I Would Follow You

To Wisconsin.

He said, underneath the heat lamp at the outdoor cafe.

On our first date.

There have now been four dates.

Tomorrow will be number five.

And that is all you need to know about him.

I would like to spill all the words and looks and the synchronicities and the eyes, oh, the eyes.

But.

I am not going to.

I spill so much of my heart on these pages.

“You wear your heart on your sleeve,” an old lover once told me, “I could never write about the things you do, share the things you do, it’s what makes you a good writer.”

I don’t know about that necessarily.

I think a good writer is just one that writes.

I still write every day.

In the mornings.

Three to four pages, sometimes just one or two, but I always write.

I don’t show up here as often, sometimes I think it might be time to hang up the blog, but I just keep holding onto it.

There is something here still for me.
I am not sure that there is anything here for you though.

I just keep letting you go.

I don’t know who shows up to read these ramblings any more.

I don’t know who you are.

I do know that you still read the words.

Sometimes you search me out.

Sometimes you find me on some old social media post I thought I had scrubbed away.

Sometimes you find me with esoteric search engine terms.

You keep finding me.

And I keep writing for ghosts.

This time.

This time though, I am writing for me.

About a month ago I sat down in front of my computer with too much eye make up on and a bushel of glitter and my hair wild and I did my dissertation presentation for a friend who is a film maker.

It was not as good as when I defended my dissertation and was awarded my PhD, that feeling of being so in the moment and not even realizing the camera was on was not with me when I did it for my friend.

But.

He got the gist of it and he liked it and he said, yeah, we can make this into a film.

It had been suggested to me by one of my former supervisor’s that I make the dissertation into something, a one woman show, a documentary, a film.

He said I had it, that he could watch me present the work all over again, would pay for it and that it was better than a lot of what he’s seen on Netflix.

I mean.

Fuck.

What a great compliment.

And also.

Fuck.

Scary and wonderful and am I really going to do this?

I mean.

I just finished my PhD.

I have a full time therapy practice.

Shouldn’t I just be taking long walks on my days off?

Just looking at the sky and the city and breathing without the pressure of a writing project on my shoulders.

Just walking around and watching the birds wheel in the sky.

Just listening to music on my Airpods and smiling that I don’t have to go anywhere, don’t have a deadline, don’t have to do another draft or edit or more research.

I can put away the research.

I have shelved the books.

I can let it go.

Or can I?

There is something here.

There is a story and I do think there is a movie and so does my friend.

When I started writing my blog, twelve years ago now, I would sometimes get a line of words in my head or a phrase and I would know, that’s my blog.

That’s the line.

That’s my way in.

I don’t actually need anything more than that.

Just the line.

What follows after that line I never know.

I just have a feeling for what has to be written in the next moment, the next breath, the next beat of time.

And I kept thinking about how my friend sent me the info about how to write a screen play and how it should be a certain kind of way and I was like, well, damn, I don’t have the “ending” you’re supposed to have.

But who ever does have the ending that they’re supposed to have?

What if it wasn’t bad timing lover, friend, soul mate, what if it was just that we weren’t meant to be, not really, not ever and we stole something, took away light from the moon and carved out a tiny moment in the soul of the world and hid our love.

But it couldn’t stay.

We weren’t meant to be together.

We never were.

Because we aren’t.

So I let it go again.

Let you go again and choose something else, I look up at the stars, the moon be damned, and find a new way forward.

It is dark and it is new and I don’t know where it’s going.

But when I put my hand on his back last night I thought I might just find a new way through.

And I might just have an ending to my story that has hope.

It may not be the fairy tale ending.

I have had my heart broken too many times by the fairy tale.

It will be a different story.

A new story.

And yes.

It will be a love story.

My love story, though.

My way through.

My way out.

When I chose to walk out the door to my apartment and take a right and not a left and meet him at the corner of the street and take a deep breath and say.

“Hi, it’s nice to meet you.”

And really, really mean it.

It really has been so nice to meet you.

I don’t know if we’ll ever go to Wisconsin.

But that you would follow me there.

Well.

That is one hell of a way to start something.

Something that begins with hope.

Don’t Stop Writing

I was told recently.

“I like reading what you write.”

God.

I love that.

Validation.

Although it’s not why I write and I am struggling with that.

Let go, I whisper to myself.

But.

It’s hard to let go of something that I have been in relationship with for seven years.

I have to shut down my blog.

I haven’t written the last few days and I can feel it in my bones.

Actually, that’s not true.

I have been writing, a lot.

Just not my blog.

I have been busy.

And the not writing I can take with a great big grain of salt because I was busy doing wonderful things and having life altering experiences.

Life is happening.

My God, is it ever.

I started my internship.

I take my first client next week.

I have read my client file, contacted said client and set up our first session.

I am navigating all the paper work and all the insurance stuff, more stuff, all the stuff, the policy papers and the keys, oh my God, the keys, I have a lot of keys right now.

Which is fine.

I jangle when I walk, but whatever.

Today I had my first group supervision training.

It was great, I learned a lot, it’s rather like being in a small classroom and getting to ask the teacher all the things, and I took some notes and got the questions I needed answered.

Most of my questions had to do with administrative stuff as I haven’t met with a client yet.

All the others in the group have been seeing clients and thus they brought up what they needed to have addressed.

It was great learning for me to just sit and listen and I did have some input and that was nice, I was able to see a few things and offer some different perspective and I was thanked for my experience and my insight.

Which I appreciated as well.

I also asked about my blog.

This blog.

My baby.

My love child.

My little place in the universe to pour out my heart and talk about all the stuff on my heart and in my mind, or to get out all the stuff in my mind so that I can listen to my heart better.

I have known, probably since I started school, that one day the blog was going to end.

But.

The writing doesn’t have to end.

And that was what my supervision group gave me today.

I got very affirmative feedback from everyone to take down the blog off social media and make it completely anonymous.

I have already pulled it from my Instagram account and I privatized that account so random folks can’t join it, I have to approve the follow request.

I have also dropped a few folks off the friends list on Facecrack.

I could probably winnow that out a little more as well.

It was recommended that I change my name on Facecrack.

I’m not sure to what, but I know a few people in my cohort have already started doing that.

It’s a damn good idea.

The next suggestion was to not link my blog to Facecrack.

It would eliminate a lot of my readers.

I mean.

A lot.

But.

It would provide me with more anonymity and it would also give my client room to see me as a therapist, not as some poet girl, Burning Man aficionado, single lady in the Outer Sunset riding around the city on a scooter.

Then.

Sigh.

Ugh.

It was suggested and I knew the moment I heard it that it was the next action to take.

That I stop writing this blog.

Double ugh.

I knew it in my gut, but I teared up.

I am tearing up now.

Fuck.

I know that because I have such big feelings that I am going to be a great therapist because I can empathize, but shit, sometimes it’s just a bitch being sensitive.

Granted, I wouldn’t wear it any other way, that is, my heart on my sleeve.

 

Gerber daisies in a Mason jar.

Dark pink stars on slippery green stalks opening toward the light.

Petals kissing.

And blushing soft.

Mouths like hungry little beasts blossoming into the warm air.

My heart.

Threaded with light.

Opening and beating against the back of my ribcage.

Tender under the bruised spaces on my breastplate.

This then.

Each moment timeless and gone only to be longed for again.

And again.

And again.

 

I digress.

But you get the point?

I like to express.

I like poetry.

I lie.

I love poetry.

I am a whore for it, like cello music and Clair de Lune and Brahms and Mozart and Chopin, I prostrate myself to it and hope, really I do hope, to gracefully surrender to whatever beauty is taking me at that moment with a kind of asunder that only perhaps is heard inside my soul.

But hear it I do.

And to renounce this forum feels terrifying and sad.

So sad, the richness of sweet lipped tears on the tops of my cheeks and the sudden catch of my breath in my throat.

Oh.

All the feelings I don’t want to feel.

But.

OH.

All the feelings I get to feel, I am so grateful and graced and loved.

Beloved.

I am.

And I am aware of my great fortune.

But.

This then, begins the end of my blog.

I have to let you know I won’t stop writing.

Nope.

I just won’t be writing here any longer.

I will have an end date on Auntie Bubba.

She has been such a good girl to me and shown me my strengths, and oh yes, my defects, those in spades, all things intimate and good and intense and wounded and sad and well, just all the things.

Yes.

All the lovely things.

This bearing witness to my own journey.

I am forever grateful for it.

So.

As this chapter closes.

As the Book of Bubba comes to an end.

I will admit.

That I am not finished.

That I am not written out.

That there are more words and worlds of words and galaxies and yes, a universe to still discover and write about.

There is a theory about the Big Bang and how the universe was created and when the universe will end and that it all came from one spot and explodes out and then shrinks back in on itself.

This is called the Big Bounce.

This is all very general and not very theoretically informed, mind you.

However.

It speaks to me and what I endeavor now to share with you.

I will be starting a new blog.

I am not done.

This blog is, however, just about done.

I will only publish a few more blogs here.

I am not quite ready to say good-bye yet.

But it is only days away.

I will start a new blog and I will continue my writing, my growth, my learning, my pushing my edges and finding out more and more who I am through this medium that speaks so much to me.

Writing.

I will not be connecting it to my Twitter account, in fact I am damn close to doing a deactivation on my Twitter account, I don’t feel like I use it all the often any way.

I will not be posting my blog on Facecrack.

I will not be making it known who I am.

I will be writing anonymously.

I haven’t a name yet.

Just a taste on my lips, like the last kiss at the end of the night, the push of tongue into my mouth and the startled stillness in my heart that precursor to the shaking tremble that befalls me and  tells me, yes, here, go here.

I will consider sharing with some of my readers my new blog.

But you will have to message me privately.

Which you may do by posting a comment.

I approve all comments before they are linked to my blog.

I will message you my new blog when it goes live.

Otherwise, seven years later, I will bid this space adieu.

They say that after seven years all the cells in your body turn over.

I know not what will be next.

I just know that there is a next.

And I thank you.

My readers.

Who ever you are, where ever you are, for humoring me and my poetry and my words and my tears and my heart ever beating upon my bloody damn sleeve.

With so much gratitude.

I thank you.

 

Doing The Work

And doing the homework while doing the work.

I did both today.

I did a lot today.

It was a day.

Tomorrow will be a day too.

All the days.

All the work.

Letting out slow, long breath and waiting for the tea pot to boil.

It was a good day at work.

It was a good day to do a lot of work.

I’m done with it for the moment and need a reprieve, which will look an awful lot like watching Project Runway and chilling out with an apple after I finish this blog.

I have done enough.

And.

I remind myself that I am enough.

That I am resilient and strong and I have come through so much to be where I am at and I am grateful that I have been carried to a place where I can see that.

It stops with me.

I thought today, a couple of times.

Then.

I thought.

What if that’s just another way of me trying to protect me?

How about I change instead.

How about I look at the trans-generational traumas in my family on my father’s side and on my mother’s side as the things that have made me the diamond that I am.

“Sometimes God uses a heavy hand to create a beautiful thing,” she told me as I sobbed my way through my first real inventory over a decade ago now.

The pressure it takes to create a diamond from the black morass of sadness I was created.

The crucible that holds me I cannot even begin to list all the ways and hows of it.

The secrets and shame and the wildness and the wrong.

The places I have tried to hide and not be found.

I always was.

I always knew.

I know now and it is a deep sadness, but also a formidable strength.

I sometimes can get tired trying to process it all.

“You had this conversation while you were at work?” He asked me aghast on the phone.

I did.

I had a very deep, but not totally deep, there were layers of things left unsaid and things that I still have questions about, but I got what I needed and I could trace the wellsprings of it farther back than I had first suspected.

High temperatures, high drama, high pressures.

I had some clue, but then I had no clue.

And yet, I knew all along.

In fact.

I had avoided making this particular call as I wasn’t sure I really wanted to open the can of worms.

“Sometimes going to far into a genogram can be hard for a client to deal with,” my advisor said to me as I showed him some of the work I had done.

Um.

Yeah.

And there’s so much more.

It’s like a legacy of pain that just rolls through my family.

It is astounding and deep and yet.

I feel that somehow or other I have gotten out, gotten over to the other side and I am looking at it from a distance.

Yet.

There are these ways that I react to the world and there are these defenses I have that I would like to let go of, to open myself up to more life, to not be fearful that I will be shattered again and need to begin again.

The things that worked for me, the safety defenses, they don’t work so much anymore.

And “it stops with me,” in the way that I have used it is not working.

No partner, no relationship, no children.

Because that way I wouldn’t pass it down.

It would really stop with me.

Ultimately that kind of isolation hurts me too.

It’s a solution and a defense that needs to change.

Grateful for the awareness.

Now to wade through the acceptance part and the forgiveness part and get to the action part.

Not sure exactly what action to take, except that right in front of me and to take the suggestions that others have to give me and to not carry the secret or the shame of it that curdles inward and hurts worse than shining the light on it.

Oh.

There are nooks and crannies I’m not too compelled to go spelunking in, at least not right yet, not right now.

I don’t need to stare at my past, I can just look, take it in, and accept it.

And remind myself that acceptance is not approval.

Fuck no

I fucking hella disapprove of the shit that went down.

I do not, I do not, I do not.

That being said, I can’t change it at all.

Although having a different perspective and hearing about some of the things in my family history definitely cast a different light on things.

So much compassion for the human experience.

And that I’m not dead.

For fucks sake.

Or in some straight jacket or in a gutter with a needle in my arm.

The noise of it all.

The machinery of the monsters that clanks down the hall to stumble upon me hiding in the shadows.

I will not have it.

I will not live underneath that banner of fright.

So.

I heal.

Soft and slow.

Gently I go.

It’s the only way.

Compassion and gentleness for myself and awareness that this does take time, perhaps my whole damn life, and that’s ok too, I shall always be seeking and that, that I do believe, is what will make my life that much fuller and richer and deeper and more experiential.

I am not numb.

Granted I am a little tired.

Granted I would like to make a phone call and say.

Come over, hold me, make it all better.

But there is no one to call that can make it all better.

All better is between me and my God.

And so far.

Well.

Things are going ok.

Really.

They are.

And when they are not, I know where to turn and I know that my feelings are fleeting, they pass, the sadness will be followed by joy or awe or discomfort or all of hundreds of other feeling states.

Feelings are not facts and they won’t kill me.

What I hope is that I can lose a little more of my rigidity and become more flexible while not losing myself or my self care.

Find me in the rooms with art.

Find me with flowers in my hair.

Find me with children strewn across my lap, warm, and a sweet and wearing footie pajamas and listening to me read stories.

Find me with love in my heart.

Find me with my heart on my sleeve.

Find me loving, lovable and worthy of love.

Yes.

Love.

Find me there.

In that field of fallen stars, like fireflies in the grass, at the dusk of this purpled twilight of pain and gray sadness a silent reprieve of pearl light and luminous joy, a flower blooming, a remonstrance of family and a flying laugh, a wallop of joy, a holler of thunder in this church of pain.

The doors flung open.

My heart too big to be contained.

Or.

Restrained.

No more.

My.

Love.

Restrain me no more.

You’re Like A Female Version

Of Peewee Herman.

Um.

Thanks?

Hey, Carmen, Peewee Herman is hella cool.

I mean.

Hello.

I may get confused with a hipster at times, affinity for coffee with notes of butterscotch and stone fruit, the one speed whip in the garage, the numerous tattoos, the arty glasses with the wood frames.

But.

The fact is.

I like glitter way too much to ever be a hipster.

Unless they suddenly make glitter in aged wood paneling or something ironic like that.

I also have a pink riding jacket for my scooter and um, heh, my helmet has not only glitter but stars and yes, I did, I have appliqued star stickers on my scooter that I put on myself.

Shut up.

So.

Heh.

I could see what he meant.

And I was flattered.

I mean, really, I haven’t been compared to many famous people, although a legend in my own mind, I don’t have that much claim to fame.

I like to think that I am.

But really.

I am just crazy old me.

“Don’t forget me when you’re famous,” he said to me last week when I saw him and told him about the podcast.

I still don’t know what the hell that means.

I suppose that I will be recorded and to that extent I have been practicing a little.

I love the sound of my voice, except when I hear it recorded.

Ugh.

Then.

Seriously.

Ugh.

Although, I heard a friend’s little guitar riff on his facecrack page and found myself making up little lyrics to it.

I’m not a singer, but I can carry a little breathy tune.

I shared that with my friend who I went to the Paul Simon show with, my vocal abilities, or lack thereof and his response?

Fucking golden.

“That never stopped me,” he replied.

Dude.

That’s right.

But.

I don’t play an instrument, even though I did play cello once upon a time in a land far, far away.

Wisconsin.

And there are days when I think, I should pick that up again.

In what time, Martines, in what time?

But, I do.

I love the sonorous voice of the cello and the prickly velvet thrum in my heart when I have been with an instrument that I connect with.

I had a friend who once took me to the luthier that all the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra uses, he’s a cellist with the San Jose Symphony, and the smell.

Oh.

So delicious.

The wood and the rosin.

The sounds.

I remember, still, it’s been many, many years, picking up a cello and the feeling of it nestled between my thighs and the weight of the scroll against my neck.

I remembered the feeling of the strings under my finger pads.

I pulled the bow across the C string and hit an F# and just about cried with the pleasure of it.

Heh.

Yeah.

I know.

It’s been suggested to me a lot to pick it back up.

And I digress.

A lot.

The Peewee Herman thing had me pause though.

I look like an artist.

But often times feel like I’m not quite the potential I am supposed to be.

That I haven’t done enough, I’m not prolific enough.

Suffice to say, how many of these fucking blogs have I written?

Over 1800.

There’s something prolific happening here.

And maybe it’s just me being kooky and dressing funny.

But really.

It’s just me.

It’s just how I like to be.

The glitter, the heart on my sleeve, the poetry that falls out of my eyes.

I may not have the degree of fame or fortune or whatever it is that I think I’m supposed to have to be considered a successful artist.

But.

I create.

That’s the thing.

I was thinking of a shred of lyric from one of my favorite Paul Simon songs, and not one that most people would quote from either.

It’s from “Hurricane Eye,” from his album “You’re the One.”

You want to be a writer/but you don’t know how or when.

Find a quiet corner/use a humble pen.

And I tell myself that everyday.

I am a writer.

I have my quiet corner.

I use my humble pen.

Fuck.

Thank God I got to Walgreens today.

I was almost out of ink in my last couple of favorite pens.

The last couple of times I was in the store they were out of my favorite and man, it makes a difference, just like the quality of paper that I like when I am doing my morning pages.

I hate those decompostion notebooks with a fervor.

Yeah.

I know.

Ecologically friendly and all that.

But the quality of the paper is shit and it feels like crap when I write on them.

Nope.

No thanks.

I prefer Claire Fontaine notebooks from France.

Or.

When I can’t procure those.

The college ruled glitter notebooks in bright turquoise, silver, and hot pink from Safeway.

Heh.

Yeah.

I told you.

I can’t be a hipster.

I love glitter a little too much.

I don’t have to be anything, I don’t have to fit any category.

I can be the girl, or woman, should you so prefer, who wears flowers in her hair and cries a lot.

“Dude, that’s what you do,” my friend texted me back when I told him that I was in tears half the Paul Simon concert.

I do.

I do, do that.

I sort of leak with gratitude and happiness and joy.

Even when I experience shame over things I can’t control, at least I can forgive myself for that, or self-loathing or self-deprecation, I am learning, slowly, oh so fucking slow, that this is ok.

And after all.

These words are not my choice.

I am the conduit.

I am just dead light pushing crystal spun sugar into the veins of the universe.

I am just the channel through which the words move.

And I cannot tell you.

I cannot tell me.

Why this beleaguered life.

Why on my knees.

I still.

Love.

Love.

Love.

This tumult, this strife.

The promise of every day that breaks.

Across my face, the grey morning light.

The sun sequestered in fog.

The call of the day.

The fall of God.

Into my lap.

The kisses freckled on my skin.

The rapture of song.

The life within.

That small quiet voice.

Always there.

Even when I am hoarse with tears.

There are still flowers in my hair.

And my heart upon my sleeve.

It’s tattooed there.

Lined in the liminal.

Luminous.

Lustrous.

Love.

Of all that is.

Which.

Is.

In the end.

Just.

Love.

 

 

 

You Look Great!

Did you lose weight?

Just the weight of having made it through the school weekend.

It is a heavy weight to carry sometimes, and as my TA in The Clinical Relationship said to my group this afternoon as we were parting, “you did really hard work this weekend, I just want to acknowledge that.”

Thanks man.

It was big, big, big work.

And.

Ah.

Yes.

I am almost done with the work.

I still have a paper to write, a paper that the professor actually gave us some more time to address.

So.

If I don’t want to write it tomorrow at work, I don’t have to.

Although, it’s probably for the best to bring my laptop and my reader, my notes, and just kick it out and deal with it.

Sometimes more time does not actually help me in the process of writing.

Ooh.

Look.

I can procrastinate this a little longer.

Frankly.

Um.

No.

Get it done.

Then relax.

“God, I open my big mouth sometimes,” she said to me afterward, “I just blurted out what I was seeing,” she said with apology.

“It’s ok, it’s nice to hear, I don’t own a scale, so I actually couldn’t tell you if I had lost weight,” I replied.

“Your face, it just looks amazing, maybe it’s because your hair’s down, I don’t know that I have ever seen it down.”  She gazed at my face, puzzled, “it’s just, it’s beautiful, your face, you look so, so light.”

I smiled.

And I do feel light.

I was happy today at school.

I got up with a decent amount of sleep.

I had a great first class of the day.

I connected with my two favorite ladies in the cohort and made plans with both of them for future time to spend together.

Slumber party next school weekend!

That will be such a blast.

I also participated and felt really good with what I contributed to class.

And.

Ahem.

I got a text message from my Tuesday evening date asking how I was.

Lovely, sir.

I am just lovely.

He’s out of town, but shall be returning this week.

Perfect.

I’ll be well rested.

Ahem.

I may also have another date this week, I’m just playing it by ear and letting whatever happens happen and enjoy the fact that I don’t have to focus on any one man.

I am having fun, remember?

Yes.

Fun.

I am happy.

I am tired.

It was a long weekend.

But I feel good.

Really good.

I feel loved and blessed and held.

I have friends.

I have a home.

I have school.

I get to do these amazing things and have these deep, effective, moving, my God, how emotionally moving some of this is, experiences.

I got my last assignments for the final weekend of classes.

I got papers to write people.

But.

I also have time.

And there is reading.

And there is time.

There is abundance.

There is lightness.

And purpose and magic.

Music.

I’m listening to The Listener’s album again, “Wooden Heart.”

It is so good.

So good.

Oh, my clamoring heart.

I am such a fucking lucky girl.

I almost took a nap today after I got back from class, I was pretty darn wiped out, but I stayed awake, went over to Thai Cottage and got myself some pumpkin curry and brown rice, came back here and read for a while.

No.

I did not read for school!

So proud of allowing myself a nice forty-five minute chunk of leisure reading, , John Irving.

A book I started last summer.

Last fucking summer.

I started it in Sonoma, at the house in Glen Ellen where the family I work for rent a place for a few weeks and have their summer vacation in some weather that actually acts like summer.

I can’t remember the last time I started a book and didn’t finish it.

However.

I started that piece of literature on a study break from school work and then, well, I just went straight to Burning Man and then straight back to school and then straight back to work and repeat, well, take out the going to Burning Man part, but I have just been reading and writing and doing school.

I pulled it off the shelf nestled into my chaise lounge, sipped on a cup of tea and read.

It was delicious.

But I was getting too sleepy and almost nodded off.

Instead.

I put on some music and danced around and got my blood up.

Then.

OH.

I pumped up the tires on my dear, beloved, and not much ridden bicycle.

Yup.

I took the whip out for a ride.

It felt so good to be in the saddle, to be in my body, and not in my head, not thinking, not processing emotions, not in a therapy dyad with a new therapist learning how to do her deal practicing on my emotional playing field.

From the moment I wheeled her out of the garage, it was like I hadn’t been off her at all, but the truth is, I have.

It’s been a month?

After I go the parking permit for work, I’ve been taking my scooter and my bike, well, she’s gotten a little dusty.

My body did not forget the motions, my legs pistons, my hands light on the handle bars, the wind soft, caressing on my face, lifting the curls up off my neck, and I am one with the bicycle and flying down 46th Avenue.

Flying.

Floating.

Magic.

The sunset at Moraga and 46th, the smell of beach bonfire drifting upwards, the salt, the ocean, the light of the bouncing off the pearlescent clouds.

The joy in my heart.

That’s what the woman saw.

The joy in my heart writ large on my face.

I cannot tell what part or the work informs the whole the most, I just keep moving believing that it is all love, brightness, light.

Rapturous with love.

And.

Perhaps hallucinatory with needing to sleep.

But let me just stick to the love part.

That’s the best anyway.

Love me, my love.

As I love you.

The raven with the moon in its mouth.

The song on my sleeve.

The music of the spheres.

Here.

There.

Everywhere.

Love.

 

 

Teeny Tiny Case

Of the feels.

Fucking sads.

Go the fuck away.

Don’t you know tomorrow is Friday?

Bah.

Oh, body, really, do you have to do this?

Sometimes I wonder if my body cycles the way it does just so that I can occasionally access emotions that I sit on.

It’s like, normal Carmen just breezes through the day and I am pretty fucking unruffled.

Quick!

Pee before yoga, you got a minute, it only takes two to walk to the studio, go, fast.

And there like a little blight on my happiness.

The dreaded red spot.

Not the period, nope, that’s got about two days to go, unless I get lucky, insert irony here, and I get it tomorrow morning, which the rate my hormones are emotionally playing the violin may strike a day early.

Ugh.

I ovulated.

“Another baby down the drain,” my brain whispered to me.

Fuck you.

WHO ASKED?

I most certainly did not and was a bit abject that this is now the tact my brain takes to malign my day.

FUCK.

I hate overblown emotions.

I don’t like having the sad’s and I am not interested in the feel’s either.

Back off.

Maybe I should change the music, Regina Spektor is lovely and all, but I don’t want to think about Ne Me Quitte Pas Ma Cher.

It just makes me want to burst into tears.

And now I’m full blown crying.

Good thing this is not a video blog.

Bah.

I just miss someone.

And sometimes that happens.

And it catches you off guard and it doesn’t matter that you’re wearing red lipstick and look really cute, sexy pin-up hot, I mean, I do, I got some looks today, it doesn’t matter if you’re crying over fantasy spilt milk.

Some times things don’t work out and it’s not because there’s not love there, it’s just not there for you.

Every one knows its going to hurt.

Ugh.

I guess I just needed a really good sloppy cry.

I guess I am surprised that I still feel like this, the grief comes, it goes, it dissipates like the moon waning in the evening sky, the stars flashing while the moon whirls slowly over the arc of the sky.

And when I am awake, late in the night, when I so just want to be asleep.

And there’s still no cure for crying.

But the moon is streaming in and the whiteness, like snow illuminated, sand ripples, waves crash, the icing floating over the ocean, the glitter of diamonds, the shatter of breaking my own heart.

Darling let go of her hand, let go of her hand, let go of her hand.

She’s the kind of girl who’ll smash herself down in the night.

She’ll break her own heart.

And you know, she’ll break your own heart too.

The pain of knowing true love exists.

Oof.

Ok.

All cried out.

Fuck listening listening to this music any more.

Back to Mike Doughty Stellar Motel.

Ah.

Better.

Side bar.

My friend commented about Mike Doughty liking one of my Instagram photos and did I just freak out?

Yes.

I did.

And I freaked out more when he started following me and now he’s coming up on my facecrack page as a friend suggestions we have four or five friends in common.

I’m like, hey sugar, we don’t really know each other, but hey, hey.

I like your music a lot.

A LOT.

Swear to god I have listened to Stellar Motel on repeat now for a good solid week and a half, I’ve played it every day, at least once, often times more than once.

Now.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not just listening to Mister Doughty, but he’s kind of got my attention right now, plus, I like to think that I sound good singing his stuff, it matches my vocal range pretty well.

I love singing.

I’m not the greatest, but it does make me happy.

I sang a long to all sorts of things tonight trying to find the right thing for the boys to listen to.

Everything from “Somewhere over the Rainbow,” to Thomas Dolby, then Jim Croce, Van Morrison, Steely Dan, again Mike Doughty, but from Yes and Also Yes, not Stellar Motel, oh and some Art of Noise–the boys freaking love it.

I was at work late tonight and I go in early tomorrow.

And I found out I’m getting out a little earlier than I thought tomorrow as well, I’ll be done by 5:15pm or so, the family has dinner plans.

Swell.

I’ll get my nails did.

Or do some grocery shopping.

Definitely need to take care of doing the deal, not sure where, who knows.

After the emotional roller coaster of hormones, it seems to have passed, I really think I just needed a good cry.

And lucky you, you got to be the witness thereof.

I thought I had all my cries out, but sometimes there’s just another in there.

I’m being a bit vague about the whole thing and I’m not sure why, the person I am having the feels around stopped following my blog.

That hit like a ton of bricks.

We’re still facecrack friends, but I did stop following him.

It was just too hard.

I haven’t been on his page in weeks but it’s hard, his profile photo is one I took.

The last time I saw his page he was half naked on the beach.

I was like.

Um.

I can not look at that.

I’ve basically been in, shocker, a unrequited love relationship for months.

It started to fall apart in November, had it’s death knoll in December, buried under the glittering lights of Paris, dissolved in the New Year and the week or so before Valentines Day, well.

Yeah.

I haven’t done much writing about it because I was so fucking in love it felt like I was being consumed.

Oh fuck, here comes the waterworks.

It’s hard.

But I will live through it.

“Just be grateful that God gave you this man in your life so that you could get a chance to see how deep you can love,” she said weeks and weeks ago at Tart to Tart.

Yeah.

Like that.

I prayed for weeks, months, let it go, surrender, move on.

And I have.

I have stopped walking down that street, I don’t fall in the pothole, but man, the siren song of it lures.

I saw him sitting in Burger Joint a few weeks ago, the one by my job, and as I rode my bicycle past I said, “don’t look, don’t look, don’t look, fuck, looking, looking, fuck, yup, there he is, and keep fucking moving.”

That’s what it’s been like.

The anger that my person was talking about that needed a valve, yeah, might have had something to do with being mad at myself.

I assuaged myself for a nano second.

“But he said he was in love with you too,” and yup.

He did say that.

It’s a powerful thing to tell someone that you are in love with them and they tell you that they are in love with you too and there’s nothing he can do and there’s nothing I can do and it’s not important the why’s and where of’s, it just is what it is.

And I can cry in my soup, or tea, or whatever is in front of me, the collar of my red cardigan, my heart broken and bloody once more, or I can say hey, you lived, you loved–oh so hard–and you learned and now.

Well.

You get to keep loving.

Harder and stronger.

Bigger and faster.

With greater joy and fervor.

With all my heart.

And that heart is so big now, so full and open and blown apart, you’d be amazed at what I can hold.

I don’t regret a moment.

Or the experience.

I know greater love for having known this love.

I always will.

And for that I am grateful.

Hormonal or not.

I get to have this experience.

And knowing that.

I know that I am taken care of.

Always.

Blessed.

Graced.

Held.

Loved.

Always.

 

 

Walk Away

Let him go.

Those were the words in my head when I saw my friend sitting outside the burrito joint on Judah and 44^th smoking a cigarette.

He doesn’t see me.

Which doesn’t mean that he didn’t see me.

He did.

I saw him.

And we did the weird, uncomfortable, yet oddly enough, familiar dance of people who need to be in the same place at the same time who don’t have anything to say to each other.

Which says volumes.

It did not hurt as much as I thought it would.

I knew he’s been around and I know, know without a doubt, that he won’t have anything to do with me even if I did approach him.

Which I have been directed not to.

And if you know anything about me, have read even one of my blogs or seen me around the block, you know, that the one thing I do well is take a suggestion.

Leave him alone.

Walk away.

Let him go.

Surrender.

Again and again it comes down to surrender.

Gratitude as well.

I am grateful for the time I got to have my friend in my life, for the words and books, the conversations, the music, the poetry of our time together, the love, the in bed the out of bed, the growth and the loss.

And the grief and joy and weirdness that is life.

One day, I hope, I’ll run into him and the past will have passed and we will be able to smile at each other, have a hug, share a moment, maybe get a cup of coffee.

Or not.

It is not for me to decide.

I choose, respectfully, to move on and keep moving forward.

These dreams.

True dreams of Wichita.

….Where you stand with keys and your cool hat of silence, while you grip her love like a drivers liscence…

These dreams lead me forward.

I know, in my heart, of hearts, of hearts, that I am not alone and that my circles of friends and lovers and relationships and employers and family may change and melt and merge and coalesce in different ways.

I have loved so many people.

And so many of them are no longer in my life, my daily life, not because they have died, although a few have, but because life has happened and they moved on or I moved on.

Yet.

I get to still hold space for these people within me.

That is the fallacy of my thinking prior to having gone into recovery, that I would always have to hold so tight to anyone in my life, regardless of whether or not they were good for me to be holding tightly too.

I get to let go, softly, gently, even though I have not always done so gracefully or graciously, I get to let go even too, of that thought, that I have to move on in a certain way or manner.

I don’t have to do anything perfect.

The only thing I can do perfect is love all those in my heart and hold them, whether they know or not that they are held there.

In some ways I believe, a person is truly alone, there is no one who is ever going to know the exact depth and weight of my life or my soul or my heart, there are some that will get more inside my sphere and I will get to share with them to a greater degree than others, but on some levels, there is always this alone.

There is not, however, this loneliness.

I am not lonely.

Which is a lovely revelation to have.

I am never truly alone.

And it is not important that anyone other than myself know the inner workings of my heart.

It’s my heart.

I do hope that I can share some of it with you.

There is that.

That I can love you and that you will know it, even if we are not together.

Even when we used to be so close.

Where I does not exist, nor you, so close that your hand on my chest is my hand, so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

“Sit next to me Carmen,” he said in his sleepy cat voice, fresh-baked from his nap, small sweaty head imprint on his pillow. He rolled over in his ‘big boy’ bed and made room for me next to him and then tucked his Meow Meow under his arm.

“Sing me a song, Carmen,” he said, opening his raccoon fringed eyes, brown and soft and sweet, at me, before shuttering them down again, the weight of his eyelashes pulling his lids shut.

I sang him a song.

My sweet boy.

I have so many songs to sing, but they all sort of come out sounding the same and that, too, I believe, is as it should be.

I don’t know how to change you, so I change me.

Sometimes the lyrics to the song will be different from what I think and I will forget the refrain or chorus, or make a jumble of the words, but the feelings remain the same.

Instead of sorrow I feel joy.

And perhaps it is tinged by a touch of sorrow, but the sadness makes the joy that much more bright and palpable.

When I think of all the people I have met in my life and all the people I have shared a moment with, or a year, or more. When I think of all the people who’s hands I have held or the hugs given and received, whether they are to be given or received again matters not, I have been given the gift and to ask for more is greedy.

Though, I suspect, I will be given more, I think my purpose is still evolving and I know that I have more in me to let out.

More heart to wear on my sleeve.

More love to give.

More love to receive.

 

Time after time you’ll hear me say that I’m so lucky to be loving you.