Somewhere like home

I head north in a few minutes, Seattle bound (you know I am never hard to locate). Watching the sunset last night over Dry Creek Valley, I realize how home this place feels. All of it, the almost thirty horses, the checking freezing waters, the keeping the wood fire burning. I am against my skin, inhabiting the area between me and my thoughts, it's a decent place to stand.

After this first year time starts to make sense in the way where I know the starlings were a little late this year, we had more water come down than expected in december, the cranes are migrating, the grape harvest was gonzo.

I love you

The Coin with Two Faces

Remember how a week ago I fucked myself by betraying a friendship? Well, the funny thing is that the further I get from the situation, the more assurance I have that I didn't actually fuck myself hard enough. I should really sit and mediate a bit more about how to be more of a nuisance to everyone around me.

So I woke up at six and made coffee, started a load of laundry (lord is it raining!), packing for the trip to washington and oregon.

Funny how I don't know where to call home these days.

Though my distress in saying what needed to be said to the person who needed to hear it was real and tangible, I grow weary of eggshells and metaphors

The End of Now

As the world ends, I sit here and think about life. How have I lived, what it's been worth, this flash of an eye sack of flesh and bones.

How I'll miss cigarettes, chocolate, libraries, coffee, dry socks, pushing 102 down dry creek road.

The questions I have now seem a little irrelevant: did I love enough; did I love the right people; did I love myself in a way that demonstrates the capacity of demonstrative lifetime evolution for an accountable homo sapien?

I fear, yes

fuck you, I am sorry

I am sorry, fuck you

yes, I fear

Eating Pnuts in Bed

Funny how the same amount of time in one year is interminable and the next is a blink of an eye. The last four months have passed quickly. Summer falling into winter the dwindling daylight goes almost unaccounted for in book until it is now the almost the darkest day of the year.

Having done my brief penance for the crime of the heart I have been absolved of my action and life goes on. Funny how are there moments in a life when growth and development seem to wedge their way into a tight space and just burst open any remaining tendrils of the past.

This was about honesty and if you know me in real life, you most likely know that I've been terrified of saying things which are the hard truth. I am learning and oddly embrace the fact that life makes sure I have more than enough on my plate to keep my cracking the boundaries of my evolution.

I rigged up a studio in the old barn--I hear rumor of a wood stove being dropped off--there is a noisy bone crunching, marrow sucking creature out there.  It's good; I am alone, not lonely

eyes wide open, hearts fall down

I learn about trust these days
how quickly it can be broken
the failure in my lapse in judgement and my inability to understand consequence

All of that aside, the world may end
The trust I broke with one of my best friends
breaks my heart and the world may end
and everything was roses

"Don't believe what you cannot see,' said the blindman

I think about faith these days. I pull it in and out of the basket of possibilities I keep tucked under my bed.

One night back in september while sitting around the fire at Basecamp Bobcat, someone asked, Can faith be tested or is all faith blind?

Context aside I hear a lot about faith at church. But the crux of it is that I have never had more proof than I do now that my search for god and my search for myself beg the same question.

Hungering for an explanation, reason, purpose, direction
my head bleeds questions

and my heart aches redemption

Do you value justice over mercy?

Yes, but only after meting justice

Live Star Action

Eight years ago I was getting drunk on beer, sleeping on a couch, listening to a man I could have loved  discuss the status of his relationship with a girl who was not me. It was my father's last night on, this, god's green earth.

I woke up, went to church, walked back to my Papa, watched him pass, read a psalm, watched his spirit reunite itself and return to god.

Off in seattle, I drank whiskey out of a crazy straw, moved to portland, fell in and out of relationships, found love, fought love, lost love; discovered high potency psychedelics, stopped using the hard whites, riding horses again, learned to swim a sub-30 mile, competed in a few sporting events, became part of a family, was considered to be almost an adult by most around me, I think I lost in all of that the tick-tock of my vital stance.

I don't have much to offer; what I have is yours. How nice would it be to imagine that we move through life islands, untouched, untouchable, stalwart to the internal crescendo of awareness. Lives overlap and years pass, faces emerge from forgotten histories.

One of these is my darling Mr. Kitty, who after even my first tours of seattle, the youthful mayhem, has remained a steady influence. We've even managed dinner once in the last five years. I ate a whole fish, it came with skin and its eyeball, it was delightful.

There are times I think I remember too much, at other times, I know I have forgot all the best parts, like the sound of your life as your heart beat in your chest and the smell of sodden wool. I am lonesome for the memories of all of us. I am with you even when we are so far apart

eleven down, one to go

One more full moon this year; a handful of days, a smattering of nights. I am preoccupied with my work and am uncertain how to navigate through my days, how to fill my nights. Grateful that there are not an endless number of them. Drawing closer to the people nearest to me takes patience and exactitude of mind and heart. The texture of my dreams can be grating and raw. I wake thirsty and exhausted.

True right now: I am soft around the edges, but since I am good at convincing myself that the world is about to end, I don't mind. I can live off the extra for weeks: I've done it before; when the end comes it is going to come down to roller skates and water.

I am sleepy and excited to see this year cycling to a close. Though a rich, deeply rewarding year I am exhausted to the center of my bones and need a week of sundays and two friday nights to fill my reserves.

I am not Irish

But I have a jar full of four-leafed clovers (there are a few fivers in there for good measure as well). I suppose this should mean I have better odds of winning the lottery, but, since I've only found some two hundred and thirty six of them in my life, I suppose I ought to leave the winning to someone who understands currency. http://www.deseretnews.com/top/542/12/Finding-a-four-leaf-clover-20-things-more-likely-to-happen-than-winning-the-Mega-Millions-lottery.html

A Woman Against Motherhood

It's a concept that I've held for the last decade or so. It is the idea that I, as a biologically capable adult female chose not to conceive a child for moral, social, and political reasons. I chose not to have a child nor do I either chose to sublimate my dna to the off chance that my womb may possibly someday carry jesus. It won't.

Anyhow, babies are not for me. Not until all of our citizens have education and nutrition. Have you ever lived off of cheetos and pepsi, that shit is toxic. And, why the fuck is it so hard to see that as we outsource our minds, as we belittle our bodies, as we fight wars against enemies unknown we soften internally and lose focus.

So I am out of that race, thank god.

http://womenagainstmotherhood.blogspot.com/

Master Disaster

Anyhow, even after all of these years there are loads of things you have yet to learn about me. That I adore cranberry sauce for example; that I am terrified that I have set an impossible, unachievable standard for myself based off of what, memorization? What is all of this besides a stomach ache and too much wine and a half-shadowed picture. I am murky at best but the brightest shadow is still nothing but a shade of infinity that rests neither here nor there. It holds the beholden and this if it is anything more or less than the search for delicious you tell me what is your amazing, what is your human in the ape suit sipping one more cosmos before you slip into the taxi have to see?

I am fine to mid-line these days. Things are in all actuality working out well in california. I've been here a year eighty days and I think I've learned a few things about living. That's usually about when shits and fans and not enough toilet paper come into play.

Mostly, I keep my mouth shut. And dream the impossible dream, because if a dream were not impossible in an imagination where shadows did not creep and thoughts did not stagger over recollections of almost remembered evenings a decade, no, two, ago.

All of this, these skills, I suppose I am ultimately the weakest because I have learned so little in my life. I can neither hunt, nor fish. I can read a compass; I have no axe.

Anyhow, I wish I had a means to express all that I could. That I work hard everyday to learn how to listen to myself and trust the impulse in me.

If it's late and you're sober, or just a little stoned, and the party is deep into cups

Quiet Beating Drums

Looking across the map of my skin
I see the scars, the ink, the age of my life
etched into the shell of the house

My elbow is swollen

alone today

because I am exhausted and might start to cry
if I have to explain to one more person why I can't sleep:
I dream in colors of a forgotten rainbow

Ten Acres of Hyperbole

The discovery that I can listen to Oregon Public Radio over the internet gives my heart pangs. I know those voices, I know that traffic pattern, I know that weather, city block, those shops along Vancouver. It makes me ache for a life I had almost forgotten and I grieve the woman I may have once become yet did not.

I gave up. I quit that life. I fucked all the best things into one big uncomfortable mess just to play with ponies and smoke cigarettes.

The pit is that even though I am lonely, uncertain, uncomfortable, cold, often hungry, I am alive in ways I never knew possible and for that alone I am grateful.

Recognition of what the absolute shit-of-a-friend, lover, partner I had been is freeing. Far from the solace or sorrow or attachment is the giving up and caving in to myself rather than fleeing the reality of my choices.

I need a coffee. I need a smoke. I need to settle my bones.

Pulling Strings and Folding Napkins

I worked for many hours to earn enough hard cash to get Starbright Firecracker BoomBoom serviced. I am lucky,  I don't need much to survive. I do need transportation. Not having wheels this week has been brutal for my social ego.

There was a time, not all that long ago, that I held a belief
that's all gone, long behind me
beliefs can be funny that way

pulled in and out of a linty pocket
on a little saturday
like the next best thing
or the new black

I say a lot of things talking
and waiting
for the other shoe
the one on my foot to fallI
and finally end the conversation
that never started

I've shaken my ass around a pole
tits poked out
for dirty dollars
and lipsticked collars

Supper time in the senior mess hall
can be anything
if you're invited it's best to cover your arms
and paint your nails fawn, or coral

I blend in button downs

I Pretend to be Pretty

On TV
and the internet
I pretend to be pretty

but
in real life there is dirt
hick and deep into the cracks of my hands,
embedded under my nails.

I work too much and am shit poor
I live off of cheese
I am out of milk
and
have taken to drinking safeway brand coffee

Sometimes, I want to quit this life
for a job
at starbucks

(because then
at least
I would know why I feel like shit)

49 and counting

There are not really all that many more days in this year. Not so very many worth counting (49).

I am officially an adult. I took Starbrite Firecracker BoomBoom to the shop for service and I did it before everything was jimmy-jacked all to hell. I am a little worried about being able to eat through november, but somehow everything settles into place and pockets stay full and hearts overflow.

And life rubs against my skin in the way that voices make my skin crawl and the feel of today and tomorrow and yesterday are all the same only today is tuesday and tuesday begins with T.

The ups and downs of being a working artist are numerous and countable. Supposing that god loses faith me me? then what will I do?

I tempt fate and my pay-as-I go approach always seems to even out. This love-hate relationship with life is grueling; this fun-shit motto keeps me in check.

Good Friends and Real Enemies

Are equally challenging to find. I do my best to be one or the other most of the time.

This week I help a friend with their barn building; only they're a wine maker and the building is picking second harvest fruit in the wee hours of the night. My feet, legs, spine throb from standing and moving and not enough time sitting. As they say, Girl, you aint got no rest on my ass

So I work and sometimes I count the hours in the morning while I am still in bed until I get off of work. I go through the day and know that I can manage my energy stores just long enough to get through the day, into the evening, out into the night.

Fall is upon us. The leaves change and the rotting oak leaves are pungent. I notice the days dip into shadow and the fierce angle of the sun lends a richness to the light. I am enchanted, lonely, in love every five minutes for five minutes.

Everything I need is in this Jar

And I sit down here at my desk to write and I wonder what it has all been about all of these years. The writing. This historical saga of my histories. I am uncertain if it has ever morphed beyond the belief that life is everything on record and as our hearts and minds wander wonderingly over the elliptical horizon to dip into the unknowable abyss I come back less certain of my physicality and more aware of crickets.

I suppose all of this is relative, normal. I seem to have lost focus in the slipstream consciousness: a fickle trainless trainstation

chunkachunk pulling vibrating my spine and all through my central nervous system feeling sound. I don't know if it qualifies as synesthesia but it sure as shit qualifies me for the dance floor.

*.Secret Talents.*

*.Shameless Self-Promotion.*

*.Focused Pursuit.*

Sleep Well

Hot to the Touch

I don't like pressure. It builds under the skin, causing blisters.

I am also grumpy.

And don't want the assumption of inevitabe intimacy.

Not joking: I love my friends and like to fuck strangers.

Hotsprings Holiday

I want one. A few whole days all to my lonesome dove and I will sit and my muscles will stretch and I will sleep and sleep and soak until I am rubber and then fall for a massage therapist for a few hours before more sleeping and soaking.

Other than that, well, if there is one thing I know about me it's that I am a fickly and flighty little bird. I am moving my creative adult self into a studio. I promise to make it worth the effort of extra work.

I am chilled. I just ate figs; they taste vaguely of *spice*

I hope that I am not too disappointingly dull these days. By now the social energy of summer ought to have abated. It has not. The upswing continues to tick. It is full harvest here. If my ears hear the word grape or sugar count one more time...well it will be normal and this evening.

The shortened days lilt between painting, writing, riding, finding out how much Chaya I can pack into one day. Sometimes it is too much, or not enough, or none.

Tell me a secret.

Rabbit Rabbit, Fox Fox Fox

Sleepless procrastination settles over me
Boarders dissolve questions

Not everyone has a ghost shadow
I know. I see them

Against the highway shadows
Lurking, skulking, shimmying the moon

Leaves tangle around the roots
and wait for rain

september why are you not seven?

I dream in action and color and I wake exhausted from my night of ongoing adventures in nevernever land.

When I was a girl of nineteen I had a little tiny sack of cells growing in my belly. It was a fucking disaster. I was alone, terrified of reality, and frozen in time, my lips sealed against the truth because if I said the word pregnant then I would have to face the shame publicly.

Time and months ticked by.

I don't have time to finish this now. Only know that I've never had a kid and the abortion took three days. I'll finish later. I love you.

All News Fit To Print

Planning now to pursue tempered ambitions. I am moving, keeping the job. There is packing and reorganizing to be done, a job to procure, pictures to paint, money to be earned, friends to love, strangers to fuck, goals, written in my mind, to be brought forward to this reality, items to sell and repair, la la la life goes on.

Weary of grinding poverty and the charity of strangers, I search solutions in the recesses of my skill set. I develop a personality that is not me, but a mask I wear to navigate the outside world.

Half-truth is simple, dancing between the half-light of moon shadows.

*poetic license

Me, I have unanswered questions

which begs reason for return

as if logic and sustenance where netted kinetically

to the fibrous structure of my soul's spine

standing to reason that with calculated decisions it is possible to be both held and beholden

both by and to

three fates

however the catalog of misfortune and disrepute

may linger over my palm

I attest it to be smoke and mirrors
and that spirit bag of shadows I tote
and what I hold close to my heart
that which I tear asunder shall no man
with four cheese cheese-its and string cheese and red-vines piece meal back together

because don't tell me that ain't living
my part of the dream

the part where I go to sleep to wake up and awaken to sleep
this is not some sort of salt streaked locution

9th, 10th, Poison
rigorous negotiations have left me on your door
benevolent pockets outpouring justice
praying mercy take me

I have three minutes to live*
I am thinking of you

 and how no time space distance
eternity as far as I can see
and
too believe
despite all of it
everything
I love you

It is brave and bracing
happiness

It Is My Papa's Birthday

This week I lost and found you're knife. I didn't find it, that was Jake. Redneck, asshole Jake found your knife after I lost it spotlighting. I thought that we were going hunting, good old-fashioned stalk game and take it down with pride. That's not what happened.

I miss you like crazy. The sound of your voice is a memory at best, and it is your voice I miss more than almost anything else. More than your voice, the smell of sweat and wool and dirt and Dr Bronners soap that mixed into my nose and familiar as my skin when you held me. If we could talk again, I would tell you how you taught me to be honest and have faith in an unknowable, unbelievable god.

The knife is sharp. I will use it with honor. I search for you in the shadow bright nights of my soul. 

Good, Bad, Ugly

 I am sitting in my room on my computer. Only it is not exactly my computer anymore. My account fritzed and all that's left of the last year's worth of work is well nothing. Not one single word of the thousands that spilled onto this hard drive remain, not a song, not a photo, not that video of Marco confessing to be a drug addict as we paddle boated around Lake Merrit.

There ain't shit to be done so let the sleeping dogs lay:

I lost my father's knife. I am an asshole. Worse even. Of the few remaining items which once belonged to him, that I treasured beyond all others. There is no replacement.

*My Heartbreaks*

This is me now this morning. Can you see Sampson on the bed? he is lazy today but has missed me. He is the world's best bear.

Help Hurt Humans

San Francisco this morning is sky and sun and early morning families pushing babies in wagons. A rare  sky day, ripe with potential and high on coffee I window shop and dream of new boots made of soft camel colored leather and a haircut with bangs and being snapped up by a roving philanthropist. Fall in the city does that, makes me dream of possibility.

Yesterday I learned something. I get to chose to not allow how people speak to me to be a reflection of myself. I am not a victim of words; I am a survivor of myself.

I am on the prowl in search of stimulation: Solitude is sacred. Pressure makes me shake a late fall leaf on a naked limb waiting for the gust of wind that will loose me.

Structural parameters, clear definable limits, and at least two contingency plans that's how I roll out through days of introspection. It is time for action.

Up Against the Wall

A good place to start with me is with the necessary deportment; mix in a healthy dose of confidence built from a checker-board past, sharp eyes and a kind heart, an appreciation of lengthily hours of grueling work, and an innate ability to appreciate life and we may have a moment together in which we both inhale ourselves as we expand.

A better place is to politely tell me what to do without me ever knowing that I am being suckered into believing that I've made my own choice. I also like perfume, redbull, and popsicles. I am picky though so don't think just because I like redbull I like all redbull because I don't.

No real updates. No real news. I am trying to get myself situated to make a step forward and I am afraid. I feel the ground shifting and here I was thinking that I had normalized. I was wrong. Fragile little ego that I hold behind a rusty cage. Aces baby.

Waiting for Myself

I feel like I am getting pegged down, pinned into a corner with work. It makes me feel boiling anger inside and it took me a long time to realize why.

It's because I am being questioned about other people's actions.

Mostly in life I want to be left alone. I think that most of us do want that, to be left alone to do our work uninterrupted and in relative peace.

I need a plan. More than a plan I feel it is time to take action. I seemingly take action very quickly. Realistically it was all part of the plan all along. I am a little terrified.

Take That

Well there aint no auto-save here and I am trying to function in a windows environment fuck all I need access to normal, functional technology.

I've seen shit this week. I've been removing larve from horse cock. Serious no jokie jokie here. Larve removal by hand. And people be strange.

I don't have more now. Just know that I am grateful and find humor under rocks and in tight places.

Chaya Lovingly.

(I pray that someday I will be serene and walk with ease in my body, in balance with my mind. Until then, I stumble and use the moon to guide me.)

maybe. I mean no, yes okay I guess

I am tired and want to do laundry. I am going reluctantly to dinner. I think it might be a date. I don't give a shit. I am weird and this small county is making my stomach crawl. But, hell, maybe I'll have fun. At least I get to eat and we all know how much I love to eat.

On a side note I am reading 50 shades of the most poorly written book since Harry Potter's Twilight Eclipse of the Heart. Anyhow, I think I can do better.

I believe that a computer is on its way into my life in short order. Serialized erotica is the wave of my future.

Peace I gotta go put pants on and brush my teeth, I'm getting fancy

Je Suis une Terroriste

I am my own weapon. Everything around me becomes a tool for heat, sharp points of metal call me by name. Fighting down this hate in me, I sit, drink coffee, and smoke cigarettes to calm my nerves. I am testy, but play nice on tv. (Secretly I thank the gods I am not on television.)

The bottom line the real bottom line is a movable intangible shadow that larks about and shifts into out of focus. It is in this shape shifting that I recognize myself without form. It is the form I despise.

There it is across wet concrete across rain streaked mirrors along the weathered cedar barn door the forgotten remembrance of manifestation.

My super power ability to see in the dark and all that I can imagine is nothing compared to the ability to feel sound and express it physically.

A Thought on Benelovent Pockets*

*21.9.12 I don't proof read or reread all that often. Benevolent, right, there is no spell check for the titles. Now you know, I spell by memorization of a visual pattern. I am deciding to incorporate benelovent into the lexicon. Definition to follow in future days.

I had an emergency bag (pants, swimsuit, soap, underware, toothbrush, sweater) packed into the back of Sparkey, my once functional 1985 300D Mercedes. As the months since may have rolled by I've been removing the items one at a time.

The blanket helped put out a road fire off Dry Creek; the sweater pulled hastily out one mid-cigarette mid-conversation evening: reception out here is a patchwork of towers and networks lose signal constantly, I've found if I want to talk I have to remain stationary--The sweater kept me in our conversation, I don't know if you remember talking that night, but we did.

The pants and swimsuit though. The sat wrapped in a cotton grocery sack this whole summer, forgotten scraps of fabric that once helped hold memories against my skin. I pulled the bag out of the trunk saturday afternoon looking for the bikini (not that I belong anywhere near a bikini at this point in time, that's neither here nor there) I packed down to san francisco but never wore.

I pulled my purple jeans out of the bag sad at being last chosen they grumbled over my ankles and wept over my thighs. On they fit right, which means I must be a healthy weight, somewhere that makes people think I look okay but makes me feel stuffed, thick, heavy limbed. The scale says 115. I call bullshit on it and use the dumbbells to double check it for accuracy. Forty pounds of dumbbells registers as forty pounds on the scale. I remain incredulous and portly.

The purple pants know and they don't lie.

I slid into them and buttoned my shirt, the mirror glances back at me and my reflection seems presentable. First inspection passed. My eye lingers on my reflection's right hip. The key pocket has a bulge. The small vial of Russian Caravan Tea perfume that is my favorite perfume of all time presents itself. A gift from Chaya of the past to Chaya today: here is one of your favorite things, I love you. From, Chaya Lovingly. That's what the note would read, if I'd written one.

Now today I don't know so much about anything, but I know that this bottle of perfume was considered long gone and I'd gone as far as to forget the pants ever belonged to me. Somehow in all of this I feel a mild sense of redemption and maybe even a little spark for a more hopeful tomorrow.

catch where catch can

Hmmm back to the toshiba, that means wretched spelling and a moderate use of commas.

The farm. I've lived on this farm now minutes and days away from a year. Amazed that I've been able to weather the storms of emotion, exhaustion, and, that intangible forgotten reason that I came here in the first place, education. I suppose of all of the things I've done in my short life figuring out how to live here and exist between the cracks is teaching me more than anything else I've ever done.

This week: say no to dates that don't sound like fun from the get-go. I don't have to do anything with anyone I don't want to. Take that money bags your fancy car and sweet smelling cigars can keep on rolling, I am just not willing to be pinned down and told how a first dates is gonna be.

I fall in love with my friends all over again. The ones who've stuck through it, seen the upside down reflection of our faces hovering over mirrors in dark rooms before dawn and are back now clean and tight with no secret agendas but an agenda nonetheless. Secret agenda man, I love you guys. There is something to be said about the pact of time and the ability to overcome ourselves as we know eachother we find ourselves. Something like that. Not quite. What I am saying is that I have the most rotten friends. They show up when needed, support me, call me out on my bullshit, and the big one, I have emotional trust with them. I love you.

Emotional trust is the challenge of my life. Since I didn't learn trust in my family as a child, I am learning it now. Hard knocks and tough spills. But I am starting to learn about the magic word" No, sir, and thank you very much." Those magic words keep me safe, though they're not nearly as much fun as "Fuck yea, I'm all in!"

Not loving this

Is there a qualifier for the absolute mayhem I inhale? I no longer touch reality with kid gloves. With searing rage I looked at the electric element on the kitchen stove. Glowing red, hot as the old piece of shit can get, my instinct is to press my arm against it against the coil as they cool.

Gulping air and choked on tears, I grab the coffee the pouch of rolling tobacco the phone and blast out into the midday heat.

Pushed out of my body I suffer the agony of separation. It is the ability to see but not feel the body. My tools to get back are limited; the older I become the less I seem to consider the implications.

Mad as fuck I suck down nicotine. I am a survivor. Of what remains to be seen. I need help in the form of a computer that functions, a home o my own, and a fall and winter to write.

Hi hello howdy and goodmorning

I Update now from my touch and will ask forgiveness in advance for my no good lack of grammar. But hey now an improvement the I before E department is not a bad thing. He'lllll yea auto correct, I'll take it.

Life is okay weird interesting. I have no real updates save I smoked a delicious cigar last night because I walked by a stranger and stopped to say hello. Loss of talking to strangers leads up new faces in my mind and numbers I'm my phone. Ladies and gentlemen may I step away from my preconceived ides and please begin to have fantastic fancy friends.

Anyhow on wretchedly broke. The computer remains on the fritz and all in all I should probably say fml but I kinda like the rough hewn edge.

Happy as a Kite

Morning happens cracking eyes like eggs in a hot pan eyes open and the soul returns from its nighttime holiday. I reach functional caffeine and nicotine levels quickly. One, two, three coffees hot and black consumed in rapid succession.

(I realize now there is no spell check on this toshiba, for which I appologize.)

I have everything in life: Absolutely nothing is mine. I let go and the edge of existance pushes back against me, bouying me up against the backdrop of reality, against the storm of my mind I am happy as a kite.

Alone together this spoken aloud agreement to be honest with my words that take form in actions, I undo the past today, start fresh with hot coffee and watch my body heal.

It is not the body which must heal but the mind which tortures the body. Hidden in plain sight these wounds, these scars, these memories on flesh truimph against anguish, a survivor of life I chase myself. A fox, a wild boar, a rattlesnake I hunt the hunted and rip flesh from bone chewing slowly on the meat suck marrow from bone. Not so alone when one is a carnivore.



Wildfire Feral Child

There is grass in my hair, oil under my nails, I sleep with a switchblade, if possible I live on redbull and redvines.

More than anything right now I feel more lost, alone, unsure, free, captured, loosed upon the world a force of nature.

salt wind death

Riding north across the golden gate bridge it is evening, the notorious bay fog thick against my face sheild, I pull my lips into my mouth and count seconds in minutes as I pray to an unknowable god. Pusing north passed the bridge the fog thickens and the wind grabs me and pushes me into the next lane. I can't manuever my motorcycle. I slow to a crawl and pray that the concrete is not too wet and that the slide across the lanes will be limited. I count my breaths inhale, exhale, inhale. Crouched low over my tank to limit the impact and reduce my size I aim for the rainbow tunnel. Dinner is in my throat as I enter the tunnel. I hear my riding companion's harley behind me which is good because I can't sit up to check my mirrors and make sure that he's upright and alive. The fog and wind double leaving the tunnel and I know that I am alive and my heart and my throat and my hands tighten into being.

Easy to Forget

How a year ago I lived in a big town in oregon and was busy losing jobs and shoveling eggs into people's throats, until I lost that job and did nothing but bum around feeding my horse babyruths and praying.

It's not that it has been simple or easy to let go of everything I've ever known just to step out and decide one day that living my life for the care and comfort of those around me lost flavor. Succor I believe is the word, but I am far away from my dictionary and no one else is awake and I don't feel like moving for anything beside more coffee.

Now here I am. Single for the first time ever, learning how to answer to myself, to take responsibility for my actions, words, deeds, responses. Mostly sober for personal reasons, I can assure you that has never happened. Any historic sobriety was forced upon me by my natural inclination to do what those around me did.

But in this here and I now, I do what I want. And I get lonely, tired, hungry, exhausted; my body aches from sore muscles, pulled ribs, not enough food, water, sleep; I go out far across the horizon in search of new smells, thicker air, mottled light; I sleep against trees and eat what I can find, borrow, steal.

Long very short: I chose this life. Broken fingernails, hay between my freshly laundered sheets, the ups and downs in living in a dormitory, all of it. I wanted all of this, it is so easy to forget how much I want because of how much I have.

I am quick on the draw

and quick to the line in the sand that I drew and stepped across

I quit boozing and killed a rattlesnake this week. There is more to that story than that handful of words.

And the pushing walls that come in and the faces that circle my horizon and the quiet secret place of stroke stroke breathe as I swim down the river I know it is time to quit smoking too as my lungs turn to cinder and my skin evaporates.

Not too much of a safety net these days.

Cool Heat

Okay so again I've almost reached appropriate caffeine and nicotine levels for the morning. I've gotten good at finding the best possible solution to any given situation. Finding the moments, stolen against the screen to let the thoughts roll.

I have a few rules in life: Pay as you go, pay as little as possible; be polite while cursing.

Don't fuck with my family or I will find a way to rail you up against a wall and not a nice cock up cunt rail from the back, more like an elbow to cheekbone and I know she won't fight fair so I gots to prepare.

Anyhow. I am as always filled with love and distractions.

The Short List

Still no computer that works worth a damn. The thing about that gets me, really bothers me, is that I can't write. Pen and papers stilt and stumble slowly across the page, chicken scratch across the sand.

As always I push more into the fabric of this life dream, possibility and reality overlap and sandwich me in between the sheets of a freshly made bed.

I expose myself against the air and light pours through the cracks and into down my socks into my bottomless boots, this is summer and I breath against the storm rising in my throat because before, back in may or june when I thought that it had peaked and crashed, I was wrong. That was only an uptick.

Being the sort of manic impulsive disassociative wildfire that I am it gets out of my hands before I know often what to think or how to speak and in those moments beyond sleep the stars shift as the earth tilts me to one side.

Hmmm, how about a redbull?

Okay cockholes my computer is fucked to all hell.

He is having second, third even, thoughts about functioning. My ability to do shit, including write, much less post online, is null and void. That being said, I organized my closet this morning. Who knew how many socks one can sort in 45 minutes? not me.

So this is me now, here,on my stolen-back old computer which I gave mostly away but still have secret access to late at night when no one is watching and my tummy is full of apricots, avocados, and toast.

No computer and worked my third, no fourth twelve hour day this week. Beat to shit yet don't really really want to go to bed because then tomorrow will start and I am dreading a little bit the day before it starts.

Yet, there is a case of sugar free redbull and a case of sugar free rockstar in the barn to get me through to sunday.

Consider this a scenic update. I can't do much (semi-colon) I am tied to the farm. My phone works better than email these days (colon) Find me. I'll try my best to get back here or there or maybe you can show up and bring me an iced latte and a cupcake and leave before I have a chance to say hello, but know that somewhere in all of that we walk not quite alone, even though I saw you see me and we forgot that there is more than enough to go around and got selfish and the world, for an instant contracted against us before bursting, it was beautiful, but not quite as beautiful as the hour before sunset here in this valley when everything is gold and thick air holds my body to the wind and forgotten against all of that is the pitter of my head-rush dissolving my body.

I am hard to miss.

It's Never Good to Lose

That's what they say:
that it's never good to lose

but I grew up losing things
and not just competitions

but virginity
and personality

but I think losing is not such a terrible loss

Me Not Amused

And it rolls out like words across sand
and they burn down my throat as I keep my mouth shut

because I remember why I am here
because I know I've move across the perimeter
because I am happy there observing

rancor boils under me building magma seams readjusting
and all of this my shit that I don't deal with and the things I keep in quiet and tight and not spoken
there's a reason to be silent
and I know that

I am the silent type
even though I am engaged in a conversation my mind is somewhere else farther from here
and I listen to all of it so often that my ears sort of just stopped giving a fuck
and sometimes my lips do too
that's the problem with not keeping your mouth shut all of the time

I do that
open my mouth
when I don't have shit to say
thinking somehow what I've got suspended between thoughts
can be expressed in words
that if I can for once finally expose my soul completely to a stranger met off the back of a mirror

I will find myself seen and recognized and learn the meaning of my name
but instead it's not that
it is something else entirely and I can't have a word for it
because I still don't know the feint and perry
of word play
or the constructed social mechanisms within which I am obliged to operate
quietly perfecting my aim and hoping that someday the target appears

I try and fail and try and fail to try
yet still I try to learn within my being
the definition of my name the soul of the what the fuck who am I in this world
whose pants where these before I pulled them off the rack at the goodwill
and how is it possible I continue to accept all of this nothing and everything
at once and be fucking careful with fast machines, hot sharp objects, and love
be especially careful with that thing people call love
however overly pragmatic my certain disbelief in a personal ability to resonate with fear

I remain observant
the target is only the beginning of the shot
to see beyond to reaction and consequence

therein lies foresight and dependable action

Things I found today

I pulled over to *free-pee* and check my map (where in the fuck am I going (today) anyways?). Scattered around my feet were a half-dozen owl pellets. Thank you owl medicine. I would like to say thank you instinct for taking me up that particular road, thank you bladder for almost bursting, thank you miss Chaya for being the queen of the free-pee, you never know where you'll end up when you pull over and pull down your pants—

I also got a new checkered scarf that matches my riding suit, a pair of bitchin vintage sunglasses, some hankies, and few random necklaces for $9 at the Crane Mellon Barn barn sale. OH!!! and I almost forgot... a unicorn music box! I haven't had a music box since ages, not since I was a girl, a young girl, and it's not actually a unicorn...

Look closer—it is a Pegasus Unicorn which Ultimate Unicorn to the Max Turbo Extreme! it plays somewhere over the rainbow.

*

*.*.*

It's too late and I's awale

I don't even know what that means
but I like it;

so I'll let it stand

But harass you from the sidelines
because I remember that I told you
and I remember that you heard

my voice against the stars

*

Wait, It's not actually July yet

I thought that it was July
this morning when I woke up

the summer fog sitting heavily through the vineyard rows
all the way down to Dry Creek

But it's June

Which follows May
May, which I gave away on accident

July looks good
I am antsy-pantsy
about all sorts of things

like finding a good sleeping bag, tent, stove
how do I make coffee the best on the road

I am also in and out and up and down of antsy-pantsy
because of wanting

wanting that indefinable urge
to dissipate so I can settle into my bones

Maybe that's July
but I'm still in June and after giving May away, I took June to my head

When dirt is part of your skin

it can be hard to get clean
I don't even know
not really and not for sure
if I want to

So I shower and smile through my teeth
and eyes glint in the light
surmising that maybe once we stumbled together
against dawn

more likely
the wind held me up
and danced my skirt up to my thighs
fingers of dawn opening my legs

daybreak

Things I Never Say

Disordered eating is a way of being for me and has been for more than half my life. I did okay, ate regular meals, at least dinner, when I was in a LTR but these days fending for myself in the world I find a diet consisting of redbull, salad, and coffee. Then I go nuts and eat a billion calories in one sitting because I am fucking starving and then my tummy hurts and I feel wretched on so many levels.

These days my weight shifts around 110 lbs and I as long as I stay close to that I am okay. It is like the rules of three. I am good with three days: today, tomorrow, yesterday; three months: this month, next month, last month. Anything too far beyond that and I start to lose focus on what's possible, what really happened, and besides it doesn't matter anyways. Back to my tummy, my mind, my ass in pants. All of those are happy at +/-3 of 110. Anymore and things get tight any less and I have no ass. I like having an ass.

More and deeper I had my first bites of a turkey sandwich. It was tasty. I think I need more protein, serious animal carnivore protein in my life. It makes my tummy say, oh I ate. I like that.

This is not about hating my body or wanting to be so thin I die. I've been there, I know what that feels like. This is about a lifelong struggle around food, nutrition, control, independence. But, I find that the control makes me nuts, nutrition makes my mind spin, and independence leads me down the dark road of temptation.

I feel healthy right now, in this moment. Awake, healthy, alive. I had painful violent dreams, that was the turkey walking over my heart while I slept. I am sorry you were delicious on bread with cheese and mayonnaise.

wide gravel eyes

I am tired to the bone core of the bone the inside bits of the bone that move blood all around
and help you grow and breathe
I am tired to there

Friends, old, old friends
who knew me when
I was more myself but a little less like me
are a reminder that the trees sing to the stars
without mouths or ears or eyes

to touch or dance
close into the moments that collapse on top of one another
drowning in oxygen debt
arms push pulling me

and my eyes have gravel in the lids
and my skin moves over my bones
a little loose with a little extra room
at the elbows and knees

Makes me Itch

Against my skin I woke up sideways twisted around my sheets, Sampson tossed to the floor like yesterday's cheese. I slept like shit, it was the ice cream and brownies I ate at quarter to eleven. I ate them because my uterus said, "Fuck Your Cunt Whore!"after I had a new IUD inserted into my lady bits. You gots to pay to play you know? Nothing in life is free. Except not having a kid to tote around on my hip for the next five damn years, that's some sort of freedom.

The lady doc took such good care of me. The whole clinic really. They gave me a hot water bottle, an electric heating pad, and a recliner to doze off into wonderland. It's my second IUD; this time my colon didn't have an immediate and aggressive flight response, so that was nice and a lot less stinky.

I've been considering sterilization! Horray for people who are so generous with their belief in the future of the planet that they decide the nicest, greenest, most humanistic thing they can do is not to produce offspring. I am a big fan of the childless by choice movement. I am a bigger fan of people without kids demanding basic human rights for the entire world.

Chanting in the streets, "I won't have no baby at my titty till you free Peltier!" and "Fluoride free water is a right!" and "Give me a sandwich or give me a gun!" this throng of women without babies, this hoard of ho's without bro's is going to take it to the man because without babies there is no future and I don't mean to be a cow, but right now I'm not totally stoked on the war, poverty, financial crime, lack of legal drugs that are fun, prison system, foster care for kids whose parents are in jail for taking fun drugs and not having enough education and being a color other than white. I want everyone to have a god damn sandwich. If we put the brakes on babies, have a platform, get enough support and internet attention, maybe something could happen.

So thank you Lady Doctor! for keeping me child-free for another six years. Thank you for keeping my who-ha in proper working order and it is worth the night of poor sleep to know that I am keeping up my end of the bargain. Between no babies, being an organ and blood donor, and trying to recycle I am going straight to heaven no questions asked. Word.

Neo-Post Traditionalist

I don't even know what that means besides have your adventure socks and a sleeping bag packed because you never know if you're going to need an emergency blanket, a headlamp, or a snack—wise to have all of that with you before you head to edge of sunset.

I asked a dude out. He has a special lady friend. Now I am off the hook for sex and on fire for friends, that kind of rules in my world as I realize I am a less than ideal partner for anyone, especially if they're local. As they say, don't shit in your pool.

Proud more for the fact that I realized all of the sudden that if there is interest, spark, attraction act on that. Finding community here and not fucking my way into it, what a concept.

I also believe always that the solstice is on the 21st. That is what this is really all about. Forever and always 21st 

Second Coming

Do it, twice

Internet had a sickness for days and I was starting to think that it would never return. What a blessing; what a curse.

I can't say that much changes for me, not really really really changes
yet I learn about the scope of my peripheries and watching them expand to contact

and then contract down, laced down tight, corset tight, laced up the back leaving red lines and a twenty inch waist tight, with no room to breath I dance into the light before forgotten and tossed like a tissue

onto the floor with a number scrawled
in something red
kicked into ball of lace
and waist

shake it up and shake it off
this one is to remember, this one is for may, this one is for my mother
as the nail hot as anything
hot as red hot scrawled numbers on napkins and twenty inch waists
presses into the soft tissue right above my hip

and I am only mad that I forgot my soldering iron
and that the stove's electric
and that the ups and the downs
pivot and spin around the spine of my heart

shining bright against the night
bright against the eye
open white hot heat of my heart
pumps iron and blood and legs along the road
and I know

I am the star
pressed to the sky reflected off the eye of a lover
and back across time space distance all of this
gone tomorrow

here today
just like the internet in the sticks

tell me who you are

Space Ship Pocket Star

Crashed and burned
the charred remains of that nostalgic trip not even worth poking with a stick—

I made a pie chart of pros and cons of my life. The pros outweigh the cons by a standard american mile. Yet, I still have the itch of not quite right in my bones.

Drink coffee, slept like shit
as I tossed and tumbled across my sweaty sheets for six hours before showering and finding myself here at the keyboard

I had strawberry ice cream with a ripe banana and slivered almonds for dinner
I saw a man that should know by now I will never want to fuck him
but he's a smart enough man to know that I am a nice enough girl
who hates to say no, so he keeps calling

I push out against the sky, I breath against my skin
and this dome overhead holds me to my body and I am grateful for the wind in my face
and the smell of the road as the day bakes the concrete and the jasmine, roses, bay all blend together into a hot mash of floral gasoline and the reverberations of my mind settle into the drone

of wheels on pavement
and bugs on face-shields
hot air and solitude blend together
mix with the wind

I am alright
with all of that
and those choices I made
before I learned how to say no

I learned them now
and I am pretty okay with
who I am in life
flesh against bone against hot road

and breathing alive, I can do all of this
living
I want all of this
living

ice cream and motorcycles and roses and lovers and lost moments
found in pockets of memories
stowed away like marbles
in jars full of prizes

I've got the quarter machine blues

Long winding roads make me hungry

for taco bell
and sleeping with my back against a tree

I took the long way home and three hours later, cold, hungry, and short on red bull I ate some burritos and tried to smoke and make sense of the previous twenty-four hours while I slept with my back against the trunk of a tree.

The nagging and unrelenting feeling that people invite me around only to have a nice good laugh about it later remains a constant sensation that I feel the third right rib. I am sure someday someone will rename that bone.

Then in and out of pretense. I am satisfied with who I am in life. I've got it made, just not yet on paper. I have a tendency to hate on people who are my age and pretty.

I have issues with intimacy, personal space, trust, reliance, respect, attachment, boundaries, social engagement and dynamics, power, sex, money, motivation, and god: would you like to grab coffee and talk about baseball?

This is what I've learned this week: never get separated from star-bright: your ability to leave is your ability to be cool in your socks; travel with a sleeping bag, sunscreen, snacks, water, and headlamp; I am not super much into house music.

The balance of dignity and truth and being cool. I'll take my wheels and a red bull over being cool.

run fast, fall hard, get up, repeat

The walls keep coming

and I am creative in dissolving barriers

but a break in the seam

a crack in the night

would help

money is not the issue

freedom is

****

freedom can fuck you

impulsive distracted will-o-wisp 

of a girl 

chasing light and shadow

hearts opening against their better judgement

"what attracts you most," mouth against ear

pain, I say to the ceiling

a half-truth and a cookie

and, I 'm fucking tired of being quiet and keeping the piece of me silent that shouts against the sky
and mouth open ingests the horizon
as it laps against the penumbra, the word that I learned from William, that's in my pda
and I cannot bring it to mind

but I eat the blue hour, the essential hour before silence
and the joy of living is in the silence of expressing more than words with our voices
and using this thing that burns into our flesh for something more than pain
and yes, this world
is pain
and grief
hollowed our hearts that sit in half-shamed silence
dark streaks against the boom-boom of your voice
as I hear
how little I am
how little I have
how little I have become in accepting myself
and pushing the hot poker to the piece of me that remains unseen I forfeit
my heart in search of my soul

against the sky what else is there besides the winds
and the sharp talons of hooked beaked hawks
dust and light filter across the field kicked up by city folks driving subarus on farm roads
and the dust settles over the crops and into my boots, hair, nose all full
and I am more allergic to my mother than anything else

I find this deeply disturbing http://www.swisslink.com/ and yet I could probably shop there for years satisfied

don't stop before you're done

because really, what are we all here for any ways
to sit on our hands as life gold
drips from concrete veins
and we lace our form across the wires of the vineyard

I am terrified to run in between the rows
the wires are traps
not easily escaped

sometimes I run down them on purpose
to feel the terror of self-entrapment
and listen to my heart

Subjective Harmony

Link: unbreakable

going dark

Within the week I will pull this string of ones and zeros off the internet. Someday, maybe, some of this will be put into a book made of paper and glue.

motorbike fightnight

those are the only two words in my head these days
not that I have a penchant for speed
or an uncanny inability to feel pain

because

sometimes air and wind and fingers gripped around bars
are all we have to hold onto

and

holding my head in my arms and eyes to the night
I can breathe against the drumming of my ears
the lights pulse through my spine
and the rumble of the turf
against the pale of my legs

Fruitful Harvest

sow seeds of contentment
that our harvest may be
plentiful

 as we reap our dreams

smash spree

looking for a fair fight

I am mad as hot butter and my guts turn around themselves

my body tightens against the skin and I want to vomit

Reading List

Lolita, A Spy in the House of Love, Tropic of Cancer; enough said.

There is an immense elephant of a project looming over me that I pick away at. I snip through old memories (lord, I wish I'd kept better notes) and wonder about the quality of the images in my head. I am thinking about going dark, by that pulling this blog down for awhile. I won't, it's only a consideration. 

Poverty is grinding my joints. I lost my foodstamps because of an office error and have not had time to get that mess straightened out. I can only image that it will take months. I have been living off of noodles, fresh eggs, leftover bread for two weeks.

More than this is the reality of working endless 60 hour weeks, know that if I say 60 I mean close to 70, and unable to feed my body mind spirit with enough sleep and rest to maintain begin to fray out into space.

Solace is in the spirit, strength in the body as the muscles continue to wrap in on themselves tightening around bone, it is only my mind which concerns me now. If the three are linked and one surges forward the others tag along into the new frontier. What if that's true of surging forward into less constructive realms. Does the mind undo what the body builds.

Lolita is surprisingly good; I've not read it before. There is a not too old man who craves pubescent girls, nymphets he calls them. They are his primary drive.

The cut on my right middle finger

is in the shape of a heart
because he loves me
this horse

when his teeth and the metal bars of his stall
sandwiched my finger

we both cried
because it was an accident

not like that one time
with the fingers tight to my throat

I remember what I wore that night, and, finally, I've managed to forget your name

I've taken to drinking budweiser—

I've taken to drinking it by the bottle

in hollows and haunts and dives sipping against the florescent lights and the popcorn chatter—

I put a finger to all upstanding red blooded americans 

not in nostalgia but in rubbing my face in prejudice

because, really

the perfect number of budweisers to drink before

riding a mechanical bull

is three

especially if the bartenders

serve in bikinis and chaps and have

shots of jagermeister

in hip holsters

two budweisers is rhythm

balance and increased bravado

three is only

a second, forgettable act

More Phobic than Not

final moments

when that last exhale passes the lips

and the cold hard flesh as

light expires

what vision strikes the eye

what holds most dear

what time is it in your life

when the beginning ends

and dreams unfold

us

we never know our bodies against the sky

and forfeit the  possibility of potential

in disguise and retribution

that's why it's better 

marry young

technological wizardry

I have a new phone number. After seven years of the same all the same same same, I decided it was time for a change. I'll be texting you from area code 707

the electronic ghost in the sky

claimed the shit phone I've had in my pocket for the last seven months. If you need to contact me leave a comment here. You never know.

lipstick slingshot

Our eyes glanced shards of light reflected across the crowd

I recognized you seeing me watching you

and for an instant less

I thought

alone together alone

bare, the disguise we mask in our eyes

stripped down to skin

and cotton

sheets fresh hot cotton sheets

the crisp sharp edges

dissipate before I sleep

Home at last

Not everyone has their eyes to the street—

where people who don't have much to offer

sit and talk into cellular telephones

conversing about sexual evolution

and the spiritual nature of addiction—

where passersby walk by the person that was a once a girl with big gapped teeth

who had a penchant to play

kung-fu with your son
while we lived one big happy family
at the Paradise House—

leans back on a wall

legs stretch all the way to my unlaced boots

I understand I said nothing

as I smiled into your eyes and those of your husband

but maybe you mistook my empty coffee mug for something it was not

or my vintage sunglasses case for my kit

and thought my pouch of rolling tobacco was a euphemism for weed

Or maybe the last thirty years of meditation 

have dulled your senses

and you didn't see me smiling into your eyes

and all you saw was a junkie on the street 

whose empty cup 

was their lot in life.

I don't know what you saw

you didn't see me

sitting soberly in the weak sunshine

discussing the development of the heart mind

through acceptance of shame 

allowing vulnerability

understanding the ability to accept responsibility for action

but since I don't meditate enough

and meat has passed my lips

and I tend to give money and cigarettes to people that don't ask but I know that they need

and I sleep around

and I put drugs in my mouth

yet I get the sense that I see people

even when they don't see me

but you have always treated me a little off

because when you meditate

and freely give a tenth of your day to your living master

you gain a clarity of vision

into yourself that allows you to see people

and accept them with neither judgement

or fear

because you will know

that they don't meditate

and that you are working your way towards paradise