a big hit from the clue bong

a long time ago in a galaxy far far away

in my whole life, i've only ever had one boyfriend, but oh, i'll tell you, he was a good one.

i had this great, great boyfriend in high school. total fucking babe, wicked funny, truly decent and kind, a brilliant and original mind, an artist and a fellow thespian. we had a flagrantly fun time together. i chuckle as i write that. there's just too much to tell, so you'll just have to take my word on this. i shake my head and smile and wonder how we packed so much into so little time, and i think that 25-cent bottomless cups of coffee from the 24 hour diner probably does not completely explain how we managed to do so.

it was just for those three years of high school, but three years at that age can be a lifetime, and looking back it surely seems it was.

i never had another boyfriend after that. whether it was that star-crossed bullshit that lasted for two years or whether it was my marriage that lasted ten, after that, what i had was relationships.

oh my god, that word. see, where you have a "relationship," and you spend a torturingly inordinate amount of time discussing, dissecting, analyzing, "working on" the "relationship," at that point it's no longer a relationship at all, it's just a huge pain in the ass. i wish i would have woken up and taken a big hit from the clue bong sooner on this crap. but i'm good and strong on this now.

how odd and unexpected that all of a sudden, here in 2009, the yearbook's pages have fallen open again because of facebook. it's been fascinating. another day, another old friend shows up at my virtual window; surprise! i can't help but be reflective about my life. i'm taking a look at what endures, how i've stayed true to myself, and what has stood the test of time. through the web for this reconnecting moment i am alice through the looking glass, wandering amid the elapsed-time lives of people who knew me when. it's very surprising, very touching.

rhythm of life

pacifica

isadora duncan was born in san francisco, in 1877; and in chapter one, page one of her book 'my life,' she writes this: "i was born by sea, and i have noticed that all the great events of my life have taken place by the sea. my first idea of movement, of the dance, certainly came from the rhythm of the waves."

i was born by the sea too, close to the atlantic coast where cape cod reaches out as far as massachusetts can go into the ocean, carrying and tossing nantucket and the vineyard there for us as well.

the whole lot of us spent every summer on the cape in a rambling clapboard house on the beach. there was my mother, perry, michael, bobby, sitter, mark, kevin (cuffy) and in time, cornelius. if you ask my mother about her first memories of me, she will laugh and tell you, 'tiny sitter, climbing on the rocks, out to the point as far as she could get, and dancing and singing "puff the magic dragon" at the top of her lungs." about ten years ago, i was with my mother, brothers and my kids at san simeon, where you can duck through a fence and walk on private hearst family property and out to a magnificent rocky promontory. i turned and looked at my mother with a smile, then turned toward the waves and danced and sang it again.

it has always been about the magic of the sea, for me. the earth mother with an edge is the mother at the place where the edge of the dry land greets the edge of the ocean.

i cannot even express in words the joy all the colors and motions and meanings the sun, the wind, the rocks, the creatures and the seashells have always held for me. one recent afternoon at pacifica, i saw this girl, dancing, and I knew why.

we were born before the wind

we were born before the wind
also younger than the sun
ere the bonnie boat was won
as we sailed into the mystic
into the golden gate fog, lands end, at dusk today.
it's been a van morrison kind of day, one with an irish accent and mysticism abounding.
you never know when it's going to happen. the veil between the worlds is lifted, the wind blows strong, fog rolls in obscuring what you think you know and the ground beneath you shifts.

someone who's been a part of me and apart from me for more than thirty years has appeared at the window, and it's a gift and a joy, for however long it lasts. but jacob, who i've known nearly that long, who is truly as a father to me, who is grandfather to my boys, who is one of the most important people in my life and in many people's lives, jacob's being taken from us by cancer, and it's such a loss, it's so hard. my heart is full to the brim. on the one hand, here again is an inspiration, joy and laughter, music and art, love that is timeless. on the other hand, here i face an imminent sorrow i can't even begin to contemplate. and it's the same hand: the one of inexorable, incomprehensible fate.
time spirals helically. you can't distinguish a particle from a wave, and you can't hold on to either one. i close my eyes and see the filaments of time, diamond threads, spiraling around me. i take a breath and open my eyes. i don't know if i've seen this for so long because i help women in childbirth, or if i help women in childbirth because i've seen this for so long.
walking the labyrinth is my contemplative practice, it is ancient grace. stepping onto the path and walking to the center of the labyrinth is letting go, is emptying. time spent at the center of the circle is a still moment of clarity and illumination and strength. returning to the path and following it back to the beginning again is knowing how i am loved and how i love in this world. when you walk wavy gravy's labyrinth, he smudges you with sage first and strikes a tibetan singing bell for you, and then he sits quietly while you walk. when you reach the place where you began, he says 'welcome home.'
van morrison says it best for me today.
and when that foghorn blows
you know i will be coming home.
when that foghorn whistle blows
i gotta hear it
i don't have to fear it.
and i want to rock your gypsy soul
just like way back in the days of old
and together we will float
into the mystic.
too late to stop now.

hello, babies

raina and me, may 2006


"Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only rule that I know of, babies- God damn it, you've got to be kind."

Kurt Vonnegut (God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater)

drawing from memory

i think i probably forgot to tell him this.

but i think he probably knows.

eternity in an hour

Farewell-to-spring along the creek in the Giant Forest, yesterday

"To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour." William Blake

Once in your lifetime, go to the Giant Forest.


life force radiating from an ancient and sentient sequoia tree, yesterday

"Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the mountaineer. Camp out among the grasses and gentians of glacial meadows, in craggy garden nooks full of nature's darlings. Climb the mountains and get their good tidings, Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. As age comes on, one source of enjoyment after another is closed, but nature's sources never fail." John Muir



Sequoia gigantea in the Giant Forest yesterday afternoon

"This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on seas and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls." John Muir


sunset on saturday, at a turnout on hwy 180. looking from the western slope of the sierra nevada toward the coast range, across the san joaquin valley. still miles from the rocky bottom, kevin.

"I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in." John Muir


John Muir and I, kindred souls of celtic root, we have found heaven on earth in this cathedral sequoia grove called the giant forest.