movement, the music of gypsy goddess sounds.

Translating to words the sea and tall-tree talk

In Rincon I thought for a sec about going to the beach.  I had a conversation with Konan the night before about surf breaks and it only seemed right.  Everything in me wanted tires on road though and already the 101 was making that certain kind of only-on-101-noise.

The gas station on the right was cheaper by a cent but the cashier in the other one had the night before won me over.  An ESL student with a middle eastern way of averting his eyes which I knew was meant as a form of respect.  The night before I'd asked do you carry tasty cakes and he said, "Excuse me, ma'am, I am only learning english, please repeat the question." We talked about his commitment to learning english and I authentically tried to assure him how successful he already was.  His humility I could actually feel in my heart.  Even though he worked, as he told me, graveyard shift, I still went back to his store in the morning for gas.

I knew there'd be grace then: walking out to my car, in my hand a jug of water and some rugged gloves that were only 2 bucks for later when I camped.   Next to my car a van, the old hippy kind, with a Dead sticker on it.  A guy my age-ish or a little younger came towards me then.  He had the sparkle in his eye and was inside his heart.  I relaxed and smiled big and warm, already had my wallet out…Think you could spare a few bucks he said and then, we're trying to get to San Diego by the night.  I nodded and said a prayer and gave thanks for beneficent road blessings for us both and handed him some cash.

I took the 101north until I saw a sign for Morrow Bay then took that west.  In Morrow Bay it led me down a little access road, it being the magic which by now was back and I had to let it ease through my body in a mild, sweet way a little at a time.  But for sure it led me down this little road with beachfront motels and so I made note, Morrow Bay I will be back.

At the south end of Big Sur I found Sebastian's General Store just past the Piedras Blancas and the Lighthouse of the same name.  Originally my plan had been to get warm lunch there then get north to Kirk Creek.  But in the parking lot it was the feeling of noooo not yet in a soft movement that felt like gentle wind.  So on I went.

I am glad I did that big stretch of the 1.  Big Sur is the only stretch of California coastline on which I'd never travelled.  But then as I got more north I realized wow that isn't true.  In the 90's when my dad lived in San Jose he brought us down that route--me and Sean my brother.  This was probably 1992.

I was saddened by Big Sur because of the invasive fragmite all over the sides of the hill.  As an indicator of the ecosystem a parasite like that, among so much splotches of otherwise bald land, well it told me her health is not well.  I was expecting so much more…green.  Only in the center is there deep green quiet and that stretch lasts only a few miles or so.  I thought more than once, well Kel you're spoiled because you lived on the Oregon coast.  Then realized it's why people keep the magic up there such a secret, it's own private host.  Kirk was all reserved and the other campsites too. I was deeply content already just with my drive and really wanted, needed big trees so anyhow so I turned right in Carmel--which means towards inland--and got a room for $50 when I got to Salinas.

Salinas is mostly Mexican which anyway next to the wealth of Carmel made me feel more at home.  I got tacos and watched the Ravens win on cable.  From there, next morning I got on 1 again and took it towards Santa Cruz.   I got to Big Basin and lost my cell again, which made me happy because it was the final piece of grace towards the silence that I need.

This morning all I could see was no shower with the crisp yum of redwoods still in my hair and curled up some place with poetry and coffee.  So I set out knowing that was it, magic vision flowing like it oughta or useta or is anyway again, and now on the other side of those coastal ranges I landed in the town of Saratoga in a wood floored cafe that roasts their own beans.  I had the most blazin burrito for breakfast even though it was already close to noon.  In this valley where around me the redwoods sing the sound you need absolute quiet to hear--well, yes.  Cozy is the word.

Writing now and will scootch to the corner in a second for a over-stuffed couch and poems and the real work, which is translating to words the sea and tall-tree talk.

Humboldt in the morning, with soul-fam.

As it should be, for Giving Thanks.

You know who's outta here?

Yaaa--

This grl.

See ya other side of Big Sur.  Travelin mercies and harmony blessings, for all~

Muscles that are strong enough

The rain of course, which is a million different creatures depending on who you are relative to the space you inhabit.  This morning it is skeleton fingers on the sky light six feet above my head in the little loft where I sleep--reminding without it we are dust but with too much this canyon could wash away.  As life, a terror or a blessing as well as the washing fluid dance of every nuance in between…

So the rain wakes me at 3:30 on a morning when I need to rise at 5 to leave for school.  And it is peculiar, how the body remembers.  I lay here and for no seeming reason recall December in 2004.  I'd been asleep in my old bed at Ocean Pines.  My boyfriend at the time was in the twin bed beside me, we'd pushed them together to sleep close.  We were living in Oregon on the coast to make money after traveling for five months and had made a harried, stressful trip home for the holidays.

I remember waking up from the most saturated sleep and sighing and thinking, ohh, it was all a dream.

Then waking came, and reminded me that no, I had a return ticket waiting and the rainy season in the mossy Suislaw and the tides of the Alsea rushing in and out to the Pacific were where I would return.  I didn't have a job and neither did he.  We were in that in-between space that feels like life at any minute will bottom out, that panicky place of potential free-fall.

It was just on the other side of following through with everything we'd set out to do--travel North America and live on her land, sleep in the forests, honor nature as our host and our home.  We were faced next with Now What~and it didn't feel good.

Of course, as life does, it moved on and we did with it.  I got a job, so did he, it was hard to cut heart strings when the time came and we travelled on.  But that body memory.

The oh it's not a dream…I got to do this now and don't really know if I can, march all the way through.

How muscles that are strong enough to do the marching actually come from the journey, the steps you take one by one, to get you to move.

Movement itself is the conditioning, what makes you strong.

That's what the rain brought today.  Makes me wonder what's yet and about to come...

The noon church bells

The church bells on Forest in Laguna are my favorite part of Saturday stroll. I am sitting downtown, on a bench in the sun. Thinking about how only a 35 mm could capture the light in the fall

or the spring, or winter.  The special summer light of this town. The noon church bells made me stop, sit.  The kind of sit that is more a prayer.  I slept late so there was only half an hour left when I got to market. The man who sold me sundried peaches for my oatmeal hooked me up with cherries and pluton and apricots too. He charged me $3 which was half the price of what it shoulda been. I left there just now with the biggest grin.

It is noon now, in four and a half hours it will be dark.  I haven't even had my second cup of coffee yet--stopped to write on my way to refill.

There's so much right now that can slide on by...unseen. It's extra important to me, then, to just pause a while. In the sun.