I got off campus!
I was able to scoot out tonight for a much-needed hour of reprieve.
I read some stuff.
Some things were said.
The deal was done.
Then a woman there gave me a great big hug and said, “here, take these, there’s a woman in the fellowship who brings them fresh every day, they’re obviously for you.”
“They” were a big bunch of Shasta daisies and pink freesia and Echinacea, stunning and sweet and my favorite flowers are daisies, I was so pleased, so warmed, so right exactly where I was supposed to be.
Then a lady bug pulled up in her truck, she splits time between Sonoma and San Francisco and typically we meet in the city on Friday nights after I get done with work at the Church Street Cafe on Church and Market.
The sunset was happening.
The soft evening breeze caressed my face.
I had left the flowers on the hood of the car in parking lot and she had no clue that a gorgeous bouquet was waiting for her after we checked in and did our reading in the last golden rays of the sun setting in the West, just over Sonoma Mountain.
There was also a, I am not kidding, I do not jest, I couldn’t make this up if I had tried to, a choir practicing hymns in the Community Center behind which were we sat at the picnic table and read from the literature.
She underlined sentences.
I tried to not get choked up.
Watching her young face, framed with long sheaves of strawberry blond hair, catch the last drops of sun from the sky and glow ethereally in the light.
I was stunned
My life is stunning.
My joy and love know no bounds.
I can not believe that this is the life I am leading.
I drove back to Stone Tree with the fullest heart and the utmost gratitude for the sky, for the silhouettes of trees against the indigo dusk, for the navigation on my iPhone telling me where to turn in 1.2 miles turn left.
Thank God for navigation.
I would still be out there back tracking.
I kept telling myself that I should not listen to the voices in my head which said, “you just missed the turn!”
Shush voices.
You’ve never done me right and being directionally retarded, I was more than happy to rely on the navigation system on the phone.
I will be relying on it again as I leave Sonoma and drive straight to SFO on Friday.
I will leave here at 3 p.m.
The drive is 1.38 hours according to the navigation app and I shall drop the rental car at the place on 710 McDonnell road, where I was assured it would only take me 15 minutes to drop of the car and for them to revert the deposit of $150 back to my account.
$150 which I had to deposit since I used my debit card.
$150 which may take two weeks to get back to my account.
Whatever.
Small price to pay to have some autonomy here in Sonoma and how fortuitous when I was offered the trip down to LA that I would have a rental car under my care and all I would have to do is drive straight to the airport.
Is it odd?
Or is it God?
That is a rhetorical question, I know what it is.
I can see this beautiful design for living that I have been granted and I am charmed and loved, graced, and so blessed to have the things in my life that I have.
I mean.
I got some huge news with the scholarships.
Plural, remember.
Not one, but two.
I sent a thank you note to the head of the department letting her know how grateful I was that she had referred me to the scholarship opportunity that has been afforded me and was there any further action that I need to do.
She replied how pleased she was that I was awarded the scholarship and how much they are looking forward to working with me and that all I had to do was accept my financial aid package when it is sent to me.
Done and done.
I accept!
Then I have some one amazing and new, but not new, just never quite seen before, there all along, there doing the deal, just on the outskirts, just beyond my periphery, present in my life.
Such a gift.
This person.
Who is flying me down to Los Angeles to celebrate my success and joy and to accompany me about the museums and to look at the art and to do the deal and have some fun and then road trip it back to San Francisco.
He’ll be picking me up at LAX and we’ll be staying at an Air BnB in Santa Monica.
I think I have a date to go down to the boardwalk and ride the ferris wheel.
I have never been to the boardwalk.
I haven’t really been to LA.
I did ride into it on the Aids LifeCycle ride in 2010, but frankly by the time that adventure was done, I couldn’t care less what city I was in, I just wanted to go home.
The next time I went was about six years ago when I was in a production of Jackie B’s and I travelled down to do a show in Santa Monica.
I got done with work at 6:30p.m. on Friday, got picked up by a friend, and we drove through the night to get into Santa Monica and stay at a tiny house with 9 other people.
I got no sleep.
Did the dress rehearsal.
Wandered around in a sleep deprived haze and ate lunch at an old-fashioned diner on Santa Monica Boulevard.
I remember seeing a lot of tourists and being hot.
That’s it.
The show went off and I spent the night back in that same house, cramped, and dirty and tired and then my ride went and hooked up with someone and left me to my own defenses, leaving me to ride around in the back of someone’s camper with no concept of when I would get back to San Francisco.
I feel that this trip will be far different.
And I am so looking forward to it.
The museums.
The company.
To get to share my celebration and joy with another person and go to museums?
Please.
Who am I to say there is no God?
Or love.
If you will.
I am loved.
I am so loved.
My heart is full of daisies.
Sunshine.
And bright sweet love.
And with that.
I am.
Back on the beam.
Auntiebubba 