Halloween

It’s going to be interesting.

I agreed to go out with some girlfriends to Oakland.

I am fucking crazy.

But.

Well.

Dancing.

Friends I haven’t seen in a while.

Fellowship.

Costumes.

Which sound great, but on my ride home from my internship tonight the shit show of traffic that is already happening and the crazy, San Francisco likes it some Halloween, the crazy is already on.

Tuesday is Halloween.

But everyone is out celebrating this weekend.

So.

Today when I was feeling all sorts of sassy, before the week caught up with me and bitch slapped me and stomped all over me, christ almighty I was drained when I left work to go to my internship–I worked overtime at my day job this week, I was all worn the fuck out and thought, I am nuts to want to go out tomorrow.

It’s going to be crazy town.

I mean it already is crazy town.

It’s just going to be more of it.

And how am I going to juggle the costume?

I sort of have an idea.

I was thinking I could do a sugar skull.

I don’t have all the right makeup to do it, but I could probably pick it up.

The thing is coordination with my girlfriend and where she’s going to be in the city and where I will be in the city.

I’ve got my internship from 1p.m.-5:30 p.m. tomorrow.

Yeah.

I was not expecting that, but then again, I did say I was open for consults this Saturday, so there it is, I am no victim, I volunteered for it.

I also had a client cancel this week and a few cancel next week, as Halloween is on a Tuesday–both clients cancelled that night, so I was eager to make up some of the hours.

It just puts a little crunch on coming home and getting ready and going back out again.

I have 7pm plans in the NOPA to do the deal and afterward my person and I are going to get dinner at Brenda’s Meat and Three on Divisadero.

I figure we’ll be wrapping up dinner around 9:30p.m.

My friend wants to get over to Oakland around 10p.m. for the Halloween dance.

A lot of folks in my community will be there, so it’s good fun, but I just feel a tiny bit pressured.

Then again.

Dress up?

Makeup?

Dancing?

Girlfriends?

Um, yeah.

That actually sounds good.

So I am going to make the effort, I am going to try not to be the old lady who is going to bed early on a weekend night since she’s fucking drained from the week, I’m going to rally.

I am sure I will have a good time.

And then I can say with all honesty that I did something for the holiday.

I haven’t celebrated it in a while.

The last time I went out on Halloween was with this same friend and a bunch of other folks, I dressed up as the Queen of Hearts and my date went as a character from Game of Thrones.

I was nervous as all hell to have a Halloween dance date and it was weird and as it turns out, it was so not a good match, but I went out and had some dancing with my girlfriend and she and her boyfriend actually won the fucking costume contest!

They dressed up as Vincent Vega and Mia Wallace from Pulp Fiction and they actually did the fucking dance on the stage.

It was brilliant.

I do recall that the music at said dance rather sucked, but it was fun to hang with my friends.

That was what, three years ago?

Yeah.

I suppose it’s about time I did something on Halloween.

I know I didn’t dress up last year, I’m sure I could have, I’m sure there was a party or five I could have gone to, but grad school, that’s been the thematic for the last two and a half years, I want to, but um, homework.

And yes.

Sure.

I have some, I have plenty.

But.

I want to play dress up.

I want to be social.

So I’m pretty sure I will go, even though it felt like too much effort to even think about after I got out of work tonight.

I have other Halloween things on the mind.

I have an interview on Halloween.

No.

Not for a job.

I love my job.

I’m not looking for another.

Unless it will help me get hours for my MFT licence and pays better than what I make now.

I suspect that won’t actually happen until I graduate.

Anyway.

No.

I was asked by a group that do this thing called “People Who Don’t Usually Lecture.”

It’s not a Ted talk, it’s not about big ideas, but about rather about unique life experiences and personal life journeys.

I was referred to it by a very dear friend of mine.

Said friend with whom I get to enjoy a lunch in North Beach on Sunday and catch up on all the things.

My friend did a lecture for these folks and in his discussion he brought up a poetry project that I did in collaboration with him a couple of years ago, my first semester in graduate school.

They were intrigued and asked if he’d forward my e-mail, they were interested in hearing my story.

It seems they have been doing this series in Tel Aviv now for three years and are taking the series to a global platform.

I was really flattered to be considered and I messaged with the director, I think he’s the director, of the project today.

And set up a time to go and interview with them on Halloween.

I am super excited to do it.

Of course I am.

I like to talk about myself.

Who doesn’t?

But I also like to share about how I have gotten through struggles, hardship, overcome difficulties, thrived and been resilient, how I have said yes to things, and therefore lived in Paris with my tattoo artist, flown to Rome to spend a weekend with a woman I had met in Paris at dinner, gone to London to spend Christmas Eve with a barely known acquaintance, gone to Burning Man 11 times, written thousands, yes thousands of blogs (2,286 to be exact, plus a few hundred more that I either scrubbed or archived off the site), how I met a woman in New Orleans and she collected me as an artist and took me to lunch and drove me all over New Orleans one afternoon, how I meet people, connect, talk, like the man in Green Point Brooklyn who’s sculpture I was so admiring of that he came out and talked to me and before you know it I have a private showing of his studio and the promise that when I could afford one of his pieces he would be happy to recreate my favorite one he had in his studio and ship it to me, (Doug Beube, his stuff is extraordinary) how I am a nanny, how I have worked with kids for over a decade, including nannying at 7 Burning Man events.  Or my most recent adventure, working full-time while interning part-time and going to graduate school full time.

Yeah.

That.

No biggie.

Or my spiritual life.

Which is the penultimate reason why I can do all of the above.

Regardless.

I have things to talk about.

I’m intrigued, and flattered, and more than a touched humbled that someone who I respect and admire referred me to this group of people.

It feels like a big deal.

And.

Some nice validation of who I am and what I do on a daily basis to do all the things.

So.

Yeah.

I will rally tomorrow and get my Halloween on.

I said yes, didn’t I?

And when I say yes.

Well.

Magical things happens.

They

Always.

Do.

 

Doing All The Things

I mean.

Seriously.

I broke it off today.

And I don’t feel broken, albeit tired, albeit a little keyed up from the day, but so in love with myself and the gift I gave to myself of doing this trip.

Now.

Don’t get me wrong.

I have had some moments of dis-ease (disease) and had to quietly pull myself back and get real and be grateful for all the things I have been given and all the experiences I have gotten to do.

Twice over the last two days or so I had moments of wishing I was not alone having a meal or walking through Brooklyn.

I wanted to be with someone.

I wanted to be holding a hand.

I wanted to be sharing conversation.

I wanted to be coupled up.

And those things are not wrong, that’s just human nature.

I just have to tread carefully in those areas because I can fall into the self-pity pot all to easily and frankly I’m all for avoiding potholes at this time in my life.

I’m being a good girl.

I mean I am being a very, very, very good girl.

I did no Tinder’ing while I was here, frankly the idea of trying to figure out how to hook up with someone out here was just too much to even fucking contemplate.

And yeah.

I like sex.

A LOT.

However, I don’t need it that bad.

I’m not desperate.

And I’m not an addict.

Although I play one on tv.

Just kidding.

Oh.

And I had the opportunity.

Believe me.

It was on the table.

However.

I turned down the offer after finding out said offer was not in my best interest–really too complicated and stupid to even write about here.

And.

I also ran into someone I met at Burning Man in 2013.

“I’m sorry, I know it seems I’ve been staring at you for the last hour,” he said to me sidling into my space yesterday afternoon after we had closed up and said the prayers and did the deal.  “I mean,” he eyed me up and down (I can’t remember the last time I was that blatantly, to my face, scoped out), “I really like your look.”

“Thanks I said,” and I his, let me be honest.

“And I remember where I know you from,” he added, “you go to Burning Man, you’re hair’s different, but I recognized your tattoos.”  He paused, “you’ve gotten a few more I see, and you’re hair was blue the last time I saw you.”

He handed me his card and asked what I was doing the rest of the day.

My friend swooped in, “Hey, _______, I see you met Carmen, she’s one of my oldest friends, I’m stealing her back now,” he said and took my elbow.

I mean, tall, dark and handsome was tempting, but my friend, my old friend, my friend from the early days of the crazy, he was who I wanted to spend time with.

And there was a time when I would have ditched a friend in a heart beat for a piece of action.

Not so much now.

My friends are treasures and I don’t get out here often, twice in the eight years my old friend has lived here–we caught up at the deal in Atlanta last July and I usually see him for a minute if he gets out to SF, but he’s busy, I’m busy, so no getting busy for me.

And I’m grateful for that.

Then.

Another gentleman who had reached out to me this trip.

I texted him back.

“Hey, when you get a chance, give me a call,” I wrote earlier this afternoon.

I was surprised to not get a call for awhile then just a few minutes back, he finally did.

“Ah, I knew it was coming,” he said to me on the phone, his voice thick with the chagrin and the knowing of what I had decided I was going to tell him.

“You’re first year is a gift I don’t want to intrude on,” I summed it up, “I don’t date guys when they’ve got less than a year.”

It’s not my place, I don’t want to mess up anyone’s shit, and yeah, I know my pussy’s not that powerful, I’m not the reason some one relapses or stays sober, but I see a lot of folks that get focused on the dating deal and not doing the deal and I respect and like this guy.

So after consulting with the powers that be, “I need to tell on myself,” I told my person as I walked around Chelsea today after an amazing afternoon at The New Whitney Museum.

“It’s just really nice to be told how beautiful you are, that someone who is attractive finds me so compelling, I mean, it’s super ego feeding and I know that I can’t see this guy, I know it’s not right, it’s just, well, yeah, tempting.”

“Good on you for telling on yourself, and now you won’t do that, because that’s not the woman you are,”  I was told.

Yup.

“Get your year,” I said, “don’t let me interfere with it.”

He knew, he told me that was what he thought I was going to say.

He was sweet.

And I hung up the phone feeling like.

Well.

An adult.

Perhaps an adult with the hormones of a horny sixteen year old girl, but an adult.

I wear my heart on my sleeve, but I don’t want to hurt anyone.

Sometimes it’s inevitable and someone gets hurt and I can be sorry for that and still not engage, and that’s what an adult does too.

And sometimes God blows magic fairy dust all over me and I am suddenly Alice in the looking glass.

“OH, I was just about to bring that in,” he said as I was snapping pictures of this spectacular piece of sculpture art in the front area of one of the historic brownstones in Fort Greene Brooklyn.

“I love it,” I said, “It just, well, it’s amazing.”

We started to talk.

He was the artist, Doug Beube.

He told me a few things, we chatted about me and my travels and being a nanny and a grad school student and then somehow onto Burning Man and I asked, I don’t know why, serendipity, God, what have you.

I told him about my favorite piece from last year-Storied Haven.

And then.

He cocked his head at me and said, “I don’t suppose you want to see my studio?”

OH my God.

I was so floored.

“I know, trying to get a beautiful woman into my house, and all, but,” he paused, “I think you’ll like it.”

I joked, “as long as your studio isn’t in your bedroom, I’d be honored.”

I was not only honored.

I was blown the fuck away.

The man’s work is amazing.

AMAZING.

I was in tears a number of time, over awed by the depth and breadth and beauty of his work.

I took a lot of photos-they’re up on my facecrack page and on twitter and intstagram, and I’d put them here, but they just do not do them justice, my photos, so check out his website.

www.dougbeube.com

So good.

He works with old books and cuts them up and remakes them and he does photography and organic art and found art and these cunning little sculptures and so much political art that was poignant and beautiful, so insightful, so thoughtful, it was just such an over the moon experience.

I mean I got to go to the Brooklyn Museum, the MOMA, and The New Whitney and then, to top it off I get a private tour of this amazing artist out of nowhere?

Who is the luckiest girl in the world?

Me.

Hands down.

And perhaps I should change that up as I realize I have been a woman.

A proud woman, a respectful woman, a woman who looks the world in the face and who above all is not afraid to smile and thank someone for their contributions.

We all want to be seen.

And when I am allowed to see someone and the things that they do that make them artists, I am so very grateful.

I am blessed.

I am graced.

I am loved.

Thanks New York, thanks Brooklyn, thanks to my friends who drank coffee with me and the ones I called and said, hey where should I eat today, and all the friends who said, hey check this place out and to all those people who smiled at me in the city and said, “nice outfit!”

I like being seen too.

It’s been special New York.

Thank you.

From the bottom of my heart.

Which I left in San Francisco.

Time for me to go back home.

But you will not soon be forgot.

I promise.

Kisses.

And.

Big.

Big.

Big.

Love.