The Impulse Itself

Really real and finally here

2012-02-20T01:03:00.000-05:00

A long weekend and all of a sudden it feels like summer, that light, smiley, that quick. Amazing what 70 degrees will do.

Friday night we danced at two different places in Laguna. Mike knew everyone at the first place making it even more surreal for me. The djs were good and different enough for me than club dancing in OC. From the sounds of it dancing's not a common way to spend a night for Mike or his friends but without doubt they had a good time. I know I did, I got to drive my magic bus, always what I like. I needed it, it was a long week one that saw my reality go from dark greens and shades of mist and moist to full technicolor, like on a 3-D screen. We rode bikes around Newport yesterday after I laid on the beach for two hours eating an entire delicious cheesesteak and reading Vogue. That's how unhippie I went. Later, I drove us to Disneyland. We saw G-Love and I laughed harder at Mike's friends than I have with any group of people since I left the hill. It's nice to feel family, and I feel that in any home where there's a brother-heart with friends that dont care if I wear my pajamas all day long.

Saturday I will move in to a house in Huntington Beach. Antique furnished room, desk. Tiled bathroom hand-done by the owner's artist friend. Best part, one mile from the beach. The writing madness is up on me, in a way that I can feel run through my whole body like long spider hands, like some kind of haunt playing the nerves of my skin, like angel wings fluttering out code that I am meant to feel than make in to sound. It is so good, to have that AND the beach all in one great round.

This is something that I've said I've wanted since the night I left Anngar Farm in 2008. Go to the beach somewhere it's always warm. Live on my own, write. Teach ESL.

I have my teaching interview on Tuesday. It's hard for me to get used to the idea that this is real, that this is all really real and finally here.

ALL those varied moments

2012-02-14T16:39:00.001-05:00

In August I didn't think I liked Newport Beach. Maybe I knew there was more on the path ahead I had yet to see, and if I liked it too much then I wouldn't leave? Who knows. The point is, when I parked my car this morning on 31st street to go to the coffee shop I had to call Beth first to get her to tell me it was all real.

Seriously, it feels surreal to be here. One morning in 1995, it was pink and yellow-glowy on the beach from the first strikes of sun, and this always shirtless guy called Ferucio came walking down to the three or four of us laying there on our backs looking at the sky. What is this, Miami out here? he asked, his red Animal afro, his fierce eyes. I never remember any moment on the beach that felt more alive. That's how visceral today has been for me, that's how much on the verge of my life I feel. It feels like I shouldn't let that much happiness in... That much glee.

I had to remind myself that the bottom doesn't need to drop out, that doesn't have to happen. When I totaled my car in October I was terrified, and went through this whole spiral of emotions including the intense ideas that somehow crashing my car was connected to following my heart to move out here. It's crazy as it sounds, I know, all the same it never fails to amaze me the extent to which we humans go to sabotage ourselves. And I saw my brain trying to set that up--with why bother and poor me thinking when I lost my car. Those last two or so days in NorCal those fears were there again, I saw them, let them pass and linger as needed, and still pushed my way through. It's amazing that right on the other side of this really real feeling right now there still sit my fears, barely veiled. That somehow no, no this isn't real. This wont work out and then what, back with my drooping tail I will run home.

I write my process out here on this blog, I share what it is to feel and live and devote the heart to being truly alive. Experiencing it all. It feels right for me to share this part, too, with you readers. So that you know the heart, its wide and funny many different ins and outs. The hopes and haunts, ALL those varied moments, it's what we all have in common. It's what draws us to each other, to keep sharing, to keep at this wanting to live. It Valentines Day, a day to celebrate the heart. Silly and huge and gleeful and frightened as it is.

I love myself completely, the blessed and brave and authentic, the enthusiastic and reverent, the dirty-mouthed and wild, and even the scary, threatening parts too. I'm whole. And doing this thing.

May you, too.

This is it!

When you come back down

2012-02-12T14:43:00.002-05:00

Thursday was six months since I arrived to Cali. Newport Beach down south at my old friend Mike's, I dropped my car off then walked several blocks to put my feet in the Pacific sand. I was only there for two or so days in August before going North up 101. Driving Thursday to Fort Ross State Beach, a 15 or so mile drive that took close to 50 coast highway minutes, I thought of my brother and I on the phone in 2002. We were each about a week out of college, my old friend Dennis from Annapolis who I used to call Padre for his teachings and wisdom invited me and a few others to go to LA. We red-eyed in, and then rented a car and drove straight to Hermosa Beach. I changed in the street and ran to the sea.

My brother Sean called as soon as I got on the beach, said Sis whatcha doin? We used to have this thing back then about calling one another to report our first spring dip in the ocean. I said I'm about to put my feet in the Pacific! He was on the beach in Ocean City, Maryland, he had just moved back in with our dad. Perfect. My bro answered to hold, so he could run down the sand and get in the Atlantic while we stayed on the phone.

Alot has changed since then, alot is still the same. Fort Ross beach was closed for the season, but it didn't take away at all from my winding drive. I actually came around one corner to a cow, walking up the center of Route One, just out for a stroll I guess to get some winter sun. You never can tell what's around the bend, this is what I kept thinking, which made me grin when I showed up to the closed beach. In fact, when I finally pulled off to just bask on a cliff at the edge of the sea, my happiness couldn't be separated out from the warm air, the black crows, Tom Petty on the radio. The green succulents underneath my faded yellow sheet.

In California there's a funny little battle between the north and south of the state. Classic admirable regionalism. Each end not only says there's is the best but especially that the other end sucks. Well, I've been North now for six whole months. The mountains have been wildly good, I speak Redwood now as part of my poetry. But just like the Buddhist's teach, it only matters what you learn in the mountains when you come back down.

So tomorrow I'm heading south. Eager to see what could possibly be coming around my next bend, I'm confidant no matter what I'll enjoy the road.

SO EXCITED ABOUT MY NEW PERMACULTURE BLOG!!!

2012-02-09T03:16:00.000-05:00

I needed a practical way to feel like I am contributing to the solution as we cycle ever forward together on this precious little mama earth of ours, so I started a new blog called Law of Return. That way I can be a mad- gypsy-wild-woman-poet-creative-writer-goddess here, and a teacher-student-nerd-education-enthusiast-idea-junky over there. Visit, and tell your friends! Learn all about the ins and outs of permaculture at Law of Return (www.solutionstartsathome.blogspot.com). And while we're at it...

I do it for my health

2012-02-08T18:18:00.001-05:00

Blue skies like this mean one thing, I have to be outside. Makes me think of Larry in Seattle telling me back when I crashed his floor that the reason for him living there was because he could be an artist and work inside and not feel bad because of the weather.

Blue skies there and a mountain shows up, so I know what he means.

I drove to Guernville this funny little valley town minutes from me where the trees surround in their tree-orchestra stadium-seating-way. You can hear them sing. Mexico drinks the most soda out of any country in the world, in homage to this after I was done walking all around I stopped at the food truck for carnita tacos $2.50 and a Jarrito for just as much. Yummmm.

Now I am at the coffee shop, warding off isolation which is the writer's betrayer-friend. Betraying because you get close to being alone and use it to create but inside of alone is a private blurry line which always gets crossed it turns in to lonely. That happened yesterday but my town-trip, the sun and tacos and the blue sky, was good remedy for that.

I make friends with everything, so I never have to be alone.

This is discipline, this blog here, same like taking vitamins or sleeping every night I do it for my health.

Busy cafe and sunshine hippie way-outs in Guernville, my triple Americano waiting now it's time to get to work.

What else could I do?

2012-02-06T03:36:00.000-05:00

It took almost three times the amount of time that it took to get there to drive home from Santa Rosa tonight. I drove the mountain roads pretending like I knew what I was doing. Finally, driving down in to a valley with a night sky to the left that I could just tell was near the ocean, I pulled in to a Whole Foods.

The Whole Foods alone was enough to know that I was far from home. I got out my GPS and wound up going the long way, down the creepy all black magicy feeling Bohemian Highway and finally back to the cottage in the woods. It's funny to me, I live right now 100 yards from one of the sunniest corridors in Sonoma County; the river across the street is a fork off the Russian several miles away, and driving along side that river through the pastures and rolling hills is one of the sunniest delights I've ever seen. Sonoma Scenic Route 116. But where I am, 100 yards away, under a tall redwood canopy, I sit in the breathless waterfall of the trees busy drinking up their fog. It is always cold, and I am getting expert at building fire.

Friday I hiked an hour along the coast. Yesterday I went to the beach late in the day. I have seen water explode over rocks in ways that make me want to fall to my knees. But I have never seen water explode on a shore, merely from the force of its shallow undercurl break, the way I witnessed yesterday. The blast was so powerful it shook the ground and my breath had trouble going all the way in to my lungs. The ocean was so fiercely, repeatedly slamming itself that it was churned to a froth thicker than shaving cream. Here's the thing, driving along the coast highway looking all the way down to the water, the sets were perfect timed tidy rollers. In the ten minutes it took me to switchback all the way down then walk over the dunes to the sand, that's how quick it changed. It was awing, I stood a long time motionless. Probably my jaw was hanging a little down. That's how much I was in utter trance to the sea.

On my way, later, back up the mountain towards the coast highway there was the white moon, in the blue sky. Night blue sky, that lovely dusk blue. Deer were pitched all up and down the crags of rock, having little grassy chews. Two times different deers looked right at me. I smelled like salt and my cheeks burnt red from the salt air and late sun. I walked a long time up the beach both ways, I watched children, I watched lovers, I listened to seals, I watched the ocean, I heard the waves. I read what Eudora seemed to have prepared just for me to read. Today I wrote all afternoon in a cafe, tonight I drove to Santa Rosa for a movie and enjoyed getting lost on my way home.

I am satisfied. It's an odd feeling, to be so subsumed in the experience of fulfillment, of actually doing it. Gratitude goes unsaid, I am quenched in it. It spins off from me, it's the light step I have, the contentment in watching, listening, feeling the sun on my arms, the mark of charcoal on my jeans. It's more like, wow, I did it, what else could I do? There is wondrous stillness knowing that there will never come a day that I may say I sure wish I had taken the chance and just gone after the artistic life I think I might love.

So, wow, what else could I do?

Thank you life

2012-02-02T23:31:00.000-05:00

The fire that's burning has been burning for 6 hours, I'm real proud of this and if you had to work this wood stove and could say the same about your fire then I'd be proud of you, too. Kindling has to be thin practically as a pencil. There is no flu so it takes lots of slow burning starter then adding on layer by layer wood in teeny degrees of bigger size.

I split wood and love how it feels to swing the hatchet. It smells so good out there and from where I stand in the valley it is always moist and the stream runs in earshot, all of it makes me happy. At night my muscles are sore from it, and my back too from sitting in the chair writing all day and so I soak in the hot tub, feel the power streams and look through the fog channels in the sky. And revel.

This is my life?

The thing is it's hard to say well yes, yes it is, and certainly things are going happily according to plan. Because when you do what I did, set out in your car with just enough money to get you all the way across the United States, with one goal in my mind, there really is no such thing as "plan."

So it's not as practical as yes, yes this is my life going according to plan. It's more like

WOW, this is my life! Thank you life, so, so much.

I'll make good decisions and see things more whole.

2012-01-26T15:32:00.001-05:00

Deborah sent me back to California with a box full of homemade toffee and for three days all I ate for breakfast and lunch came out of that little box. Toffee and coffee, sugar and caffeine. It was a cheap way, and convenient, to stay powered. Now I'm in Eureka, old town which has been nicely revitalized even since I was here in 2004, writing. And drinking the best Americano ever. The toffee here makes me happy because there's only one piece of it, so I'm savoring, plus it is wet outside but not too cold, so the downtown dock air smells thick with salt.

Em took me to the herb store before her and Nick split, when we were done I realized my phone was missing and probably was left in the motel. I got back there and the woman was halfway through cleaning our room. My phone was nestled in my winter hat on her cart. She was happy to see me so happy. Timing. Timing is everything.

And my timing right now is that aligned with medicine of gypsy. I gave appropriate space for the decompression from Earth Activist Training that my psyche needed from me, on just the other side of that sat the details of living arrangements for the next few months. So I've retreated a few days, not to figure anything out but just to relax and shake it loose and have some fun, knowing this step is part of the alchemy of alignment. I got on the road yesterday to see Nick and Em, light and open music and floating up the 101. We ate, danced, did our thing. Slept in a cheap motel stinking of bleach. Today I'm a poetry girl and am looking forward to a sweat in the Arcata sauna-steam. All this, and knowing complete that when I get back to Monte Rio and the Cazadero hills I'll make good decisions and see things more whole. I'll see things all the way through.

A hike tomorrow, among the oldest and roundest redwoods, some quiet time and witnessing how they do and have always stood. That too will bring gyspy rightness. The magic of all-good.

Through the tiny kitchen with our food

2012-01-25T00:32:00.000-05:00

Dora and Leo are here, Dora made miso soup and delicatas for dinner, I did dishes, Bebe amazed us all by her fascinating processing and enthusiasm. It was just like being back at the farm.

At the training I thought often of my Humboldt family, missing them with a sense of magnetism I was sure they felt. I spoke to Em and Nick, Bucket and Dora Saturday night as soon as I left the hills and it was true. We felt what we thought we felt. That is the thing about California, there are already bodies here washed through with love for one another so strong it will forever be home.

Dora and Leo are going to Hawaii in the middle of February, meandering slowly to San Diego than back before then. Mo's in Nevada City with her honey, Jon's sitting meditation at Joshua Tree. I am eager to see all the rest. Which is not to say I am elsewhere uneager: the rainy season is here, the river is fast and brown, the tires make the wet noise on the air. We drink hot soup from bowls and I hunker in cafe corners, writing poems. I have a whole new family, my fairies in the Cazadero hills, my mama mentor who Starhawk will now forever be. There is so much to do. A whole book to write. Southern California beckons. We circle around one another in Bebe's little cottage, circle round the woodstove, the loft, through the tiny kitchen with our food. We meet in the hot tub, text one another what's next in the rounds.

The circles look like rainbows to me in the North California mist. It all feels so good.

This time moving all the way through

2012-01-23T16:11:00.000-05:00

It's so easy, the easiest way indeed, to be "depressed." What I mean to say, to live inside that autopilot function. I woke up this morning at Bebe's after a day of rain. Rain like soggy riversides, rain on everything, trees made of rain, air-rain breath-rain rain in your speech. Rainy Ravens rain day, we watched football and ate potpie at the local bar called Blue Heron. I processed all morning first, rain cry, for the poet all things round the labyrinth again. Chestertown a weepy sigh. Bebe's house is made of magic, since I'd come then gone again she re-arranged so everything glows light now. In the Cazadero Mountains I did magic for two weeks and you can not do magic with fifty people for two straight weeks and then not see the energy of all things when you get back. So high so high.

I met two fairies they live in Cazadero tucked behind the woods. They have friends with a cabin where I may indeed go. Eager for warm potlucks under the deep redwoods. The writing is ready, the hearthands of my skin digit processors are ticking. I think about Jon at Vipassana so far south, I want to tell him his Giants made the Bowl. I think of Gracy and my brother and sister-in-law both away at new job trainings missing the first mobile motions of their little girl. I miss her it feels terrible but I am alright, alive, where I am meant to be. Sad words reflexive, they are how I smile...

Meaning it could be easy to be but I'm not depressed. I'm brave enough to express all the way through! Bebe helped me. I learned so much at training, 9 hours of class a day and at times up to two of ritual, at least. We'd learn then process by going out to play. There was a time in my life when I had a home and a community and a partner, peopled through by what we'd built on our love. Permaculture, holy permaculture took me back there again so for two weeks my heart is what my eyes were on. Poor little closed door. I watched it surface then hide. Surface tweaking then blocking reeling hide again. How could I have let so fully go of who I used to be, where did the man go who helped so strongly grow these roots of me? I watched. I kept learning and playing. Trancing ritual praying. I am good at loving everyone, I am good at loving myself. But my past, that bridge back there, back to me, I am good too at keeping that blocked. Tight and closed.

O Bebe, who helped me. Today I woke in her big sweetness, bed lush warm cabin hugging me and all the dripping trees and air outside. I knew it was time, here I am circling again, this time moving all the way through by willing to go back. I can open to let go, that's how to fuel the moving on. I chopped kindling in the rain, added wood to the fire, heard it crack and cackle and came happy with the words and the morning back in to my whole life again. This fire different here, not like the woodstove I learned when he taught me once years ago. And Gillian sings, and Brandi sings, and these are words I eat whole to taste my own words yet unspoken but starting the first movements of dance in my mouth. Sacred tongue. Brandi, back again, and gillian O poet gillian poet women who I love...and I would really love to hear your voice sometime to close a little distance in my mind...

I'll go back to Cali where I can sleep out every night...

O time. Blessed time, the revelator.

and the words start again

2012-01-23T16:09:00.000-05:00

How a heart mends.

And words start again...

And life goes on

and life rewarms

Say YES

2012-01-17T00:23:00.000-05:00

I think this might be the right time to share something really important.

If no one's told you today, if a song hasn't inspired it, if an overheard conversation in the bank line didn't make you raise a brow, if the sight of the sun going down wasn't just the right majesty to make your heart open, then hear this. Please:

It is never, ever too late to follow what your heart is telling you it deeply wants.

It is not whim.

It is your calling. Never doubt the great swiftness by which Life will align to move you exactly where you are meant to be. Don't be stuck on the why or how.

There is tremendous courage and unseen answers that come, simply by saying YES.

Say YES.

I woke up thinking about sex and men

2012-01-14T13:50:00.002-05:00

Day off here at camp and I woke up thinking about sex and men.

The most read post on this blog is about relationships, being single, being passionately alive. It's gotten almost a hundred more hits than my next most popular. Interesting. Though I am deeply private about that area of my affairs it does not mean it doesn't compel me. I think about it all the time! Which explains all the reads, I suppose human hearts and quiet passions are the one sure thing we all have in common.

My cycle just passed, meaning it's ovulation time. At Eric's house yesterday I couldn't help but notice all the colts, all the twenty-year-olds unshaven, shirtless, shoeless. Twinkling eyes. The new guy/girl flirtations, the girl/girl couple meeting under a tree, the two tight fresh bodies of young people walking off for the first time holding hands. There was so much frolicking in the air. Last night during the mycellium slideshow it occurred to me that not once since being here have I wanted to join, to throw my flirty breath into the swell...

Further proving there is a transition I believe I am making. A passing. The worst consistent pain I've known flogged me for months and months--this was the time of muscle-ripping when I left my long-term boyfriend in 2008. Grief is like that when it hits. Dizzying, foundation shaking. Nameless. It was an ache that can still visit me, and the variety of griefs that got transposed on to that time in my life were griefs that had haunted me, unfelt, for years. The deaths of friends, the loss of best friends, the agony of family traumas in my childhood home. The shame I had yet to let go of of the years of my life in active addiction. I made my passing though, lived in solitude for a year out on a river, dug out my injuries then worked to re-root myself deeply in to the strong soil of my family and friends. When it was over I quit my career, and moved to my family home at the beach. It was a maturity process that I took on consciously and worked at whole and slow.

After leaving my ex, I had two relationships. Both within that first year. After the second ended, because I wasn't ready, I threw myself in to the Game. My obsession became having fun, and for the next two and a half years I met more young twenty-something hottie guys than I ever tried. Twenty-something guys don't date, they "hang-out" or "talk" so I got good at that lingo, at having no expectations, at keeping it light, fresh, fun and funny. Always remembering I was in the Game. The host of female strength around me, of literal single gals out and also ready to have fun, grew and grew. The most beautiful moments of all were in the center of my grls, realizing my belief in my self was doing the same.

There is still a great stigma around women my age who are unmarried with no beckoning promise of settling down. Married women are suspicious of us, married friends question us, relatives look on with concern in their eyes. What I want the world to know: we have our reasons, they are unique, personal, and real. My new friend Irena, from Belgium, said yesterday that she doesn't know if she can have a relationship and live the adventurous life that makes her most happy. She's tried both; like me the committed life left her unfulfilled. It is her fear, that she'll never find the balance.

Here is my passing: I dont want 20 year-olds anymore. I'm done with that nonsense of "hanging out." I am strong, full of life with tons to give. The Game never once afforded me anything meaningful, the one most recent actual my-age man who I thought offered potential ended badly because that's how we met: in the Game. Today I am certain there is a man out there who wants openness and connection and happiness and also adventure just like me. Certain. Until he shows up though, I wont waste my time and energy on less than that. I'll choose the carload of gypsy single grls, I'll choose following my own light and life and dreams, continuing all this education and fun. I'll be brave, and open. The thing about passings are we dont know what's coming next. We just keep the faith that we aren't the same as what once was.

This was all cement.

2012-01-13T22:21:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite things is riding in the back seat of someone's car.

As most people, I am a recovering control freak. I have several years of active recovery in this area, and one of the finest remedies for it has become a knack of mine: I'm really good now at just showing up to the moment if other people or new experiences are involved, showing up and being open, and going with the flow. Which is why I think that one of my secret joys is riding in the back seat of someone else's car with no say over where were headed. Just giving over to the moment, happy to be going wherever it is I am going. It is such simple fun. Five gypsy women, five thirty or almost thirty somethings riding in a car. Single, gypsies, funny, happy, wise. DeVotchKa on, sun almost down, radiant plume-air and shadows of pine canopies twisting all around.

In September on a date with me I randomly found this town called Sebastopol. I spent four hours there, in the buoyant sunshine of the market, on my knees in the used bookstore, smiling and milling on the sidewalks, grinning at strangers like they were friends I was about to meet. Today I went there, me and four gypsies, and also me and forty-five others, to our instructor's house one street away from sunny downtown.

"This was all cement" he said. One third an acre is what he was talking about, tho whole of his land. All cement when he bought it, an old ratty lot. We ooohhh'd and ahhhh'd. Now a food forest Permaculture Neighborhood Center only three years later. One of his six water tanks for rain catchment hold 4000 gallons of captured rain water, or the equivalent of drinking water for his family for three months. We ate fresh veggie cob-oven baked spelt pizzas for lunch. The awe goes on and on.

While he showed us his garden guild he paused at the nitrogen fixers and ran his hand through a literal stalk of sage. It broke mid way down in the most gentle way, literally fell in to his hand. He grinned and horay'd, it was white sage, what I and many other gypsy wild types love to burn for smudging. The group accepted it to take back to camp, an offering from Eric's most amazing land.

I make fun of hippies. I really do. But really, we have fun and love our lives and you can't make this stuff up, so fun is more than okay.

Me and White Sage

Cob Oven

yummmm

Double Yummmm

Eric in front of soil remediation, or soil bringing-back-to-life

Go here to learn more, and see the before and afters of Eric's lot.

I cheated my way through.

2012-01-12T16:14:00.000-05:00

Math and sciences were never easy for me. I almost failed 10th grade chemistry, to pass in the end with a D. Geometry that same year I cheated my way through.

But put me down in a garden, have me play all day under the sun and in the dirt. Finish it with fresh foods and songs and rituals and music around the fire. Now teach me the names of bacterias and fungis, tell me how to worship carbon renewal. Make bioremediationnnnn the most sacred sound. I will learn, I will cherish, I will thrive. I will sing.

Suddenly life, all of it, is the most primal joy and easiest thing in the world to know.

One sacred inter-connected realm

2012-01-08T02:19:00.001-05:00

At Buddha camp we couldn't look at each other. Or speak, or read or write, or even for that matter eat after a certain time of day. We just meditated, from 5 in the morning til 9 at night. And in the evening watched lectures from a grainy vcr and old tv.

When I went back the second time it was as a volunteer, out of service, to cook for first time attendees. That time I could speak, thankfully because the most important part for me turned out to be the community of consciously-minded attendees all back for their second or fifth or twelfth go-round. It warmed my heart, does to think of them still. To find people who really got my heart.

Now I am at Earth Camp, and the people here believe in the earth and communites and Nature as I do, all as one sacred inter-connected realm. It's such a joyful, fun atmosphere among these like spirits! Earth-worhsiping tree-huggers. So many sacred smiles and light reverie. I thought California was a place with minds and spirits like mine, that was before I came here: I could never imagine such a similar-spirited tribe! Men and women, old and young. Tonight we were led to recall the feeling in our heart of the moment we decided we would come here.

That was 2005, late fall, in the red and orange living room at Truslow Road. I was desperate, certain I was on the wrong path. On the stolen internet of one of my neighbors, I googled as I so often used to the words wild, and women, and wisdom. That was when I found out about Earth Activist Training.

I've wanted to study with Starhawk ever since then. Her books are pure muse to me. And now here I am, finally. Seven years, a full wisdom-cycle it took me, but that decision from back is finally coming true. My next two weeks, here in the redwoods of Cazadero, Sonoma County,CA. At EAT. For my permaculture certification. Camp for Wild Women at a Peace Institute run by Tibetan Buddhists. And oh yes, for wild men, too. Wild Men! My path, it circles back time and again.

And already such a long inspired journey it's been...

Til I was just triggered enough

2012-01-03T13:25:00.000-05:00

Life is a Carnival by The Band was playing when I parked the car, that music for a long time reminded of Brandon but in the past two years makes me think of my cousin Ed. I love WRNR in Annapolis and have listened to it literally since the nineties when HFS first went corporate. RNR repeats songs a lot and there are a lot of commercials, but the bands are independent or undiscovered or alternative, and the commercials are always local because that's what they rely on: local support to play real music.

I try not to be, but it's true. I'm a snob.

The thing about that song playing is that Eddie had just called me, I was in the parking lot at Marshalls waiting to hear from Amy when he did, and said he had the day off where was I? Well I was getting ready to head to the coffee shop to write, where was he? About to head to Annapolis, he said, to spend money on things he doesn't need and then hit a coffee shop to do some reading and writing.

Well, guess we better meet up...

Dad and I left the beach this morning at 6 am. We drove to his job the whole way on 50, and got off where the New Carrolton station is so I could have his car. On Sunday he got me in Philly from the train and drove me to the beach. Yesterday mom talked to me a long time about the magic I am trying to make in my life right now, and the luckiest thing in the world, in the world must be the conscious choice of the two people who made you fully supporting every choice you choose in making your self.

I am endlessly, emotionally, wordlessly thankful.

Amy has arrived unto herself, it is something I have had the pleasure of getting to watch and celebrate. After hanging up with her I called up Jott, mostly to acknowledge the same thing in her.

My life is so good I often don't know what really there is to say...

In my backpack are two books snagged from Katie, they're both Kerouac and they both lit the holy light in me when reading the intros. One by Creeley, one by McClure. So I read in her kitchen in my pajamas, drinking tea while the cold Connecticut air drafted through the window next to me. I read til I was just triggered enough, then closed the books, tucked them in my pack, made a date in space with myself, in the heart of things, that meant-to-be place.

Because I'm up here where I grew up, because I drove 50 passed the exit for Crofton this morning, because of RNR, I've been doing a lot of remembering. I left in 1998. Homelessness, for years after, haunted me. It's the clouds, the music maybe, the gray-blue of the sky. The air, absolutely mean today. For all my wordlessness there feels like a lot to say.

My in my space with my self space is the best. It's made all and totally of love. Eddie's not here yet, so as for my date, today's the day.

Who needs to go places

2011-12-29T02:49:00.000-05:00

There's an enormous amount on my mind.

I went to see Liz for her intuition and to get a tarot reading. Her shop is closing, in the morning I have a reiki client there and then that is the last I will ever see of Ancient Arts. I was staggered by what came out in the cards, sitting there open-jawed it felt like Liz had me cornered under a bright white light. It was true, afterall, what I saw laid out there between her and me. Hard to admit, plain out in the daytime like that, but even harder under Liz's wise eyes to deny.

Amy is driving me all the way to Conneticut tomorrow and then to get home Sunday I will take the train. Bebe has offered to let me stay in her cabin back in Cali for a caretaking exchange for up to seven months. I am stunned by the kindness of the people that I love and can not help feeling that these are things I do not deserve. So I will write... I spent most the day and even time after going out tonight sorting through my old room here at the beach. Trying to decide what of my writing materials needs to come back to California with me, what I can live without. Journals, notes, folders and folders. What I can fit. I feel horrible for long moments about leaving mom. And worse than that about leaving my niece. I'm confused about the reading I got, it was counter to all the work I felt like I've been doing. I am talking here about men specifically. Suddenly it was three years ago and I couldn't trust because I didn't know myself, all over again, and that was all before I got on the phone tonight with Josh.

Thank god for Jott, and a high-backed booth at our local bar. I haven't had a drink in 11 years but that has yet to change the fact that I'm the kinda girl who needs to go places, to drive in the dark when it starts to turn late at night to meet friends in the hush dead of winter with our faces lit by neon lights. That camaraderie, the magic of shiver-bones and tires on a cold street and then people who are warm, will always be medicine for me.

We drank club soda and red bull and ate chicken wings until our bellies hurt and there was nothing more to say. Thankfully that's when Tara turned up so the laughter started.

Thankfully life goes on.

Of course a dance party broke out

2011-12-23T21:27:00.000-05:00

It would have been easy to stay in bed with Erin and watch the entire third season of Bored To Death, sleeping half the time and with a lac-of-sleep headache the rest. Grease nap. At Double T the day after the party stories, when everyone's punch-drunk still and easy to make fun of, made breakfast fun. I like Christmas week, always have, when I was a teacher or intake counselor and even last year at the coffee shop I had off and could travel and that's how I used to get my kicks. Being on the road Christmas week. Now, I'm just on the road, all the time.

There's something to the clouds the last two days. On the drive up 83 to Pennsylvania my mom said it's a cold front, all I know is the clouds and the colors up there keep capturing my attention and then next thing I know I'm engulfed, staring out the window or above the trees. The gray and the blue and the white. It's so striking, I forget it's Christmas and just think, Maryland, this is so your sky.

Em and Nicky were home from the farm too and drove down from Connecticut last night. It was raining and balmy on the streets of Baltimore, Em was shaking it at me through the window from out on the street and of course a dance party broke out. Sixty some years ago in a basement on Church Street in Brooklyn Park my grandparents started having Christmas parties for their brothers and sisters and all their friends. My dad and all his brothers and sisters raised us kids on black and white pictures and stories from then, the dusty liquor bottles behind the sheet in the corner, the train that ran the floor on hand connected tracks. Shiny shoes one pair a kid lined in a row. It's a long time away from that little two bedroom house with the 9 people in South Baltimore, my brother and I still do what we can. Our parties have people dancing on the bar and dancing outside, smoking in the streets. According to the aunts and uncles, Grammy's and Pop's had them dancing in the basement under the stairs and sometimes, on the roof. Singing at the stars...

There are no leaves on these trees.

2011-12-20T18:19:00.004-05:00

The Patient First next door to the Panera had Mandy's car in the parking lot, and when I texted her that I was creeping on her she answered how small our home town is.

It's not a town, where she and I are from, it's a county. Due south of Baltimore. But in 2011 with chain stores and strip malls up and down Route 2, that doesn't make what she said any less true. It's good to be home, there are few things more real and heartening to me than my family and friends. But I am tired and don't feel too well. Everyone here is sick, everyone. Mandy was feeling ill and thought she might be catching what her kids and man had, I'm feeling it because of five days without my morning practice: meditation and writing. And because there are no leaves on these trees which feels so potently voyeuristic to me, and it's so damn cold.

How quick to fall off the beam, I thought, and called Brooks to make an artist's date. Erika told me about Zelda's paintings at a gallery at Hopkins, so hopefully that will remedy my soul. The first week of December on the mountain in NorCal I was walking outside in the sunshine along the ridge of a hill. It was winter and I felt vital still and knew it, I was charged and alive. I remembered what Justin said to me in July, jogging by my side from the inlet rocks along the beach in Ocean City, down by the Pier.

You're elemental, Kel. You need the elements to be well. He's so energetic, Justin, and I remember us happy and diving in the water either on or just after our run. He was right, and I knew it that day months later and a coast away, in the 50 degree mountain air. My cure for seasonal affective is no more than regular contact with the air, the earth, the sunshine, the trees, the sea. So it's not just the cold and lac of light that bothers me, it's the absence of a lifestyle. It's an outdoor wellness regimen that I need.

That, and my regular quiet routine.

I cancelled on Mandy, we cancelled on each other. I am going to Tim and Mary's tonight to do what I know to do this time of year back east. It's time to hibernate. I need sleep.

All those people under all those little orange lights

2011-12-16T03:52:00.001-05:00

The air on 28th street in Ocean City is warmer than the mountain air in Northern California. Warm beach air, is there anything better in the world? It's December, when I got home to mom's it was rustling the branches asking hey come on where are your leaves? I got out of the car and started to squat to pee. Cmon, Kel, I had to remind myself, no more outhouse living you're not on the compound now.

I cried when I left the farm Tuesday night and mumbled something in to the neck of Monique like "Dont tell Jon I dont want him to know he was right." He said for two days that I'd cry when I left, it's funny the things you think of when your emotions get the best. I did cry, but not til after all my little moments, all my little private goodbyes, after I was walked to the car and watched them all walk back to the cabin led by their headlights through the dark. It was as I was pulling away, Mo ran back, knocked on the window, and then neither of us said anything. Just started to sob.

It took 32 hours to get to Ocean Pines. Lots of driving, a motel stop, more driving, a car drop, a shuttle then airport rigamaroll. In between it all that warm California sunshine. Smiling and lots of I love my life. My transfer flight outta Vegas was empty, I had a row to myself and slept a funny plane sleep that was never quite all the way. I saw a shooting star out the window, right next to the big dipper which looked like I could touch it, or at least sing a song close enough for it to hear. In Maryland I stared at the lights of Baltimore as we neared the ground. I love to travel. And I especially love to fly home, all those people under all those little orange lights, in the middle of the night.

My brother surprised me at 8 this morning. He showed up at the Pines and laid my three month old niece on my belly in my sleep. I was totally startled then in a rosy-warm-baby-blanket-glow. All day I just kept looking at them, him and his daughter, thinking wow, he's really a dad. Tonight I went with Jott and Schank, my ol Yacht Club girls, to Mother's Christmas Party. The bartender from Peppers was guest pouring, Chico was there, Ryan was wearing a red tie. Life goes on, things change, and also they dont. All of it's so great, I feel like a spectator watching the peaceful way I get to enjoy myself.

We raised hell. I love the way beach air feels, it still smells that good-same walking out the bar room door. No tears now. It's rad, to be home.

I lay dazzled.

2011-12-12T00:07:00.000-05:00

Our Compound Christmas Party was the night before last. Tequila was involved and Secret Santa Survival Kits, so the gift-giving in the hot seat went on for three rowdy hours. All the presents were wrapped in newspapers or boxes and bags from the recycling pile. Thrift store and hand made gifts stilled the room. My face hurt and eye wrinkles got deeper from this smile that wouldn't leave me, the smile matched the curve in my gut from laughing so hard. When I finally came to bed the bonfire pit still flamed, there were orange coals enough to cook bushels of oysters, and the white round moon made the fog moving in from the valley look like a fish bowl above us. You could see the beams in the bows of the trees.

I lay in bed for 45 minutes unable to sleep. Listening to my friends laughing and singing outside, or snoring and breathing in their beds. I lay dazzled. By my life. It's a long, long time since I can remember being sleeplessly stoked as that.

On Thursday I went out with this guy from up here, we've talked on and off the past couple months, it was good to see him one last time. On our way out of the bar I grabbed him. Hang on, I said, looking up at the sky and the tree line from the bottom of the valley. I told him, I want to remember this, it may be the last time I ever walk out of a bar in Southern Humboldt. He grinned that dancy grin he has and gave me my moment. Then he laughed and walked to his truck, his back to me to take a piss. No it's not, he said. You'll be back...you're a Humboldt girl, now.

There really was nothing else to say.

Little grey car and ocean air.

2011-12-07T02:15:00.001-05:00

Yesterday at work I was listening to this song by The Phoenix Foundation called Buffalo. Every time I hear it I see myself in my car driving down the coast highway, next to the diamond filtering dark blue respirating sea. Big rocks, knee-high grasses and the cliff side. Sharp colors, green, yellow, blue, brown. Sonoma County where the Russian River pours out.

When I flew back to California in September, after my brother's baby was born and when I still had my Versa to live in, I took an exit off the 101 one day that on my map led to the coast. I discovered Sebastopol that way, ate carnitas for $2.00 from a parking lot taco stand, found a deal on Red Bulls and iced espresso drinks in the same place and then landed at a bright farmers market in the center of downtown. I love the flowers in California. The happy space on the sidewalks. All the magic in the stores. I love the hippies in Mendicino, too. After that was all done I took the Russian River Highway all jagged and twisted to the coast. That's when I found the sea again, me and the sea, always us together, always the rolling crawls then crashes that lead me on. It was the perfect, perfect spontaneous road trip kind of day.

I keep seeing myself in that bliss. Window down, sunglasses, little grey car and ocean air, rocks big as castles, water and yellowed grass. It's so real. I dont know what's coming next. I just hang on to this, this sense, this vision, because of the way it's so clear in my heart . Me heading south again, maybe camping, near the coast where I belong. I hang on because of how happy and natural it feels.

Guns and whiskey.

2011-12-05T02:19:00.000-05:00

We hadn't walked the hills all the way to the creek in a long time, most nights now we just do several laps from our cabin down to the gate. It's more athletic that way, the steep climb. Tonight the moon was right though, and besides. It's my last week.

Two new guys moved in while I was away in Oregon, they are younger and the family names we gave them stuck. Bucket and Son Won. They're from Washington in the Cascades and bring this amazing new enthusiasm combo'd with that boundless, nameless mountain spirit. It has a name actually, I'd call it peace.

Also, Em had to leave, which hurts my heart every day.

When we got to the field in the middle of the hills and the valleys circled like a black tapestry backdrop hung in the sky we stood a long while and looked at the stars. None of us used our headlights the entire time because the moon of course was so wide with the soft white light. We walked to the bridge, the creek was running high and the air around it was cold and wet as snow or ice. In the daytime here it's warm in the sun, at night next to the creek by the bridge our bodies caused steam. At night it's winter in the hills.

In the field walking back Mo and Bucket and I stayed back and I showed them how to use their breath to open their instinct. Their backbreath, or moonbreath, that subtle wild body we all have but dont use because we think we're higher or better than animals now. It got Mo all jazzed and talking about wanting to take survival classes, how to live in our enviroment naturally. Permaculture! I was happy, going on to her and Buck about my earth activist training coming up in Jan. Native plants and invasives and medicinals and eco-diversity and harmony. We were amped, inspired, energized and grounded from the moon and breathing exercise. How? I asked them then. How did we get so disconnected from our home?

Guns, Bucket answered. Guns and whiskey he said. And we laughed and walked up the hill past our gate, in the dark, through the woods.

This was driftwood.

2011-12-01T02:38:00.000-05:00

I almost lined up with a place in Topanga Canyon. In Oregon the last day it rained all day long. Soaking rain is what mom would call it, the kind we really count on back east in the late spring. I was at Gretchen's in her cottage so close to the coast you can hear the sea. We stayed in our pj's all day long, the pine trees outside bowing way down from the weight of the rainy wind. She handed me her Ipad on our third or fourth cup of coffee and said c'mon, that's what we can do let's find you your place in LA.

On Craigslist under sublets I searched Topanga. The only result was the exact place I see in meditation. At work someone said Mama you would love Topanga Canyon, Topanga's where you need to be. Soon after that knowing nothing about Topanga came the vision of me at a white cast iron table on a patio, surrounded on three sides by potted flowers and trees. That was the place Gretchen and I found on Sunday, exact pictures and all. I say almost lined up with it because in the end I said no. It was out of my price range.

Nikki assured me, as it was she that helped list the pros and cons, that this was driftwood. It's not her original metaphor, yet it bares repeating. If my heart's goal is an island, the paradise joyful island where I am heading, then little examples like the spot on Craigslist that I saw first in my head are signs from the island that my tide's moving me the right way. Little signs, pieces of driftwood, from the island. My enthusiasm was crazy high so applying practical decision making to this was hard. Nikki's example really helped.

Before heading south to park at Gretchen's in the rain, Beth and I forged our own paths through the woods on Saturday to pick chanterelles. The day before that we stood in the bead shop in Nye Beach where I used to work and get paid to make and sell jewelry. Both times I felt so like myself that everything even looked lined and clear, more defined, somehow crisper. Lit by light from my heart.

Driftwood.

This is my favorite part of the inventing process. Scariest, too. When you can just barely, happily and anxiously, start to feel the tides starting to pull.