Red Cedar

these are brief excerpts from my notebook since friday – largely unedited – they might not make a whole lot of sense – but the whole passages they come from make less sense… and until i have time to make a coherent post, they will have to do….

friday – airport gate

i look at my hands – which look nervous – why? is it because i have crossed that line into a place where i have no rights – or some other line not yet defined inside of me? what fear of mine is so imprinted as i enter this country or is it just the fear of giving up control? something about airports and checkpoints always makes me feel disorganized – having to produce the same papers over and over again, fumbling documents in front of sentinels defending their borders.

arriving

when you arrive at a place you’ve not been before, long after dark, the other senses are forced to work overtime to suss out the new surroundings. getting out of the car at the fork in the road, i am overwhelmed by the smell of eucalyptus which runs from the skies in the damp evening air – the road scrubbed with heavy rain, gives a satisfactory suck as the mud grips at the soles of my boots – the sound of water and small critters restling in the underbrush are a greeting… to this yurt perched on the edge of a landslide in a community no one has heard of.

lowbaggers and thieves

it really feels like a double life sometimes – that i can simultaneously be one thing and another seemingly opposite. at home in my surprisingly straight surface life, but feeling like i am coming home in the world of lowbaggers and thieves – like a memory almost forgotten but always tugging at the corner of who i am – a curtain pulled back to reveal who i might be instead.

this yurt in the hills of a rainy northern california winter, moulding despite the heat of a woodstove, is neither surprising or loathsome in any way. i think of ways to fit this into my present life – but am stumped because the way to do both hasn’t been mapped yet, and may not even be a possibility. but then, that is the whole of how i have lived in any case – unmapped in a territory yet unstaked in a world yet unbound with a deep and terrifying desire to be free. what body this soul belonged to before i do not know, but i wonder if it was always this much of a puzzle, or outlaw desiring. if so, did i not learn from that – or does this essence belong to some future yet unimagined?

soap

his soap smells like bay laurel, mine like red cedar – we from different ends of the same coastal spectrum and i am kneeling in a cold porcelain tub with a shower nozzel in my hands – warm water cascading down over my forehead, hair dripping with the scent of forests near and far.

i have been writing and writing since i left on friday – it seems a whole other world – to not have to get up to go to work today – to be in the united states. i am often reminded here that i just am not cut out to live in a place with this large of a population – too many people, too much need to be agressive (or at the very least assertive in a way that seems foreign to me). i am hoping at the end of this trip to have fodder for more creative endeavours – as there are moments within moments here that need to be written and photographed (not because of this particular country, but because of my peculiar friends)….

since i arrived friday, i have been staying in a tiny corner of the east bay area called – canyon (population 200) – on a squatted fifth of an acre that “belongs” to two friends of mine. i will post photographs when i am able to download my camera (probably not until i get home since i left the cable in roberts creek). since that time i have done some lounging about, gone for a hike, gone to church, driven up the coast to a town called bolinas, read books, gone to a poetry slam, cooked good dinners (and breakfasts) and generally done a lot of socializing with my friends kevin and jasmyn.

tomorrow i travel again and will not likely be near a computer for awhile… a brief hello to everyone and letting you all know i am safe and doing really well 🙂

yup – that’s right, gone on holidays. will post during the trip if i get computer access. will return sometime around the 1st week of march.

i got home late last night smelling of curry and imprinted by my lover. suffice to say, it was a fine evening which made up for the birthday sadness (some of which was related to the combination of my desire and an inability to see him).

sometimes i think i should get a “real” (that is capital R) relationship, but unfortunately, that would likely mean giving up this man in my life right now – and although it has its furtive qualities – he does make me quite happy. having said that, i don’t feel i am closed to the possibilities of another realtionship coming into my life – but i don’t meet that many men who i like (and no, i don’t think i’m too fussy) and i’d rather not settle.

maybe that is the crux though, in that i am not unhappy on my own most of the time – so there is no reason to settle with someone who doesn’t meet my needs or desires (or who treats me badly as some men in my life over the last couple of years have seemed wont to do). i suppose the nagging worry is that while i am happy with my arrangements at 32, i might not be at 40, or 50 or 60 – what then? will i be a lonely old crone? unloved and unattended to? or is it possible to be happy without coupling for life? (i think it is, despite my mother’s warnings that reverberate through my head).

since my birthday, this has been floating around , a bit – but seeing my lover last night… well, i don’t like the idea of having to give him up – ever… which of course isn’t possible for so many reasons.

*sigh* what’s a girl to do? i suppose just let things take their own course as usual. 😉