Through The Sunlit Room

Overcome by your extravagant beauty I fell into your eyes.

I fell into love.

Into loving you.

I had no clue how deep that fall was to take me.

I have no regrets that I have fallen.

Fallen woman.

I am.

Coloured in by states of grace and the softness of your kisses on my face.

You drowned me in the flood of your colour.

In the iris of your eyes as they dilated and opened in the shafts of light falling over you.

Falling in love with you was like falling in love with art.

You are art to me.

Poetry.

Beauty.

Color.

Love.

I had fears of embracing you from before we embraced.

I walked away from you.

I strode away from you.

I got on my bicycle and rode away from you.

Literally.

Thinking to myself, why am I going home alone again?

Why?

As I sit here alone now.

Same table.

Different night.

Unalterably altered by you.

You broke me down though.

You and your shine.

And though danger forbade me I proceeded.

I embraced you and in the embracing.

I found myself.

Not a place I had thought I would stumble upon.

For you showed me to myself.

You displayed to me who I was in your eyes and I became something new to myself.

I knew I was to suffer.

And I didn’t care.

And when I did suffer.

When there was pain.

I stuffed it down.

I sat on it.

I buried it.

I smiled.

And then I cried when you left.

Sometimes slow hot tears that leaked as though steam from a kettle on the stove.

Sometimes torrents that would threaten to capsize me in the very boat of my bed.

The bed we had just ridden through tumultuous love waters to be stranded on the island of you and I.

Population 2.

I became one with you.

I still feel your embrace.

I still feel the weight of you on me.

And.

It fades.

The fading has begun.

I am not overcome by your beauty.

Unless I allow myself to stumble down the hill of photographs stashed away inside my computer.

Or I wallow out into social media scrounging for scraps of you.

Tomorrow will be three weeks since I last saw you.

Since our last kiss goodbye.

Ah.

Now there.

The pain.

It rises.

It is still there, persistent, it says, oh no, not faded yet.

But it is softer.

The sharp edge has dulled down.

The crying does not last as long.

And this too.

Worrisome.

When you are gone.

When I cannot remember the way you smell.

Or how you taste.

Or feel.

The heaviness, so comforting, of you arm across my body.

The crook of your arm as I nestled into it.

Always my safest place.

My home.

In your arms.

And what will become of you?

What will happen when I don’t recall the touch of your hand on my body?

Or in my hair?

Or your mouth on my mouth, my neck, my clavicles.

Remnants.

I have bits and scraps and pieces of you now.

And I try to not try to knit them all together and make a wrap I can put around myself.

To steel myself from being ultimately left by you.

I am afraid to let go of the pain of the loss of you.

Because that is all that seems real anymore.

And if I don’t have that pain.

I will have nothing of you left.

And.

Then.

Then.

Truly.

I will be bereft.

And Then Some

Today was exactly how I thought it would be and also.

Easier.

Lighter.

Less fraught with anxiety than some Saturdays can be as I recognized early the need to make all the things happen.

RIGHT NOW!

I text a friend.

First day off in two weeks and must make it all happen.

This is my best thinking.

And I know, deeply, that it is skewed thinking.

Flawed thinking.

Thinking with nothing more to it than make miserable happen when there is no need to be miserable.

I slept in.

Not long.

But just a little.

Just enough.

I skipped yoga.

Yeah that.

I also got honest with my person about skipping yoga in a phone call check in this afternoon.

I won’t be skipping tomorrow, especially now that I have made myself accountable to someone else, someone who sees me with a much greater kind of perspective than I see myself.

I made myself a nice breakfast.

Thank you Jesus for persimmons, my sweet little fall indulgence, how I do love thee.

Homemade oatmeal with apple and persimmon, sea salt, nutmeg, cinnamon, unsweetened vanilla almond milk; a hard boiled organic egg with salt and pepper, two big mugs of coffee–Four Barrel pour over.

And.

I am ready for the day.

Plus a little quiet time.

A lot of writing.

I wrote five pages this morning with out batting an eye.

I didn’t realize I had all that much to say, but there it was, it just came tumbling out.

All the words.

The words that spell out anxiety and I’m not enough and there is definitely not enough time.

But.

There is.

There was time to go grocery shopping.

I was shocked actually at how not busy the SafeWay by Ocean Beach was.

I had suspected it would be a mob scene with Hardly Strictly Bluegrass.

But it was not.

I got in and out and I have to say, I felt really happy with myself when I was standing in line and putting the food on the conveyor belt.

Man.

I take damn good care of myself, my food looks awesome.

I continued that trend by coming home and trussing a chicken and then doing a salt and pepper rub and roasting it in the oven while I did a run up to Other Avenues.

My preferred place to shop, but quite pricey so mostly the little organic things I can’t get at Safeway and the bulk food stuff and some hippy candles I really like.

Then back to the house, brown rice in a pot, groceries put away and onto the spending plan tally for September and doing my plan for October.

October is going to be a chill month.

No buying tickets to Paris.

No more scooter issues please.

I spent two grand more than I normally do this past month.

I don’t have a whole hell of a lot in savings.

Upside.

I do have something in savings.

And I have employment and I’m ok.

Just nothing extravagant for October.

Meeting my basics and sticking some cash in savings.

By two p.m. I was sitting on my back porch eating salt and pepper roast chicken with tarragon butter and brown rice with a brussels sprouts, white corn, and brown mushroom hash.

The sun was warm.

The breeze was cool.

Banjo rifts and guitar licks drifted to me from the park and I relaxed enough to know I had done pretty much everything that I needed to do and now it was time to do the deal and sit down and get square with my text books.

I did hours of reading.

I’m not done.

There are hours and hours to go.

“You are going to get through this,” my friend who I hadn’t seen in months said to me last night outside Our Lady of Safeway as the recovery house boys smoked their cigarettes and crumpled their court cards into their pockets.

I leaned into his warm hug.

“And you are going to be good, and you are going to help so many people, you will get through this, it is not for always, one foot in front of the other kiddo,” he finished, gave me a warm hug and shambled off with one of his guys toward the Lower Haight.

Sometimes the dread of the day lays heavy on me.

The responsibility to get it all done and be good and be on the up and up and get it done and go, go, go, well, it can be tremendous.

Overwhelming.

And.

Self-defeating.

I stopped making judgements around 45 minutes into my reading.

I started to feel good for picking up the books and just making the effort to read.

I don’t have to comprehend it all right now.

But I do have to start somewhere.

And.

I need to get caught up on all my reading.

Not necessarily to fulfill paper requirements or to please anyone, but because this is what I’m doing, I’m getting my Masters in Psychology and this is part of the work.

I have to do it to get the degree and I need the degree to facilitate moving into the next phase of my development.

Development that takes time, slow time, golden time, drowsy with afternoon light and the hours that breach between two and four p.m. when the promise of the day begins to wane towards dusk.

I read.

I read a lot.

Is it enough?

No, my head whispers.

Yes.

My heart confirms.

Today you did enough.

You are enough.

It was enough.

And tomorrow.

Well.

That’s not here yet.

Let’s just stay here.

You and I.

Or.

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky

As long as it is with your hand in mine and the colors that bleed are not bleeding from my heart, but from the underpinnings of love that color the clouds and light my way forward.

This moment.

This now.

This everlasting love.

Yes.

That.

Always that.

Love.

Let us go there.

Together.

You Smell Like A

Field of flowers.

Blush.

Thank you.

That is always the hope.

I have such a nose for needing to smell the good things, the lovely things, the dry grass, the smell of the oak trees, the bark dry, the lichen tight on the tree its own kind of scent, the curl of leaves, the soft sage and smoke smell of one of my class mates.

I’ve begun to study Gestalt.

And there is something there.

I get it.

It is very here and now.

In this moment.

And in this moment is God.

God is not in the past and God is not in the future.

God is right here, right now, in this place, in the words tumbling from my fingers onto the keyboard, the sound of music in my head phones, it is the two stars I saw falling from the sky while I was in the hot tub.

A stillness that I was in, a space, looking up and out and there, the flash on the sky.

And the creamy smoke of the Milky Way a pale smudge on the midnight blue depths above me.

I was chatting with one of my cohort and explaining the smell that she gave off.

We had to do an exercise in class in which we broke down sense by sense what we were seeing, tasting, touching, hearing, smelling.

She smelled earthy and mineral, like clean cool water, she also smelled herbaceous and of what I first thought was lavender, but was not, rather it was lingonberries, mulberries, and the smell was not so much of the berries, but of the leaves themselves, and underneath that I could smell clay and lime ash.

It was subtle and soft and powdery.

One of my classmates smelled like honeyed turmeric and ginger and saffron.

One of my classmates was blue.

But not blue in mood, just blue in color.

Not a sad blue either, rather a cerulean blue, a Dutch Boy blue, a Van Dyke Blue.

It was really an interesting experience.

My friend replied that I smelled like a field of flowers.

Success!

I wish to always smell good.

There is something divine and comforting about smells.

Wood smoke.

Hot cotton sheets, or line dried cotton sheets hot with sunshine and summer breeze and grass and clover.

Oh.

God.

The smell of clover can be so rich and intoxicating.

There is small bright, heady patch of clover that is in the Golden Gate Park smells like French music sounds to me in my head, my thoughts have smells and colors and love.

I feel loved.

I am also listening to a Spotify playlist that my friend put together for me and I feel loved and thought of and bright with that kind of joy that is bubbles in sunflower fields.

I have a bit of an imagination.

Thank you God for this experience.

I feel a lot more settled, a lot more connected, and a lot more myself.

Familiarity has not bred contempt, but rather a kind of closeness that can be unbearable until I just collapse and accept it and let it all in.

We are so lonely in this part of town

The sweep of the music, the golden spires of notes, the spheres sing and the stars fall over the fields of dry grass the deer pass through the shadows of the trees from the moonlight cadence and I dance here, in my bed a slow shifting of love and acceptance and ease.

Thank you my friend.

Thank you for loving me.

I love you too.

Very much.

I may not be able to put together the best mixed tape ever, but I can put down some of the words and the feelings and the colors.

The images and sensations that I get to have.

So many.

Memories and love and tenderness and hot days and summer, grass, apple trees, the wind in the lilacs, the heady bowed over blooms of peonies on the edge of the border of lawn between houses.

A revelation.

Instead of a fence to keep you out.

Instead of a wall that you have to climb.

Or one that I have to knock down.

Perhaps all I need is a field of flowers to keep my safe.

Just a little border there between you and me, a sweet, soft, petal, a musical of blossoms blowing over the grass, the apples like paper sails of hope and dreams and the reverence of of sunshine on my soul.

Clots of dandelion seeds.

Wishes on the air.

The organ grinder and the ferris wheel splayed against the spread of heavens and the carnival swings into gear and the smell of hot cotton candy and the soft powder of sawdust and popcorn.

Summer.

Cut grass.

All the memories all the evocations.

The witchery and the bright eye turned to the coin in the sky.

Money that cannot be spent except in reverence to the moment unfolding.

Always.

All the time.

Sunshine.

Burn it the sunshine.

These coins I carry in my pocket, pennies and coppers and two bits of silver that are just slices and slivers of time that I cannot spend but with you.

Bright notes bell on the guitar string.

Somewhere between my heart and my head I settle into a place and soften, let go, and give you all the pain.

Because I don’t have to carry it alone.

I never did.

My mistake.

I lay it now down in that field of flowers.

A crushing outline of my body in the tall grass wrought with wildflowers.

Alive.

To get up and walk away and hold my hand out to you over the carcasses of flowers adorned to my body.

I am here.

You are there.

And in this field.

We are everywhere.

All stars.

All love.

All bound for this moment.

This here.

This now.

Love.

Love.

I have paid my dues.

Take my hand and let’s run breathless toward that bright horizon always pushing toward the moment up the road, to that crest.

There.

Just there.

Just here.

Just Now.

Just.

And always.

And.

Forever.

Love.

Color Me Happy

I got the best hugs today.

I caught up with some friends that I have not seen in a long time.

And.

I got my hair did.

So good.

Blow Out

Rollers

Pink

Happy

Damn

Color me happy, joyous, and pink.

I was just going to go blonde.

But well, one thing, er, lead to another.

And I’m in the pink.

And I love it.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, my dear friends at Solid Gold Salon, Sutter Street at Jones (shameless plug, they are just awesome and amazing, I mean, come on) in the Tender Nob of San Francisco.

Check them out.

I mean they have been doing my hair for a long, long, long time.

Calvin did my cut and his partner Diane did my color.

I could not have been in better hands.

It was not always this way.

“You look like a space hooker!” Calvin hooted in the living room of his apartment in Nob Hill proper.

“Dude.” I said, as I looked in something like horrified awe at what he had done to me.

Note to former self, never let anyone dye your eyebrows.

Ever.

Especially not someone who is still in beauty school.

“You are not allowed to post those photos up,” I said, “and excuse me while I go scrub my face off.”

Calvin was not just in school for hair (Aveda and Vidal Sassoon), he also did the program at Blush School of Makeup down on Market Street.

I too was living in Nob Hill, Taylor at Washington, and I would often make the two block, very uphill walk, to his place and we would shoot the shit, drink too many lattes, and he would cut my hair, color it, razor blade it off, once, oh God, once, he gave me a faux hawk and a tail.

How do you know when you love someone?

You let them give you a tail.

I saw a little boy at the park the other day with a tail and all I could think was, that is so not cool, cut it off.

Off man.

I made him cut that off pretty quick.

I never really gave a damn about the color or the weird cuts, he always figured it out, and it was fun to be his hair model and let him go to town on my head.

“I remember when you were rocking all those crazy colors and cuts, you were doing wild color before any one else,” she said to me last night when I told my friend I was going in to the salon today and I was going to do blonde, pretty blonde highlights, beachy, you know, sexy.

Well.

There was some blonde involved.

And the pink will fade, eventually to blonde.

Which is perfect.

That’s actually what I want.

I also left with a container of Manic Panic Cleo Rose.

When it fades too much.

Or.

When it’s just about time for Burning Man.

I will use the Manic Panic and bring back the pink.

I love the way it fades out though, I may wait a while to douse it with more color.

I’m pretty happy with how it turned out and they gave me a blow out, using the great big curlers, and I just love the being fussed over.

Perchance we are to date, and you are a man, identifying as heterosexual, not gay, not homeless, and not in a poly possible relationship, you will win me over by 1. Kissing my neck and 2. Washing my hair.

Oh goodness.

It is the best thing to have a person wash your hair.

I could just lie in that wash station all day and let that happen.

It still amazes me that I go to the salon and get my hair done.

Or that I go to the nail salon and get my nails done.

Or that I wear makeup.

All the things.

All the things I never used to do.

It’s like having the adolescence that I never had.

“My dad says I should be careful, you’re high maintenance, he says,” my boyfriend in my twenties told me.

I’m high maintenance?

What?

What the fuck do you know about high maintenance old man?

He was right.

Perhaps why I reacted so strongly to it.

If you spot it, you got it.

I love this part of myself though and I am doing my best to allow myself to embrace it, within reason, I’m not so high maintenance as you might think.

“I’m going to shame you when I tell you when the last time you came in for a cut was,” Calvin said as he looked it up in the computer.

“I know, I know,” I said, cringing.

I knew it had been almost a year.

“Almost a year,” he said, giving me the look.

They say every six weeks.

I say every twelve months.

“I wish you would teach me how you do that cat’s eye,” she said to me, “I just can’t do it.”

It takes me five minutes to do my make up in the morning.

Maybe six if I don’t have a steady hand, but it’s just doing the same thing every day since Calvin taught me how to do my makeup.

I got to be his model a few times for make up and when I went to Blush one of his head instructors also used me to do a demonstration and I learned a lot.

I could learn a lot more.

I don’t know contouring or really how to use blush properly or apply false eyelashes.

But you know.

I’m willing to learn.

I may be high maintenance, but I’m not time-consuming high maintenance.

And I know how happy I feel when I have pretty hair and makeup.

And how sexy I feel.

“Don’t hide your sexy under a barrel,” she told me, “God did not give you all that to waste it hiding in a corner.”

Yes ma’am.

“Where are you going tonight,” Diane asked as she finished the hair and smoothed down the last pieces, coaxing the full soft curl forward in a long sashay of bang framing my face.

“I don’t have plans,” I said.

“You look great! Are you going on a date?” My housemates friend asked as she popped over to check the mail and feed the cat.

Nope.

I do not.

But you know.

Every time Calvin has done my hair.

I do end up getting asked out on a date.

Here I am.

Let’s do it.

My hair looks amaze balls.

And.

I’ll put my make up on quick.

Real quick.

Promise.