Not Quite So Dark

Oh.

For fuck sake.

So here I am trying to be all low-key and down low and not post anything via social media so I stay anonymous.

And.

Um.

hahahahahaha.

Oops.

Turns out I’m completely transparent and known on my own fucking blog.

My “About Me” page had, I say had since I just pulled it down, a photo of me and link, failed link, but still a link, with my gmail account linked to it.

My gmail account is my full name.

Rolls eyes at self.

Ugh.

Fortunately a friend caught it and gave me the heads up.

And the post has been updated to reflect that.

No more photographs of me, no more name on the page.

Just me and my thoughts listening to some Bill Withers.

When I wake up in the morning love and the sunlight hurts my eyes.

…..Just one look at you and I know it’s going to be a lovely day.

Up a little late.

Up a tiny bit wired.

I went to an anniversary party this evening after doing the deal over on Turk and Divisadero this evening and saw a swarm of folks that I hadn’t seen in a while, including one of my best friends who came into the city and my god, it was good.

I had my internship today and lots of errands that I wanted to do and some down time in the afternoon to do laundry and get myself caught up, and I realized that I hadn’t done a good bit of this kind of socializing in a while.

It took me a moment to catch my stride.

I can be charming and funny and outspoken and a character, but the truth is that sometimes I get a bit over my head with social stuff, which is hilarious and most folks have no idea.

I am not going to label myself an introvert or an extrovert, I’m not going to pigeonhole myself, but I will say I felt awkward and I realized it was going to pass and I had a minute to get settled and be in my skin and let it be ok that I was in a big social situation with a lot of people I am acquainted with but perhaps not that close to.

I also needed to be there and be seen and just let myself be not at work or at the internship.

I logged another two hours today at the internship, even went in a little early to do some paper work and get myself situated and eat a lunch quietly in the office before the other interns got there for our session.

I got some good info, gave some good feedback and was mightily pleased that I had clients to talk about.

I am just dipping my toe into the mix and it’s a lot to carry, but I’m starting to do it and I can see that I am doing the thing that I am supposed to do.

Granted when I logged into track my hours I realized that I had done five hours this week, two client hours and three training hours and that my supervisor at the internship wants me to carry a load of 15 hours.

Three times what I did this week.

Sigh.

Granted I may not get up to that speed for a while and there will be times when I’m able to do that and times when I won’t.

I can’t get too focused on it and I also told myself today that in the service of keeping a tiny semblance of sanity that maybe I don’t have to get as many hours as is possible for me to collect while I am in school.

I just need to get the hours required by my program to graduate.

Granted.

I say to myself.

Fuck that shit.

GET IT ALL.

But.

I don’t want to kill myself and I want to have some socializing.

I need face time with people.

I am thinking specifically of a few friends that are just too dear for me to let go of and I will squeeze them in where and when I can and I will be tired and I won’t give a fuck and you only live once and get it.

Get it girl.

Some things may feel overwhelming, but in the day-to-day of it, I’m doing it.

Slowly building up my client base, learning how to be a therapist, learning how to keep loving and taking care of myself and finding those odd hours and minutes in the hollowed spaces of golden sunned afternoon light when I can pause, catch my breath and get hella grateful.

I mean.

Hella.

Grateful.

That I have what I have.

“You look different,” my friend said to me tonight.

And she’s right.

Things in my life have altered in an amazing way and I am beyond myself with happiness and succumbing to all the feelings therein.

Without expectation or thought for future moments.

Ok.

Small white lie, I do have some plans for future travel, but I am trying to really keep it to this day, these scattering of moments, dipped in old school R&B, or Elvis ballads, old love songs and lyrical movements in time, the stars framed by the trees overhead, a snapshot of a moment.

Astounded with beauty.

Awake to every feeling in my body.

And that’s all I can wish for.

This moment.

Where I am alive.

Oh.

And I am so alive.

It is glorious.

Sure.

Might have something to do with the peer pressure cup of coffee I accepted gleefully at the party and perhaps I might have racing thoughts but I have had racing thoughts for weeks now and I am rather used to it and the heart beating in my chest going fast just lets me know how fully alive I am.

It is exquisite and I am unabashed by the feeling of it.

Love.

Love.

That’s where it’s at.

The word that flutters in my chest.

The ache and longing.

The aliveness.

The song on my lips.

The poem in my eyes seeking yours.

The smile that I cannot help but smile.

So fucking good.

This life.

My life.

Luckiest girl in the world.

 

Bashed

Feeling a little blue and sad tonight.  Change is a foot.

And not where I was expecting it.

It looks like Burning Man is being taken off the plate for this year.  Although I had a wild and crazy scheme burning me up this morning…I’ll do a Kickstarter platform and fund my way in and I can do that book on being a nanny at Burning Man….

And, and, and.

And I really want to go, but I am not in the same place I was last year.  Nor is the family that I nannied for the last four years.  Situations change, jobs change, and change, well it fucking happens.

I am a little heart broke right now and I think I am just now seeing it.  I have so much happening, and most of it is in my head, thank you very much, that the idea of not going to Burning Man actually freaks me out more than the idea of moving to Paris.

I can see Paris happening.  I can see traveling the world happening.  I will be going.  I will be getting.  I will and it don’t matter how.

It will just happen, one foot, in front of the other foot.  Hup, two, three, four.

I checked in with a confidant about an idea I had, I have had before, about doing the Burning Man nanny book, and although she did not squash the idea completely, she did give me a reality check.

Some thing to the effect of, I have watched you get great ideas and get excited and then they go nowhere.

Ok, the go nowhere language is my own.

My idea, do the Kickstarter around the book on nannying at Burning Man and get money to go by doing that, shift the focus from doing it to travel the world, but to travel to and from Burning Man and do a book out of it.

Sounds like the other idea I had.  Or the idea I had about being a dj when I first moved to San Francisco.  Sounds like being a photographer, or a travel writer, or a veterinarian, or a make up artist, or a massage therapist, or anything other than, Carmen, works in a bike shop girl.

Oh heart breaking.

I am such a human.

I do, it’s so spot on, get really excited about things and then they don’t happen or I get stuck or I don’t know I sabotage.

Thank god for my fellows.  Thank god for listening to someone else for an hour.  Thank God for knowing what my true purpose is no matter what.

In the grand scheme of things, so what if I don’t get to go to Burning Man?  Life will continue, Burning Man will happen with our without me.  Something else will present itself.

Or God will make it really obvious and I will go.  I can only make do with what I have right now, the resources I have in front of me, which are not figure it out.

Figure it out always fucks me up.

Radha looked at me when I told her about my idea and how I had been pulled back down to earth and she hugged me and said, “honey, at least you have ideas”.

Jesus.

Very true.  I do have ideas, boat loads, bucketfuls, hundreds.  And I do try them out.  Most of the fail me abjectly or don’t pan out and I think I look like an idiot.

But you know, if I hadn’t had tried being a kung fu master I never would have gotten my black belt.  If I had not tried to be a journalist major I would never have gotten my degree–granted it was English Literature, but I got a degree.  I am not an actress but I got to perform in a play in Los Angeles.

I am not a singer but I got to perform with one of my favorite performers of all time–Sunshine Jones–last Sunday.

I also know, because I went and made an ass out of myself that I don’t want to be an accountant, or a veterinarian, or a therapist, or a dj, or private chef, or a caterer, or a make up artist, or a paralegal, or a film assistant for porno’s (whoa do I not want to do that again).

Some times that not knowing can be just as powerful as the knowing.

I know, too, that I won’t be 85 years old tottering around wondering, if only I had investigated that, career, plan, travel, that kind of love.

For instance-I know that online dating does not work so well for me; that I am not interested in being the secondary in a poly-amourous relationship; that one night stands no longer work for me, if they ever did, that I can’t sleep with some one who is married, that I am not a lesbian, that I don’t like sex with more than one person at a time, that some one who is a bad kisser will probably be untenable to date.

I know these things because I took a chance and I tried to do something different.

I am finding out what works for me.  I am trying.

Yeah and I get great big screaming ideas that run away with my heart and then bash into a wall and I get elated and over the top and dramatic, but you know-

Fuck it.

I love that about me, that I am willing to have my heart-broken in everything.

It allows me to get a bigger heart.

My friend was right and I love her for pointing it out to me.  And maybe I will still put together that book and maybe I will still try to do a Kickstarter for it.

What I won’t do is trying to figure it out.  I probably won’t be able to swing Burning Man.

I can get mopey or I can say, hey, I got five fabulously awesome and amazing years–how many people out there can say that?

How many people actually got off their asses and went to Burning Man?

I know scores of people who are still talking about getting it together to go.  I went five years in a row.  I fought in Thunder Dome.  I watched a meteor shower over head while floating through the hot springs.  I sat on top of a four-story throne that I climbed underneath the black dome of velvet sky and hollered out my name.  I flew a kite on playa, rode dragons, danced, sang, roller skated, hula hooped, trampolined, wrote poetry, fell in love, found my soul mate, fell out of love, lost my soul mate, broke my heart, cried, flew in a small prop plane above the mountains, left my best friends ashes at the Temple, watched the Man burn from the inner circle, ate a lot of dust and got to do something that only a handful of the world’s population have gotten to experience.

I am better for it.

And if there’s no Burning Man this year, that’s ok.

There’s still Paris.

Thank God it’s Friday

I mean Saturday.

I mean Friday.

It’s my Friday!

And I actually have a full on weekend.  I have two days off in a row, back to back.  I already have Sunday pretty full booked in, but there’s a wee bit of wrangle room in there.  I am holding space for myself on Monday to do the mundane, tomorrow is my fun day.

I will be heading over to the other side of the Bay to Oakland tomorrow to see Jolie.  I have not seen her in years, years!  She and Josh were up in Noe Valley tonight and I got to get in a good catch up session and I will be going over to Lake Merrit tomorrow to do a little speaking engagement and get into the sunshine and out of the fog.

Boy howdy.

That’s right, I said boy howdy, it got foggy tonight.  I knew it was coming.  I could feel it in the air when I rode my bike to work.  I had a pricking in my thumbs.  Basically the recipe is this, two nice days of warm weather equal one shell shocker of a foggy evening.

I don’t know a whole lot about the weather, but I have paid enough attention to it in the last ten years of summers here in San Francisco to sense a pattern.  I think the heat inland pulls the fog in and it always, always, catches you off guard.

It was super sunny when I left the house and it was almost hot as I got on my bike, but I felt a tiny little nip in the air as I was hopping into my pedals, and sure enough, when I turned down 19th off of Folsom I looked over to Twin Peaks and there it was, just a scrim of dirty grey in the air.

Fog.

It was coming.  I was very happy that I had packed my sweatshirt and jean jacket and a scarf in my bag.  I had plans to hit Noe Valley after work, and despite the two neighborhoods being so close to each other, they really are two separate micro-climates.

Nothing says funny like being a San Franciscan who knows what is about to happen to the poor pod of tourists from the Midwest who are out flip-flopping around in their sandals and tank tops thinking they are in California and it’s going to stay warm.

Not so much.

I rode my bike past a couple shivering their way up 24th street and I actually felt bad for them.  The woman was obviously freezing, light summer dress, no coat, no scarf, bare arms, bare shoulders, flip-flops.  She and her boyfriend were huddled together and I almost hollered out, ‘welcome to San Francisco’.

But I am not that mean.

Work was chill.  Sold two bikes, designed another, did a bunch of invoices, trained the new guy some more and got visits from Mrs. Fishkin and ladybug Eve, who smelled deliciously of cupcakes and, well of Eve.  I could eat her right the hell up.

I also got a visit from Alex and Shannon and

LaRoux!

OMG

That’s right, motherfuckers, I said, OMG

Check it out:

La Roux checks out the computer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Seriously.  Stupid cute.  And so tiny.  Alex and Shannon have a new baby.  They also brought me a cup of coffee.  Dude.  My friends seriously rock.

Speaking of friends, I got to see Kevin and Beth tonight, which was a super nice surprise and the best text to get at the end of the day as I was getting ready to leave the shop.  Then, the surprises kept coming, Josh and Jolie, and Mick.

Ahhhhhhh.

My heart feels good and full and life is smashing.

And Margo.  I got a good check in with Margo and we talked a little shop talk about Kickstarter and my travel project and  making a video with Johnny Carroll.  Which reminds me, I need to get a red and white striped sailor shirt.

I am going to write a spoof on Where’s Waldo.

I need a sailor shirt.

I am going to dork the hell out for this video.  I am almost embarrassed with glee at the stupid fun that I have planned for it.  Hopefully, I can keep it somewhat contained so that Johnny has something to edit.

Sometimes when I think I am being funny, no one else does, and hopefully that’s not the case here, but I almost don’t care if it’s not funny to you, it tickles me to death.

That being said, I actually need to write the script.  This will be my first go at writing a script.  I am not quite sure how, but I will rough it out and I think I know enough people who do know what they are doing that I can get my idea across.

It will be good fun.

Embarrassing?

Oh yes and that too, but I will walk through it.

It feels so good to be into the weekend that I feel that I must caution myself to just chill it out and not get too over enthused.

Then again, I am actually going to be doing a sound check at The Elbow Room with one of my favorite djs of all time and performing a piece that I wrote with him to a live audience, tomorrow.

OMG

Again.

I sort of fall in and out of remembering that I am doing that, less than 24 hours from now I will be behind a microphone.

Crazy.

Life is pretty rocking right now.

 

One Little Step

In front of the other.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

I barely got anything done in the last two days.  Or so it seems.  It has just been keeping up with the general day-to-day of life.

I got to see my fellows tonight and last night. I got to do some work.  I got my laundry done, a few groceries from the land of Rainbow and I shook out the rugs.

Some times it is all I can do to just stay a float.

Then I think, good gravy, I do a lot of stuff over the course of the day.  It is not like I am sitting on my ass twiddling my thumbs.  I don’t have time to twiddle.

Or twaddle.

The best I could do with my travel plans for the past 24 hours was look at what an around the world ticket would cost me.

I am really still quite up in the air, literally, figuratively, and otherwise, as to how and where I am going to travel.  I spent some time researching cargo freight and container ships.  I have looked at maybe taking a train across country, either from here to the East Coast or vice versa.

The around the world airline ticket is sounding pretty luscious.  I would get a year to do the whole thing.  Which is pretty much what I want to do.  Go for a year.  A year feels like the right amount of time to get the travel ya yas out of my system.

It could also permanently ruin me for sitting at home, ever again, but that’s a risk I am willing to take.

A year would also give me the time I need to collect the experiences I want to write about.  I have on my plate to write-up a script for Johnny Carroll to help launch my KickStarter idea.  I have to get moving on this as my time span is limited to this summer.  If I leave in October I need the funding to come in by September.

That means that the project must launch and complete within thirty days, the optimum time frame, and then it takes 30 days for it to come in from Amazon to Paypal.  So, if I am going to do it.  I need to get a move on.  I will script writing this weekend.  I also need to source a red and white shirt.  I am going to write a spoof on Where’s Waldo?

I am torn, I feel like I need to have solid ‘I am going to go and this is how I do it’.

OR

Say, what ever happens I am going, despite or because of getting the Kickstarter funding.

I know this much, thinking about it does me no good.  In fact, doing a lot of thinking just makes for craziness.  I confirmed again with my go to person that I won’t really be saying anything about my travel plans at work for a little while.

There is no need.

I don’t have plans per se.

I just have a date.

I just have a dream.

It’s nice to acknowledge that dream, frankly.  Even if in the acknowledgement of I have to then take some actions to step into that reality, to abandon my limited objectives to see what the Universe has in store for me.

I think that it’s an impossible dream.  I think that I don’t have enough money to do this.

But I don’t know.  I won’t know until I go.  I have a few things I can sell.  I have few real needs.

Me, my health, a group of people and some folding chairs with a cup of coffee, a clean set of clothes, a roof over the head, good food in the belly, a shower.

Basics.

Just basics.

I have lived slim and I have traveled light.  I can do it again.

I can start over again.

I can let go of the few possessions I have fairly easily.

Hell, it looks like I have already been prepped.  No more nanny gigs.  No more cats. No lease.  No relationship.

A wide open space to move forward into if I just take one little step down the path.  I am going to go.  I am going to go.  I am going to go.

I am going to go to South Africa.  I am going to go to Australia.

Perth.

I just like saying that–Perth.

I am going to see things that I cannot even imagine.

I am going to go to Fiji.

If I get an around the world ticket I get to choose 16 flight segments spanning the globe.  I would start out on one coast of the United States and end up on another.  I was on Star Alliance last night and got as far as figuring out that I wanted to start from New York and end in San Francisco.

I want to take a train across country, because that just sounds like stellar fun, then go see Zefrey and Mark Menke and Luis and Amanda and Kim Harmon in New York.  I want to go to the Metropolitan and Central Park.  I want to see the trees changing color, I haven’t seen an autumn colors show in a while.

Then down to South America?

Or across the Atlantic to Africa?

I mapped out a couple of different routes.  There’s a lot of things that could happen.

There’s a lot of flexibility too.  I could get to Europe and pop around with out actually using the around the world ticket as a lot of the air travel in Europe is relatively cheap anyhow.

I can move dates around a bit, there’s flexibility with the ticket.  You just have to complete your world tour within a specified time frame, generally it is a year, but you can change that too, although I think there are financial repercussions to it.

The cost comes in around three grand.  I have about $1800 in savings.

Not much.

But a start.

A little money in the bank.

A little, BIG, dream.

One little step.

One little step at a time.

My favorite saying of all time, all time–

A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.

Here’s to that.

Videographer

Check.

Idea.

Check.

Fear.

Check.

Awesome.

Well, I did it.  I sent my friend Johnny in Alameda a message last night about collaborating on a Kickstarter video and I got a resounding yes.

Oh holy shit batman, am I really going to do this?

It would appear so.  Yikes.  Johnny left me a message at work and I talked with him when I got out.  I took a good long walk and caught some fun images on my camera, took about 50 frames on the walk, which I am happy with three, and really happy with one of them.  I put them up on my other blog.

My other blog.

I feel like a proud parent.  Five photo posts and one about page photo.  Not too shabby.  I am actually getting into the habit of walking in the door, booting up my computer, and downloading whatever photos I have taken during the day.

Can I just say, there is so much to see!

So much.

I am startled by how much I shut out in my day to day get about San Francisco.  I like that I am slowing down enough to really look at things, how light strikes surfaces, and what intigues me, what my heart sees as a good photo.

Some times I don’t even know why an object or a scene catches my eye, I just see it suddenly there, behind the lens and I know I have to stop and take the picture.  It really brings me into the moment, the present, and it feels really good to be letting myself have fun.

I am not serious about it, past the point of being serious enough to have begun devoting a daily practise to taking out my camera and taking pictures–I am not trying to get a career, accounting, ahem, or a life path or a job, just a photograph or two.

Another nice bonus is that I am getting photographs of my friends.  I  do not have a large number of photographs of friends and I am beginning the gathering.  I got some good shots of Jane tonight and one that I thought was really good.  Something about the look in her eye and the back ground scenery helped too.

Plus, Jane is just super styled out and a fabulous model, so it was not hard to capture a good image of her.  I just want more than a pretty face and a nice outfit, and I got a little sliver of Jane, something in the tilt of her head and the whimsical exression on her face.

Anyway.  I like that I am gathering these photographs and I like that I am documenting my life.  I can’t tell how long I have felt the compulsion to do this, but I can tell you how long I have been jealous of friends who have followed their photographic dreams.

A long time.

The practise is becoming a practice.  Which is what I wanted, needed really, I need to be disciplined.  I need direction and this is good direction for me to take.  I like book ending my day with the photos and the blog.  I like begininning my day with writing.

I am an artist.

Shyly smiling and waving at the camera, or sticking out my tongue, as Jane took a couple photos of me tonight too.  I am not the best at sitting for a photograph.  I don’t know how to pose.  I feel self-conscious and usually make a face or stick out my tongue.

I should stop sticking out my tongue, I am going to be 40 this year.

Or may be not.

The practise also of taking one small action is working too.  I deleted the over abundant follow up e-mail I got from the ex-lover, I don’t need to engage and I am not that desperate to get laid.

Thanks.

I instead returned Johnny’s call.  Nervously, with great trepidation, “what if he thinks your idea is stupid?  What if it is stupid?  Do you even know what you are doing?  He should know that you know what you are doing, even though you don’t know what you are doing.”

Shaddup.

I just breathed, and took the plunge and returned phone call.

And he’s 100% behind me.  In fact, he’s going to help me do it pro-bono.  I am going to pay the camera guy a $100 to shoot the video and Johnny’s going to do the rest.  Whatever the rest is, that I don’t know and don’t have to know.  I just had to ask for help.

I have to put together a script and I tossed out a few quick ideas about what I want to do.  Johnny wants me to write it out and send it to him and then sometime in the near future he and his camera man will meet me here in the city and we will shoot a video.

Peeing in my pants just a tiny bit.

Tiny.

Little.

Bit.

Hooray.

I took some action, I don’t know if it will pan out, but I am going to keep up the forward momentum.  Of course, I am still showing up to do other things and I am getting to let go of expectations, which, shocker, it turns out that I have a lot of.

Do the work, let go of the results and you may be happily surprised.

This leads me to post a photograph of myself here in my blog to illustrate such. I am not the biggest fan of posting my own photo, but I had no idea I had such long skinny legs-where the hell did they come from?

But it turns out I do.  They used to be fat, unwieldy things, and now look at these, these leg and I think wow, this, this is how it happens.  You surrender, you go to the winning side, you take one small action and they build up and then the next thing you know, skinny legs.

I have not taken a full body photo is a long, long, long time. It was a surprise and affirmed what I am doing here with this project as well.  Taking action and who knows where it will go.

And see what happens when you let go of the results and just do the work:

In the Ladies Lounge

I could still work on learning how to be in front of a camera, but it’s not a bad start.

And I am going to have to get used to be out there, I have a video to shoot after all.