Two Days Left

Just sayin’.

Before.

This blog is going to be going dark.

Well.

Sort of dark.

Just off social media.

I also realized, after talking with my therapist about it, she’s a huge advocate that I don’t stop writing and has in fact, encouraged me to submit to Psyched, that I have to pull as many blogs off my facecrack page as possible.

One could foreseeably go through my page and find the link to it.

So.

Periodically I am going to start removing them from my timeline.

I am not sure if I should delete them completely.

I mean.

I already have copies of them here on my blog, I can go into my archives at any time and access them.

But.

Would I miss the comments that some of my blogs drew?

I have had some really amazing feed back from people who follow my blog and sometimes that feed back has come from comments left on my Facecrack page.

Sometimes people comment directly on the blog, but most of the commentary has come from facecrook and a few from Twitter.

Once in a great while I have gotten a comment from elsewhere, one of my blogs a few years ago now got picked up by Buzzfeed and I got a bunch of comments from that.

That blog was about Burning Man.

Definitely something that Buzzfeed would have wanted to carry, most of my other blogs are interesting, but I’m biased, but not to the degree that one was.

I don’t even remember what the fuck I wrote about.

I could go back and read the blog I suppose, it still has the highest number of reads for a day, so stands out on my stats board.

I can read a lot between the line when I read my stats.

No, it doesn’t give me names of people, but it does give me locations.

And that is information.

And some blogs get hit more than others.

And some blogs may have gotten more hits from certain areas about certain topics.

It’s fun to read in between the lines.

Sometimes sad too.

I remember someone I was dating not dating a few years ago and he would read my blogs and sometimes I felt that I spoke more to him through my blogs then we did face to face and I broke my heart a lot trying to communicate and make things happen.

Of course nothing ever did.

But, man, the writing was good, sometimes being in pain elicits better art.

Or so I’ve been told.

There’s the break up blog with an ex-boyfriend that got a lot of play for about a week.

I am assuming it was the ex reading the blog.

And I wondered about that.

I also remember wishing that he had paid that much attention to actually talking to me than reading what I wrote.

It can be an easy out.

You can catch up on me here, have some ideas about what is happening in my life, make some assumptions and maybe sometimes those assumptions are right.

And maybe.

MAYBE.

They’re completely off base.

Suffice to say there have been times when I have written with a person in mind and another has made the mistake thinking it was about them.

I try not to use names.

But sometimes I steal images or words or ideas.

I am a thief, I admit it, if it looks pretty I’m going to steal it and put it in my bag of words.

Mine now, my sweetie thing.

Sometimes I want desperately that a person reads what I have to say and hears my voice.

My voice, specifically saying the words that are written here.

There was a blog I wrote recently and I read it out loud, as though I was speaking to the person whom I was thinking about, after I wrote it.

It helps sometimes in the editing.

To feel the words.

To feel how they sound coming out of my mouth.

I believe that I write very much like I speak, that you could be having a conversation with me.

Now.

This writing, let’s be frank, is more eloquent than my spoken words, there’s a bit of craft involved.

Sure.

I am writing at the speed of thought, but I go back after and I tweak here and there and blow up some images or sounds or I toss some glitter colored poetry into the mix and I think about.

 

His hands in my hair.

The sun through the window.

The flowers in a jar on my table.

The globe on its persimmon colored stand lit up, a nightlight of travel in my dreams, the ease and burden of being kissed so well that my heart shakes underneath my breast and my breath.

Shatters soft in my mouth.

 

Sure.

You know.

Moments like that when I want to whisper wanton woman poetry into the shell of another’s ear, so I read it out loud and there is a power there, a knowing of when I should end a sentence.

Pause.

I use a period.

I break the line, or sometimes, a comma, a hitch in the voice of the writing, a pause but not quite so firm.

When I may need firmness.

And then.

Short.

Quick.

Fast.

And it can be done, these subtle manipulations of language, the power of the word, the sword I split myself in half upon.

 

Like.

An apple you push your tongue into, eating me alive.

Devoured and sacrificed  on scriptures of play and the pleasure of prayer that is laugher.

Dimple song.

Torch song.

Flamed.

By.

The music of the spheres and the light of stars still echoing and crashing against the thrall of your collar bones.

And the soft, sweet dip of skin there, a sing-song of pulse and blood and the thrum of the rain of sunshine flooding through the back door.

Let me shelter you through the rain.

Let me be.

Your baby.

Baby.

Doll.

Baby.

Let me be your girl.

Day One

Down!

God it feels good to be moving through the days of my program.

I felt super good today, even with starting the day with Trauma class.

Which.

Well.

Is oft-times traumatic.

However, having done so much of my own work around trauma I feel pretty grounded and able to hold myself in the stream of information that is being shared and to share my experience, not someone else’s experience.

I have been privy to much information that is confidential over the years and many confidences of delicate nature, trauma, abuse, sexual violence, stalkers, bad jobs, violence, drug abuse, emotional abuse, troubled relationships with partners, children, spouses, parents.

I have heard so much trauma and witnessed so much that I am surprised that I am not inured.

Rather.

I am impressed.

I am a little bit awed, in fact.

By the ability of us humans to heal and grow despite, or perhaps because of the nature of the pain that has been experienced.

This is not to say that I wish for you a traumatic experience, it is rather to acknowledge that holy fuck I have done the damn work.

I have shown up.

I have held my space, my heart, I have eaten out of the palm of pain and I have lived to tell the tale and in the telling, grown, blossomed, survived, thrived.

Despite, not because of the trauma.

I am graced in the knowledge that walking through the fear is never as hard as the fear wants me to believe.

I get to do this work and I am so situated that I have been allowed to go to graduate school and pursue it and be a kind of healer in my community.

This is a blessing.

This is a gift.

A gift that carries a burden that could be hard to shoulder had I not already done so much to strengthen myself and move my own stuff out-of-the-way.

That’s not to say that I won’t come up, that it hasn’t come up, that there is not some ugliness there or terror to shed light on, there is always room for growth, for more blossoming and even when it is the dead of winter I know that the plum trees will bloom on Church street and the act of walking, my face lifted to the blossoms pressed against the night sky will carry me forward through another season of pain and growth and exquisite beauty.

I was also just happy to see my cohort.

Let’s be honest.

I missed my friends.

And.

I acknowledged to myself how important these friendships have become to me.

I feel really amazed, I wasn’t expecting that as a product of doing the grad school work, that I would have another unique set of circumstances and fellows to travel and trudge the road to happy destiny, a destiny designed to connect me further with people in community.

With love.

I love that I am seen and accepted.

Oh.

I am not always liked and I don’t always like people in my cohort, but.

I love them all.

I do.

Unconditional love.

Meaning I wish for each and every one of the people in my cohort, in my class, in my school, in my neighborhood, that same respect and love a showering of respect and a willingness to acknowledge that we all deserve to be happy, however that looks.

I don’t have to like you to love you.

I don’t have to like you to wish for you the best, whatever and however that manifests.

I am an equal opportunity lover.

Heh.

Maybe you find a love that falls across you gently like a pick pocket brushes your thigh.

This means.

That I also unconditionally love myself, even when I wonder, am I people pleasing again, am I holding my tongue because I don’t want conflict, am I acquiescing to someone else’s need?

I might be.

At least I can recognize it now and more forward with that knowledge too.

So much to learn.

So much to feel.

The good new kids, you’re going to have feelings.

The bad news?

You’re going to have feelings.

But.

The nice thing is, feelings aren’t facts and despite feeling many things, I don’t have to be held hostage to my feelings.

I can have them.

I can let them go.

I can let them move through me.

It is a gift to see the emotion, to name it, to love myself and let whatever is there, rise, float to the surface, gather light, bloom, blossom grow, then slowly wither, become a puff of dander that the next feeling breathes against it and pushes the seeds carried by small parachutes of fluff and gossamer, carrying the impetus for so many other feelings to grow, blossom, wither, and die upon the warm air of God’s breath.

A sigh of kisses.

A multitude of stars.

I can contain millions.

I do.

In fact.

So too, do you.

Extraordinary.

This.

How hard I have striven to find these small moments of metaphor, Dolly blue in the hand crank washing machine of my heart, the pain renders it all the more beautiful and I rise to the light of the full moon.

Woman.

Once more.

My own.

You may have tried to trespass.

I may have shut the door.

I may have resisted.

I have come to understand my struggle and my power.

I underestimated my strength.

My fellows see it.

They breathe it back to me in the language of love and unconditional surrender.

The is that is right now.

The being that is scoped across my heart, a light house beaming its beacon at the end of the universe.

A small flower opening.

My face to the sun.

Uplifted and held.

Tears on my face.

The water of love showering my heart.

Where all the wild things go to grow.

I sing my barbaric yawp at thee.

Sounded over the rooftop of the city.

Howled into the nether regions of love.

I gather you here, upon my breast, open hands to cradle you close.

The music of the spheres.

The resonance of light in your eyes.

Your head upon my shoulder.

Warm breath.

Human.

Together.

Moving through and above.

Beyond.

Into another realm.

Which is only this one repeated again and again as I attend to all those things that I thought were lost underneath the attic stairs where my dreams went to nestle and die.

Or so I thought.

They only slumbered.

They only dreamed.

And now.

Well.

I have them again.

And I won’t let them go.

Trauma class.

Trauma.

Trauma.

Trauma.

I meet thee there.

With.

Love.

And.

Surrender.

And.

Gentle.

Repair.

 

 

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.

 

 

We’ll Record When I Get Back

Holy shit.

I ran into a friend of mine.

A dear, sweet, darling man who has known me from the days of yore when I went to an event that he was playing at, his birthday party, and I danced my ass off while walking around with a cane.

I was in the last stages of healing from a really bad back sprain.

The music, his music, was so infectious though, I could not help it but to dance.

“You know, I’m playing one show here for Pride (tomorrow is Pink Saturday and the high holy holidays of queer are here in San Francisco), it’s going to be good.” He leaned in a subtle, conspiratorial manner and whispered in my ear as he gave me a hug good night, “I’d invite you but I don’t think you should be dancing quite yet, heal well, I’ll see you in seven weeks when I get back from Europe.”

Oh awesomeness.

He’s right too.

I would probably try to shake my groove thing.

I have been listening to a lot of jazz of late.

Smooth.

Mellow.

Sit still and heal, soothing.

I do not know what possessed me, but I put on the dance music when I took the train downtown today to run an errand.

I should know better than to run downtown during Pride Weekend when I am hobbling about on my walking boot.

But it was too late and I was there and as I slowly maneuvered through the crowds, I kept myself occupied by listening to a Green Velvet mix live in Dublin, Ireland, that was just smoking.

Best genre I can come up with to classify it is Retro-Electro/Ghetto Techno.

So good.

So dirty good.

I just wanted to shake my ass.

At least the half that wasn’t affixed to the boot.

So, “running” (I suppose wobbling is the much better adjective) into my friend the day before he’s off on seven week tour of Europe was great timing.

I told him about the epiphany I had at Lighting in a Bottle and how I love my writing practice, can’t get enough of it, doing it all the time, but that I wanted to expand a bit more and I wanted to record a full album with him instead of just one song.

I gave him some ideas.

I would love it to be called “Music of the Spheres” or “Jesus Was a DJ”.

Something spiritual, sexual, definitely a little retro and ghetto sexy, but with some sugar lip sass, I have to be able to dance to it, it can’t be too slow.

He suggested we do an EP then play out some clubs and press some vinyl.

Ah.

Ok.

OHMYGODREALLY?!

Fyi.

I don’t even know what an EP is.

I suppose I shall have to Wikipedia that right quick.

I know enough to know it’s not a full length album.

But it’s a set of songs.

Ah.

Thanks Mister Google.

Extended Play.

Not a full album, but an extended set of songs, usually three to four.

Perfect.

That sounds exactly what I want to do.

And play out?

Hells to the yes.

I miss that kind of performing.

I mean, yeah, it freaks me out, but I also loved doing the couple of shows with him the summer before I left for Paris.

It was pretty amazing, even just that little bit.

We played together with another vocalist and a violinist at the Elbow Room and then a few weeks later I joined him with another vocalist at Club 222.

It was pretty epic.

At least for me.

And the opportunity to do it again, but with more music and lyrics and a longer story, I am down with that.

I would not mind calling it “Baise Moi” either or “Sugar Kiss”.

I have a few ideas.

Some old material and some new material.

I also don’t have to have as much per piece written as I did for While You Were Sleeping.

It’s a long poem.

It’s not epic length, but it’s too long for a song.

Knowing that I have an idea of how many words each song can hold.

This means cutting and gutting a few poems.

I can do that.

It’s just editing.

And I have an editing eye.

I want to include “Cry Baby” on it.

OH.

That’s it.

Love Junkie.

That’s the refrain for the poem, the repeating thematic of the piece, a nonce I wrote years ago, “she’s a love junkie.”

We talked about mixing it with Paul Simon’s Graceland.

At least that’s the inspiration for me.

There’s a certain time in my life I would like to allude to, where Cry Baby came from.

And then the channeling another kind of music in there, underneath it, maybe some Hues Corporation.

A little mixing of “Don’t Rock the Boat” underpinned by something French retro or new wave.

Oh, the ideas.

EEK.

Yann Tiersen.

The guy behind the Amelie soundtrack.

Oh goodness.

Snowflakes on the steps of Sacre Couer, straight to my heart, the glow lamps in front of the cafes in Paris, the Eiffel Tower glittering in the snow fall and mist.

Baise moi indeed.

I have some writing to do.

I have a creative project.

Yay.

This will make the continued editing of Baby Girl that much easier to withstand.

Not that it’s all that difficult, although I am still cringing at the errors that rife through the work.

Sophomoric errors.

But hey.

I am learning and I get to have this experience and how many folks are in the middle of editing a book, their own memoir, and also writing lyrics for a pending album with a world-famous, globe-trotting dj?

Not so many I am going to suppose.

My friend who sold me the scooter also suggested I get back into dj’ing.

I did it very briefly, very much as an amateur, never played out, when I first moved to San Francisco in 2002.

I might have to do some investigationship.

I would not be getting turntables again, I’ll be honest, I’m too busy and a bit too lazy for that, but a good mixing system, a premium membership to Spotify, and my own ear, I think I could mix a good party.

Not really for money.

Just for the fun of it.

“We’ll press some vinyl and makes some money, and play around some clubs and get you before some crowds, and,” my friend’s eyes lit up.

I interrupted, “oh, I don’t care about making money, I just want to have fun and create and…”

“Oh, you get to make money too, don’t you worry, you make something and you’re going to make money too.”

He hugged me.

“Go, we’ll talk when I get back.”

He ducked into a tacqueria to meet some friends and I walked off to the N-Judah stop to take the train home.

Music rumbling through my head.

Right foot tapping a rhythm.

Happy to have a distraction from the ankle.

I’ll dance again soon.

I know I will.

And I will get to make new music too.

Life is pretty damn grand.

I just have to get out the way.

And ask.

The Universe really wants to say yes.

Just ask.

The answer is yes.

It always is.