The Impulse Itself

Already the sunset is a half hour later.

2015-01-21T17:43:00.002-08:00

The sun is this ridiculous red-orange ball and because of the haze today it is sinking behind Catalina but you can't see Catalina. So when it is almost gone it looks like a ruby mountain tip sitting there alone against this sheet of mute blue. I am laughing and the sea wind has wet my eyes. Already the sunset is a half hour later than it was at the peak of winter, the solstice. And yea, indeed, that was a whole month ago.

On my drive home I am delirious only the way January ocean air and beach mud can make me. David Bowie comes on and the windows are down and it is a remastered version of Unwashed and Slightly Dazed. I feel like the air is ruffled currents of ribbony light wilding up my hair. I laugh again and think what in the hell, this is where I live?

And my people back east don't understand. Hell most my friends in Calif don't. Magical Laguna. On Oak St where I go to write and do laundry and for pizza there is a totally out of place statue of Pan on the corner. Across the street on the other corner is the first place in Laguna I ever went. This is Olamendi's, frickn Wallace three years ago when I first got to town from Sonoma took me out that Friday night with pals of his from Billabong. We go to some private party at some rando Mex restaurant. Private DJ, makeshift bar, whole thing. We danced our asses off that night.

Today I finished my daily writing and cruised across the street at Oak. I walked forever, it was really low tide, I walked in my boots on packed mud, you could see the rocks where normally the water surges and flows. The rivulets making marble designs of the sand. I walked past the empty rich houses past Brooks, past Cress, past the Bobs Big Boy on the balcony of that one condo. All the way to where the big circle hole in the rock is close to South Laguna, and landed up at Woods Cove. I sighed and sat a nice while until I was no longer alone. By the time I got back that big orange sun was sinking low.

What a day, unlike all others and also just the same. God damn it when it does, seize how good it feels to be alive.

open letter, ol catfish.

2015-01-19T17:53:00.001-08:00

honey,

i have known a lot of music men. a Lot. i lend my gold hand around all over those streets back there and have a long long time if i do say, which normally i don't.

that said.

there is SO MUCH I WANT TO SAY.

it must be done over other wires than these.

so i will go w: this is the first time ever in my life that i have listened to an album of a friend and been absolutely wowed. i mean these--i know i am often a cheerleader so let me be real, real clear--these songs? one on top of the other? i cannot handle it. normally w my peeps when i say wow, it is because as a whole picture, a whole piece, an album right? it captures the essence of you that is original you and as essence and out of admiration for you, ohhh hell yea, i get it. but THAT is NOT what we have here.

um wtf this is so the exact other of that--where the album as a whole makes me swoon because it as a whole is what it is bc of HOW INDIVIDUAL TO THE ENCHANT EACH AND EVERY SONG IS, which makes this extraordinary >>> get this? like NOT ONLY does each song live out the very life of its own soul WHAT!? every song on the album being fuckn epic is what makes the album so fuckn epic, the songs stand their own ground each but as a whole make the album this masterpiece, like a crazy explosion of vastly different-similiar songs. I don't know how to say this--there is so much influence i hear in each but so much of YOU, in different flavors of you in each, too
which is what i mean to say differentiates from others music i usually first hear, which is that every song is different and therefor makes you. most albums run a single flavor and make a nice long song separated by different titles. this is like. w t f?? how did you did this?

i am wowed.

thought you should know

In no particular order

2015-01-17T16:55:00.000-08:00

It had been a while, so it'd been nice, being on the road.

Ocean City. Laguna Canyon.

Big Sur. Santa Cruz Redwoods.

Humboldt.
Western Maryland. Laguna
Beach. Los Angeles. Ocean
Pines.

How that's supposed to make me feel.

2015-01-14T10:15:00.000-08:00

I am writing this week with loud music for part of it which I'm not used to being able to do. So far, so good. My Wednesday morning regular cancelled this morning and I had slept on the sofa because it would be easier to get up early. I like mornings that start like this, right off the couch like it's still yesterday and all I have to do is go change and fold blankets. Coffee will be ready by the time the screen is already open and gaping and that is a huge, weird turn-on. And then I am sitting and then I am finger tapping and time is disappearing behind me like road under tires. I don't get any of this. And writing feels like I am almost to my shoulders in the hot spring muscle soft waters. Every word I write I also see a dream splice, and it has been like this the last several days where I am walking in the middle of last night's dreamscape. It is funky to weave my thesis in with all this. My therapist's direction: follow the soul of the work.

What in the good love of fuck? I don't even know what that means either. I have never been so frustrated and so at peace in my life. I think of October 2011 living up north at the top of the state dirt redwood backroads and doing yoga under the green canopies. And in a forward bend and stopping on a choke feeling of glee because, ohhh my god, this space here on my back deck I could see this. Deep inside in places that always just felt like discontent, because that's yearning, I saw this land and this yoga here, that fog and that sun, the pine needle earth, these trees! Holy god. And that's what this is, yes. This little hobbit house window looking out the canyon, the heater on the floor the music and the sun deck for reading in the late sun hours. My god those moments in my past I remember now, misery so stuck inside cuz that I could see all this, too.

There's nothing worse, more whiney--than that. When?

I was writing a long spondown of poetic compulsion bc damn it there is a man on the east coast who still has me a little stunned. And what I was writing was sounding exactly like the song singing. Which I'd never heard, it was Po'girl. Mercy. I saw them in Easton at the Night Cat two different times back when there was still a scene there. I lived in the best ever apartment in Easton, with a wall length eight foot high book shelf and a bedroom I'd made my study for writing and meditation. My bed was in the living room which made it fun when guests stayed on the couch. I could sit on the roof at night there and look out over Goldsborough. And smoke cigarettes bc that's what I do.

There is the deepest hollowed out space beneath me that says only one thing, oh my god how am I 37 already? How?

It is the first time in a long time that I don't know how that's supposed to make me feel.

The silent prayer

2015-01-12T13:03:00.000-08:00

The hobbit house is built in to the side of Laguna Canyon and for that reason at night with no heat it feels cozy and held by the earth herself. I have a space heater Annie and Tony gave me when I first moved in and that's all it takes to stay warm. With lots of soaking rain the soil is green and smells like life. Even the morning mist-gray feels right in an atmosphere like this, one that sings Allliiiiive!

Damnit even if the Gods themselves gave me a paintbrush I couldn't of hand-created a life more exactly specific to what I love. This I tell Serena to ensure her, this, this our hard fought independence, our always-there choice, to live. What Laguna Beach for us actually means. She has done it every step of the way as I have and I admire her fiercely and devotedly for this. We will always have this. I laugh then and say because they did! I took my brush right from the God's hands! Said gimme that I will choose the life I live! Serena laughs too, this our secret, what we treasure and hold dear in the other.

It has been a long road since she left the treehouse upstairs. Life, which in living gives us what we need. We are so blessed I also tell her, and yes, yes we are I know, she says back to me. I feel a gulp in my heart and for us both feel-say the silent prayer.

I am always so wrought through with home and the ties that bind. Spent two years studying the psyche of this, of these things, and am convinced more than ever of the continuum of earth, of how she uses her people to soul-speak for a place, and in this way keeps sacred the tides of the land. There is so much life outside any door. When I first got to California the best part was how new it was. I vowed never ever to take you for granted Holy California and even though sometimes I start to, in the end I never do. Or still haven't. And that's what life is. To keep waking up. Again.

I consider family, too. Back east, here. Derynne and Cam, the kids. We buried her brother in what for her I know was a long whir of endless sad. Pacifica family and blessing the sacred space for Eve and Kalen to wed. Visiting with Atticus, seeing clients again, waiting on Jasmine to get back for school. Through it all there are tacos at Feast, the hot counter in San Juan with the pounds of chilaquiles, the clerks at the market downtown who tell you they missed seeing you, there is mermaid beach and the other secret spots and burrito joints with surf boys covered in tattoos. It is amazing how our tiny rounds from day to day connect us in, make life, see us through the daily passings of grocery trips and recycling and take-out Chinese food. See us to the big ones. Death, marriage, birth, tears and laughter. The sighs in between where words can not fit.

So it life again. I come back to you. I let you in.

Upon the screen.

2015-01-09T12:27:00.000-08:00

I want to speak with authority but maybe I'm wrong--though this is my third winter being here so I ought to, if it feels right, be able to believe my ability to judge the seasons of this place & speak the earth speak like I so often do.

This said, it is like springtime here, or how we learn spring by the tide of April back east. I love it, the earth awakes, it rises my heart like a flock of doves sit beneath which maybe that's because it's true. The buoyancy, the fat bird-singing songs infused in the ascending green. I am not more than this: the live song.

It is, and I hope that readers who read me one time before for the poetry, get this--a time of waking myths. Activating our mythology is the charge of the day--and I mean this as base and re-rythmic as allowing your thoughts to settle in to your conscious choice of brand new words. New stories. I am writing, clearly, precisely, my own. By being the words. It has been so long. I think, I see my Self, honor, bare witness seem to choke just a tidbit, and say Could it really? Have been this long? And more, Is it true I actually came out here--here California--on a hunt for them? And yes, just there, the echo--yes that is true. I did.

It HAS been that long. And there the perplexity, Could it really be sure, true and simple as THIS? And that is what's most devastating to say. That when it's been since July of 2012 that you've had word activation you actually forget what it means. You forgot what it is like--no, you forget that it's possible to cowrite song. Aghast, even as I write this I stare at the screen--how is it possible to so unwittingly forget what it means to come back to my self?

I have no questions though…the years that ask, the years that answer…And so it is. All answers.(Even though questions are how they seem, you forgot this though the double vision cross-eyed grace.)

Even sure as I see it finally, visited by my hands that place it up upon the screen.

I was gone fifteen days.

2015-01-07T10:13:00.000-08:00

Not really sure what happened other than I slept eight hours last night, almost to the exact minute, and felt clean and clear waking up in my bed in the loft in the canyon. In the California mythos of sunshine-wintertime.

I was gone fifteen days but the truth is it was way, way longer than that. On Friday Uncle Tim, who is my godfather by the soul way, called in the morning. It was Ocean Pines gray out which is its own special prison that keeps the winter folk away. The thing is with sock-in like that marsh gasses keep the soil tender-moist and smelling green. So we took a four mile tall tree walk on a path he tends for the Rec department and I cried those hot soul-cleanse tears that are meant only for God-ppl and wise women, which of course are the same thing. Helped me to take serious the karma I have between me and my own god-kids, too. Later I found out about Derynne's brother and couldn't see straight again.

So Konan came through winding us up at Cork Bar downtown which in a million different scenarios if I had to hand-pick that would be down towards 9 hundred ninety thousand on the list. But here's the thing, the Wild proclamation: you just never know you know? We wound up late night in WOC and that there was the only place in the world I needed to be, kicking it w his real home grls and seeing myself in them in a way I haven't seen me in Way. Too. Long a time.

The next day I stayed in pajamas til 7 pm and watched the Red Tent and ate the soup broth I'd made/been making since the first night at home. Witchy bitches make witchy brew. We watched the Ravens rock Pitt like we all knew was coming. WILD card that's Baltimore, that special Baltimore one-eyed medicine some mistake as bad (false-pride).

And that's what's up, tracking home, the special tendencies that run the soul of who you are cuz of the land peopled through of from-where-you-come. If you can read and track this, good for you. If you can't you need help dark-seeing which means between the lines. Linguistics. Can't be studied. Someone should tell Pacifica that.

Point is this all happened or started back the night I went to HB to meet Yasi and Konan started blowing me up--that's the thing about WILD, all cards eventually come a calling and that's the thing about one-eyed medicine. It's your duty to rise up when the reminder comes: you CAN see.

So now Humboldt makes sense, the long 101 journey home again to the earth and the tides that rise. I come living back to the canyon, no food in my hobbit dwelling just coffee and no phone charger to keep me tied to time and ties and all that hell. I write these words and The Light comes on which is Erin Mac back there in Baldamore making her next moves saying wutsup. She comes through as WILD does, like I useta say and always will, Poetry is my only religion.

That is what's up.

I know Who I am. I need little else than that.

Prayers that all ppl get right. Or Wild. Either or is the same. Go listen to some good music if you're dead!

I'm going for a swim.

You can drink.

2015-01-04T06:51:00.001-08:00

The part of me I landed on since even before Maryland I have pretended not to see but it's sitting here finally staring back at me. This happens some days your one-eyed blindness comes a-reckoning.

There is fine gray rain-light in my back room at Ocean Pines. The quiet truth is you can't go back again. If you know me you know words flex in and out and taunt and haunt my head, you know fire propels and burns my guts and runs my legs and doesn't let me settle, you know the arrows of these things draw electric on my skin and you know the deep quiet places I like to disappear from it all into mellow trance and stare. You also know there's a shine that transmutes everything and illumines the muscle of my heart and leads me and that most of all for this heartlight I will and do forsake all.

My father leaves for golf after coming back for a rain jacket. It is near 60 out today. My mother is on a plane to Mexico. Miles from here my cousins are in cozy nests each with their loves and this of course is the only thing that makes sense. I try not to be jealous or misunderstand. The first beach boy I ever loved has wrung me up and washed me out which is exactly what I came here to let him do. All of it is past now Kel, can you be past it, too? HOME. Where I stand it sits out like a soft grassy tump just above some fast moving blue waters. They are crystal clear. To write this makes me also see the Ocean City pier. There is above it a sky that is soft and pink-yellow with the warmth of a season-worn sun. The waters are tracking and quicker than they've been in a long time and yes, that's it. I don't have to cross them, and that is what it is to stand here. Because you can go back you can go back over and over and again to the many dark falls just behind you oh but to stand here, on the grassy tump with forested woods thick and deep just steps away from my feet--and so many cliff sides on the shore to the other side. You also don't have to. You also can just sit shoreside, and breathe. You also can scoop handful. You can drink girl, you can drink. My god this thing will move you, you can let it, can stop the canvassing and cutting of jungle vines can stop all the bloody poison you keep ingesting in your veins. You don't have to cross these waters again because there's no place else left to go. You can jump in, right here, and let the waters wash you through.

Or you can just stand, too. Stand in this peace awhile, on this sturdy ground. Appreciating the scenery. The where you've been.

The tracking of self

2014-12-08T22:09:00.000-08:00

It is quiet as a cat steps, the gentle return to the self. Delicate as this as well.

When I was growing up and we moved from the old neighborhood of Baltimore suburb sprawl to the country woods and backroads further south, my closest friend lived across the street from me in a house that was built at the turn of the 19th century. It had kitchen stairs, which if you're from the east coast you know are the narrow shoulder-squeezing curvy steps meant for the servants or slaves to use. Honing the return is always like this. Knowledge of the secret passages crept and kept, how to use the quiet shadowed light to slip unseen through the house. How to recognize when some part of your self has become subservient to an other.

And so it was I went away. North on the 1, for many hundred miles. Slept under canopies of trees so deep the green looked black and the sunshine wasn't so much as a yawn. Spent hours of extra hours of travel time just to be able to drive the quietude of mountain roads. As it always goes, I was not the same and more the same than ever before when finally I returned. Drove the Grapevine in panic up- down of body exhaust and got delirious on the man-friend for trying to get too close. It took me a full week to stitch it all together again, what all of that--the departure and return and rupture at the end--might've meant and still could mean.

Now, I move about the hobbit house on quiet cat-step toes. Set the slow cooker to high after it sat on the counter for three hours ingredient-full but not plugged in. Mistakes are made: I'm not wholly present, but know as much--can see at least that I'm not which is as close an assessment of the truth as can ever be seen. I open books, close them, adjust the light. Take notes. Miss movement in my body but know this is temporary, this physical time-out. Feel certain of being on the verge of things. A surety of witnessing: the stealth and knowing look of being so close to, and at once amid, the ever-endless circle of tracking and tracking the tracking of self.

An act of love

2014-12-04T10:25:00.000-08:00

Boom-shaka-laka he says, and turns, keeps talking, good choice--more a mutter under his voice. He is responding to my breakfast sandwich order. The woman next to him with the hair and eyes we would've called hipster ten years ago but is just Youth now is wringing her body, a posture you have to be near enough her to feel or sense rather than see. Squirming. Trying to contain her energy. We used to call it wilen--trying to hold that feeling in. They are jolly, inside-skin-sweating, barista-caffeinated in that contagious way that saturates me so completely I have to sit down and write about it.

To write, to just say: I witness, I see. And also I guess, for some of us anyway: Yes, I also have been…

...A barista, a million 5 am mornings the slim shiver ice slap to the face brutal as breath in the morning coming in from the Bay. Get the lights on and newspapers out for the Pines retiree locals who'll be here by 8. Espresso grounds airborne or on your hands actually infuse your skin, that high-wired trigger volt there even if you don't drink, gotta go gotta go gotta move keeping going what to do nowwww. Brown-eyed hippie boy and his broad shoulder townie friends, Natalie's Comfort Food blueberry muffin smells, how smells actually fog your glasses, December mornings walking in to Play it Again Sam's, start the slow drip 7am, senioritus and early-caffeinated-sobriety thirteen years ago in my college town.

I have been…

...I leave the rehab early this morning. Two clients I used to work with, back. One strung out again, one almost half a year clean. The same jittery barista-body wringing-energy in them. One from tweak, one from the joy, the life force, the vitality that is wordless but throttles through you in a rush of yes I can.

Hope is a funny thing, its wavers and disappearing acts, its suddens rushes and returns.

There are so many people in this coffee shop that the line doubles itself in front of the door. Of all the things I have been hope is the most important of them all. Boom-shaka-laka guy never doesn't use his barista high to connect with me, and every other customer, to give them a smile. I remember that. Each moment, which could be…an act of love.

In most moments, a choice. In a million different things. HOPE--which most finally is a thing to be...

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope

2014-12-03T21:42:00.000-08:00

Mostly I am on hear tonight to holla:

It feels so good, after three months watching the concentrated efforts, to see the ground work of the activists rallying in response to Eric Garner tonight.

My trip was so bitchen, but I am tired now and in need of quiet because I feel like I am settling a lot of things.

There is this project which makes me yearn and yumm. It's nice, restores a small elemental part of me, experiencing music seemingly somewhat worth the production..

Finally. Mostly I just want T.S. Elliot to speak for me.

from East Coker  italics mine

III.

O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark,
The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant,
The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters,
The generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers,
Distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees,
Industrial lords and petty contractors, all go into the dark,
And dark the Sun and Moon, and the Almanach de Gotha
And the Stock Exchange Gazette, the Directory of Directors,
And cold the sense and lost the motive of action.
And we all go with them, into the silent funeral,
Nobody's funeral, for there is no one to bury.
I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre, 
The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed
With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,
And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama
And the bold imposing facade are all being rolled away—
Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations
And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence
And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen
Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about;
Or when, under ether, the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing—
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony 
Of death and birth.

The music of gypsy goddess sounds

2014-11-30T10:31:00.001-08:00

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

2014-11-26T12:12:00.002-08:00

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?

2014-11-24T10:08:00.001-08:00

Yaaa--

This grl.

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

Muscles that are strong enough

2014-11-21T05:32:00.001-08:00

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

2014-11-15T12:12:00.001-08:00

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.

Love letters, from Laguna.

2014-11-13T09:34:00.001-08:00

The coffee shop I like to go to is on PCH. When I first moved here from HB coffee shop was the very first thing I looked up. You can sit in the alley and see and speak with the sea. A corner away is the beach where at the top of the street an oak tree stands so great-big and enchanted I am certain you can get to Avalon through there. Seriously, there's even a random statue of Pan on that corner which always makes me think about the artists then hippies that mapped this town. Supposedly, Ken Kesey lived on my street decades ago when it was a commune. There is an unfinished, always under construction straw-bale sprawling mansion which is the first house on the right and most times when the man is up there under the tarp with the yellow light on slapping on some earthen adobe I think of that. The free love vibes that built all the funky houses, tucked away back in the canyon where I live. The folks in and around town comfy-clothed with the little lippy smiles that embody that, still.

Sometimes people in their frenzy get under my skin which is what happened yesterday. I was in the alley fusing creative writing with thesis research and had really dropped in to the flow. This hetero couple shows up, he was loud, she louder and that's one of the first things I learned to hate about Southern California. The obnoxious warm-up suit men with too white teeth, yoga pants women with fake tits fake face or at the least fake blonde hair. These people always talk too loud and are purposefully drawing attention to themselves. Often they have a little annoying fuckn dog.

Our coffee shop almost never gets these types, who in my experience don't take the time to meander and sip and stare at the sea. Anyhow I got up from the alley as soon as they sat down and went inside to the high top in the window. It had just cleared out and the man was there, beginning the afternoon ritual of roasting the beans. It's the only coffee shop I've ever been a regular at that roasts their own. The whir noise and knee-deep smell has become part of the atmosphere for me of love.

It was a little after four so the sun was muted by the horizon clouds. Hazy orange light came through the front window in a slant from the blind pulled half down. I was writing and thought I saw a guy I knew. It started me thinking about how many men I've dated since I've been here. A lot. Real, adult dating. I don't drink so not talking hook-up or first night sex followed by oh shit what next. But like, I meet men on the beach or out and about or for a while on the dating site and then the customary phone calls and get to know you dates.

A face from the past was on my radar yesterday, we talked for a few minutes about how much we have in common because of our beach lifestyle. He made me think about this. Specifically: I have dated a lot of good, just not right for me men. Since right around when I moved to Laguna two years ago it started with a lifeguard in Newport and pretty much since has not stopped except for last year when I took three months off. When a funny outspoken Brazilian guy who drank too much got me playing the bullshit hang-out games I was so good at in Ocean City before I came west.

I am actually single right now, not dating anyone. Enjoying the golden silence, considering the momentum of my life. My life, built by me, measured out in breaths I take in and out and choices I've made. Clear seeing, looking out on a life made by my own two hands! I have only four months left of school, including this month. I am not ready to talk about that yet, but it is there like a new part of my breath and I am tending it everyday. As a rule, since a gnarly gnarly break-up in 2008, I keep my love life tight and quiet on the internet. We broke up the same month I got on Facebook, so it's sorta been how I reinvented. Figured out who I was, separate from a man. That's six years behind me now though--and in the orange haze light, that sun that spilled over my hands like it was meant to feed the ink from finger tap to screen, this all amounted in my head yesterday. Thinking on the men that have showed up as I've walked this whole, wild way made me pause and see this whole, wild way:

My god, I have been in Laguna over two years now. That is longer than I have ever lived anywhere, ever! Since I first left my mom's when I was 18. I have stayed in one place. I stayed! Even at Philosopher's Terrace, where I had my name on the lease from 98 to spring in 02, I still left to go live twice with mom. Alcohol and drugs. They'll do that shit to you.

I almost left, last summer. I almost fell back, like a wise woman can slide a minute

into dumb girl hang out games, to my old style of cut and run.

Last week I was picking out furniture for my sun deck, this little wooden alter built up out of the side of a Laguna Canyon wall. Underneath, my compost bin. Attached to post, my hammock swings. I just bought fins, snorkel gear, got my wetsuit out to live in my trunk for easy access. It would seem rather than making cut and run plans, my intent is to snuggle even further down and in.

What contentment, to nod at the coffee roaster, glance up from the orange-gold on my hands. It doesn't feel melodramatic anymore, like something I need to figure out. It just is, easy as how the same sun that rises will eventually go down. Love letters, from Laguna. From and to my heart, my soul. They are my own :)

On their Facebook page! Me in the alley.

I put their sticker over the Starbucks logo on the plastic cup I reuse.

Which cracks people up. It goes everywhere I go.

Truth is whole and living and malleable in our hands!

2014-11-11T11:31:00.000-08:00

Lately what's in and out of my mind? Discrepancies. Like in character.

I was living on the road in early 2012. Hanging out learning magic AND practical ways of how to heal the earth. At a Tibetan Meditation Institute that hosts a bunch of starry-eyed heart-fueled pagans for a permaculture school for 2 and a half weeks every year. This is up in the Cazadero hills, Sonoma. I was both, still am, both a peace-full compassion junky meditator and starry-eyed earth-worshipper who believes in the magic fuel of an open heart and can get down in and with the transformative power that happens when we deal with the real deal: our own life-funk and shit.

A man who was at that training said something like, his contradictions were the best part of him. And that's it: Permaculture, 101. That life thrives the most at the edge, where two ecosystems combine. Where new life can be let in. And that's us. Humans. Our light part out in the open and our inner dark, our hidden shit. The center where they combine.

One's not more real or important than the other, which some beliefs would have you worhsip. The shadow is more real bc it's not persona. The persona, which can be light-touched, "spiritually" touched, is more real because it's conscious.

Ok so yea, I tend to feel more whole and rich around a starry-eyed shadow-walker than a light-filled shadow-thrower myself! ;)

But to me neither side is true. Or maybe each is. Each is a part of the truth?

To me, rigid definitions of our self or each other can become the end of personal vitality.

As I write this, Dead Prez's rap "the cause of your ignorance, flaws in your discipline." And I get that, the need for discipline, particularly as it arises out of self-introspection and contemplation. But also--what if personal discipline includes shaking off dogma, includes shaking off any adage that professes because I am this thing I also must be this…? Meaning, isn't self-discipline about self-honesty? Isn't that the depths of it? Honestly looking at what's real about us, shallow or deep or in-between as it possibly is?

And also, I don't mean just looking at our selves. I mean making room to embody it, to give how we're feeling in our heart embodiment by being it. Experiencing it, experimenting with what's emerging.

This is a major issue with words, by the way. How they are symbols for something we already associate. Which means we will read them written by others and embody our preconceived notion of them instead of allowing the thought-function to drop us in more deep.

(Pardon that interjection…)

You know Gandhi right? Most people do, at least because of that meme you must be the change you wish to see. If you study him, like really try to get down with the man behind his words…Read his autobio, read the critical readings that arose from that. Gandhi's whole point was live what you believe, live it, embody it. AND if, as you do so, it no longer feels exemplary of your soul, change what you speak to match what does. Change how you be to meet what's true for you. Be the change you wish to see.

Of course, this coming from a man who lived women as second class citizens and who also believed sex and sex energy was wrong to embody…

DISCREPENCIES. Truth is whole and living and malleable in our hands! That means changeable!

AND we can't see whole parts of our selves sometimes! The shit is in the dark! That means we can't see it! Haha the best we can do is have compassion for this, understand we are half blind groping around for light and touch. Each of us.

I have this buddy Justin who I love. He said in December that he was worried about me. That my mountain was blocking out my sun. He was talking about grad school.

That's just it. When you can't see--you can't see THAT YOU CAN'T SEE!

Have mercy on us, each. May it begin, within.

Last week, I walk out to the driveway to get in the car and go to my favorite place, Mermaid Beach. I wanted to, had to, go dive under the ocean green. Crazed Kelly zeal. A hummingbird catches my eye and mesmerizes me in the deeper way. I drop in, meaning, I recognize that it stirred my heart to see that little bird, so I honor the stir. It reminds me in that moment of a time in 2004 when I was living in the national forests and wilderness in this country. I lived the reality that it is possible to be able to interact with nature and to experience nature outside as reflective of your inner nature--follow me here, this is BIG mindbendy stuff--to Know them as one thing. To embody nature as interactive with you, as reacting to you as you too react to it. That this can happen if and when you deprogram your ideas that that's not real. I think all this in an instant because those years of 04 and 05 is when that was my primary lesson, and it partially started with an experience while living in the woods with both hummingbirds and butterflies.

Hummingbird is a symbol for spontaneous joy. I think of this driving to Mermaid Beach, let my thoughts of this symbol spiral me down more and more to the heart where living truth is. Feel jamming and alive in the moment. Yea, dude. My JOY'S BEEN GONE. This feeling of life inside me. It's been so…FLEETING. I haven't been awake to it, because you know…Dark.

Next thing I know I am laying out my towel on Mermaid Beach and here flies up this sweet little hummingbird doing horrible unstoppable spirals at my towel unable to stop bc his or her little wing is hurt. I mean she's freaking with the panic look in her eye. She or he lands then at my towel and I scoop her or him up in my scarf and do reiki on the little creature, singing and loving it and very gently caressing the little sweetie, bc really, what else is there--that's all we can really do.

Then when the warmth passes and I can tell it's time to put him back on the sand, I do. She sits about a minute or two and then flies off no problems.

So I get to heal a symbol of Joy.

So now here I sit, thinking about rigidity, and dead forms of things, and how our vitality can disappear easy as that. And old systems of self-care, and giving too much because we think it's what were supposed to do, and how this is as rigid as it gets: "supposed to". And how we don't see, cuz we can't see that we don't, til we do.

If you're following ANY of this, good for you. ha

Discrepancies. Sid Hartha, Herman Hesse. He wrote about it. Everything is true including the opposite of the truth.

So yea, seeing the shit! Dark paradise, when finally on comes the light. What will I choose (the holiest discipline there is: choice. And it's opposite too, deciding not to choose…a half-lined choice, itself) today to make alive? Who do I get to be?

(and will it look like a long ass diatribe instead of my thesis, Ch, 3???)

A brand new chance

2014-11-10T20:59:00.003-08:00

It's been a long day. I just remembered that I left to see my first client at 7:30 this morning. That feels like it was last week.

There are heavy, heavy things going on with people I love.

It makes me feel sad which I can handle but today sad is edging near lonely, which is the shadow side of appreciating a handmade life all your own. That part doesn't feel good.

I had a meltdown about my thesis and feeling like there is no way what I am writing is good enough. It is profound to me, the depths of self-doubt I have around raising my voice and valuing the Women's Mysteries as something real and valid and profound.

Erika of course came through with her wisdom and words.

This is the part where I pause and remind myself--feeling curled up around the edges is old self-care which means I have started to slide with managing my basic needs. This can happen ten times a day. And does. To all of us. Can we stay close and present when we see it? That's the thing….

Saturday I spent at a beach clean-up then at Aliso Creek for snorkeling and sunset bonfire fun. There is nothing that relaxes me like the elements. A long salt soak. The way fire unwinds the muscles, makes the soul softly sing. How surf pounds on the sand in the dark steadies the beat of your heart.

Sunday I acted a fool with Alison at Sharkeez from breakfast time til literally after the sun went down. Somehow all that golden time of fun seems far off in the background now.

Brian writes and says he wishes we had smart phones when we were kids to have caught the goofy stuff we did. Like our old renditions of Stand By Me. That knocks me back to 6th grade, he woulda been in 3rd, when that was our major jam. Somehow it is November again, the end of the year closes in. It is time to shut this computer: STEP AWAY FROM THE SCREEN! and let the day bring its quiet end.

Cuz then comes tomorrow, its new experience of present tense. A brand new chance at joy and choosing love, once again~

The tears were gratitude, every one.

2014-11-07T10:58:00.002-08:00

In my morning time yesterday I was done with the sitting and done with the journaling so I thought I was done, for good. Ready to start the day. Thursday's have been thesis writing days so my head was a tumble of forward motion towards that. Words on a screen. Losing time down the rabbit hole of books into thought into books into new next thought. Like little lights in a row each of which transmits power to turn the next one onnnn. I love it. I have never before been so plugged in to my real life on every end.

I got down out of the loft and went for my phone. I keep it plugged in downstairs where I can't reach it. Or that's when I don't have clients in the morning or need for the alarm. That way my precious first glance at me in the morning isn't consumed by that dastardly little electric machine! Those high-wires they so easily infiltrate my brain.

When I got down the stairs and peeked the time it was only 8:30, I don't write til 10. Sighhhh, morning time. I made a fresh cup of coffee and climbed back up to the loft.

Hoagy Carmichael on Pandora brings up muscle-ey memories that catch in my chest and stir my whole body to rise. Coloring in bed for the next hour is what I did. It let my body transmit memories. I was alive, at Church Street, which is the house in South Baltimore, Brooklyn Park, where my grandparents raised 7 kids. This little two bedroom and an attic space, the living room ahhh god the kitchen, a space so living in my earliest reverie. I spent a lot of time there. It's a body memory of orange-brown linoleum and yellow walls and my grandmother's round squooshy bosom where her hug got you lost. And my pop, his records. Porgy and Bess.

It was amazing to me. I had this new experience of re-living the love-light of back then, and feeling so happy my eyes brimmed with wet tears at least for half the colored pencil ink pen time. All I could think the whole time was wow, it's never really gone. What a secret to comprehend! That we can revisit love-past at any time.

It wasn't bitter-sweet. The tears were gratitude, every one. Meeting the Self is endless in its inward reigns. It's playful, a living sacrament we each get to make unto our own spirit and soul whenever we choose, each and every day. There's so much joy. There's so much play and life. There's so much and it's so endless and precious and easy to access when we just--do.

In the early morning pain in 1997 when Grammy died I dealt with it in customary McMullen forward motion. Shuffled the girls with their clumsy arms and awkward puberty hair and squeaky voices and braces mouths in to my car. There were five of them, my five girl cousin that all came in a year or so of the others. They were in middle school by then, except for Sarah, the babe. I was 20.

We drove 97 through the county towards where Jackie lived. At some point the car radio played Total Eclipse and that is our song, to this day. Endless. Reverie. Church Street. The bemoans of the aching human heart. An eighties song so legit during the interlude you actually hear blowing wind. Uhhhh yea.

This morning, bc this is the way of the heart when we let her open and sing--cousin Erin's text was waiting when I climbed down the ladder from the loft. A group text to all the girls. It said, Total eclipse on the radio! Love you all-- with a million exclamation points to try to express the inexpressible. We live in Seattle, Buffalo, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Baltimore, California now. It was to me a nod from life that the heart is still home, endless in its ways which lead us both in and outside.

The oldest just had her first girl, last week. Of the six of us, half are parents now. Life goes on. The heart keeps us golden, connected. It eclipses, too, hell yea. And also, overflows of blessings always there, always living and beating, pressing us to look a minute and recognize. To just, see.

This really happened and I am still awe-struck

2014-11-06T19:38:00.000-08:00

I couldn't figure out why the streets were chattering with that low Laguna glee but at Thalia seeing all the foot traffic heading towards PCH it hit me. Art Walk or first Thursday was happening. My glee was elfin and made of sea salt which I suppose is more mermaid then but if you're town bound after the setting of an orange sun you have to go with elf. You need feet, is what I'm saying. Hide the fins. That and also, Kelly J had an Elf the Movie quote on insta this eve so it's in my brain.

And that's my life, salt brain. Sea-eyes. I finally got fins and a mask and didn't even bother with the snorkel literally just ditched my towel and tossed my clothes and ran for the sea. And it feels like I'll blow it now, trying to give words to what that was like, being finally able to see what I could feel for all these years? To really see. Most people it scares them to feel that large body living and breathing and pulling and pushing you all around but me I have nothing but intrigue. It's an honor to dance with her, to be swept up in her moves. And I don't know how to make people understand which means I guess I can't which means I guess I just get to keep the smile of secret glee all to me. Which is that I have a salt water heart. Which means really and secretly I know the truth of the alchemy-romance between the ocean and the sun.

Holy god more than once I had to move my legs hard to get to the top again because I could've stayed down there forever-- but I mean you know, it's just--air. Because when I was far enough out above my head and dove under again and felt it, the pull--the livingness--I turned quick as I could which with fins is still awkward but I was looking for it, what I felt--and there it was and sure as I saw it well it also saw me, too--and this is the part I can't explain and you won't understand. But the shock was enough for me to have to fast remind myself not to breathe in bc I'd a sucked sea. Which I think I would've been happy like sorta it's finding Camelot under there, but also please don't read this the wrong way it's not like I want to drown. What I am trying to say is there where the sunlight went under and was glistening with the water it was real, the livingness, like it was living, had presence. Was more life-full and emanating with the life-ness then the small skate that slid under me or the many many schools of corvinas I swam through. And I knew it was real when I saw it bc I had to squelch my gasp. Like it was animated, where the sun and water met, they made this other, this sacred precious third made out of them together. Just like all great soul mates, that thing, their own third that is her and her or her and him or whatever combo of two together--and the witnessing of the creation of sacred other, the Third. Which is Their's. Of them but not them. Holier than as result of the combination. Startling in its truth.

I have felt and swam and floated inside that presence, its come up and cradled me a million times so it was like for the first time ever truly coming home. To see it. Holy Sacred Third, divine created combo of Sea and Sun. To have it react to and with me. I am not being hyperbolic here or a creative writer. This really happened and I am still awe-struck, in bliss.

It was cold tonight but I stayed out for a half hour or more. I changed on the beach and laid a long time on my towel, watching the sun go down and stunned and still in stoke-awe. I thought I'd cry. Then dude with the blonde ponytail, the one the Coachella boys would call an old loc, he showed up and went out mask and hand boards but he took his piece. To breathe.

And we've never met but always acknowledge each other since we often beach at the same space. But tonight he came right to me when he got out, clearly enchanted too, said Can you even believe it out there eyes clear and wide and green-blue sparkling same as the sea. And I had someone to share it with then, my slack jaw glee, my joy at the livingness unseen now seen. Danny the ol loc who's been in the same spot above Taco Loco for 30 years. Just livin and jammin on the magic out there. We marveled over the sunset so clear you could see San Clemente Island to the left of Catalina.

I drove in circles when it was done confused by the foot traffic and bc I was thinking I'd raised Atlantis with the setting sun. Now I am being creative. The fact is though I had to park and made my way through my little town on its sparkle strung air by foot, greeting other ol locs and finally making my way to St. Anne's. It was $5 enchilada night at Feast. I had a lot to celebrate.

Like the fact that tomorrow I will get to do it again.

Amen. Amen, amen.

You know, like from Peter Pan?

2014-11-05T21:28:00.001-08:00

I left Jan's and had tacos then got Starbucks and got on the road. On the 73 the veins in my forehead were so thick I think you could jump them like rope. Like tangle them out from underneath my skull bone or apart from the muscle up there and use them for sidewalk games. That's what traffic feels like. Trying to untangle the jumprope jarble from my brain.

I'd been so calm too--what the hell is all this red brake light on the toll road? The whole damn reason they make an elitist toll system through the rich part of south county is so entitled brats like me don't have to deal. Just eww. No I didn't actually think that last part that's just me making fun of the southern cali-chick in me. Elitist. Entitled. White. Bratty-ass. Chicken. Me.

Anyhow. I really do have issues with road rage but I haven't in a long time. The way the 73 runs up and down the coastal hills is like a smooth finger along the backbone of the land and feeling her long slow in then out--up then down--breath touches me in that inside place that hummms with quiet rest. The moon fat and white to my left. I love that stretch of road. It's why I originally moved to Laguna. Almost three years ago now…or anyhow come May. I had to take the toll road for an ESL conference to San Diego and was wowed by the rolling canyon up-downs. Green expanse this side of the 405 with no construction and dirt hiking paths? Woah what is this magic land? I didn't know a thing about Laguna. I'd only been there once, and that was dancing. And it was dark.

Jan said some stuff near the end of our session though and I guess it pissed me off. That's the part that challenges me as a therapist. My job isn't to tell you what to do, or how to think, or any of that. My job is to help you feel understood. Truly seen, witnessed for what's true in you.

In this way you get to become stronger in who you really are.

And my point today to my therapist was that Wendy, you know like from Peter Pan? Wasn't just the mama in that story. She didn't just play the good girl role, in fact she got to explore never having to grow up, too. She got to have all the same fun as the lost boys and Peter Pan. And that's a hell of a lot fun…So it's not all just stunted, to be enchanted by Never never land. It would be if Wendy didn't know all the subtleties of her role.

But if she does? Does that mean Never never land is still in control? If Wendy is exploring parts of herself, a conscious choice of subversiveness? I got all triggered because I didn't feel like my therapist heard my point. I told her as much, and now I am sitting here wondering: so is it Jan's job to align and hear where I, speaking for me back then, as a wild grl Peter Pan teen, stood? Or to challenge adult me now?

And is there truth in her point, since I'm pissed? That I still love for the enchantment to take control? And if that's a role she's gonna take with me, to challenge me--how do I feel about that, working with clients, challenging them?

Is it something I'd want them to leave with…to have bulging out their brains? I trust her, a lot. And am willing to ride this to see where it leads. I drove to see my clients, with that rope-vein jumping like nuts outta my head. I chose to just focus on a secret I know about, which is were all crazy, just working it out in our own ways. And working it out or covering it up or whatever we each do looks different for us, each and every one. All of us have our own very unique styles of crazy-management. It's a wonder we make it from day to day.

Tonight I for one am happy that at least for today, I didn't ram in to the back of any cars. I actually laughed at myself freaking over a couple brake lights, running those up-downs, grateful to have a bank account, a means to afford a fast track, the little unspoken gifts that made it so I wasn't in traffic on the 405. And now, it feels good--I like how you're there waiting for me, like you used to be, sweet ol familiar blank screen.

The dark comes and then like a switch

2014-11-02T10:47:00.000-08:00

Bob Weir shouldn't be singing about don't you want your daddy to feel alright because I haven't had coffee yet and it makes me think eecchh no bluch what's up with this version of this song? It is a studio version, clean version, Shakedown Street version. The dark comes and then like a switch too, the cold is here. I am adjusting to winter in the canyon. Which means my windows are still open but in the morning I need fuzzy socks and sweaters and live recordings of the Dead that make me think of the dreams of California before California was actually my living dream. You know yellow sunshine cliffsides and PCH. Not mustache muffle you can hear too well bc of over-production. I mean. Sheesh. Also I will need a wetsuit now. At Mermaid Beach it was the blue and gunmetal color on the twists and turn-unders that make the lips break so stunning white. Which if you know the sea like me you know that means cold. I was right and even though past the pound it was clear and turquoise underneath, still it was goosebumps soon as I got out and my hands took several hours to warm. It was the same before on Tuesday, just that it didn't look cold yet.

Haha this, my life. I spent at least six hours yesterday cleaning up my online presence. Online presence!!? Isn't that a trip? When I wrote that I saw in my head my old bedroom when I was a young teenager where in the corner I had this sittin-chair, like a futon armchair thing. It made me feel like, you know. Adult. And it's where I would sit and paste pictures on the wall of cut-out magazine poems and surfer boys. And ohhhh lawd feel the angst of gahhh but life is sooo hard. Then smoke a cigarette out the window and think of all the reasons I needed relief. Back of hand on forehead. Dear me.

I went to San Juan to meet ppl down there to celebrate a birthday and the 73 was like driving through a technicolor scene. Like sunshine batches you could actually reach out and touch and make into braids to ribbon through your hair. Clouds the size of bonnets for the Angel-Queens that ride in the sky. What this land would look like if we got more of this once or twice a year rain!? Come on world you're so beautiful it is devastating. You crunch me apart like I have glass insides.

Hand to the forehead.

Again.

When I got home after that I spent another five hours on business cards and brochures. It was 2 when I turned in. The flat pat of rain outside. The holy surrender cry of plants that long ago had quit. It amazes me the instinct--where does it come from--to press on and on, and do what we have to do.

Life you strange beast. I adore and…also grit my teeth at you. Plants sing better than Weir does out my window. Ahhhhhh ohhhhhhh mmmmmmm yea

thank you waterrrrRelief.

The Vintage Series.

2014-11-01T11:14:00.000-07:00

You guys, I'm back. YES, the Impulse Itself is vibing high and vital! Screaming surging pulsing pressing to get out and witnessed, or at least not to just stay bubbling under the surface any longer.
Can a blog that started only six years ago be called vintage? No haha and I am alright by that bc I dowhatiwant and also, yes of course it can--bc in this high-wire frame of techno overdrive time blogging is as yesterday as MySpace so holllaaaa and whatev. Who's gonna stick with what feels good anyway?

Ya. Def this girl.

So for two years I worked out my esoteric witchy wisdom stuff over on Wild Women Wisdom. I'm really hella proud of that project and how it informed me as a tool through which I could be self-taught. That whole time, (and still) I was getting fed from the bottom on up by my education in depth-influenced counseling psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute. For the past several months I have been behind the scenes, relying on the old persona of KadadaB to work it out for me as I begin to coalese the old with the new in order to focus actively on what will yet be! So STOKED!

Wild Women Wisdom is slowly changing into the hub of my women's coaching practice. I am focusing on self-empowerment, whole-bodied practical day to day meeting of yourself where you're at and learning to love and live your self, through whatever responsibilities and roles are alive and real in your life as a woman. I am happy to work with men too! I will also specialize in The Women's Work, or the Menstrual Mysteries, which is helping women to embody their personal tides until they are no longer mysteries! A life's work, for sure…I offer Skype sessions right now, can see clients in an office space in San Juan Capistrano, and (especially for more ritual or sacred-based work) in my home.

Ultimately--and here's the exciting stuff to me! The seeds of what yet will be! Woot woot--I will be incorporating--ever so slowly, my goal of doing the Social aspect of Permaculture work. SoCIal Perm. I'll be using Wild Women Wisdom to mostly work that out but you know there's no separating soul--so stay tuned on here to learn--WITH ME!!--more about what I mean by that. We'll learn together, since that's always how I do this jam.

The Impulse Vintage Series will be alive-- again! Horay. Bc sure as I am living I need a place to express all the minute expressions of the holy mundane coming through me and that I'm out there relating to each day. In this way, I re-Christen this blog, at the season of Samhain, holy celebratory tide of reverence for the dead. From which comes all new life.

To Poetry, as a way of being, living, seeing. Getting it all down~ holy act of self-creation. Amen Amen Amen.

I love you guys! Play on~

My Last Post on The Impulse!

2013-02-21T12:52:00.002-08:00

Well, no doubt a wondrous, if not overwhelming, several weeks.

Last Wednesday in the morning tulips arrived from my dad for Valentine's. Tulips, which bloom back east around my birthday which is also the first days of Spring. Wednesday was also my year anniversary arriving to Orange County. I started as the ninth member of a long-held writing critique group led by the fabulous Barbara Demarco-Demeritt on Thursday, Happy Love Day to me! And it couldn't have been more timely, or more eloquent, a celebration.

On Friday I talked with my bff Katie for three hours...she was snowed-in in New Haven, CT. Me, I hung up with her, got out of bed (it was noon!) put on my bathing suit and went to one of the secret coves here in Laguna. I luxuriated in the sun until it went behind a far west cliff. Then I drove to Huntington for tacos from my favorite, Normita's. The following day I cleaned my house, moved in quietude and touched all day long by that fabulous stillness of reflection that seems to strike from a magic place time to time.

I saw my first butterflies on Friday, a monarch and ladybug in the same moments on Saturday. In this rapidly changing time here on earth, mother nature let it be known. In Southern California, spring is here!

And for me, too. This blog has been my fateful reflection for five years come April. I am proud of it as it is a mark of discipline and self-reflection I can always look back upon. It helped me grow. Today, in continued celebration--I offer thanks to the Impulse, Itself, for always being there within and guiding me along. I also am happy to announce that today is the last post here at this site.

My focus has always been self-honesty and creative-process here. It has been a means in which I could establish, knowingly, my own creative tides, and eventually know how to mark them. In 2008 when this began I lived on a 400-acre soybean farm on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Through allllll the changes that led me eventually here, those inner rhythms have never faltered, and this space here on the web became my stability.

It taught me a lot, and I want now to combine my gifts of teaching and writing to help others understand the same. The rhythms of their own soul impulse, within.

THANKS FOR ALL THE SUPPORT OVER THE YEARS!! And may this greeting find you happy and open, alive and full of wonder...and may it remind you to begin within... and share with one another, too.

Keep smiling.