Sitting on the beach alone. For the 3rd night. When the world cracked open, before my eyes.
I saw a brilliant light, something so bright. I feared I would dissolve. The people I know are far away.
The air cool. On my skin. Darkness all around.
Sand underfoot, slowly slipping away. Time is a relative way of measuring the length of one's life. It's all that we know.
The light left like it was never there at all. I questioned my judgment. I almost forgot.
Then, There it was, reappeared. A brief reminder of eternity. Reverberating through my body, shimmering like dragonfly wings.
A glimpse of power. Of mystery. Standing on an edge. of the road on a cliff.
Looking over the bay. Something unnerving in my bones. I met a man from a world away.
We exchanged a kiss and said goodbye to the past. There are times when I go away, searching, The unknown. For a place where no one knows all the things I've done.
As easy. As it is to leave. There are things that remain.
No matter the distance between here and there. I remember the eve of my birthday, you took me to the beach to see the waxing moon. The fire burns slow that night.
The driftwood was damp. I collected rocks to spell the names inside my heart. I no longer know these people, but love exist in my memories.
I'm different now. The one I hadn't met yet was called River. I was my wildest self with him.
Abandoning things that no longer mattered. Making decisions without a thought. He lived.
Not quite in the world, not quite out. I couldn't tell if he was holy or dangerous, or both. We slept under the stars, wandered deep in the woods.
Beneath him, I felt the way the dry earth yearns for the rain. Longing, like thirst, the power of desire flooded my limbs. That night, I dreamt I gave birth to a star.
This is how it ended. Let's stop for a swim. Cool off a bit, okay?
At this point, I was scared of him, the man in my car. My plan was to leave him on the side of the road. I lingered, picking the blackberries as he went up ahead.
When I was sure I was safe. I ran. And then drove, shaking.
I threw his stuff out the window half a mile down the road and never talked to him again. Not long after I met a very different kind of lover. Someone I still masturbate to.
Now, years later. He had only one tattoo, an unfinished dragon across his chest. His friend gave it to him, but died before.
He could finish it. We were at a potluck. The host was a pretty girl I met in a free Tai Chi class at the park.
He was her downstairs neighbor. As the evening came to an end, he asked if I'd like to see his place. He rolled a blunt and we talked about our past.
I said I had to go. He said I didn't have to go. So I stayed.
He rolled another blunt, and kissed me in a soft way. We ate magic mushroom brownies like kids and got lost in the slow motions of our bodies. Morning was the only thing that came too soon.
And with it a blissful exhaustion. I saw him once more. The magic was no less without the mushrooms.
The wanting was real. And that was enough. Insane high of love.
Withdraws, leaving emptiness. To tell you the truth, I think about you way too much. It's ridiculous, really.
I wonder if you think of me too. How often, and in what way? I don't know what I want.
You're nice as a friend. I imagine your body would be even nicer. I want to touch you.
I don't have some insatiable need for sex with you. But I'm drawn to you in a physical way. Something about connecting our bodies, our handprints.
Like memories from another time. Something in me recognizes something in you, a weakness, a strength. Whatever matters most.
Present day. It's raining here. I walked with my dad and Daisy in the park.
No one was there, so we let her off the leash and she ran. We were all soaked. My dad said something like, if he died, he would miss me.
I said I would miss him too. It's one of my greatest fears to lose my dad. I love him so much, it seems impossible to be separated.
So maybe fear is not the right word, but acknowledging an inevitable thing that will change one day. I pray for many more years together. Let me return to the idea of love again and again, bringing it into being.
So the thought becomes real. I hugged myself for a long time this morning. When it comes to pleasure, I have a lot to learn.
I'm feeling it in the present moment, learning how to be slower. And enjoy the experience of living life in a body. The truth resides deep inside me and it takes time to get there.
Time to touch, time to say what we really mean. To attune my muscles and length and strength, to breathe fluid breaths, full air, to fill my lungs, To taste the food I eat. To be where I am undistracted.
I made bread this morning. Sourdough. I just want to tear off chunks and chew.
The taste is nutty good. I took all the steps. To ferment the dough.
I also made the loaf knowing I would soon be making love to my husband. It rose overnight and I baked it in the morning after walking the dog. I swear, the bread communicates its readiness to me.
The smell. Touch is telling, but secondhand to smell. Sight somewhat superficial, yet still important.
Taste can be honed in. The sound. Well, that depends.
Pick a person to write about each day. Today I'll write about you because that's where my thoughts are. No.
I don't want to write about you. Because I don't understand you. I suppose this is resistance, but I'm okay with that.
I'll pick someone else, my grandmother. There's her pink lipstick, of course. And the small table of mirrors and perfumes.
She kept a dollhouse hidden in her attic. And there was a laundry chute to her basement. Where she did the laundry.
It was an unfinished room that spooked me, but the staircase was colorful. I wish I knew her beyond what I know now. I wish I had memories of making soup together, reading, walking, more than just a visit here and there.
Seems to me that our real vital relationships need to be close to home, that we can observe the day to day together. The willow behind her house fell into the lake. It was always on the edge, but now that she's gone and somebody bought the property.
The tree's gone too. They took down the house and are building something modern. By the edge. of the lake.
Where the tree fell. The upstairs bathroom had black tile on the floor and yellow walls. There were delicate blue vases on a small table that seemed to have no purpose other than to be a surface on which to place the vases.
In the winter, I would count the icicles through the windows, behind the lacy curtains. There was some proper way to turn on the bathtub that always required a grown up to do. The downstairs bathroom was simple, just a toilet with a sinking cabinet with a mirror with the pink lipstick inside.
Sometimes I went in there just to be alone. There was a 3rd bathroom. In between 2 rooms to get from one room to the other.
You had to go through the bathroom. There was a greenhouse, a swimming pool. A hidden room full of books and portraits of each of her 6 children, and a cabinet full of real butterflies and beetles from around the world.
With pins stuck through their bodies. Kind of sad really, the bugs, but also the willow tree. There were a few things you could count on in her kitchen.
Pops, I think that's what it's called, the corn cereal. Snyder's honey mustard, pretzel nuggets, wintergreen lifesavers, spaghetti for dinner, Budweiser in the fridge, vanilla ice cream in the freezer. I remember the shape of her glass cups, the thickness of the rim.
The small stacks of plates and bowls with olive green trim. The kitchen had a little TV where she sat on her cushion and wrote lists in her notebook. As she got older, she had to lay in the cot in the dining room.
Stayed the warmest in those rooms in the winter when the rest of the house was cold. This woman who slept with a knife under her pillow, who raised 6 children after her husband died. She never met the man I married.
Only the other one. But she knew he was not the one. Because she told me to do what makes me really truly happy.
I wonder what she'd say now. I worry about my own mother shrinking away like that. I don't know how I would manage the sadness that would accompany that kind of loss.
I'm in no way prepared to deal with the death of the ones I love. How do people possibly manage? I have a letter from Grandma Jean saying she wanted to hear about all my great ideas.
She doesn't even know that I'm divorced now. British Columbia. Canada.
I'm shaking. I just left the guy on the side of the road. Basically, I was traveling with him. through the Yukon, from Alaska to Washington.
Slightly as friends, but Sometimes we made love. At some point along the way, I began to see his true nature, something angry and unstable. I got really worried something bad would happen.
If I stayed with him any longer. He was talking about breaking into someone's house and stealing. Grow lights.
And I didn't want any of that. He was driving and got outrageously mad at another person in the car next to us, flipping him off and swerving and such. I felt like I was with TJ. my 1st love all over again.
Total disregard of another person's life, total arrogance, delusional. Both TJ and River were in touch with Spirit in the way that most people are not. I learned different pathways from them.
I remember sitting on the beach afraid I'd mess up the rhythm. TJ asked me to hold the beat. On the sand, thumping to help him go on some journey.
In his mind. I was supposed to be the anchor back home waiting for the fisherman to return. I felt immense pressure to do it right or he'd become mad as he often did.
I didn't do it right and he got mad. Like the time I came home from the library after a fight, he was waiting around the corner of the neighbor's house to hurt me. I was scared for my life when we went camping in the Smoky Mountains.
I felt sure if he killed me, no one would know. I did what I could to not upset him. He one time kicked my bike while we were riding together because I wasn't going fast enough.
I suppose there must have been some good times, but the darkness eclipsed that. In my memory.
Is it valuable to remember having met him and loved him? It was Halloween. 2008.
I was 18. A freshman. In college.
I wore a psychedelic dress. And whenever anyone asked me about my costume, I said I was LSD. I was at a party on King Street, smoking, drinking.
I danced to the song Electric Feel. TJ and I kissed for the 1st time. He was dressed like a zombie, wearing jeans, a white t-shirt and red bandana. Later, we snuck away together and climbed a wall into the graveyard.
We kissed there again in the dark. I scraped my knee when I fell getting back out.
We walked through the cobblestone alleys, holding hands back to his dorm room. We had sex for hours. It was my 1st true sexual experience.
When I lived in Hawaii, there was this guy. Nico. He lived an hour bike ride up the mountain.
His accent was somewhere between Arkansas and Hawaii, his 2 lifetime homes. Vegan lifestyle, pants made of hemp, cord shoes, short dark hair, long face.
He was such a Leo, so obsessed with himself. I don't know if he ever truly noticed who I was.
I had no idea how to assert myself. First time we had sex, it was uncomfortable yet I still proceeded, still opened my legs and pretended to enjoy. No proper foreplay, no real romance.
They say there's a way to clear the womb from past trauma. What's the next step? Write it. Relive it. Feel it.
Is it necessary? Can I just envision white light and let that do the work?
I'm slowly boxing up all our stuff. My husband and I are moving from the city to the country, from faster to slower. We lived in this little house for 2 years, rode the waves, the highs and lows together — here and now, we're shifting.
Our new house sits on one and a half acres of land, mostly fenced, with a bit of forest and a small creek, to grow our own food and flowers, live in a quieter way.
I plan to write and write and do all the things I love. This is the life after all, right? The chapter ended.