Sun Burst

They left their car behind in the Pan Handle of Florida.

Broken down along the side of the road.

Tin can from a Chunky’s Chicken Corn Chowder soup barely holding

Together the rotten muffler.

Love.

Flashes like heat waves rolling up from asphalt

Pavement, as smoke eddies and drifts from a lit

Pall Mall filter Gold Light 100, grasped like a lifeline into

Another time where glorious naivety

Flexed in her 19 year old calve muscles.

Feet strong and unweary, propped on the dashboard watching the

Moss dipped trees roll along outside the window while Jethro Tull blasts from the radio.

These stories written in the power of youth and the glory of

Summers wandered through decades ago.

Her skin tattooed now with narratives and bygone memorabilia.

Literally.

She, her, I, wears her heart on her sleeve.

(Left side inside wrist wreathed with cherry blossoms)

She, her, I, has not forgotten the sunshine splash of freckles

Constellating his face and the desire badgering her heart to kiss each one.

Love rises like mist in a swimming pool at night in

Saint Augustine awash in humidity and the susurration of wind in palm leaves.

Song of flash pan memories born on the wings of cicadas,

Bark of a worried dog, crackle of fire on the edge of night,

Embers glowing on her (my) face, fronting strength under the curious

Gaze of heroin junkies and good ol’ boys with running mates and prostitute

Companions holding bent Budweiser can carburetor crack pipes.

She, her, I, will dance, never the less, none the less, dance now, dance then

Beneath the swelter of stars, amid the whispers of sexy, sexy, sexy

Spilling from the mouths of men unable to grasp her, attain her, hold her (me).

Love, lost like a plasticine slipper in the dusky playa at sunset.

Burnished with desire to kiss the bottom lip of his mouth and vanish into the

Streets of the Mission District, oh my sweet San Francisco how unexpected

Summer night strewn me with ghost kisses of fog being sucked in over Twin Peaks.

She, her, I will climb the hills back towards the sea, remember her (me) her face

Aswirl in dark curls, your face writ with awe, once again in her (my) hands.

Oh bluest eyes

Peering back into mine, this blissful fantasy a phantasmagoric feeling all

Ephemeral and moon washed will haunt you, I, me no more.

For yes, oh yes,

My darling.

This too shall pass.

Here Again

These old memories.

They bang at my head.

A washing of blue jean sky,

Salt tenderized by the sea.

Light.

So.

Californian.

Like my soul,

Built on mussel sea shells

Found by the sea shore.

Sally sells them for a penny a piece.

(find a penny pick it up)

In a brown paper bag I left them.

Hiding, the shells–

Underneath the Volkswagen’s seat.

The bounce of light against the

Rear window in the back seat of the Bug.

Little girl.

Brown eyes wide.

Watching the clouds scroll by,

Catching glimpses of ocean blue between the dunes.

Side mirror reflections bring me back to now.

Decades later.

Decades.

(All day long you’ll have good luck)

Four to be exact.

Those days down by the sea

Watching the water foam over the shore,

Tiny sandpipers scurry.

Coppertone baby in white panties,

Already insecure in my body,

Scampering at the edges of the sand burning bright

Heat rolling up my legs from my feet.

I am.

Curly headed.

I am.

Sweet lipped.

I am.

Brown as a nut berry.

(See a  penny, let it lie)

Pink soled feet softened by the rasp of sand.

Now I am plagued by these,

Photographs of melancholia–

Nostalgia tinged with seaweed.

The cry of mermaids in the grotto.

Sun high.

Heat on high

Cooking hotdogs on aluminum foil on the hood of the Volk’s.

Sand, a grit in my teeth.

Running back to the water, the ocean nips at my feet.

I find another shell for my paper bag.

(All good luck will pass you by)

Listen for the soundtrack to these memories.

One that drifts on the radio dial of Northern California

70s folk rock.

The outlines of my heart.

The nook in the cafe.

A flash of vinyl, the undertone scratch of needle finding the groove.

The light.

The light.

The light.

The smell of salt.

The hint of driftwood bonfires at the edge of night.

Golden foiled light in the dying

Embers of my childhood.

Bespoke.

Bag of shells.

Halo of white sun as I close my eyes to

Everything.

Lost again in that bright light.

Washed out in the sun.

Freckling my face.

I am.

Softened now

By these.

Kisses of eternity.

When You Feel Heartbroken

And you don’t know what to do.

You write.

You cry a bit.

You put on Wooden Heart’s Listener album and sing along to torch songs.

About crows and whiskey and prayers that aren’t heard.

But God hears the prayers.

He just doesn’t always give you the answers you want to hear.

You think about dying.

But you don’t die.

You put on a brave face and tell yourself that the pain is alright.

That’s how you grow.

Isn’t it.

Pain.

And I don’t want to die.

I still have so much living to do.

Maybe I just want to crawl into bed and cry into my pillows.

Fall asleep with tears rolling down my face and stare at the dark ceiling.

And wonder about the next door neighbor and the piano jazz that sometimes seeps out the windows of the ramshackle house at odd hours.

And maybe while I’m crying I’ll think about integrity and honesty and pain.

Because maybe you forgot what the pain feels like.

Well.

Until you feel the pain again.

And the surprise of it.

As though the past haunting hurt was just a whisper of how it feels now.

And maybe I’m not supposed to remember how it hurts.

Because then maybe I wouldn’t dare to love again.

Or love now.

I know I’m alive.

I know because it hurts.

And every moment of silence sinks me deeper.

The deep blue of Halsman’s Marilyn Monroe.

The old faded blue Christmas tree lights.

The blue ribbon on the package under the boughs.

Sinking me down.

So I write.

To process it all.

To not sink and stay sunk.

And I cry, soft, wicked slow, tears melting and wet.

Crumpled up and bent over and crying.

And maybe that’s ok.

It’s not, not ok.

It’s just a feeling.

It will pass.

Right?

Every season of grief has a meaning.

I just wish it wasn’t at Christmas time.

The baffled cheeriness of my battered heart.

Listening to Charlie Brown Christmas during the afternoon.

Watching the high blue sky and thinking of you.

Driving in my car so alive, so bouyant, so happy, so grateful.

To end the day in tears and confused and forsook.

I forsake myself, haven’t I?

Haunted by the last kiss you placed on my mouth.

Did you really tell me to scotch guard my shoes?

Were those your last words?

Because there’s no more to say, nothing left to say?

We all have the same holes in our heart.

Maybe I’ll just walk down to the sea and watch the meteor shower.

The sea can wash away the pain.

The sea can have it.

I won’t die from a broken heart.

It just feels that way.

That’s all.

 

In My Zone

On my bike.

Whipping along 46th avenue.

In my body.

Fog cool on my face.

Getting the ya yas the fuck out of my head.

I came home a little crazy.

A good girlfriend, thank you God for girl friends, talked me down off the ledge.

“Go eat some dinner, watch a movie, chill out, enjoy your Friday.”

I had gotten out of work early and the weather turned a bit toward the intense, heavy fog, so heavy it’s basically rain, and the visibility was decreasing rapidly.

I made the executive decision to scooter home instead of hitting the Church and Market scene to do grocery shopping, the nails, or the Our Lady of SafeWay crowd.

I was headed that way all day in my mind.

Some times the things I have in my head are completely fantasy.

When reality snuck up on me it was after a long day of cake making and crazy birthday party preparations.

One of my charges turns six tomorrow.

We made a birthday cake together.

Watching him and his younger brother lick icing off a spoon and run their fingers along the edge of the batter in the bowl, so sweet.

I also didn’t mind that they were having some sugar, I wasn’t going to have to put them to bed and I wasn’t responsible for dinner, and well, it’s a birthday and hey, you got to bend the rules some times.

I made a two layer banana vanilla spice cake with banana custard filling in between the layers, frosted with homemade buttercream icing and topped with a heavy hand of sprinkles, courtesy of the liberal shakes from the birthday boy.

I was very surprised that the mom wanted me to make a cake.

Last year they got a big chocolate six layer cake from Tartine.

It was a fun project to do and though it’s been a while since I have made a cake from scratch it was just like riding a bike.

It was a blast teaching the six year old how to separate egg whites from yolks, squeeze lemon juice, cream butter and sugar, and whip egg whites into peaks.

“Carmen, can you mix it for awhile, I’m tired,” he said leaning his sweet head against my hip.

“Of course,” I took the whisk and whipped the egg whites into peaks.

“Oof, this is hard,” I said, as my shoulder began to chatter with me, “I am going to need some love to keep going.”

He hugged my arm.

He hugged me a lot today.

He’s been such a sweet snuggle bunny with me.

Oh.

God.

Speaking of snuggle bunnies.

Fucking Rainbow and the barrel of overflowing Jelly Cat bunny rabbits.

(HA!  I just re-read that sentence above as I was editing and I thought, only someone who live in San Francisco knows that Rainbow is a high end hippie grocery store and Jelly Cat is a brand of stuffed animals that they sell in the kids aisle, but it makes a great visual if you don’t know the context!)

I almost threw myself in the vat of them while I was busy spending my paycheck on toiletries.

There was one mint one, like dinner mint green, those soft pastel melting mints that you get at the steak house after a big filet and sizzling plate of hash browns, the ones in a glass carafe at the hostess desk, yeah like that.

That bunny there, mint green with the softest little pink nose.

Dude.

I don’t know how the hell I restrained myself.

Give me all the bunnies.

I stood in the aisle for a good minute or so thinking about it, stroking the candy colored rabbit’s ears and then, with a last squeeze, I walked over to the produce area and got the apples I had come for.

Yeah.

So I got some good love on today with the boys.

“Carmen, I’m putting all my love in your heart,” the three year old told me as the mom was passing by, and then threw himself into my arms.

I just about burst into tears.

Yeah.

Still got the sads.

Slightly tempered by the pissed offs.

Why do I do the things that I do to myself?

Haven’t you learned yet?

Fuck.

I was beating myself up pretty bad.

Then the family left for a dinner at Rintaro as I finished up the laundry and tidied up the house for the weekend, birthday celebration.

I left my boy a small stack of presents and a hand made card on the kitchen counter and put his paper birthday crown from school on top of the domed cake in the kitchen.

I got him a bunch of model planes to fold out of paper and cardboard as well as a self-propelled rocket launcher that works on green energy.

It’ll shoot the rocket up to thirty feet.

Dude.

He’s going to be over the moon.

“Carmen, I used up all my love, I gave it all to you,” he said after licking the whisk reverently with half lidded eyes–banana custard, I mean really, I don’t eat sugar, but this was intoxicating to make and the smell, oh my, heaven.

“You know, I accept all your love, I always will, I love you heaps and bunches and to the moon and back infinity times infinity,” I said and stroked his soft face.

“That’s a lot!”

“Yes, it is, but you know the amazing thing about love?” I asked him.

“What’s that?”

“It’s an infinite resource, there is always more love to give, you can’t run out of it, whenever you breathe in the air, you breathe out love, it’s just natural, it’s just always there, I promise, you’ll never run out.”

“That’s a good thing,” he said and continued dreamily licking off the spoon.

“I agree.”

And I remind myself of the same thing.

Love.

Infinite love.

I have it always, deep down inside me where that small quiet voice presides.

So.

I locked down the scooter, ordered some take out from Thai Cottage, I ate an awesome pumpkin curry and then pumped up my bike tires and got my bicycle ready for a sprint over to Vicente and 41st, hang with the hoodlums in the Outer Sunset.

It was the best thing to do.

I heard everything I needed.

And I got my God on good.

Then.

The ride back, the soft fog still thick and wet, I was pretty soaked by the time I wheeled my whip into the garage, the air on my face, the smell of the sea, the crash of the waves on the beach, soul sluiced with sweetness.

Sometimes when you’re dreaming I see a light.

I walked into my safe, warm, glow globe room and said, “thank you,” and “hello house,” and “I love you.”

Because.

That’s how I roll.

Infinite love.

All the way deep down in my starlight soul.

All the way to the heavens and back.

A thousand times.

Giving myself the allowance.

The band width to be human.

With just a tiny bit.

Of.

(Infinite)

REVERENCE.

And.

God in the mix.

Not a bad way to start the weekend.

Hello you.

Let’s be friends.

 

 

Soft And Sleepy

That would be me.

I was up late last night and that was lovely, it happens sometimes, I go to bed late, things happen, life moves forward, the moon rides the waves over Ocean Beach and the sand presses in between my toes and I carry these small particles of love and salt into the grey morning.

It was far later than I thought it would be when I got up and moving.

The very grey skies gave me the illusion that it was still early.

It was not.

I got up, did my routine, got on with my day.

Really.

It was superiorly mellow and chill.

I did the deal.

I did the writing.

I did the Applied Spirituality homework, but I didn’t really do any other school work, I wasn’t feeling it.

I was soft and sweet and slow today.

I even, wait for it.

NAPPED.

The rain.

The sound of rain outside my back door, the patter of it on the patio the splash of it against the window pane.

I drifted in and out and lay, like Ophelia, with my hands clasped over my chest, my Converse kicked to the floor, my head a soft halo of loose curls tumbling over a velveteen pillow, my skirt billowed out, the crinoline a heap of fluffy icing.

I have been dressing pretty for myself all week and that has been so much fun.

I went to ModCloth’s Fit Shop yesterday and I had an actual fitting session.

It was spectacular.

I don’t have a lot of time to shop, and even when I do, like I have time this week, I am often loath to spend free time wandering in and out of stores.

It exhausts me.

If I know what I want, then I’m good, but just browsing can really just be too much, unless I’m in some sweet little neighborhood or visiting a city or museum, then I’m all about the shopping.

I wanted to go into the Fit Shop after I got my last dress and it was just such a fail.

REALLY.

I mean.

I have a nice figure, my bust is not supposed to look so squished and small and weird.

I was happy to get down town, then, and have the help of the team at the Fit Shop–a brick and mortar downtown on Grant and I think Stockton.

Basically the shop is full of clothes and they keep one of each size they have from petite 0s to 4x.

I mean, really anybody could find a cute dress or outfit there.

For me it’s that I don’t have a great idea of what I look like.

I either think I am bigger than I am.

Or smaller.

I have been rather hit and miss with the sizing chart in the online store.

I got measured.

I got my size.

Then I wandered around the store with a clipboard and wrote down any dress or top or outfit that I wanted to try on.

I tried on ten or twelve things.

I was ecstatic to find a sweetheart of a dress that I would have never bought online and it was a great fit and super flattering.

I felt like spinning around the store.

I also got a sweet cropped red cardigan, a sky blue slip with lace trim, and the perfect tunic shirt dress, amazing fit and again, not anything I would have even looked twice at ordering online, in faded blue.

I spent half the money I was prepared to spend.

The only thing that was a tiny bit disappointing was not being able to walk out of the store with my goodies.

However.

They gave me a discount for coming in and also expressed shipped it at no extra cost.

So I have some lovely things to wear soon.

I am looking forward to it.

It really has been nice letting myself dress up and wear things that make me happy.

I also cleaned out my closet today.

If it doesn’t bring me joy when I hold it I’m going to toss it or sell it if I think I can at Crossroads.

I was able to clean out some stuff that I wasn’t wearing and was just old and then cull a few things out that I just never wear, doesn’t make me happy, or doesn’t quite fit.

I got rid of all the things and hopped the N-Judah to the Inner Sunset.

I mailed the return dress back to ModCloth–I’ll be using that credit now that I know what to look for!

Then I sold 3/4s of what I had to Cross Roads.

I treated myself out to lunch then donated the remainder of the clothing.

I thought briefly of trying to sell it, but it just wasn’t worth hauling around anymore and the rain was starting to come in.

I just slipped back on the train after lunch and came back down to the house.

I made a cup of tea and luxuriated in some non-graduate school reading.

Then.

The nap.

So lovely.

When I woke up I made some nice dinner and then headed up to see some fellows over at the Sunset Youth Services.

I got my God on real good and now I’m back here.

Oh!

And I renewed my FAFSA for next year’s graduate school.

A little crazy that.

But not nearly as anxiety producing and nerve wracking as it was the first time I filled it out.

Pleased I am.

Life is good.

I am good.

I am blessed.

The soft rain on my face, upturned to the wind and the caress, a kiss on my neck, the lovely air on the stars adorning me.

I am a star.

Just another gathering of God light in this Universe sweetly shining in my little space.

Down by the sea.

Happy.

And.

Content.

Ne Me Quitte Pas

Mon cherie.

I miss you so.

And I come up for air.

A hot bowl of soup on a cold night.

A warm face to say to, happy I am today, how are you?

Love fills my heart and it stills my face and then I sit and stare at the walls and wish that the light was still there.

But it is the dark.

The night of winter.

The cold laying frost.

The dormant.

Before the growth.

That is what I believe.

And there is so much love, so much grace, so much more than you can ever imagine, than I can ever imagine and I sing poetry under my breath wishing to encapsulate it all.

I cannot though.

There is a fullness, a fire, a heat, a warmth, a softness, a softening, an astounding, a tenderness, and it aches with all that it does.

I just wrote “id.”

Freudian slip.

Excuse me.

Where was I?

I digress.

She’ll break her own heart.

A beautiful death, that.

And a poem for you that I wrote, aching and full and saddened in the seeping twilight sky that bled rain through the ragged grey clouds outside the window of my class Thursday morning.

I am Going to Go Now

The unwinding inevitable, the snowflake dredged with grime

A kissing time, a hand print fingered dove grey

Soot smeared and dusted with transitory crimes–

Passion pushed, outlined darkling cashmere fey.

Smudged with the meaning of God, gold patterned

Euthanasia, impacted without you, focused after life

Fabled and unique.  This too is true.  Maneuvered

Polite, we dance the waltz of unspoken strife

Rife with lusted desire.  Pagan with practice

Patience and archetypal, the sparked pointed Southern

Crossing resurrected, convicted by love, the chalice

Over full, the wetness on my lips, the flight, a turn,

Rebirth, the exodus of uncertainty belies my certainty

Of you and our luminous connecting, a mastered calamity.

I am grateful for passing time, even when it pains in the passing.

I have felt achey and full and wide open and perhaps that has something, everything, to being in school these last three days.  Not a night in three that I got more than five hours sleep, not a day that didn’t go by where there weren’t tears.

I am in school to be a therapist.

The tears, they do happen.

They happen sometimes in class, sometimes after, sometimes, more times this past week than I really wanted to, when I went to bed, the slip of tears on my face.

Potentially lonely/perpetually human/suspended and/open/open.

OPEN.

So wide open.

So painfully, wide open.

It feels like my heart is on a plate, not silver, not a platter, but a plate, bone china, the cusp of the new moon gilding the edge.

It’s a good place to be.

This teetering on the cusp.

It sounds painful.

And.

Yes.

It is.

And yet, so alive.

So exquisite.

So enlivened.

So playful, when I don’t feel shattered in the leavings of my old idea and the imprinting of the new upon that smote landscape of love and loss and longing.

Smote.

That is how it feels.

Searing.

The grief rolls through, over, and plunges me down and there, a stillness, a pearlescent shell, a spiral, the nautilus, the tiny chambers of soul lit phosphorescent and gilt.

I climb in and float away.

This embedded moment brought to you by listening to too much Regina Spektor (but oh, there is no such thing as too much, not really not ever) and the sad sweetness of end times and new beginnings.

I had my last class today of the semester.

I had a long day, a long week, a big weekend and now, it’s back to work.

With a brief moment of respite in the evening with a friend over soup and Thai food over in the hood.

I have had so much happen over this past six months and it astounds and I look about and I realize I have almost made it and there is still so much more to go, so more to be realized.

So much more of me to be realized.

And so.

And so.

So.

I don’t understand/if I kiss you where it’s sharp/if I kiss you were it’s sore/will you feel better?/better/better/will you feel anything at all.

ANYTHING AT ALL.

Oh.

I will.

I assure you, I will feel all the feels.

Little fuckers.

I am feeling all of them.

Grateful that tonight I will get a full night’s sleep, and yes, there could be more tears on the pillow, tears aren’t such a bad thing, my small dulcet downfall, the shallow sip of sea salt on my cheeks, the flush of my face against the sheet pulled up by my head, the crush of the weight of love and the foolish tender softness of dreams that push themselves into the wet lashes resting on the tops of my cheeks.

The stars, that old light, the seeps in between the cracks.

The liminality of love.

The threshold to the moon.

I watched the sky today while I sat in the student kitchen, the bright, high blue, the push of scudded white bounded clouds, the flight of a seagull in between the buildings.

I ate an apple with sea salt sprinkled over it.

I thought about eating apples, walking the streets of Paris, cold and scared and alive and undone and all done back up again.

I go back in a week.

I thought about Paris.

I thought about the paintings.

Kandinsky, Accent en Rose, at the Pompidou.

Kandisky-Accent in Rose

I thought about the alone.

I thought about the aliveness in me.

I felt the lonely and the alive and the love and let it wash over me, the soar of the gull in the sky, the press of the blue, the powder of the clouds, the clock over the counter winding down the minutes to my last class of the day.

That much closer.

Still so far away.

A reckoning on the horizon.

Love in the streets, the cobblestones smothered in shine and light from the lamp posts, the impossible sparkle of the Eiffel Tower.

Dazzle

And my heart a glow.

A small spot, a spiral of ember over the ocean, the rushing sea, the Christmas tree burning on the edge of the water, the beach a bonfire of holiness and the beckoning of the North Star.

I know not into what I walk.

But I walk ever forward.

Joy smeared and sacred with the smut of my own carnal life, the living.

It is good.

Don’t let me fool you.

It is all good.

So good.

So overwhelmingly painfully.

Wonderfully.

Good.

It doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt.

It does.

I am still the love smitten fool.

Who would I be?

If I weren’t wearing my heart on my sleeve.

At least it goes well with my clothes for Paris.

Transparent authenticity usually does.

And perfect attire for riding to the top of the ferris wheel.

I’ll blow you kisses from the pinnacle.

I promise.

They may be burnished bittersweet.

But.

They will.

Be.

All.

Mine.

The Week In Review

“Oh my gosh, I so relate to that,” she said, “I self-sabotage all the time.”

Hmm.

And then.

“Oh, I won’t date a woman who blogs,” said a friend today that I ended up hanging out on the beach with this afternoon, “too many people seeing my foibles, all one-sided, nope, I couldn’t do it.”

“You need to stop writing about dating.”

And I wonder.

Maybe I do.

It may be time to stop the self-sabotage, to not air the laundry, clean, dirty, or otherwise.

“You can write about me all you want,” my friend told me last night as we sipped lemon ginger tea and got caught up on each other’s lives–he’s back from the radical sabbatical and it was good, very good, to see him.

It’s hard to watch friends through struggles and he has been there for me through a lot of them.

There is a lot I don’t blog about, I think, I do keep some things, lots of things, to myself, for myself, by myself.

I could write all about my friend, but it is not my place, so perhaps, yes, I should not be writing about the dating too.

Not that I had a date today to write about.

I spent the day having Sunday service down by the sea.

It was so beautiful out today and I had a new white dress to wear.

I woke up earlier than I should have, all things considered, even with it being Daylight Savings time, I still was up late last night.

However, the sun was up and it was all blue skies and the brain started up and I just decided to get up and brave the day.

Even without having a thing planned, which can at times cause a kind of frantic feeling in me, I have a hard time sitting still and I have spent much of this past year trying to find that balance of not working too much and getting in some fun and some relaxation time to, because, ultimately, it does make me such a better worker and person in the end if I do.

Breakfast, coffee, hair in braids, new dress, flip-flops (which made me smile a bit, it’s November 2nd and I am in flip-flops), write for a while, sit for a while.

I went out into the back yard and sat in the big white Adirondack chair and the sun beamed benevolent and warm and the birds rustled over head, ravens, and songbirds chattered, gulls squawked, the ocean surf rumbled, and once in a while the N-Judah would grumble past.

I sat soaking in the warmth and the love and I got quiet.

The frazzle and dazzle of the week siphoned through me and I was still.

I realized I did a few things this week that I could regroup around and rethink, especially in regards to self-care, late nights, some really late nights for me, both Friday and Saturday, with early wake ups and no naps, a few nights when I did not get to my blog, which is like its own version of sunshine for me, I need to do it, it feeds the art monster in me, drinking an energy drink on Friday.

Oooh.

I know, I am so subversive, drinking a caffeine bomb.

However, it’s true, I don’t really drink them, I don’t do artificial sweeteners, I don’t chew gum, I don’t drink diet sodas, so what was I doing drinking a sugar-free Rockstar on Friday?

I knew, even as I said yes, I should have been saying no, or at least, yes, I’ll have a water, thank you.

But I did it anyway.  I want to keep up with the cool kids you know.

Then again.

I also did some spectacular self-care for me–went and got the mammogram done, which I was dreading and it wasn’t so bad, did grocery shopping, sent my mom a birthday card and got her birthday present, I need to drop it in the mail tomorrow.  Called mom, I try to call my mom on Sundays, it still amazes me that we have re-established a relationship, I feel ridiculously blessed by it.

I bought myself a new dress, I don’t clothes shop well, so this was really big self-care and as I took it out of my bag last night to hang in the closet my friend made a comment and I said, “I don’t even know why I bought it, I have no idea where I am going to wear it.”

“You’ll figure it out.”

And of course.

I did.

To the beach, to the beach, to the beachy, peachy keen, lovely beach, that place wild and wooly right out my back yard, just blocks away.

I packed a lunch up for myself–large kale salad with 1/2 an heirloom tomato, broccoli, carrots, 1/2 an organic Hass avocado, kalamata olive oil, apple cider vinegar, Bragg’s amino’s, 1/2 a tart apple, two hard-boiled eggs, and of course the ubiquitous persimmon (they won’t be in season much longer so I have stacks of them in my kitchen), a bottle of water, a blanket from the housemate, my camera, and off to the beach I went.

I climbed up and over the dune at the edge of Great Highway and Judah and walked down toward the sea.

I found my spot.

Spread out the blanket.

Sat down and breathed deeply all things good and salty and sea.

I felt it all loosen in me, the sun warmed me, I felt doused in love and light and I unpacked my lunch and ate it under bright cerulean skies, laughing at the confused sea-gull who was watching close by and was none to happy when after much patience he finally scavenged something from my lunch–the persimmon top, and disgusted with his findings, flapped off  in a huff to better pickings.

Picnic

 

 

Kite

I took some photos and called a friend.

Who, as luck would have it, is it odd or is it God?

Was right down the beach at Noriega and Great Highway.

He made his way to me and we sat and talked about shoes and ships and sealing wax, cabbages and kings, dating, family, recovery, Ocean Beach, life, travel, work.

It was so good.

He gave me some lovely perspective and I felt unburdened and lucky and blessed to again, come back to this simple, sweet, serene life I lead.

My Sunday sabbatical complete I was able to come back to the house, write some more, meet with a lady, do some reading, eat a wonderful dinner, sit in the last of the sun and drink copious amounts of cinnamon tea.

I downloaded my photographs and felt that despite a rather tumultuous week–all in my head, mind you–I had gotten what I needed and relaxed here, finally, at the end of the week, the edge of the world, down by the sea.

Sunshine Day Dream

Right exactly where I am supposed to be.