Time to write

There comes a time to write.

Not the time to write that I take for myself, the daily journal, the morning pages, that fill notebook after notebook, after notebook.

I have a stockpile of bins in my office closet.

I slowly fill a notebook and then quietly transport it to my office, place it in a file box, or an old leftover plastic bin retired from Burning Man.

I look at them and reflect on the past 18 years that I have been assiduously putting pen to paper.

I wonder what to do with them.

They are precious.

And they are markers of passing time.

And they are just words.

Words that help me process the world that I walk through.

Words that, to few others mean very little.

They are both everything and nothing.

I could go to the office and make a few trips up and down the steps and load the boxes up in the back of my car, drive out to Ocean Beach, find a fire pit, and have myself a little bonfire (of vanity) of my words and I would be ok with that.

I am attached and detached to both the idea of keeping the notebooks and letting them all go in a whoosh of flames.

I don’t have anyone to leave those words to.

Perhaps to my younger self, see here, girl, look what you have wrought.

I reflect on this as I think about this past week and the travel that I took.

I was in Florida.

First to see my mother and make an amends for having to cancel a trip over Thanksgiving.

I saw her for Mother’s Day.

Made good on being a daughter.

Traveled across the country to a land that seems so far away and different to me than San Francisco.

Then I met my beau in Miami.

And no.

I won’t be writing about him.

I long to in some ways, there is much to process, but that goes in the notebooks.

That is for my eyes, my heart only.

Suffice to say I was not alone in Miami and what I did and felt and saw was so vastly different than the last time I was in Miami, that it stirred within me the urge to write my blog today.

Aside.

I wonder about taking this elsewhere, this blog.

Am I loyal to the platform?

Is it just a historical document, my millions of words, my thousands of blog, my endless ego, that keeps me here?

I don’t often write, as I used to, once a day, every day.

A kind of hiding in plain sight I think.

A way to be seen and of the world, but also away from the world, away from socializing, dating, going out, making friends.

The blog has been a protector, a glimpse into my life, my psyche, who I am, the places I have gone, the things I have seen, felt, touched, heard–a way of mirroring who I am and also, frankly, not who I am.

This is just a part of me.

Not the biggest part of me either.

It is me.

And.

It is not me.

I don’t know exactly how to formulate it, how to describe it, the words they come out of my head, they flow through my fingers, I am just dictating my thoughts as they move around my brain.

This is not me in entirety, it’s a thread, a gossamer, a glowing line of words that meander around some segment of my brain.

I just follow the trail, like a silver snail, and pick up the words and put them here.

I know it is me.

It is not me.

Something else.

Something divine.

Something that has its way with me, through me, in me.

There is more me than this me.

Like all the levels of death, the small deaths, the ego deaths, the different manifestations of death, le petit mort.

A conversation that rattles around in a part of my brain that writes the poetry.

There is a line from a conversation on a couch in a hotel in Miami that has a poem waiting to be breathed into life.

But it is not here yet.

I am here still.

Writing.

Thinking about writing.

How it feels.

Fuck me.

It feels.

So.

Good.

And I am a pleasure seeking missile and this is what I think about.

This flow, this ease, it is so luxurious.

I don’t have to do much and the words just flow like jazz scat scattered on my skin, kissed with music and words.

It is a drug this.

Such pleasure.

The writing that I am thinking about is the writing that both scares me and pulls me along.

Write the book.

Write the book.

Write the book.

I have written tens of books, if you layer all the blogs together, there are books, upon books, upon books. The dissertation, the three memoir manuscripts, the boxes of notebooks.

The proliferation of words is not hard for me.

I think you have gotten the gist of that.

It is in the crafting and the vulnerability of really looking at what I have.

31 years ago I was an unhoused, terrified (I wouldn’t have said that, I would have said, “curious” or “adventurous” or something that belied the obvious dissociation I must have been in to do the things I did) living in Homestead, Florida.

Aside, I just Googled Homestead, Florida.

I have never done that before.

I won’t do it again.

Gave me ugly goosebumps.

Anyway.

I wrote a memoir about that time.

One of the things that I reworked and worked on more and I think took into five drafts?

But still I think is shit.

And I spent a lot of time on the fifth draft when I lived in Paris.

I sent it out to a lot of agents.

I queried almost daily.

I got almost nowhere.

Very few responses.

Very few interested people.

But I did it.

And I think now, I think, do I unearth it?

Do I rewrite it, fictionalize it perhaps.

Very few people in there that would be affected by my writing it, very few people that I even remember the names of.

Leon.

E.

Billy Ray.

Myself.

Three major players.

One bit player.

One love triangle.

And a lot of crack cocaine.

Under the table construction.

Living in shacks on the edge of the destroyed Fort Andrews Air Force base, sometimes cars, sometimes tents.

Trips to the Circle K for roller hots dogs, generic cigarettes and wine coolers.

When there was money.

And when there wasn’t, stealing from the gas station a couple miles away.

I never stole, I was a patsy to a couple of different thefts though.

Sigh.

So much fodder.

Alligators.

Moldy hotel rooms.

Cold showers in the dark at construction sites when I had not showered in days.

The smell of wood lath after being smashed by a sledgehammer–I did demolition at some of the house sites the boys worked on.

Sonic Burger drive in when we were flush.

Dine and dashes, my first one at a Keg South bar and grill with Billy Ray.

The taste of really bad Rose in a cheap wine glass.

Coral rock.

The sunset that I will never forget, 31 years later, it is still seared there on my brain like a still in a movie that I can’t quite shake.

And this girl, me, this woman, young, brash and brazen and running, who just kept surviving and putting that next foot in front of the one in front of the one in front of the one in front of the other.

Going blistered footed ever forward.

She is there too, in the cracks and crevices of me.

Maybe.

Just maybe.

I go back and I write a epilouge.

I write framing it in this now.

In this moment of my life.

Aged fifty.

Aged with lines around my eyes that crinkle far too deeply.

Aged and achy for the heart of that girl/woman/child.

Oh am I ever just a child, adrift in the stars over the dark water of the Lake, the warm nights, the sparkle of Miami that was so far away, so unatainable.

Little did I know where I would go, where life would take me, and that one day, many, oh so many years later, I would make my return.

And the sun on the face of the man in the car is not the sun on the face of the man in the car.

It is there bright and washed pink golden orange red burnished in the sun setting behind the Miami skyline, promising me something more than I had thought possible.

If I so chose.

And.

I think.

I think this time I do.

I think it is time to make that choice.

It is.

Time to write.

Translucent Honey

On the time that covers you.

Golden down

Whisper quick

Flicked with lust

And

The first kiss

Blush of love.

September sun against surreal

Blue skies.

Your eyes

Blue too.

Pupils dilated.

I remember.

Oh soft my heart that does always bear such remembrance.

Push my memories aside.

Focus on the now

Cloud of time.

Reminisce no more my love.

Lost in songs,

Mixed tapes,

Love letters,

Tattooed messages of

Forever

&

Eternity.

Momentos of our brief,

Too brief.

So brief.

Why so fucking brief?

Time.

Yet there.

There

It goes again.

In the whippet quick beat of my heart

Pulse dancing to the possibility

That one day.

Oh.

One day.

I will.

(yes please)

See you again.

Until then my sweet.

 

~Stay golden~

 

A Time I Will Never Forget

I am appropriating your words again, my love.

You renamed something of ours.

It was appropriate.

The re-naming.

I approved.

I responded.

I know.

No contact.

I don’t know that you saw it.

But.

I hope that you did.

And I said.

“Nor will I, my love.”

Nor will I.

I can’t forget that time, our time.

The city we were in.

The heat.

The warmth of you next to me on the stoop in Brooklyn.

Our picnic that I put together.

The way the day’s sun had warmed the cement, the call of the birds settling in the trees.

The same birds that would awaken us in the morn.

They seemed to call to me.

Here.

Now.

Be with him.

And I gave myself to you.

I have no regrets.

In the giving I was given to.

The sacred radicalism of our love.

The driver the night before as we came over the bridge from one borough to the next.

She asked us if we were married.

We weren’t.

But you know.

We were.

We are.

Married and joined in some other way.

I felt betrothed to you.

I still do.

I write about that sometimes.

I haven’t told you that.

I still write your name, in its fullness, in my morning pages, and that I am married to the great love of my life.

Then.

Yes.

I list all the places we will travel to.

Places we have already been.

But will need to go back and reclaim.

And places that we will go to.

And make them ours.

Today I was in such a place.

Out by the sea.

Rockaway Beach.

It is not a particularly luxurious spot.

There is something rough and redneck about it.

And yet.

As I ate my three egg omelet at the table in the cafe while I watched the ocean come in and go out, I could not stop thinking of you.

I could see us in the hotel room where I am staying.

Alone.

My room-mate never showed for the intensive.

I could see you and I here.

Together.

Then in the cafe later, having a very late breakfast, drinking too much coffee, making plans to build bonfires at the beach.

Telling each other stories from our rebellious youth.

I could see your face across the way.

So real.

I teared up.

I cried over my three egg with cheese and bacon omelet.

Then.

Damn the music sometimes.

One of the songs that you put on my dance card came over the sound system.

REALLY?

I thought.

Really.

Now.

In this moment.

Right now as I am figuring out the tip for the waitress.

She wasn’t great but she’s my waitress and she’s going to get at least 20%.

Once a waitress.

Always a waitress.

And that song.

Not even a recognizable Elvis song, or an obvious heartbreak song.

Just something to dance to.

Remember.

When you made me that playlist.

And we went to the beach.

It wasn’t the best time at the beach.

I think we actually fought.

But we made up.

We always made up.

I wish we were making up now.

Instead of being nostalgic for another time.

A past time.

A memory that grows, though not distant, removed.

I miss you baby.

I wish I was making more memories with you instead of trying to reconcile not being with you.

I wish I was writing you poetry that you would actually read.

I wish you had been next to me, not just at the cafe.

But at the beach.

I saw the plume of a whale spout.

Then a humpbacked breached.

I gasped a loud and reached for your hand.

I almost fell off the damn rock I was sitting on.

Reaching for something that is not there.

Grief.

Yes.

Grief.

For a time I will never forget.

For a man I will always want.

For a love that is not mine to have.

But.

I had it anyway.

And no one can take that away from me.

Not anyone.

Now.

Or.

Ever.

Random Images

Daydreams and revery.

Blues songs on the radio station you programmed in my car.

The blue of the ocean in my rear view mirror and the trembling thought of wild-fire in my heart.

You like a car in a meadow filled with flowers and tall grass.

A car with the windows open and soft snow falling inside it.

I saw that car today.

Barbara Lewis on the stereo.

A soft kiss of nostalgia.

I wanted to climb into that car in the heat of summer, to cool off, to be dusted with that soft snow.

I would open the door, climb in and settled down.

No need to change the channel on the radio station.

Just lay my head back against the seat and let the snowfall of memory engulf me.

I could ride around all day in that car.

Eyes closed.

Leaned back.

Checked out in the glossy remembrance of your embrace.

Your smell would wrap around me like a chambray shirt.

I want to curl up there.

On that seat.

In that car.

Drive forever.

I would look up at the ceiling and realize that the roof top was open and the snow fell from the heavens above me.

And then notice that it was not snow falling.

But stars.

Soft and cool.

Stars dusting my shoulders and glittering in my hair.

Star shine.

Moon shine.

Love shine.

I would hold your hand.

Press it to my mouth.

Wanting only to drive down the night into the sunset of my never-ending always longing desire for you.

I don’t know where that meadow is.

Full of flowers and light and monarch butterflies.

Birdsong.

Love song.

Heart song.

I don’t know where that car is either.

Yet.

I sense it there.

In the whispering of my psyche.

In the skeins of time.

Waiting.

Just waiting.

For you to pick me up.

And.

Drive me home.

 

Your Face In The Moonlight

The birds singing, each to each, in the branches outside the window in the morning.

Your face lit up, eyes wide, your hands reaching for me.

“You are so beautiful,” you said.

Then you kissed me.

Held me.

Melted into me.

I can still feel your embrace.

I can still see your face.

Your face in the moonlight.

I woke up in the night.

No reason.

No rhyme.

Just sudden, as though I had been tapped on the shoulder.

I opened my eyes and there you were outlined bright.

Still.

Perfect in your slumber.

The moon bathing in you in sublime wonder.

I will always see you that way.

Amongst the many ways I see you.

I took your hand and fell back asleep holding it.

I remembered the words from the sonnet I read you in the afternoon.

So close that your hand on my chest is my hand,

So close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

That sweet, sacred afternoon, spent on the leather couch in the front room.

Reading Pablo Neruda poetry to you.

Your head in my lap, my hand brushing through your hair, stroking your cheek.

Until you fell asleep.

Outlined soft in the warm air of love drifting up from the rise and fall of your chest.

I read to you long after you lay sleeping cradled against me.

The soft words raining down on your face.

I want you to hear my voice in your dreams.

I want you to know that I am always here.

In the shape of the moon as it waxes and wanes.

In the kiss of warm air on your skin.

In between the songs of lovebirds and the skein of time.

I am here.

Love.

To hold and to have.

Always.

Big, Full Week

But then again, when is it not?

I was just going over my Google calendar and putting in all the things that I have happening this upcoming week.

I swear, I might need to not look at it for a while, there’s a lot going on.

But, I usually do have a lot going on.

I’m feeling the need to organize it as I wanted to see where I had little pockets of time to address things.

Like clothes shopping for D.C.

It was 75 degrees in San Francisco today.

It was glorious.

I wore a sundress.

I loved it.

February always has a run of nice days in San Francisco, it’s like a little mini-summer break, in the middle of what should be winter.

D.C. however is not that warm.

Nope.

Today the high was 41 degrees.

Granted I’m not going to D.C. to participate in outdoor activities, I mean cozy hotel, cozy restaurants and cafes, cozy museums, maybe a brisk walk around Dupont Circle and Georgetown but aside from that I won’t be outside that much.

Yet.

I still have a yearning for some cold travel appropriate clothes.

Plus I will have one nice meal out if not two and I want something appropriate for where I’ll be dining that’s not, well, a summer dress.

So.

Anyway.

Just spent a lot of time combing over my schedule and seeing where I can do things.

Tomorrow is pretty jam-packed.

Coffee in the morning and walk on the beach with my best friend.

9a.m. yoga class.

Shower and breakfast and more coffee after that.

My morning writing routine.

Food prep for the week.

And then.

I have a ten page paper I have to knock out.

I also have a lady coming over to do work at 2p.m. and I will be leaving to do very much the same kind of work cross town with my person at 5:30 p.m. then over to the Castro to get right with God and that is it.

My Sunday.

I won’t have time to do any shopping or the like.

Nor did I have time today.

I did, however, do some nice self-care things for me.

I did go to yoga, my head always says, just sleep in, but my feet were smart, I’d signed up for the class the night before, and I went, and as it is always, I was quite happy after I had done the class.

I had super hot shower, washed my hair, ate a great breakfast, worked on some client emails, did a bunch of writing, and went off to my internship for group supervision.

I was supposed to see a consultation today.

They no showed.

So I took the extra time, went to the bank, deposited a check, went to the car wash and got my car washed and then actually found brilliant parking just off Divisadero a block from a nail salon that I have been frequenting more often.

I got a mani/pedi and the eyebrows waxed.

It felt super nice to have an hour and a half of not moving, just relaxing, getting a little pampered, and then I was off to the spot for the doing of the deal and after, home.

A bite to eat for dinner, confirmation about meeting my friend for coffee, I can’t believe I’m getting up at 6:30 a.m. to meet my friend for coffee.

I obviously love my friend.

I hope there’s a lot of coffee.

Heh.

And that about wraps up my night.

It wasn’t a huge eventful day, but it was sweet and there were good moments of self-care and I had a few phone check ins with the new lady I’m working with and that felt really good.

I’m not going to make it a late night tonight, since I’m getting up early, just a little snack, some hot tea, and a bit of Peaky Blinders.

I’m quite taken with the show.

Just started season 4.

And a good nights sleep.

I’m not really upset about getting up early on my day off, it’s actually a good way to start the week, being up as early as my earliest day, which is Monday.

I’ll have a lot of 6:30 a.m. starts this week.

Monday for supervision before work.

Tuesday, fingers crossed there will be a fucking yoga class to go to before therapy.

Wednesday, a chiropractor appointment before work.

Thursday I can “sleep” in until 7a.m.

But Friday, Saturday, and Sunday I’m back in school for the second weekend of classes for the semester, and that means a 6:30 a.m. start for each of those days as well.

So an early start tomorrow will just prime the pump.

And I’m super happy to see my best friend, our schedules are full and busy and it can be really hard to see each other.

I’m sure the company will be fantastic and I won’t be at all upset about getting out of bed early on a Sunday.

Fuck.

It will probably put me in such a good mood that I will get all the work done I need to do.

Fingers crossed.

Because I don’t have space or time during the week to work on my paper, I have to do it tomorrow.

I’m sure it will get done.

I always get them done.

I just have to sit down and show up.

And.

Well.

Write.

I think I can do that.

And with that I bid you adieu.

Snack, tea, Peaky Blinders, bed time.

Sweet dreams lovey.

Sweet dreams.

Bye Bye

Faceplant.

I took Facebook off my phone today.

It gave me a great big scary warning about losing content and I was like, what the fuck ever.

Let me lose political arguments.

Terror.

Sniping.

Ugliness.

Trauma.

Policy intrigue.

And frankly a great big suck of my time.

I was on Facebook a bit more than I typically am via my phone today as the baby was sick and the only way to nap was to get him in the carrier and rock him until he could sleep.

It took a while and the screaming was tremendous, mostly just because the poor little guy was exhausted, he has croup.

In fact.

All my little monkeys have it.

Thanks to some kids who came to school sick last week and it spread like wildfire.

So today I had two boys, both who were sick and not so happy.

I did get to have them out in the world today as I helped the mom with some errands and for a very sweet hour I had the baby napping in the stroller and my big guy curled up on my lap telling me stories while he nibbled a pastry from Arizmendi bakery.

I got sunshine on my face, good snuggles, and sweet connection.

So.

When we got back to the house and I had the baby again I ended up being on my phone a bit, but the more I was on it, the more annoyed I got.

I have been contemplating taking myself off Facebook entirely, since the current administration and even a bit before it, I was beginning to have a lot of negative feelings about the forum.

First of all.

It’s extraordinarily challenging, I find, to see horror story after horror story, the fires in Sonoma and Napa, the mass gun shooting in Vegas, the hurricane in Puerto Rico, to name just a few, all the celebrity and musician deaths, deaths in my community and fellowship, the suicide at Burning Man, Jesus fuck, all of it and more, and then see Facebook selling me shit.

I am at once terrorized by the horror show of the world and then I am being sold some period panties, or a dress or high heels or what the fuck?

I can’t take in both information.

I can’t want to look at a pair of shoes and then feel extraordinary guilt that I can buy a pair of shoes when people in Puerto Rico haven’t had electricity for a month.

I can’t see story after story after story of women who have been raped and sexually assaulted and then see an ad for a dating site.

Fuck off.

It’s too much.

So.

When I found myself being disturbed, I put down my phone and I focused on what was happening right there in the moment.

I looked at the room I was in.

I felt the weight of the baby on my chest, his warmth and heaviness.

And then I closed my eyes.

Oh.

Why.

This is lovely!

I meditated and then.

Yes.

It happened.

I fell asleep!

I had what I like to call “naptation.”

It’s the best ever.

I couldn’t have slept more than ten minutes, a nap snack if you will, but wow, I felt so much better and refreshed and not irate at the world and upset.

I was present.

It was pretty damn nice.

Then.

Later at my office when I went into see my clients I realized that looking at social media tends to destabilize me and there have been more than a few incidents when I will be idly flipping through Facebook and see something disturbing and then I’m lost in la la land and minutes fly by and I’ve been sucked in and I’m upset now.

Well, fuck me, that’s not how I want to hold my therapy frame.

No.

I want to be calm and serene and ready and empathic to whatever my client brings in, not whatever algorithm Facebook has my feed on.

Fuck that.

So.

I deleted it off my phone.

Yes.

I do still have an account.

And I did not delete the messenger app.

I actually use that more often than one would think, especially with my classmates.

And, irony, school is one of the reasons I won’t get rid of it entirely, my cohort has a closed private group where we facilitate conversations about school and I have found the connection really important.

Facebook still has some things that I want to keep and there are friends and family that are out-of-town that I like to keep in touch with.

But.

No more on my phone.

I don’t like it and I don’t like how often I can be pulled out of the moment, out of the present, and away into something else.

I want to be present for what or whom is in front of me.

I remember when I realized that I could turn off the volume on my phone when I went to bed and not be woken up by a beep or ping or tweet.

I haven’t put my phone in night mode, except once accidentally, that was hilarious, yet, but I am close to doing that as well.

No interruptions.

Just pure sweet sleep.

I also try very hard to turn off my phone and put it away when I am with someone, I don’t like how distracting it is.

As I lean in more to being a therapist as I see what works for me and how I can better show up for friends, for those I love, for my fellowship and my clients, I lean further and further away from social media.

It was such a lot of fun, but it stopped being fun a long time ago.

When I stopped posting my blog to social media I noticed a distinct shift in how I use it and I have to say, I really don’t need the validation of people commenting on my blog from Facebook.

I missed it for a little while, but what I realized, what I have always known, is that the process of writing is what is important.

If someone gets something from what I write, well, huzzah, but ultimately, it is for me and I am grateful for that, that I kept it up and that I continue to do so and I can give a fuck about Facebook.

I think it will get along very well without me.

Probably won’t notice at all that I am gone.

And that is fine with me.

I don’t mind living under the radar.

That’s where the interesting stuff happens most of the time anyway.

Seriously.

Almost There

And it was a full day.

But almost there.

Almost done.

Full of work and writing and reading and clients and my supervisor.

Who never fails to astound me with his breadth of knowledge and insight.

I was flummoxed by a new client and he sketched it out in three sentences.

Blew my mind.

Of course he’s got years of being a therapist on me, but still, he’s so damn good and also it’s refreshing to be under the tutelage of someone who is so in tune with his work and knows really deeply how to talk about clients.

I bring a lot to him.

I am very observant and there are things that I know he’s surprised that I catch.

But man, he takes them and runs with them and sees the things that aren’t so obvious to me.

Of course.

They’re obvious as soon as they come out of his mouth and his explanations make so much sense.

Again and again I am so pleased to be allowed to work with him.

I got very lucky.

One of my friends in my cohort argues that my supervisor got lucky with me.

That was nice to hear, but I do feel that I’m the lucky one in the deal.

I do think he finds me interesting to work with though, and for that I am grateful and I’m an intelligent woman, I think that helps a lot, I get where he’s going with things and I am able more and more, to articulate what I am seeing in the sessions and relaying it well enough to him that I am getting a lot of help with my cases.

More so, by far, than I get in group supervision.

Sometimes I feel like my group supervision is just there to help me see how good I have it, not just with my supervisor, who is not affiliated with my group or my internship, but also with my school.

I have gotten a much better education, it feels, than many of the other interns that I see in my group.

I could be wrong, but it feels like I’m getting more from my school program than I am seeing with the other interns that I have worked with.

And though my group supervisor is a nice woman, she’s not as intuitive as my solo supervisor not as academically rigorous.

Not complaining, just observing.

So.

Yeah.

I saw my solo supervisor before work today.

The hour always flies by, then I usually pop over to Rainbow Grocery and pick up a few things, things that I can only get there, it’s sort of like my treat.

Go to supervision, get Rau Chocolate drink.

Ok!

Then I scootered to work.

Where it was quiet and I was able to take care of the household business and then take some time to do some homework and have a nice lunch.

I don’t normally sit at the dining room table, but there was no one home, and the view, oh, my God the view is crazy good.

A gigantic sweep from floor to ceiling of glass and the sprawl of the city, the Bay Bridge, downtown, it’s amazing.

And there are plum trees in the back yard.

With blossoms on them!

I was so startled to see that.

Not a lot, not heavy like in spring, but there were blossoms and the beauty of them caught me so off guard.

I was inspired and wrote some poetry.

I like to write a poem now and again.

Makes me happy.

Makes me happy too when the work resonates with the reader.

Very happy.

I write poetry because I can’t help myself.

I really can’t.

It’s a part of me.

And a part of me that takes precedent over homework.

I still did homework though.

I still read.

I took my reader with me on the train to pick up my charges from school.

I took my reader with me to my internship.

I read when there is down time.

The only issue I have at the moment that I’m a little put off by is that my reader for my class that I need to wrap up for the upcoming weekend got fucked up at the printer.

So all sorts of my reading is not available to me.

Except.

Online.

Thankfully the professor was alerted and posted the readings up, but I dislike reading online when I am studying, I like to outline and write notes and underline passages.

I also like having a reader or a book that I can throw in my bag and read when I have a spare minute.

It looks like I will have time the next few days at work to attend to my readings as my work load is slightly lighter with the mom away on business with the baby.

So.

I guess I’m bringing my laptop to work tomorrow so I can do some of the reading I wasn’t able to yet get to.

Luxury problems.

I flipped through a bit of it already when I got home from seeing my clients and having a bite of dinner.

I may even be able to finish up the reading tomorrow at work.

Thereby leaving the rest of the week for just work and clients.

And.

Yes.

School.

I’ll be in classes again Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

Friday: 9a.m. to 4 p.m.

Client at 6:30p.m.

Home by 8p.m.

Saturday: 9a.m. to 8 p.m.

And.

Sunday: 9a.m. to noon.

It’s nice having shorter class days, last two years I was in class until 8p.m. on Fridays and 4 p.m. on Sundays.

My internship, or practicum as it’s referred to while I am still in school, is considered a class.

Of course I spend a far greater amount of time and effort on my internship, it’s a different kind of learning too, and I’m actively doing therapy.

Whew.

It is a lot.

But I suspect.

I will have some nice times in there too.

I don’t suspect it.

I know it.

That’s the kind of life I live.

Work hard.

Play harder.

 

 

 

The Language of Love

Truths that we experience without speaking.

A synthesis of our kisses.

The emotions expressed in the color of your face.

In the push of your lip.

In the crinkle of laugh lines around your eyes.

You say so much to me.

My heart swells.

The over arching expression of wholeness when I am held by you.

A bubble of time and space that is infinite.

Expansive.

Delirious.

Sometimes I catch you looking at me and I lose my breath.

Sometimes I look at you.

And the wilderness of joy that breaks out inside me.

Well.

It is wondrous.

The opulence of you.

The shine.

Your comeliness makes me swoon.

And your charm.

It is lavish and magnificent.

Our language is poetry and magic.

Music lyrics.

And.

Laughter.

Great big guffaws of it.

You make me sing with laughter.

It spills from me like sunshine.

And sometimes.

When you are far I still feel that you are speaking to me.

I feel it in my body, an ache, incessant, in my bones.

That you touch me without even being in the same room as me.

Your love overspills the boundaries of time and distance.

It kisses me on my forehead.

My cheeks.

My tender face.

Glowing for you in the dusky light just after sunset.

Glimmering at you in my own language of love.

That you may decipher in codes ancient.

A language that needs no words.

Only the smile of you to unlock the meaning.

And I know.

All the way through my body.

How you cherish me.

And you must know.

Yes, you must.

Love.

How.

I.

Cherish.

You.

 

 

 

Maintenance

And slow movement  forward.

I have to give myself some credit here.

Even though I did not leave the environs of the Outer Sunset.

Oh mama, did I do a lot of stuff.

Sometimes my brain will give me grief, you’re moving too slow, you’re not going fast enough, there is stuff that needs to be done.

And sometimes I can let that old harangue take a back seat to all the spectacular, albeit small things, that I did do in my day.

All I have to do is look at my sumptious bed.

I made it.

That’s a big deal.

I put fresh sheets on my bed and washed all my linens and all the clothes in my laundry basket, I made my bed and all the pillows are lined up and it looks comfy and cozy and beckoning.

I’ll get to slide in between soft, clean, fresh, sweet smelling sheets at the end of my day.

Which is not too far off.

I love my bed.

I have a nice mattress.

I have a bed frame.

I have five fucking pillows.

Who the hell am I?

Remember?

I do.

Remember being a kid and having one flat, stained, squashed pillow?

Or.

When I upgraded to two pillows when I was a junior or senior in highschool.

I forget which, but I remember how I would double up those pillows and prop them just so underneath my head so that I could read late into the night whatever novel I was busy seeking refuge in.

I escaped in reading a lot.

Reading was my way out and the feel of those pillows, each folded in half, to prop up my head is a memory that I won’t forget soon.

Then.

There were the times when I didn’t have a pillow of mine own at all.

Or a bed, for that matter.

Sleeping on couches, in the back seats of cars, or the passenger side.

Being homeless on again and off again for years, squashing myself onto a friends love seat with broken springs, sleeping in a tent, “but I was camping,” I told her and she laughed, “we call that being homeless.”

Sleeping on a sheet of plywood on the ground.

Or.

When I moved up a little in that world, on a sheet of plywood that was being held up by a couple of plastic milk crates and there was a sleeping bag.

Homeless, on the abandoned airforce base in Homestead, Florida, just outside of Miami, in the early 90s after Hurricane Andrew had devastated the city, living in a hooch.

Good times.

How I got there is a story in and of itself.

But a bed.

Just seeing my bed, that it’s not a mattress on the floor, but a real live bed, is something that I don’t take for granted and when I think I’m not doing enough, well, just look at my amazing bed, so pretty with its duvet and big fluffy pillows.

So pretty.

So yeah, digress much, I made my bed today.

I went to yoga.

I took a shower.

I washed my hair and deep conditioned it and ate a lovely breakfast and drank a nice latte and wrote morning pages.

This takes time and sometimes I wish my morning routine were not quite so long, but I do savor having some time to look over e-mails and do my writing and I did my morning prayers and readings too, important stuff, small stuff, in its own manner but really necessary.

I feel better for having the routine.

I also went grocery shopping.

And that does take up some time.

Especially that I had to go to three different stores.

I didn’t mind though, just got to it and picked up all the things to make all the things.

I made a pork and ginger, garlic, onion stir fry with baby portabella mushrooms and julienned sugar snap peas.  I had it with brown rice and half an avocado for lunch.

So good.

Then I put up the rest of it, some in the fridge and some in the freezer, as I like to have back up food for when I’m in class and often times my weekend before the weekend of class will be taken up with writing papers.

I have two to do next week.

They’re not horrible and shouldn’t take too long.

I figure I’ll kick them both out Sunday afternoon.

After the lunch cooking and weekly food prep I got down and dirty with my school books.

I flipped through all my syllabi and noted what I needed to read and I toggled about in my Cognitive Behavior class syllabi and saw when I needed to be online for a class webinar.

I just got out of it about 45 minutes ago.

So.

I pretty much read and did homework for four hours.

I feel like that’s getting some stuff taken care of.

I also roasted a chicken, for dinner and meals throughout the week and made up some more brown rice.

I like having my stuff stocked up for the week.

It’s maintenance.

It helps me with a certain level of comfort that I feel allows me to go about my busy week and still maintain a semblance of being a human being.

I love that I cook.

I love that I have good food to sustain me, that I went to yoga, damn my thighs are sore, that I stretched, that I wrote, and yes.

That it was sunny.

And instead of being rueful that I was not able to go out and play in the sun, I took advantage of it and threw a pillow on a patio chair out back and sat in the sun for a good two and a half hours doing my school reading.

There is something rather nice about being propped up in the sun and reading a book, even if it is for school.

I had some sweet phone calls.

I wrote a little poetry.

I managed my calendar for the next couple of weeks.

And now.

I’m just about done with my blog, I’m listening to Coleman Hawkins and thinking very sweet thoughts about the week to come.

It’s going to be a grand one.

I just know it.