Damn!

That dress!

Those shoes!

Your outfit, girl, damn, you are working it.

But you already know that don’t you?

What the fuck was I supposed to respond to that?

I smiled.

I said thank you.

Then I went into the waiting room and got my client.

Who had overheard every single word and was smiling as I came out.

I was not expecting to have that interaction in the hallway at my internship.

Not with another therapist, although, the woman, and it was a woman who made those comments, is likely a massage therapist, not a psychotherapist.

This is what I told myself when I noticed her lack of shoes and her athletic leisure-wear look.

She may have been hitting on me, I am not sure, but I wasn’t going to take the time to find out.

I just collected my client and went back to my office to start my session.

I will say, though, it’s nice to get a compliment.

And.

Well.

I did, do, look nice.

I have gotten home and though still attired in my dress and tights, I am no longer wearing the heels.

The heels are a pair of taupe patent leather that I fell for pretty hard and then have only worn, counting today, twice.

I’m not sure what compelled me to wear them, aside from the fact that the dress was all black, my tights were black, and my fingernails are painted a neutral taupe color that the shoes complimented.

I had my hair up in a big messy bun.

My glass heart pendant on and silver hoops.

It was definitely a sassier therapist look than I normally rock, but I wanted to bring it a little today.

Not sure why.

But it was there.

It was a good day, despite the pretty constant reflux I’ve had.

I’m so grateful I’m seeing the GI tomorrow.

And I’m hopeful that whatever is happening can get addressed.

I’m also hopeful that I can get out of the appointment in a timely fashion so that I may get over to my private practice internship interview.

I really don’t want to be late for that.

And I have figured out what I will be wearing tomorrow, which is nice, as I have an early day at work and will be getting up at 6:30 a.m. to get there on time.

I’ll just be doing a five-hour shift, then off to the doctor, the interview, and yes!

Supervision.

The Wednesday supervisor got back to me as I was in my last session tonight and let me know that someone called out and that there is space in the group.

Thank God that’s dealt with.

So tomorrow after I finish with the interview I’ll probably have about an hour to kill before supervision.

I’m thinking I’ll grab at salad from Gus’s Market and chill out.

It’ll be good to have some down time.

I may do a little client advocacy work too, catch up on some articles.

I’m quite happy that things are falling together this week.

I also got my therapy verification paperwork signed today!

One more thing off the huge check list of stuff that I have to finish.

I have all my paperwork set up in my binder and ready to drop off at the practicum office on Friday.

In fact.

I think I may go in early and just see if I can get it out-of-the-way immediately.

Either that, or drop it all off during my first morning break instead of waiting until lunch time.

It felt really good to talk with my therapist, who went to the same school I did, about the paperwork and the process and how I didn’t actually feel excitement yesterday, but rather tired and a bit emotionally depleted.

I teared up a little when I relayed that.

I want to feel excited, damn it, I turned in my last fucking paper!

But the work took a lot out of me, and I think I haven’t really let it sink in yet that the work is done.

I feel like I’ll get that nice feeling when I get all my paperwork turned in.

That will probably be the lynchpin.

I’m hoping anyway.

I’ve done so much work, I really need to appreciate it and myself.

Maybe I need to have some sort of little self-acknowledgement moment.

Or get myself something.

I don’t know.

Maybe I just buy some flowers for myself.

I’m sure the right thing will come to mind.

But, yeah, an acknowledgement.

And yes of course, I will get that when I walk in commencement and go to my graduation party.

I will have some ceremony and that will be good.

I sense, though, that I need to do something else.

Just take a moment and appreciate all the work I have done.

My therapist actually did that really nicely with me today and I did get excited talking about the private practice internship and what that might look like.

And she shared a little bit with me about her own process so I had a feeling of what I will be doing.

And that I would be getting paid for the work.

And that I could start taking referrals and marketing myself.

All things I really quite like.

Tomorrow’s going to be a big day!

I remind myself, that this is a transition too, and transitions can be sticky.

I get to be kind with myself while it’s happening.

And yes.

Dress the fuck up.

Because I always feel better when I’m working it.

Even if I can’t verbally acknowledge it in the hallway in front of my client.

It’s a very nice feeling to have.

Seriously.

You Are The Embodiment Of The Poet

My heart burst reading that line.

I was in the upstairs bathroom at work wrangling monkeys, brushing teeth.

Brosse/brosse/brosse/

Les dents/

Brosse les tres souvents/

Tous les jours/

Tous les jours/

Tous les jours/

A les belle est dentes.

Brush/brush/brush

Your teeth/

Brush them every day/

Every day/

Every day/

Every day/

Ah.

The pretty teeth.

(sung to row, row, row your boat)

Yay!

“Spit,” I said, running the water.

I had to put down my phone, I could not finish reading the sweet e-mail I had received from my patron, my eyes kept tearing up reading it and I had to manage the two boys.

I’m just going to call him that, he’s my patron.

Anyone who sends me a check for $1,000 for some poems is my patron.

Anyway.

I had sent him an effusive e-mail thanking him for the check and how I was honored and seen and just over the moon.

That moon.

Did you see her tonight?

Sometimes in the waning I feel there is more power, more poesie, more haunting and longing.

The wandering back into the self, the darkening lunar landscape, the eery rise in the night sky and the glow as it rose over the trees in Golden Gate Park, the nipping wind chill on my neck and my arms, reminder to up the sweatshirt ante here soon.

The Indian summer is passing and the autumn cold is coming.

But that luscious moon.

Yes.

Over the moon.

He sent me back another sweet missive and the above quote amongst them.

To be the embodiment of the poet, that means so much.

The validation has been powerful.

It’s hard to acknowledge and yet, I know I absolutely have to, its false modesty to not acknowledge it and the sorrow for all the time I didn’t let myself create, the doubt, the fear, the negotiating my own way through the world, poetic voice or no poetic voice, being an artist, yet denying myself entrée into the club.

No.

Really.

I don’t belong here.

No.

That table couldn’t possibly be for me.

No.

I know you say I have a reservation to be here, but there’s been a mistake.

The maitre d leads me to the table and seats me despite my own fuss.

“When I heard you reciting them,” my person said to me in front of the Church St. Cafe as we sat and drank tea and caught up, “I thought to myself, oh these are lovely, who’s are they?”

He continued, looking at me with his sparkling blue eyes, that matched exactly the corn flower blue cashmere sweater wrapped over his shoulders, “I didn’t know you wrote them, it took me a minute to catch on!”

We talked about the story behind the poems and I told him how I got there to the creative process and how I did a nonce and what that was like and it was me running away at the mouth.

“Girl, I knew you could write, but I had no idea about this part of you,” he said and smiled, with his eyes and mouth and heart, and squeezed my hands.

“You are an artist and you are curious and you let yourself go there and you have experiences, this other artist saw that in you and you connected and you let yourself do that,” he smiled more.

My heart squeezed itself in my chest and tears rose in my eyes.

“I feel like I may have cheated myself a little though,” I told him.

“How so?” He asked, curious himself.

“Well, I cashed the check and immediately, like within minutes I had transferred the entire thing into my savings account, there was no celebration, there was just a straight transfer, I feel like I should be celebrating and doing something with it, although I am doing something with it, I’m going to get a Vespa, a new one, which is what I wanted to do all along before I got bamboozled last year with the knock off I bought.”

“Girl, you are celebrating, you are telling me the story of the poems,” he looked at me, “it’s good that you put that money right into your savings.”

He’s right.

I don’t have to go out and spend the money frivolously to prove some sort of point.

In fact.

I transferred the entire $1,000 and another $150 of my own into savings.

I really want to get a scooter.

And I really want a Vespa.

So.

Just a little closer to my new ride then I was the day before yesterday.

The acknowledgement, the accolades, the poems themselves, the being a poet, letting myself be seen, that is the celebration.

Plus.

All the love from my friends who have always seen this side of me and applauded it when I did not or was not able to.

Sitting here.

Doing my blog.

Being happy.

Knowing that I made another artist happy with my work.

That is celebration.

I revel in that.

I also revel in the almost weekend of it all and my staid Halloween plans.

Which include going to 7th and Irving to get right with God, meet my person at Tart to Tart, maybe get the nails done, then lunch with a friend, and afterward, borrowing said friends couch to sit and read all day long on and maybe, just maybe, let myself take a nap.

Yup.

Those are my mad, crazy Halloween plans.

That and sitting down tomorrow to write-up another sonnet.

I have an idea I want to submit to the Bastille and I need to get it out to them ASAP, the deadline is the 31st.

Plus.

I have decided that the compensation for the sonnet series being what it is I am not, cannot with any integrity, submit it for further publication or award.

I have been amply compensated.

That being said.

I am still submitting to the Nemerov Award.

I am going to send in a sonnet that was supposed to be part of the sequence, but I messed up the rhyme scheme and the principle was out-of-order, so I tossed it.

I tried to re-work it but, it just didn’t fit.

I let it go and wrote a fresh one that fit the schematic I had set up.

But I really liked the sonnet.

And.

This means, I have an extra sonnet with all the flavor of the sequence, that I did not submit to my collaborator and patron.

Thus.

I will rework it and tighten it up and send that off instead.

I love that I have ideas falling out of my head.

I still have lots of work to do for school.

Another paper to write for Human Development.

More reading to do.

Etc, etc, ad infinitum.

But I will find the balance with the poetry.

And move forward into the generous flow of language that is out there just waiting for me to cast my net upon it’s worded sea of stars and images.

I’ll push out my boat into that ether and gather wide the nets into my arms aching and full.

Heavy with the heavenly catch that lies awaiting me.

All the things.

All the love.

All the pretty.

Pretty.

Poetry.

Are You Done Yet?

Yes and no.

It was with some relief that I sent off my last two papers.

Thus the culmination of having arrived at the point where I could say, yes!  Bring on the Burning Man.

Except.

Well.

There’s more to do.

Argh.

I realized that I will have to stay up to par with my reading, all the reading that needs to be done for the first weekend of school–really, my first week at school on campus–which is the weekend after I get back from Burning Man.

It already feels like I have been doing school work for a month.

Which I have.

The reading, the papers that were due before the retreat, the retreat, the catching up on reading, the getting here, to Glen Ellen for work, working, back to SF, then back to Glen Ellen, more working, then more reading, the writing of all the papers.

In toto: 5 papers.

A ten page paper.

A seven page paper.

An eight page paper.

A short one page creative brief.

And another two page reflection paper.

The last two papers I did this evening and it was in the process of looking over the syllabus that I discovered, god damn it Professor Kich! That I had another paper due that was a reflection paper (similar to the one he had my class do previous to arriving at the retreat) in regards to the reading that needs to be done for the class that opening weekend on campus.

And if he’s got reading, you can be sure that there is other reading that I have to do.

I felt instantly deflated.

As though none of the work I had done was worth it, that I was constantly going to be doing work, the work, it never stops.

Then, I reflected, of course I’m going to feel this way, I’m in graduate school and the work is not going to stop.

At least not for the next three years.

That’s the deal.

That’s the reality.

So.

Don’t bemoan what there is left to do.

Just get to it.

I did what I could.

I felt a little blown out from the big paper writing last night and it took me a moment to get into the papers tonight.

But I did.

And I had done some reading, just a half hour, while on my break while the family went for a hike in the Jack London National Woods, this afternoon as well as another hour and some change this evening after finishing the two small papers.

I had seen the Kich assignment when I was reviewing my reading this afternoon, but it didn’t really sink in until I sat down later in the evening to do the last of the papers.

Despite feeling like I was getting off the work in a reasonable time, way ahead of schedule I felt almost immediate panic at the thought of having to stay on top of the reading for the upcoming session.

The thing is, I remind myself, I have done a hell of a lot of work since the end of the retreat and I have caught up on the reading and surpassed what I need to read for one of my classes.

Granted, one of my classes the god damn reader is not available for it.

Damn it Dubitzky!

Get it together.

I’m sure it’s not the professor’s fault, the reader can’t be printed yet because there are some sort of copy write issues happening with it, royalties haven’t been paid or something of the like.

I haven’t even looked at the syllabus for the class.

I know there are other readings for it and I will explore those when I can.

I can also take care of doing some reading tomorrow as well as when I get back.

I’m not taking my books with me.

Although it is a definite consideration.

But I have been to Burning Man enough times to know that I won’t read there.

Not the way I am going this year.

I am not going to be stuck, isolated from the rest of the event, with the exception of going to the commissary three times a day.

I knew there was something wrong with my last couple of burns when the highlight of my day was going to the commissary so that I could interact with people.

I will not be that isolated this year and I am allowing myself the freedom to play and play as much as I can.

Which does not mean in the conventional sense of the word, I’m not going to be imbibing in extracurricular substances or drinking or partying in the common parlance of the saying, “work hard, play hard.”

NOPE.

Rather, my play hard will be dressing up, drinking loads of coffee, wearing fun makeup, sticking too many flowers in my hot pink hair, dancing without a care in the world like no one is watching, even if they are, bicycling across the playa, hanging out with friends at camp, going to do the deal in my favorite village, visiting Camp Stella and Run Free, having reunions, making new friends, making out, there has to be making out, I deserve (and need, frankly, need it at this point) to be kissed, and kissed well, more dancing, late night walks under the stars in deep playa, looking at art, playing with art, singing, giving hand massages, connecting with people, those I love and those I haven’t yet met but know I will love, connecting with my favorite little person who is not so little anymore, rides on art cars, snuggling in furry blankets, seeing fire art, FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!

Oh there will be playing.

And there will not be blogging.

Yup.

You heard it here first.

I have decided, officially, to not take my laptop.

I cannot afford to damage it and I want to have an unplugged experience.

My phone will go with me and I will use it for photos and I will also have my Fuji camera on hand, there will be much photography.

But I won’t be blogging or logging on to the internet out there.

I won’t be reading or writing papers.

I will be having fun.

I will allow myself this.

I will not take on extra.

I will be of service to my community.

But I will not sacrifice myself and my experience any longer.

It’s time for me to go to Burning Man.

Really go.

So whatever reading doesn’t get done.

So be it.

I’m doing good.

I’m ahead of the curve, I’m not going to sabotage myself or my experience.

I am going to have fun.

If it fucking kills me.

I jest.

A little.