So Fresh and So

Clean.

Clean.

My house looks pretty fucking good, let me tell you.

All the laundry done, all the trash and recycling out and swept, swiffered, vacuumed, scrub the bathroom down, tidy the fuck up.

Which means one thing.

Mama had a lot of homework to do today.

My God.

There is no fucking end to it.

Yet.

Me thinks I see a glimmer of a light at the end of the tunnel.

Oh.

The light is far off, but I can sense it getting closer.

I did so, so, so much work today.

My god.

My brain hurt.

Still does, not as much, and hurt might not be the right word, but I was worn out with the material, as I was warned that I might be, but I toughed it out.

I finished all of my Elder, Spousal, and Child Abuse class.

Huzzah!

But man, it took the stuffing out of me, and I don’t eat stuffing.

Haha.

It was a lot of reading, and a lot of watching some intense videos.

I wrote out responses to five of the sections, I got three out-of-the-way previously.

And I wrote a clinical mock-up of an elder abuse situation and what I would do, from mandatory reporting to clinical interventions and everything in between.

It was a lot of work.

But.

Fuck.

It’s done.

So happy I got all of that out-of-the-way, it really was the big monster in my block of classes.

I also finished all my reading for Transpersonal, which means, drumroll please…

I have no more reading to do for the semester!!

My God.

That feels fabulous.

I am not, however, out of the woods yet.

Tomorrow I have to write two papers.

One will be fairly short, two pages, on a dream I had, it will be my last dream to tun into my Jungian Dreamwork class.

The other will be a bit longer, but not too bad, five pages.

That one will, however, be a bit more formal and honestly despite having finished all the reading for the class I’m not exactly sure where I am going to go with the paper.

I was also in contact with my group today working on our final project presentation that I will be doing the last Saturday of classes.

I’m hoping to knock out both the papers and the group work tomorrow.

And also, if I can swing it, the Psychopharmacology online portion of my Psychopharmacology and Human Sexuality class.

I have a paper in that class due at the end of the semester too and one for my Drugs and Alcohol Class.

Sigh.

That will be for next weekend.

I can get it done though, especially since the Elder, Spousal, and Child Abuse class is completed.

My God.

One more class done towards my degree.

Which reminds me, I have to register for classes in two days.

In two days I will register for my last semester!

I only have three classes.

It is going to feel miraculous after carrying six classes this semester.

I have only done four classes at once before, this semester was a stretch, and obviously, it’s not done.

OH.

And I still will have a final paper for Jungian DreamWork too, it’s just not due until after the last weekend of classes.

Which is always a conundrum.

Crush that bitch out of the park and get it done before my last weekend of classes, or finish that Sunday when I get out of classes.

Because the damn thing is due on the 15th of December and I’ll be working all that week and of course, seeing clients.

There’s no way I can do two big papers tomorrow and the small one and the online portion of my other class.

No.

I will be a wastrel of a person.

But.

Maybe I can do them next weekend.

Maybe.

If not, maybe I can get it started.

It would mean three papers next weekend.

Sigh.

I got invited out to the movies tonight.

I turned it down.

I got invited out to dinner.

I came home and made my own.

I am going to be over the moon when this semester is done, it will be nice to have a little more wiggle room for social outings and such.

Although I do have breakfast plans with my best friend in the morning.

Super excited for that, really happy to get to have some time before I get into the homework grind.

And if I’m good and grind hard and get a lot of it done, maybe I go to yoga.

Not the regular Vinyasa, nope.

My ankle is doing better, but not that much better, no, I was thinking maybe the Restorative yoga, my brain is going to need some restoring to normality by the time I crank out all the homework I have to do tomorrow.

Grateful I know how to write a paper and grateful for my ability to pull together my notes and book references and make it work.

I can do it.

I have my process and I’ve done the biggest work, which is the reading.

That’s the most important.

I’ll skim through my books, grab a stack of post-it notes and flip through my class notes, I will put together a skeleton of the paper in outline by looking through my materials and see what my common themes are.

Then.

I’ll write that bitch.

It’s five pages, so with prep time, reference time, write time, I am going to give it two and a half hours.

Actually.

That seems too long.

Two hours.

I’ll kick out the dream paper in twenty minutes, I don’t have to write it up with references, it’s just me doing what I do anyway, write what I see in my head, so two pages will be twenty minutes, thirty tops.

So maybe I’ll have all the writing done with in that time.

And that should give me enough room and time to finish the rest of the online material I need, I suspect that will take an hour to two and also writing out an outline and making a worksheet for my final project for Transpersonal.

That will take forty-five minutes.

So.

What am I looking at?

Five hours?

I think I can do that.

Breakfast shenanigans are early so I’ll be in the mix by 10 a.m. like I was today, today I finished at 6 p.m. working pretty much straight through, yes, even when I was cleaning I was doing homework.

I had to watch a few videos, but I will admit, I was listening to some of them while I was cleaning, the material at times was graphic and I found it easier to integrate when I was cleaning and sweeping and washing.

So if all goes as planned I’ll be done by five or so.

I have an hour break at 1p.m. to do some work with a lovely lady and get right with God, a break after that for lunch, and then back in it.

It will get done.

It will.

I can do it.

I can.

Go team go!

Heh.

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.

Luminous

Don’t put your light under a bushel!

I wanted to grab the woman across from me and give her a hug.

I did later.

But.

In that moment.

I nodded my head, I used a small furthering word, I repeated back what she said.

I used her words.

I heard her.

I really heard her.

I used feeling words and listened.

And.

It was amazing.

“You’re doing it kid!”

I was so excited and present and there.

The classroom fell away, I didn’t hear what was happening with the other dyads that were spread around the room, I didn’t notice anything but the woman across from me, the feelings registering on her face, the words she was saying, the situation she was describing.

The vulnerability.

I could swoon with the honor of bearing witness.

I had my first taped, as in recorded, role-playing session where I was a therapist and my client was herself, ie, not a made up character taken from one of our texts, which is what we have been doing until today.

I will have to transcribe it and I am eager to hear it and loath to as well.

Hearing my own voice recorded is not my favorite thing in the world, although I like my voice, I like reading out loud, I like reciting my poems, I like reading stories to the boys at work.

Speaking of reading.

The artist I collaborated with from Burning Man got back to me and he is very happy with the sonnets.

I reiterate.

I am very happy with the sonnets.

In fact, I think I may rework them a tiny bit and submit them to the Howard Nemerov Sonnet award.

The Formalist is accepting applications to the award until November 15th.

I am going to submit the entire ten as a sequence.

Only one sonnet will win the award, but as a poet I can submit up to twelve sonnets.

I have never submitted more than one that I can think of, at a time.

I have submitted I believe four times.

There were times when I thought, I will just keep submitting until they give me the damn award.

Now.

Well.

Sure.

I want the award, but I think, just as much, I want them to be published.

Even one of them.

They just do make me happy.

Of course, technically, I have published them, here on my blog.

“Quick” is the title of the blog.

Anyway, I digress a touch.

Where I was going with this is that the collaborator wants me to meet with him and read him the works.

I am excited to do that, to read them, just as much as to have them printed off.

There is something really visceral about reading them to someone.

They become more than the words on the page.

Oh.

I want you to see the words on the page too, they are some clever words, and some tidy word play and some great rhymes, but really, I want to perform them for you, read them for you, have my heart in my mouth and my soul bare before you, so that you receive the full song of the sonnets.

The epic.

Well.

Ten sonnets in a row, is not necessarily an epic, but all linked together by the words of another poem, using formal verse, my, my, my, Carmen, I think you made up another nonce.

I’ll take it, thank you very much.

I love poetry.

Not that you can tell.

Ha.

And I love the sound of my own voice and I am not humble at all.

But I have some modicum, every, once in a while, of humility.

That humbles me, that leveling of my ego, the evening out of my pride, that being teachable.

I am teachable.

I am learning.

I feel like I am an ever emerging young adult in the world, open eyes, dancing over the sewer grates of the down town rough and tumble asphalt, innocent, perhaps not, but open, fresh, awakened, alive, a light, a lit, in love with my life.

“You are my light.”

And you mine.

I smile and sink into my heart space and feel surrounded and held and the words float out like holograms.

She used the word again!

Luminous, luminosity.

The depth of seeing that she has for herself that she is not even aware of having, and how she does not want to hide her light and yet feels compelled to dim it down.

Shine brighter love!

Be brighter.

Be your own light.

Be the beacon, the unsheathed light of love.

Let is shine.

Shine darling.

Light up the sky.

I kept my mouth shut.

I let her do the work, which in of itself is a lot of work, a lot of knowing to just listen, to sit back, or forward a little, leaning into the words and cadences of her phrases, seeing how her body would get small, then big, then open and the emotions chasing themselves fleet foot and dancing over the planes of her face, the rich brown eyes deep and doe like, soft with tears.

I’m learning!

I wanted to shout.

I wanted to dance in my chair.

I don’t know that I was exactly articulating that in my head, it was just a nice buzz of knowing of connecting, of being in the moment and being there for that person and knowing, in my heart, deep and true that I was exactly where I was supposed to be, doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing, my gratitude.

It knows no bounds.

It leaps about the room.

It rolls across my bed and giggles.

It kisses my neck and drops me dizzy and divine, my hair fanned out behind me.

Lush.

Luminous.

Light.

Lit up.

Happy.

Joyous.

Free.

Liminal, dancing there, on the threshold.

Lined in love.

Lightened like feathers, swan down, cushions of softness and swathed in light.

All the light.

I wanted to reach across the way, to touch the back of her hand with mine, so I reached with my heart.

I believe it was felt.

I looked with my eyes.

I did not touch with my hands.

Sometimes when I look at you, I am touching you with my hands.

Stroking the soft crown of your head, tracing the bones of your face, holding it dear, sweet, delirious in its humanity in between my cool fingertips, scrolling down the tender nape of your neck, holding you, darling, close to me.

Sometimes I see you so bright and lit and full of love.

It astounds me and I fall aghast with love, adorned with love.

A glow.

And I know.

I know.

I am exactly where I am supposed to be.

Spot lit by love.

Sunshine Day Dream

I woke up to daisies on my doorstep.

Not a bad way to rise and shine.

Happy.

That will be my principle today.

Not that I had any time,  not a single down moment or minute, to spare, to call my person and check in with her that my principle was such, but it was.

October is one of my favorite months in San Francisco.

It’s a gorgeous kind of Indian Summer that most out of towners are not aware of, the sun shines bright, there is a lick of cool in the wind if it’s windy, there’s not usually fog and there usually is sun and high, wide, blue, blue, robins egg blue, skies.

My kind of weather.

My outfit was inspired by the flowers.

I wore my bright yellow polka dot shirt and pig tails with a daisy, fake, but still, in my hair.

And gold on the eyelids.

I could have been a bumble bee if you had stuck some antennae on my head–I wore black tights as well–in fact, I had a moment when I thought, if I didn’t already have an idea for a costume for Halloween, I would go as a bumble bee.

It would be super easy.

Maybe for when I go trick or treating with the boys this year, they were in their police office costumes all day today and are definitely ready for the holiday.

Although, Halloween is on a Saturday this year, so I may not be trick or treating with the boys.

Still it’s nice to know I have a couple of costume ideas and options before the day sneaks up.

It always sneaks up.

And then it’s suddenly here and everyone is raiding Mission Community Thrift and Buffalo Exchange and all the stores in the Haight and no, really, I don’t want to spend money on an outfit, but I don’t also want to be left out.

I only have been invited to one Halloween event so far and I am not certain I want to head over to Berkeley on a Saturday night to play Halloween with the kids.

Maybe.

I also just checked and I do have another invite to the party at the Park Gym, that’s a possibility.

Although, I am not sure about heading into the Mission on a Saturday night Halloween.

The Mission on a Saturday night is enough of a horror show as it is.

I heard of another party in Glenn Park.

Who knows.

If I do go out

I will probably dress up like a pin-up girl.

I have all the stuff.

Polka dot dress with a flare out skirt and crinoline, high-heeled pumps, and I know how to draw on a pretty good cat eye.

What I would need, is someone to do my hair pin-up style.

I know a lady who does her’s in a victory roll and it’s hella cute, but I have never done one and I have neither a flat-iron or a curling iron and I can’t tell you when the last time was I owned hairspray.

Never?

But it would be fun.

I did have a couple of girl friends that wanted me to go to the Armory party, there’s great dance music going on there and there’s another good party at Public Works, but I am hesitating to commit to anything right now.

Committing the most now to getting as much reading done before school rolls around this weekend.

In fact, I set my alarm a little early for tomorrow so that I can get to the rest of it.

Halloween.

I may pass you by.

However.

I am interested in getting dressed up and going to the ARTumnal Burning Man event that rolls around in November.

I got word from the photographer/architect/artist that I am collaborating with for a project he wants to present there.

I would love to see my work out there in the public eye.

He was quite happy to receive them.

I was happy that he was happy.

I really quite adore them.

In fact.

I am thinking of submitting them to The Bastille–the publication in Paris that published one of my stories when I was living in Paris.

They reached out to me today and said they were looking for submissions.

It’s not paid, but it’s a chance to have my work in another publication and I would get a copy of the publication and an invitation, haha, to read from my work in Paris at Shakespeare and Company.

Not that they would pay to fly me over.

I was thrilled when they picked my story The Button Boy to publish and invited me to speak at the event and read the story at Shakespeare and Company.  But by the time the publication came out I was already living back in the states.

I do want to have a reading one day at Shakespeare and Company.

I mean.

Really.

What writer doesn’t?

So in lieu of going to Paris, not that I won’t hey, you want to go to Paris?

Let’s go!

I speak some French and know a few folks over there.

But realistically.

I think the ARTumnal is more likely for me to get into than Paris at this time.

I do want to go back to Paris, especially since one of my fellows in the program at CIIS is from Paris and it would be tres cool to hang out with her there–ma poulette across the Atlantic.

I will too.

I can tell.

I keep digressing on the Paris track.

Ah, the Bastille e-mail is doing it to me.

Anyway.

I would like to go to the ARTumnal.

The tickets are pretty steep.

But I am thinking that I want to be there.

I know I will see people I love and care about.

I know I will see some art and I might even see my own poems somewhere in the big mix of spectacle and carnival, music and mayhem.

If I don’t go out for Halloween, I definitely want to go and get dressed up for this.

Oh.

Shoot.

I just looked up my school syllabus.

I am in freaking class that weekend.

Damn it.

Ugh.

I don’t know that I can get out to it.

FROGS.

Oh well.

At least the poems are done.

And I am happy I wrote them.

They make me happy.

That’s what important anyhow.

Happiness.

Sunshine.

Daisies.

Love.

I got it all today.

Who needs more?

Done And Done

And done.

But.

Not done in.

So thankful to have had this day of working on all that is love and home and work and homework and heart work and everything that life entails and encapsulates.

I had a full day.

One that I wasn’t exactly sure how it was going to go off.

I insisted on letting myself sleep in an hour longer than I normally would.

Well.

I don’t know if insist is the right word, it felt almost like work, just lie here and let yourself go back to sleep.

The machine in my brain wanted me up and about and get on it girl, there are things to do, people to meet with, breakfast to cook, writing to be done, you have papers to write and so much reading, do you have any idea how much reading you have to do?

Not as much as I did this morning, but I get a head of myself.

I was able to combat the thoughts by acknowledging them and saying, might have been mumbled into my pillow as I turned over in my bed, my delicious, delightful, pinch me I’m so happy I get to sleep on it, bed, “thanks for sharing,” and go back to sleep.

It worked for a little while, I got another 45 minutes in.

Of course the next time I woke up, I was up and going.

And really.

I haven’t stopped since.

Although there have been reprieves and moments of down time today, moments when I look about me with such gratitude that I am overcome by what I have and the abundance, nay, the super abundance, of love in my life.

I have been all around the world and I have this home that has become such a home to me that I am in literal awe of what I have.

There is art and beauty everywhere.

The last piece finally coming together as a friend came over this morning to help me hang the Diebenkorn he gave me months ago.

When I look at that piece, the way it sings on the wall, the heralding of love, the colors replete and yes, matching, complimenting, extending around my room, I am reminded in subtle, and not so subtle ways, of the journey of the last few months.

Had someone said, you are going to cry this much, and feel this much pain, and yes, laugh this much, so much that you think you might pee your pants or vomit out sushi, or good forbid snort (all of which have happened in one degree or another) or that I might feel so much joy that I felt I was to burst, that I was going to see so much art, have access to it, get to bring it home and make my home even more my home, well, I would not have believed it.

Which is funny.

Since I have big feelings and the above sentence does not seem at all irrational to me when I re-read it.

Of course I changed.

My home becoming my unexpected crucible and I am replete with happiness, content in a way that I had not thought possible, though knew, really knew, was out there for me.

I have everything I need.

I have so much that I want, that the wanting is almost supplemental.

But I will tell you a secret.

Shhhh.

I am thinking again about a scooter.

I have been saving.

And I have not touched the financial aid disbursement that I have received for school.

I have gotten help, I won’t say that I haven’t, I have been gifted generously and taken care of and that has allowed me to throw a little more in my savings than I typically do.

I am feeling it out again, the scooter topic, as my knees also bugged me a bunch today and over the last week.

They buckled a little trying to help lift my bed out-of-the-way to hang the Diebenkorn and I found myself bursting into tears.

Although I valiantly tried to hide them, my friend looked at me in alarm and told me to sit down.

I was humbled.

My body, a token of constant humility.

I can dress her up, but sometimes I can’t get her to walk from here to there.

Anyway.

The scooter has been on my mind again and part of that, I won’t lie, is for efficiency as well.

How much more reading could I get in if I weren’t riding my bike to and from work and school?

What places I would be able to go to, doing the deal especially can be hard some days and I feel that a mode of transportation at night that is faster than my bicycle will be helpful.

I am hoping the little Buddy Italia in cream and avocado is still at Scooter Centre.

If it’s not.

It wasn’t meant to be.

If it is.

Heh.

Maybe I can get a better price on it than the one he offered me when I looked at it a few months ago.

Plus.

I am expecting a bonus at the holidays.

If I can hold off on spending the loan money and get a nice bonus, I maybe riding a scooter into the new year.

This is all speculation and pulls me away from the moment and the further acknowledgement that I need to give, to myself, really, I just want to acknowledge how much work I put into those sonnets–the ones from last nights blog.

I sent them off just before logging on here to write my blog.

I went through them three more times today and edited them, read them out loud, tightened them up, and then sat and dreamed on them while I wrote my Psychoanalytic Paper on Freud’s theories of Mourning and Melancholia.

Ayup.

And I used them in my paper.

Which was fantastic and outside the box and I was hesitant, but my friend said go for it, and when I consider how much work I did on them it didn’t feel like I was cheating to include them in my paper.  If anything, it felt like an acknowledgement to the professor of how much the Freudian work actually found its way into the sonnets as I was writing them against the back drop of analysis and dreamscapes.

I re-titled the work, tightened it up, and sent it out.

The collaborator poet has officially sent her poems out into the world for the photographer artist to use.

Part of me hopes he likes it.

The majority of me doesn’t give a flying rat’s ass.

I did a damn good job.

I love them.

They brought me joy.

I spent a lot more time with them then I thought I would, but I received so much in return, including a lot of insight that I extrapolated later in my paper when I wrote it.

That was my day: poetry, reading, writing, repeat.

Take small breaks, meet with ladybug, cook food for the week, do laundry, go with friends over the bridge to do the deal in Mill Valley, hang out, catch up with folks, then come home and finish all my Freud reading for class on Friday.

Thank God.

It’s done.

Oh.

Hahaha.

Don’t worry, I still have reading to do before Friday, but I don’t have any more papers due.

A reprieve.

I’m done for now.

Just now.

And with that.

Time to put up my feet.

Curl up in my bed.

Sip a cup of tea and look in astonishment at the prosperity and abundance in my life.

I am a very lucky girl.

I am.

So.

Very.

Very.

Lucky.

Giddy Like A School Girl

It’s how he makes me feel.

Then I laughed to myself, as I shut the gate to the house, catching one last glimpse of him as he sauntered down the street.

I am a schoolgirl.

Ha.

And like a good school girl I am here writing.

Yeah.

I know, this is not home work.

But I do my best work when I am able to also do this, this sitting, this coming to the page, this writing it all out, all down, falling down that dirty little hole of word lust and wanderlust and rumpled and tossed on my bed kissed with heat and desire and shake it off girl, you got papers to write.

I do have papers to write.

But I still have reading to do.

So.

The reading runs a pace.

I got in more today and I am happy to announce I have a plan.

(God laughs at my plans)

I will read as much as I can and then outline my paper on Saturday afternoon, writing it in the afternoon completely on Sunday.

I have a few ladybugs that I am meeting with, then doing the paper writing deal.

My week is actually pretty damn full up.

When isn’t it?

Tomorrow I meet with my person after work at Church St. Cafe.

Friday I meet with a ladybug at the same cafe, again after work.

Saturday I meet with another one of my people.

Yeah.

Like that.

It takes a village to keep me straight, as in not bent.

Then.

A speaking engagement at 7th and Irving.

After.

I will treat myself to my small indulgence and go out to a solo lady lunch and then go to my mani/pedi/waxing spot and get my girl on.

Why?

Because I like to pamper myself and this is one of the few things I allow myself, once a month I get the full deal and it’s so nice.

I would actually be getting my nails done more frequently, but between juggling work and school, well, I just don’t have the time.

I looked at my nails today and cringed, it’s been too long, but, it’s going to wait until Saturday, there just is no time otherwise.

After I do the girl’ing out, back to my house, a shower, a shave, shake out my hair, curl it up (like I have anything to do with that, it will just do it all on its own) pull out a crinoline and put on a pretty dress.

I gots a date.

Super stoked to be going to a restaurant I have never been to and heard lots of good things about.

Range in the Mission.

In fact, the dad who I work for, it’s his favorite restaurant.

The mom’s is Michael Minna’s.

I have never been to either, although, ha, I have known people who have worked in both places.

Even after a decade of being out of the service industry (I was in it for 21 years) I still know lots of people in it.

I like this dating thing.

I am having fun.

The going slow is good too.

Although, on one hand there is no going slow.

The intimacy, emotional, has been deep and intense and also relaxed and easy.

I’m not going anywhere.

I’m in school, giddy like a school girl, remember, for the next three years.

I was working this morning on my three pages of journal writing, my morning pages, and acknowledging the slight bit of anxiety about getting my Human Development paper done and getting my date on and doing the deal with the ladies, I’m meeting with three of them this weekend plus my two people–it’s like having another job, of course the most important job when it gets right down to it as it allows me to do everything else that there is to do, and I do mean everything–but I know it will happen.

I just have to sit down and do it.

I am also working on the sonnets for the Burning Man collaboration with an artist I met at the burn and I am happy, nay, excited, thrilled, over the moon, that they are going well, they make me tingle when I am writing them and I had to put them down today after I wrote the fourth one in full.

I actually spoke to myself out loud.

“Ok, now, read, put down the poetry, Martines, pick up your reader.”

And I did.

I read for a while before getting on my bicycle and going to work.

Work.

Adventures in nannying.

Adventures in asking for what I need.

I am taking a day off in November to go over to Corte Madera and do a little speaking engagement that I was asked to do before I had started school or even headed off to Burning Man.

I realized when I asked for the day, that I obviously couldn’t take it as a sick day, but the family and I haven’t sussed out whether or not I get vacation days or pay or time off or sick days or, shit, a lot of things have yet to be discussed.

So.

I must to send them an e-mail tonight requesting it off officially, so they have a reminder and I need to ask for clarity.

Such a small thing.

I thought I would feel some anxiety, but I don’t.

I just need to clear it up so that I don’t have it on my head running around in circles, just being present is the hardest thing to be and it is an absolute must when I am nannying.

Being completely present for the boys and for myself.

Knowing how I best can take care of myself is a part of that.

Knowing that I can balance it all out is good to know too.

I am.

I will continue to do so.

Moment to moment.

Taking a minute.

Once in a while.

To get giddy like the proverbial girl and let my hormones, just for a minute, tumble me about.

Then back to the grind.

Back to the books.

Back to the page.

And.

Back to work.

There’s always something to do.

Grateful.

Grateful for it all.

At the end of the day.

I am happy.

I am happy today.

No regrets.

No cause for worry.

Not in my wonderful.

Full.

Loved.

Creative.

Poetic.

Enchanted.

School girl life.

You Still Writing Your Blog?

He asked as we pedaled our bicycles up the hill past the Rose Garden in Golden Gate Park.

I was riding home on my whip thinking about all the things that need to be done and the grocery shopping that I was about to embark on, so, so, so grateful to be meeting a friend after work who gave me a lift to SafeWay.

I got all the things I need to get through the week and then some.

It would have been two, probably three trips on my bicycle had I loaded up my messenger bag real full and rode my bicycle real slow.

I don’t ride my bicycle real slow.

In case you were wondering.

Although.

I don’t ride as fast as some.

If I was on a geared bicycle I would actually be faster.

I am on a one speed and it only goes so fast before I am just needlessly spinning my crank.

I coast down hill pretty damn fast though, and that is often where I will catch up to those who have passed me on the uphill climb.

Which is what happened as I sped through the park, thinking about autumn in Wisconsin.

There are parts of my ride home, specifically the Pan Handle, where there are some old growth oak trees, when I am reminded of fall in the Midwest.

The smell in the air.

The leaves scattered on the ground, the shadows falling from the trees and the old sodium lamp posts lighting the way.

I am reminded always of the CS Lewis book, “The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.”

The lamp-post always get that reference for me.

And.

There is a kind of magic about the park, especially at night, when the shadows are long and the stars hang low overhead, when it’s past the last of the day’s commute and the runners have done their runs and the bicycle traffic is light to none existent, and I feel as though the entire way is mine.

The soaring on my bicycle through the air, the whick of wind against my neck and pulling through my hair.

I passed by the DeYoung and started the slight descent to the Rose Garden that heralds the last big hill climb on my ride and then, literally, it is all down hill from there, down towards the sea, the salt wind, the bonfires kissing the dunes, and the shaded night heralding my heart home.

I usually holler out, “passing on your left,” but I actually thought I might startle the rider I was coming up on, so I just gave him a wide berth and whipped past.

“Carmen?!”

“Yup, that’s me, who’s that, you better pedal harder to catch up!”  I laughed as I hit the down slope on the hill, bottomed out and began the climb.

“Use your momentum coming down the hill to push you up the next one,” my friend taught me on training rides for the AidsLifeCycle.

I never forgot that advice and it’s really the only way to get up hills on a one speed in San Francisco.

I heard the bicyclist behind me drop it into gear and push up the hill.

“Hey!” He said, “it’s Max! How are you?”

“Hello!”  I said, “doing good, just got out of work, heading home, you?”

“Just left 7th and Geary,” he said, “heading home too, hey, did you start grad school, how’s that going?”

“I did!”  I said.

“I just had my second big weekend of classes, it’s kicking my ass, trying to balance all the things, working 35 hours a week, carrying 12 credits in grad school, doing the deal, you know, trying to not get too far into the future or I’ll freak out.”

“Yeah, I feel you, that’s a lot, but you can do it,” he said.

“Yup, I just keep focusing on what’s exactly in front of me,” I said and spun the crank.

Just keep my eye on the next foot fall, don’t get carried away thinking about how I just got my schedule “figured” out and the mom asked me today to totally switch my hours from a 1p.m. start to a 10 a.m. start next Monday and Tuesday–the boys have two days off from school.

And.

If I get too consumed with my schedule and I am not flexible with myself I will freak out.

“Hey, you still writing your blog?” He asked me next.

“Yeah, I’m sort of in awe that I am doing it, but it’s so helpful, it lets me get all the stuff out of my head, it’s like a nightly inventory [sic] I need it, I don’t think I can drop doing it, although I’m still not sure how I am able to find the time, I do.”

“It pops up in my Facebook feed every once in a while,” he continued, and we crested the hill and began the descent home.

“Nice to run into you!” I shouted as he slowed down to take the turn and I sped, yes, right through the stop sign and rolled on into the velvet night laying splayed out before me.

It does leave me with a sense of wonder, this little blog does, I am still finding words for my experience, still aching to share those experiences with you, the reader, lovely reader, hello, you do fill me with regard and wonder too.

I wrote last night about being mindful that I was writing for myself and frankly if I think about the people reading, or not reading, my blog, I will get weird about it, but that doesn’t mean that I am not aware of you, sweet reader, in fact, I regard you with respect and no small sense of honor.

Thank you for stopping to read the words.

Oh the words.

They do mean so very much to me.

Speaking of words.

I am knocking out the sonnets for the Burning Man poetry project I have had on the back burner for the last couple of weeks.

I was supposed to have some things ready for my collaborator, and I did, I do have some sonnets I wrote, but I did not like the way they read and there was something missing.

I found the missing ingredient.

And.

I have been flying.

I wrote out the supporting framework for ten sonnets and then fleshed out one completely yesterday.

Today.

Well.

I was on a roll.

I wrote two sonnets back to back and I probably could have written a third, but I did want to make sure that I addressed some reading for my Human Development class or I would be falling behind for the paper that I must have written in this upcoming week for the class.

I love when the words come and the images and the song of the world seems to croon to my ear and I am connected to that elixir of light and poetry.

I feel blessed.

Graced.

Lightened.

Enlightened.

And.

Loved.

I am such a lucky girl.

Full of words.

And wonder.

I am.