Yes!

I made it through the financial aid rigmarole.

I had to fill out one more piece of information when I got home today and finally, all of it is done.

I will be getting an award and I was notified that I would get it once the last form was filled out and sent it, that it would take 24 hours to process, I would get an award e-mail and then I hit accept.

The school will receive monies to pay for my summer practicum internship and supervision–$2380.

There will be a little left over from the award, enough to get me two more months of therapy over the summer.

I don’t have to touch my travel savings and I will have tuition paid for.

Thank God.

It all worked out.

I never really thought it wouldn’t, it was just some unnecessary stress that I got to work through.

I also spent some time checking in with my employer about summer hours, I’ll be working a little more than I do now.

Currently I’m pulling 35 hours a week, three weeks a month.

The other week during the month I work 28 hours–the week I’m in school.

During the summer I won’t have school on Fridays.

I won’t have official classes, I’ll be doing my internship at nights and on weekends and my outside supervision and therapy two days a week before work.

I ain’t gonna lie, it’s a lot to juggle.

But I see all the pieces coming together and it should work.

For my work schedule I’ll change-up to a slightly early start on the days I’m not in supervision or therapy before work and I will work 8 hour days on those days.

I’ll go from working 35 hours a week to 38 with the flexibility to go to 40 if the family needs me to.

I’ll do my internship in the evenings after work.

Four nights a week I’ll be doing the internship, and one day, Saturday.

I’ll be putting in a lot of hours, but the investment is worth it and although I am sacrificing a lot, more of my social life than I can imagine, as it’s not much at the moment, although, got to say, proud of myself for hanging out for an hour between work and doing the deal tonight.

I was so tempted to blow it off and just do my homework, but I made myself put down the books and walk to Java Beach and play a hand of Speed and socialize for an hour.

It was really much-needed.

I have been told repeatedly this week to have fun.

“Go get laid, have fun, blow off some steam!” My person told me when I met with her on Monday.

I’m trying to figure that out.

Not much by way of nibbles on the dating front and though there’s interest in me to pursue, I’m not really sure how to go about that right now.

Putting out to Universe.

I need to get laid.

There.

That should do it.

Hahahahahaha.

I actually reached out to an old lover last night and then immediately thought, ah, that’s not going to happen, why did I do that?

Not that I’m afraid of rejection, more that I can go bark up the wrong tree.

There is no squirrel there dear, go look elsewhere.

And there wasn’t.

As I have said to myself many a time, no response is a response.

My feelings are facts, but sometimes it feels like I either try to awful hard at this whole thing or I could give a fuck and I just bury myself in school and work.

There is an in between I’m sure.

Dating can also be a distraction from dealing with the thing at hand, but I am wanting to do it.

I am.

When have I not been willing to date?

I have tried lots of things.

Maybe this therapy thing will help.

Ha.

I can usually recognize when I am not on the right track, but sometimes, I get stuck and I go chase after someone and there is nothing there and I’m like, stop it, enough energy expended there.

Move on.

So moving on.

And being open to see whom God wants me to see, not whom I want me to see.

Those are different people, I am sure of it.

I’m listening to Lilac Wine as sung by Jeff Buckley.

I had to pause.

I had to sing.

I don’t even remember what I was whining about.

Luxury problems.

I’m alive.

Jeff Buckley is dead.

I saw him once.

At the Barrymore Theater in Madison, Wisconsin on tour for his album Grace.

It was one of the best concerts I have ever seen.

There are concerts that I remember because of the power of the music or that something momentous happened, or because of whom I was with when hearing he music.

Jeff Buckley touring for Grace.

Soul Coughing, Ruby Vroom.

Beck, Odelay.

Paul Simon and Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, Summer Fest in Milwaukee, 2001.

J. Davis Trio, at the Angelic, but also the show in Chicago where I got so trashed I was hung over for two days.

But my God it was worth it.

Anni DiFranco, Not a Pretty Girl, Civic Center, Madison.

Primus, Coliseum, Madison, WI, can’t remember if it was Sailing the Seas of Cheese tour, but I think it was.

Moby, Play, Civic Center, Madison, WI, and also Moby at Lightening in a Bottle three years ago, I was up front and it was amazing, I felt like I was on fire with the music.

Underworld, the Fox in Oakland and also two years later at the Warfield in San Francisco.

Paul Simon at the Greek Theater last summer.

Mike Doughty, three times, small show at Cafe Montmarte in Madison, his first solo tour after Soul Coughing broke up and he heckled my friend who was shrooming.  Then the show at the Fillmore when he covered Ruby Vroom and I was the only person in the audience that caught the Edna St. Vincent Millay reference, and got a smile and shout out for that.  And last summer the 2016 Living Room tour where I got to meet him in person, and talk about Burning Man.

Spearhead in Madison, Wisconsin, I forget the venue now, but they were on tour for their second album and Michael Franti pulled me up on stage and danced with me for a song.

Tori Amos, Little Earthquakes, Barrymore Theater, Madison, Wisconsin.

Nine Inch Nails, Pretty Hate Machine, Coliseum, Madison, Wisconsin.

Sleater Kinnery at Union South, UW Madison Campus, holy shit was that amazing, they were just on the floor, no stage, four mikes and a couple of amps.

I went to a lot of shows in Madison.

Goldfrappe at the Fillmore.

Gary Newman, also at the Fillmore, here in San Francisco.

I’ve clubbed a lot here in San Francisco too, so many djs–Mark Farina, Teisto, Sasha and Digweed, Paul Van Dyke, Oakenfold, Kid Beyond, BT, Dmitri from Paris, Derrick Cater, Frankie Knuckles, Sunshine Jones with and without Dubtribe, Tortured Soul, Eric Sharp, Carl Cox, Armand Van Helden, James Ziebela, 2ManyDj’s, Basement Jaxx, fuck, I’m forgetting a lot of shows.

So much music.

I haven’t been out to enough shows.

Maybe I’ll focus on that instead of dating.

Heh.

Right now though, sleep she calls.

Homework is still on my plate and work has got to get worked out.

I’m still listening to the glory of Jeff Buckley.

Hallelujah.

 

Stairway to Heaven

Hello friends

It’s been a few days.

I have missed you.

I have so much to write about, I may not get it all out here tonight, but I will give it a shot.

I was away for the last three nights in Bradley, California for the 9th annual Lighting in a Bottle Festival.

I had never heard of it before this year and really hadn’t much inclination to go.

However, the opportunity to spend a weekend camping with a dear friend is not to be missed and you know, maybe I might see some music that I like.

Moby.

Moby

That’s right.

I got to see God.

No.

I don’t believe Moby is God.

But I do believe that he is a conduit for a higher power that so moved me I nearly danced my knees to pieces.

And I was so close I could almost reach out and touch him.

The set was beyond belief, I still cannot tell you how exactly it happened, but we just gradually made our way closer and closer to the stage, being there for the previous act helped, and the next thing you know while they are changing sets, we, my friend and I, are down in front, center stage.

It was so good.

So good.

This good:

Me, front row, Moby

I was filled up with light.

Yeah.

I know.

Cheesy.

Corn ball.

Over the top.

But, whatever, I won’t argue with you.

You get to be right.

I get to be happy.

Man, was I happy.

Then the round of stair climbing truly began.

The festival was set up in a emptied lake resevoir that had dried up and the event was spread over quite a few acres, I am not sure the exact parameter of it, but it was probably spread out over two, two and a half miles.

And there were stairs going in and out of the gullies and valleys.

You could not make it from one side of the event to the other without going down some pretty big drops and long climbs in and out of the gullies up and down the stairs.

Now.

I am already a bit injured, from the scooter accident I had two weeks ago and the attack of the skateboard last week, and my legs were sorely taxed.

I must have climbed those fucking stairs a thousand times.

Perhaps I exagerrate.

But, not by much.

My friend and I postulated that we probably walked anywhere between three and five miles a day.  Maybe more.  I am not sure, but there was a lot of walking.

A lot.

Unlike Burning Man it was not flat and there really wasn’t much bicycle riding, although I did see some valiant efforts to do so and there were pedi cabs circling about.

The other thing was that there were vendors there, unlike Burning Man which is a gifting community and I found it a challenge to not compare the festival to it (the lights, the rigging work, the stages, the shade structures, some of the art and the artists, have all been to Burning Man).

For example The Front Porch was there:

The Front Porch

An art installation that debuted, I believe, please do not quote me for fact, three burns ago on playa.  It features a front porch facade that is pulled by a tractor and the back side has a working kitchen with an oven, where yes, dear, you can bake cookies.

There is nothing more magical than the first time I saw the Front Porch rolling across the playa at Burning Man and I was riding my bicycle through a dusty night following the sound of bluesy folk music and the smell of homemade chocolate chip cookies being baked.

My goodness.

Free goodness too.

Nobody charges you for those cookies at Burning Man.

However, when I saw someone handing out slices of watermelon from a cooler I overheard this conversation:

“Oh my god, WATERMELON!”

“I’ll take a slice,” the man eagerly reached forward to the proffered piece.

Then he hesitated.

“Is it free?”

“No.”

“Dollar a slice,” the vendor replied shutting the lid to the cooler.

The man retracted his hand as though he had been bitten.

That dude made a lot of money off the participants.

I suspect all the vendors did.

And I don’t begrudge someone making a living, but it was such a contrast to the kind of de-commidication that I have found so warming at Burning Man, that well, I was bummed out a bit by it.

I found also that the act of commidifying the spiritual aspects of the even made me quite judgemental about it.

I was also wearing my Ms. Judgy Pants with all the out right drug use happening.

Esctacy.

Molly.

Cocaine.

Pot.

Mushrooms.

Acid.

I saw so many fucked up people.

I saw more out right open use of drugs than I have in all the burns I have gone to, seven, combined.

I found it disgruntling and a bit disturbing.

Hey, let’s serve you some raw vegan gluten-free food, its organic too!

It’s gonna help you get over that cocaine/alcohol/acid/mushroom/GBH/K/Molly hangover you got going on.

Just in time for you to get to that yoga class you wanted to make.

I was mystified by it.

The quest for spirituality through incessant drug use.

I mean.

I get it.

I understand, I sought escape too, one time, dontcha know, but to see it encouraged to the point that it was, made me feel a little jaded about the entire event.

Though, in fact, despite myself and my nay-saying ways, I got to have that little spiritual awakening myself.

However, it did not come from drugs.

I came from music and it was so powerful that I hesitate to write about it.

Not from the stand point that I want to convince you.

I am not interested in convincing anyone.

I know what happened.

I was there.

I was aware.

I was not checked out and it completely took me by surprise.

Lying, exhausted from being up late the night before, climbing many sets of stairs, remember, pitching camp in the dark, dancing my ass off at Moby, followed by little sleep, awakening early, too early the next day, by seven a.m. when the hot sun chased me out of the tent, walking more, up and down those stairs, probably mildly dehydrated, in an oasis, I had an awakening.

Not unlike the one I had about seven and a half years ago after doing a lot of amends in my life.

I was underneath a shade structure, spent, lying on a mat on the dusty dry ground, head propped up on a pillow I had scavenged from the ecstatic dance group that was going on nearby, I closed my eyes and tried to rest.

Rest, however, can be a challenge when there’s a dj playing music and the bass is so heavy it shakes the ground beneath you.

But it happened.

Somewhere in the middle of the sound, carried on the waves of bass, brightened in the hot air, blue-ified sky, high above me, the sound blew in and out of my heart and broke it open.

The dj was spinning a Paul Simon song from the Graceland album that I had played so often during a certain period of my life that I still know all the words by heart.

I sang along to the words, the song being mixed with a classic four four beat, bass trembling beneath me, warm ground cradling me, I rose into the sky and cried it all out.

The grief, the loss, the idealized fantasy life that I had surrounded myself with so long ago, the ideas of who I am and what I am finally melting out of my soul, like a hard sugar candy crust that had finally been cracked.

Yellow, sweet, golden, I basked in the music and let it hold me.

I don’t know that I can fully articulate everything that happened in those moments, but the deep realization that grieving is not linear and has no time line, struck me again, that I could still be holding onto to these old thoughts and ideas, beliefs of who I am and what I am, to let go those concepts.

Who wouldn’t cry?

I had a lot of small epiphanies after the grief riveted out of my heart and I will write more soon.

It’s just late, my friends.

And I missed you.

But I missed my bed too.

Tomorrow.

More.

Love.

For you.

Or magic, should you prefer.

Magic

More Magic

Black Light Magic

Magic, it’s everywhere

 

 

 

Soft, Sweet, Wet Kisses

For me.

All for me.

Drenched with them.

Saturated with them.

Slowed down with lush.

Face full of mist, warm, enveloping, deft, dewy, succulent.

Safe.

I felt cocooned in the rain and mist and fog as I cycled, slowly, through the park.

I knew about one-third through the Wiggle (San Francisco’s bicycle route to get around all those hills from the Church and Market area to the Haight and all points West) that I was not going to ride my bicycle in the weather down Lincoln Avenue.

Nor was I going to take Irving with the train running and the parking and the commuters who suddenly get weird when the weather changes on a dime, like it can here.

I was not suspecting rain at all today, no fender on my bicycle, no thought in my head of wet weather.

After the nap time extravaganza of two hours that my little girl Thursday took, however, I began to suspect something was up.

It got humid in the afternoon.

And heavy overcast, thick, dark clouds, the smell of rain just wafting through Alamo Square park presaging the mist and fog and light Spring rain that was to marshal me home.

So, yes to the park, yes to light to none existent for blocks, traffic.

Just me, the bicycle, the wet, which was not the kind of wet that drenches you quickly, but soaks you in a quiet, seductive way.

It was not overpowering or cold.

It sprinkled down about me in the way that reminded me of soft warm rain in the late Spring in Wisconsin or even early summer, the rich smells not being the heavy drowsy perfume of lilacs, but rather the pungent spice of eucalyptus, searing sweet jasmine, and succulent honeysuckle, wet grass, and then, as I turned down Chain of Lakes, the seminal smell of the ocean.

It is the kind of weather that I wished, for a moment, that I did have a lover to walk through the park with, hold hands with, and yes, find a canopy of mimosa to shelter under and kiss wet and dark and long.

Spring has indeed sprung.

And summer is coming.

Summer.

I am going to experience it.

I am.

Not just the fog in the city.

But summer in California, in Bradley California, in just two weeks.

I am going to Lighting in a Bottle!

I got asked to go a couple of weeks ago but after just purchasing a ticket to fly back to Wisconsin I didn’t think I could swing it.

My friend shot me a text today, she’d gotten the weekend off, let me help subsidize your trip, will you please come?

How in the world can I say no to that?

A weekend with one of my best girlfriends, camping, a road trip–small one, Bradley’s only about three hours away from San Francisco–music, dancing under the stars, an opening salvo to the summer.

Oh my.

I had to say yes.

She bought the tickets and I am going.

My friend said I’ll sport you $100 off the ticket, take care of all the food, and get you there and back.

How could I say no?

I didn’t of course.

And of course, pride, ego, lack of humility, wanted to say, no really, that’s too much, but  I also know better than to look a gift in the mouth.

I said yes.

I am still going to give her $180 for my ticket (the ticket is $280–just a basic general admission ticket and we will be tent camping by the car) but that is a steal to see the line up, which is kookoo crazy good.

MOBY.

Beats Antique.

Amon Tobin.

Kraak and Smaak.

Claude Von Stroke.

And a whole lot more.

Plus, camping, yoga, art, pretty festival people, DANCING, dancing, dancing, and yes, more dancing.

I have not gotten my butt to Coachella yet, maybe next year, but I am going to this.

It’s a nice, sweet, unexpected surprise.

I feel that there is more of that to come.

Scooter riding as a part of that surprise.

Glad again to not be on my scooter today, riding in the rain is one thing on my bicycle, I have 8 plus years of riding around this city in the rain on my bike and zero days of being on the scooter in the wet, I have no idea how it will respond and am not yet prepared to ride it and find out.

That being said, fingers crossed, I will be able to venture forth tomorrow to work at 19th and Noe, ie all places hilly, as I got it started, the scooter, last night.

My friend came over and I wheeled it out, showed him what I was doing, then stepped back while he asked, “have you been priming it before starting it?”

Uh.

What?

Um.

No.

Turns out, I probably was, accidentally, but not with real intent, that is giving the throttle a little gas to go through the system and get some fuel to the engine.

Oh.

Well, now I know.

My friend stepped up, gave the throttle a little twist, stepped on the kickstart, and kicked it over on the first try.

D’oh!

I knew it was me and not the scooter.

Yay!

I will give myself a little time to make sure I can replicate it all tomorrow, although, I feel quite certain I will be able to start it, I still want to make sure.

Because I don’t want to repeat the manic bicycle ride that I endured on Monday tomorrow.

I would rather go, sweet, soft, slow, and mellow, zooming up and over the hills on the Vespa.

I shall see what the morrow brings.

Nothing to worry myself with tonight.

Just the enjoyment of knowing that in two weeks from tomorrow I will be heading out and having a new adventure, seeing something new, having new experiences, and hanging out with one of my best girls.

Summer.

I think this may be my best one yet.

I am ready for it.

The warm soft rainy mist bestowing its kisses upon me has primed my engine.

I am ready to kick it off.