Do not you dare (piecemeal)

What kind of person spends money on a palm tree license plate frame? And how is it that the same person would invest in double exhaust pipes so as to release her frustrations in the form of giant plumes of toxic chemicals onto unsuspecting cars behind her.



I do not believe for one fucking second that the town of Buellton, California is the home of split pea soup.

Sometimes I'm a freak (October)

Five more to best 2012.

I listened I have been sad ever since. 

I am so sad about it I don't really want to eat this homemade chili or wash these dishes or dust the bookshelves, though the bookshelves are covered in dust. I'm clammed up; I'm sad about it; I'm so sad; for too long I have not been as honest of a person as I would have had myself believe, but I know (because I must) that I am/we are capable of atonement. 

It is so cold in this apartment; I am cheap; I do not turn on the baseboards; Wilson sits on the toilet in the steam after my shower trying to get warm. Hanna presses her face into my lap and her chest into my thigh and Wilson moves from the bathroom to the other side of my lap; together we create a warm zone as good as any electrically powered heater. At least until one of us (most likely me) gets up to pee. 

I am now the owner of a gigantic novelty mug with the word "spooky" written across it in multicolored lettering; of course I love it; what should I fill it with red wine or whiskey. 

Because I have witnessed life's grand capacity for detours I do not will not believe that it's too late. 

You have to be free

I am writing this from the sea of California. This afternoon I drove four hours up the coast to the tiny house that I've rented; its walls are covered with seashells of various types and in a variety of presentations. This evening I walked down to the beach--I nearly forgot how to move my legs while walking down to the beach, that's how beautiful it was. I hadn't seen the ocean in at least two years. It is some kind of spectacular.

I stood in front of all that raw power with my bare feet planted wide in the sand and I took it--the wind, the waves, the inexplicable flood that reached all the way up to my toes one time--when I first stood in front of the ocean--and then not once more in the 40 minutes that I stood there. My hope is that mother Ocean was saying hello after all those years of separation.

People talk about the sun "disappearing" behind the clouds, but it doesn't disappear when clouds move across it. It's just temporarily eclipsed. To stand on the edge of the Pacific Ocean is to watch the sun actually disappear--to shine so bright that you can't even look at it and then slip away, regardless of whether you missed that last split second of great orb shining. Only it's still not that immediate; I laughed out loud when the sky started pulsing again, a few more shimmers showering the ocean with light, then the stillness of wind and water and waves.

From "The Bones of August" by Robin Ekiss

Not to ask, Did you

           love her? and leave

the answer in the ground,

                     where everything difficult

       is buried.

....

Is it necessary

                      to remember

      absolutely everything?

Do not fuck with the ones I love

As I am walking Hanna back to the apartment in the early fall evening, feeling so peaceful and glad to be walking with my dog down a leaf-lined alleyway on an early fall evening in Colorado, a large gray dog barks and growls on the other side of a fence. I tell Hanna everything is okay and to walk on, what with the fact that the large barking dog is secured on the other side of a tall fence, and then the large barking growling gray dog stands up on its hind legs and crashes its front legs down on the gate, which swings open, and in a moment of horrifying certainty I know the latch has uncaught, and the large snarling 80-pound gray dog is freed from the gate and lashing at Hanna, he doesn't even pause to register the surprise of having crashed through the tall gate, he just lunges, catching her shoulder as she darts to the side, and then I am standing up tall and inhaling and I am shouting No, and my voice is so ferocious and unafraid that the large biting gray dog sits down and snaps to attention. You leave my dog alone--now I'm the one snarling, I curl my lip and grab its collar, drag its body so swiftly that it catches air as I turn, practically throw the large gray dog back into the yard, its paws skidding into the dirt, and slam the gate and secure the latch. I am breathing hard, enraged, and I admonish the large gray dog again, I can't remember what I said, and then I am turning to Hanna and crouching by her side and petting her head and examining her shoulder, which is wet with the spit of the large gray dog, and telling her, as she cowers in the stonedust alleway, that everything is okay. As she slinks away I turn to administer one more aggressive stare at the large sulking gray dog, and then I walk Hanna the rest of the way home, talking softly, and when we are safely back inside the apartment I feed her several salmon treats, I hug her, I tell her again that everything is okay. When she exits to the bedroom I walk to the sink to fill a glass of water and my heart is pounding so hard that I am surprised my hands are not shaking.

Me-ow-ahh

I made the typo because I was slightly drunk when I wrote it. The waitress kept refilling my tequila and I kept drinking it.


Here is the thing: There is nothing I can say to convey the beauty of the instrumental melodies on this Allman Brothers album, even though I am and forever will be a proponent of words.
Ed. note: Same goes for describing Sung Tongs.



Today I drove 45 minutes through the huge slabs of the gray rock canyon and watched the colors change as I descended elevation. I parked on a residential street in a part of town I'd never been to before, and then I walked to the used book store. Two hours later I emerged with five books of poetry, an Emmylou Harris record, a Bonnie Raitt record, and four Merle Haggard records at $3 apiece.

Then it was on to the rock store, where I picked out rocks as they called to me, without knowing anything about them, filling a little wire basket that was handed to me by the kindly rock shop employee in the wizardly vest. I chose tangerine quartz, blue soda stone, several rocks whose names I no longer remember (one is purple; one green; one blue-gray-green; one black), and three lodolites, I was so taken with them, each one containing a small world.

After stopping in at the pet store to pick up the only food brand Wilson will eat, some cat grass, and two new stuffed animals for Hanna, and then buying some new sports bras at Target, and then picking up bags of cinnamon, almonds, bee pollen, leeks, squash, and kale at the natural food store, I drive back through the gray slabs towering above me and return to the apartment, where I spend several hours organizing the shelving unit in the study and dismantling cardboard boxes to take to the recycling center after tomorrow's big hike, then cook dinner--rice, roasted veggies, sauteed kale and garlic and garbanzo beans, boiled corn--and then I sit down at the computer and google lodolite:

Lodolite is usuallly used in meditation, and its powerful but soothing energies can instantly put you in a deep meditative state. 

It will bring energies of manifestation in your life so that you will be able to fulfill your heart's desires. 

Lodolite will enhance your communication with beings from other higher realms and increase your spiritual energies. 

Lodolite will bring loving energies into your life. 

It will infuse you with a quiet and gentle strength that will help you overcome personal challenges. 

It's also an excellent healing stone that will give healing to your subtle and etheric bodies. 

I can't wait.

You know I do believe

I don't mean to do it. 

I can't stop listening to Music from Big Pink. And Angel Olsen. I am going to see her live soon; it has been so long since I saw one of my musicians live.


Yes and tomorrow I'm going to drive through the canyon and purchase some crystals at the rock shop; I've heard they will string them onto a necklace for free.

Yes I know exactly how it sounds.



What the fuck. The Arsenal game is on NBC Gold. Looks like I'll be looking for a free stream.


After I told the stranger that I love her, that my heart is feeling for her and I am sending her love, I told her that I am giving myself room to breathe. I said I shared that anecdote in the hopes that it might be useful to her too.

I am here to be of service.

This is not the same as servitude.



The pet store has moved several blocks closer to the park.

(The better to purchase treats for Hanna.)


When we pull up to the dog park 20 minutes down the road through the red rock canyon, Hanna starts crying with excitement. She can't control her body, most especially not her tail. I open the car door and she leaps out, arrested immediately by smells on the very edge of the spiky green grass. There are SO MANY SMELLS. It is THE BEST DAY EVER. And then she gets to play with other dogs, chase balls along the grass, bound into the water from the pond's sandy edge? What a great day. The best day ever.



She is a mother now. Most likely this will create a lifeline gap between us. Not a lapse in love, but a distinguishing line between our identities. As for me? I think I am an odd, free bird. I think I am married to being free.

Then Wilson curls up on my chest, and even though I do not want him here right now, really--what with enjoying feeling free, feeling like myself, and all--I let him stay. I press my lips into the top of his head when he presses it to my lips. I think, his getting to experience this receptivity and love is more important than my desire not to have weight on my chest right now. Isn't this what it's like to be mother.


I love my children as if they were my own. I am a keeper of the Earth and all of her creatures.



Man I hate to be tickled.

Look out the window tell me, what do you see?