Damn do they gotta say it like that?

The next 12 weeks of my life on two pages. Listed as articles, semicoloned excerpts, as if it has passed, static, and over. I must wait, though I dare not blink, to see if profundity exists among these lines. How I will affect and be affected by this typeset that, nearly absently, has compressed time.

You don't miss the forest 'til the trees are gone

by July we’ll have once-a-week shower mandates
neighborhood water watch
environmentalism McCarthy-style

what we need is a toilet overhaul. 500 million-jillion new toilets. With the $4 seats - they hold up better than the $10,000 variety. (assholes)

5 gallons each time someone flushes a toilet in the mall, or the office building, or the coffee shop. 5 gallons gone each time. Or an airport bathroom, or a bus station, or plaza on the turnpike. It’s more than each person in each city and town, you have to add on the people that come from other cities and towns to visit. we’re flushing our showers. and we’re gonna smell like shit come summer.

30 going on 17 or 7 (is that gross?)

Every time. I mean every time. I flare up with righteous indignation and I pout and I resolve and I calm, and then I talk to him. Any part of my rehearsed monologue that makes it through ends up sounding spoiled and faithless and silly. And I feel like the brat who whines that someone else got more than she did and everybody's cookies get taken away. I'm left with punch to swallow.

He told me tonight he thinks I'm scared. That's why I can't leave things be. When we sit still among our deeper vibrations I get uncomfortable and bring us back to the superficial. And perhaps, dammit, he's right. The serial monogomist, uncovered.

But still, spontaneous kisses would be nice. Some hint at what might be going on behind those lucious lashes and some affirmation that at least a moment or two is about ME, that would be fantastic. I think of how many tiny joys I've missed opening my mouth to negativity.

I got a new kind of Jungle Fever

The Asian boys is nice out her... :)

A truck flipped and I folded

7:13 am, 580 freeway, headed to downtown Oakland. I have to be at the courthouse by 7:30. A red car clips a black pick-up truck and the truck goes flying up the embankment, end over end. Something on the hill changes its momentum, and it rolls, on its sides now, back down to the road. It lands upright, red car nowhere in sight.

This happens maybe five cars in front of me, no one stops, they hardly slow down. I am mortified. I pull over and run to the truck, phone in hand, sure I will find a body in pieces, a head torn off, something I really dont want to see. But when I get to the truck, a man is blinking at me. He asks what happened, says he can't open his door. Around to the passenger side, he unlocks it and I open it, babbling that I can't believe he is all right as I give him the spectator's version of what just went down. A stethoscope peeks out from behind the seat. Police are on their way. I leave him my name and number, just in case, and walk back to my car, shaking my head, hand still on my mouth, positive that I have witnessed a miracle.

Park and walk up to the courthouse and stop dead in my tracks. The fucking line is wrapped up and around the corner and halfway down the block. At 7:30 in the morning. In 40 degrees. More than an hour later, we are inside, in another wormlike line, and the line outside has grown rather than diminished. Amazingly I get in the morning session. The first case is man who had obviously been caught doing more than 100 miles an hour, since they "agreed" on 99. He gets a fine of $381. Funny, that's what these assholes are charging me. I jot it down on my paperwork so I can bring it up to the judge.

Once the trials are over, I am in the first group of arraignees. But when I get to the podium, the bile evaporates. The rant I had planned all night drains from my throat. Guilty or Not Guilty, he demands. I start to explain - Guilty or Not Guilty he demands. A plea of Not Guilty requires a return to this ridiculous charade. I am silent, I stammer. Well, I dont want to do this again, I say - laughter from the courtroom - so I guess Guilty. But this fine seems grossly excessive. It's the standard fine, he says. I do not pull the ace out of its hole. I am silent, I stammer. He bangs his gavel and dismisses me.

I am so angry at myself I cry. So much for freedom fighter. Why didnt I speak up? Even if I had an answer, it wouldnt matter now. I folded under pressure. And now I will pay $30 each month to the City of Oakland for eternity it seems. And I am angry at the fleecing, but mostly at myself. My ego cannot tolerate cowardice. So I am beaten, internally.

With Curiously Waning Trepidation, I Emerge

I took my tooth off today.

I have now officially graduated from my semi-sheltered roaring twenties.

This small decision seems monumental, and I am afraid to post the information and yet afraid to let the moment pass without documentation. It seems odd I would offer to help anyone carve vulnerabilities in my armor.

What would someone think - new or old, friend or stranger - what would happen to my possibly delusional air of 'sexiness' were I to write of how it stunk, my loose crown gathering god-knows-what beneath it, shoving it under my gum. Would they guess that I spoke with my hand covering my mouth because I could imagine people passing out from my conversation. Could I really write how I would catch a whiff of something putrid, then realize with shock and shame that it was coming from me. One day I thought I must have chewed on feces.

What do I do? No dental insurance. No money even for parking tickets, quickly adding up to a rent-sized column in the budget (that's rich, me with a budget). So I just pulled it off, and left it off. Fuck it. The odor is gone, my tongue has a new playground, and I have quickly and deftly acquired a new method of taking in liquid, curling my tongue in a protective bypass funnel so that the fresh nerves stay quiet.

I have entered a new room. I can feel initiation in a cool breeze through my molars. The threshhold is covered with flakes of vanity; I stop for a moment in the doorway to decide which pieces I'm willing to drop, or to accept that some must fall away. I stand a while longer adjusting, the missing flecks show that there had once been a whole suit I hadn't known I was wearing. Suddenly I can see all of the things I've left unmended, all the loose strings of my life that have been flapping as I sped by. If I trip now that I am slowing, it is only the nature of strings and motion. [It has always been my job to measure the thread.]

Breathing through my mouth in East Bay January pierces pain receptors, and I realize I'm gonna have to put the damn thing back in so all my other teeth dont rush over there to see what's going on. But, at this moment, I'm wearing my nametag, I'm in a new club.

We do what we got to.

My Second (First? Third?) Language

What did he just say?
It's okay, I speak jive...

This language is one for which a student need not know all phrases; indeed, that is likely impossible. Knowledge of current slang is helpful, but the base of this language is intuition.

Standing in the dirt yard 'round the fire (fahr), beer or whiskey in hand or coat pocket, this poetry is amorphous and essentially laced with humor. It gets easier to understand and harder to say as alcohol thickens the tongue and steels the wit. These slick half words speak volumes nearly without a noun to hang on to - we say everything while seeming to say nothing, and the secrets stay in-club. I cherish the wide-eyes and the arm slaps 'round the circle each time I would give a properly-dressed response, the right color of humor, laced with taunting, covered over with the backwoods' accent and buoyed by facial expression. This is a whole body language.

Double negatives abound, perhaps because the practitioners have known doubly horrid injustice. We drop syllables in places and add in others. Double plurals, if one could have fathomed such a thing, are a favorite - maybe because so many never got a chance to speak or be heard.

It's a language that gets in you, encroaches on the accepted grammatical definitions, so that, long enough immersed, it is nearly impossible to recall the "correct" manner of speech...too long away, and the magic words evaporate, which is why I can only speak of it, and cannot recreate it here. I am not a gatekeeper, I slipped in and picked it up before the natives knew I could understand.

First, though, was Spanish forced from my head; pushed out by Southern pre-school teachers who might have let me thirst to death for not understanding my pleas for "agua," and a Spanish-speaking parent intent on an empire built of assimilation.

And now I'm in school for "English," far from my chosen dirt road heritage and no closer to a Cuban legacy I long to embrace. I sit studying language anew, and I realize I have always done this; even though I cannot call up the precious phrases that let me belong in culture for which my skin (and 'talkin proper') should have ensured my exclusion.

I am all of these things. I am reminded each day to "speak," to say hello to any I might pass on the street without reservation, 'cuz they didn't have to let me in way back when we laughed over hardship and learned from each other.

Nug-Nuts Rejoice

How we're gonna change things.

Healthcare begins with the food we eat. How will we "change things" with a lobbyist from Monsanto as Secretary of Agriculture? There can be no healing without awareness of our deadly method of food production - why is agribusiness protected in the new regime? Why is this special interest allowed at the table?

I plead with myself for optimism, to surf the waves of hope that rose at the election and have come to shore today with the inauguration, but the water is still murky, the horizon still lost in haze. The foundation of being is being ignored, it's perversion perpetuated.

We remain the nonesense we eat.

Snow White, Rose Red

Beware your actions, they form your character. I read that somewhere once. In some tiny book in the checkout line, or at the bottom of someone's email. I am weary of dissappointment and dissappointed at the wariness I long to release rather than increase. (words like these make me wonder of suffixes and origin and linkages of language - what is the vein-like connection of these words? does rhyme actually reveal heritage, a poem of history rather than coincidence?)

I want to tell him, "The next time you find me, I will be seated on a throne. Remember that I leave you now so that I may have some mercy left when you truly need it."

That is what I would say - chin slightly lifted, gaze unwavering - were the scenes in my head ever to occur. Always a dramatic exit, a reckoning. More probably, the explanation will be incoherent, or worse, there will be no attempt at explanation at all. And I would not get a chance to issue a regal dismissal. The dramatic moments I've forced always explode, I end up feeling silly. Unintentionally issuing ultimatums met with apparent indifference, and not mustering a persistent will to make them real. I feel no ultimatum now. Just a filmy disgust.

At worst he just doesn't care; at best his tender, reasonable places are scarred. The reasons could be surface scum, they could be fathomless currents; just being left to wonder, the mystery grows less intriguing, the effort more arduous, the reward transparent.

I'm not in a dark place though, I feel the stubborn sun - thankfully we have a little in common. And the balance shifts every day, the good side is winning. I am determined to foster and feed belief in the positive, to attract the beneficial energies. All transition is uncomfortable, the edges are being shaved off, the necessary bleeding.

Beware your inaction, it forms your character.

Oh Meeeeeeeeegggaaaaaaaaaaannnn

So my fantastic, proactively mischievous, beautiful BITCH of a friend done put my shit on YouTube man. How-what the f-ha-yu --- Are you AWARE of my loose trigger on mortification??!!! There was no forewarning for the video, much less the posting!! Don't I own my dumb-ass accent??!! "shampOO" ooo Are you kidding? I just, geez, I just. Damn! that's embarrassing.

But I guess you do know. In this short and glorious time, you know. That it is critical that I not remain frozen. That even if it is shit, it's out. Something has burst. You do for me what I wouldn't.

And that's why you didn't tell me. And that's why I will rejoice in your affection for a long time to come, and always be looking for the opportunity to pay the favor.

Well, Hot Damn

I got 2 As and 1 A- my first semester in grad school. look out!

(guess which one was the A-...asshole...)

LA has a waterfall!

Headed out to LA this morning, ended up in Yosemite. (You know how we do?!)

Every turn is serendipitous. LA was a no go (he is coming up tomorrow - dont ask, I am choosing to believe in the positive flow of love across the universe and as I focus on beneficial connection and the falling away of what I dont need, we shall see which was the right door. More on trust and past and discipline and joy later.) However, where I stopped to get gas and a granola bar happened to be the beginning of the road to Yosemite, as seen on my trusty atlas page (you people who pray to the GPS have to already know where you're going to get there - what sense does that make?). Never seen Yosemite, so I took a left. There was snow! And a waterfall falling into snow! It was 25 degrees! It was beautiful... My country training came into play - I turned down a road that wasnt meant for the Acura, ruts deeper than the car, I had to straddle them while sliding back and forth on the ice, dirt road practice came in handy.

The sun fell and it was time to go. I had planned a loop back the bay. Took my turn and looked up into a flashing sign that told me to get out my chains. I didnt have chains, or cell phone service, so I headed back out the way I came. But all the way back the way I had come seemed boring to this adventurer, so I got out the trust atlas (he needs a name, how 'bout Henry). Checked ol' Henry and plotted a new course. 'Cep they didnt tell Henry the road I picked had been abandoned long ago. There were so many patches in the road, it might as well have been cobblestone. A good 100 miles from where I ultimately needed to be, night had fallen, the old lady in me took over, getting cussed by the adventurer, we all turned around. Settled for hitting small hills fast enough to lose our stomach, and decided intact pavement was the best decision.

On the way to Yosemite and then in the park, I believe I passed my totem pole, though it came it pieces. Lets look them up and record them here so I can remember.

I saw a bald eagle on the flats beyond the orchards:

Eagle Energy
Because of his high flight, Eagle has been seen as a symbol of divinity among many cultures. To the Greeks he symbolized Zeus, father of wind and lightning; while the Native Americans see him as connection to Great Spirit.

Eagle teaches us that we have the ability to soar to great heights if only we will find the courage to do so. Once we dare to reach, we find that the upcurrents and thermals of the Universe will support us. Through Eagle we learn that the joy and freedom we gain through reaching for the Sun is worth the fear of singed feathers.

From his great height, Eagle's view of what is possible becomes broader, his horizons more limitless. Eagle people are may often seem apart from the crowd, where thier perspective can give them a better view of the big picture. Their broader perception gives them an inherent understanding of what must be done, and that in nature, the greatest mercy is often a swift kill.

However, Eagle's beak is swift and tearing, and Eagle people should remember that others view of the situation may be limited and to temper their words so that they do not cut others apart. It is important to learn that there is a time for force and a time for gentleness. There may also be a need to work at releasing past and repressed angers, so that the heart is lighter and can soar to greater heights.

Eagle's talons are strong and fierce. Those with Eagle medicine should be willing to grasp opportunity as it comes. To dive towards what they deem necessary or helpful. The feathers of the Eagle are said to hold great cleansing and healing power. Legend also tells that the Eagle would undergo a Phoenix-like rejuvenation by flying close to the Sun and burning away its feathers, then bathing in clear water and be reborn.

Eagle medicine teaches us to work towards releasing past hurts by embracing our inner core self -- the Sun at our heart, and by being willing to accept our emotions and heal. For those working Eagle there is a need for purification; willingness to embrace the creative Child Self at our core; and courage to let the processes of growth move through our lives.

Eagle thrives best in an environment of quiet isolation. Eagle people should be certain to make space in their lives for alone-time.Though a creature of the air, Eagle has strong associations in all elemental realms. He soars toward the sun (Fire) and yet purifies in a lake, according to legend (Water) -- also, the Bald Eagle lives near water & dines on fish -- and eats of the creatures of Earth. The strength of his legs, far stronger than most birds, also speak of a need for grounding and Earth association. Through this, we understand that the journey to our Higher Self is an alchemical process wherein the greatest growth will occur when there is balance in all dimensions.

Nice. Saw a wolf. Just standing and staring. Not afraid. At least I think it was a wolf. Kind of reddish brown. Maybe it was a giant fox...I'm gonna say wolf. If that was a fox, there is most definitely something in the water.

Wolf Totems
Wolves are the epitome of stamina, known to run 35 miles a day in pursuit of prey. They are highly misunderstood animals, who have gained the reputation of being cold blooded. In reality wolves are friendly and social creatures. Aggression is something they avoid, preferring rather to growl or create a posture to show dominance.

Even though living in close knit packs provide wolves with a strong sense of family, they are still able to maintain their individuality. Wolves represent the spirit of freedom, but they realize that having individual freedom requires having responsibilities.

Because wolf is a teacher and pathfinder, he comes when we need guidance in our lives. Those who have a Wolf Totem will move on to teach others about sacredness and spirituality. Wolf can also teach how to balance the responsibility of family needs and not to lose one's personal identity.

Wolf teaches us to develop strength and confidence in our decisions. He shows we will learn to trust our insights once we learn how to value our inner voice. This wisdom keeps us from inappropriate action. If wolf appears in your life examine where you need to develop more confidence and if you need more balance between friends, family, and yourself.

Well damned if that dont apply...Last I saw a bear. A bear! Brown tipped fur with a lighter color underneath. Ran right across the road and disappeared. Nobody else saw, just standing around or making snowmen very close to the woods that a bear had just run into.

Caution, Healing, Leadership
The power of the Bear totemis the power of introspection.The answers to all our questions lie within us.Each of us has the capacity to quiet the mind,enter the silence and know.

Just as the bear hibernates during the winter,people with a Bear totem will be quieterduring the winter months. But theymust awaken in the spring and seek whatever opportunities are around them.

When you have a Bear totem,you are being guided to a leadership role.You must be fearless in defending your beliefs.

The Bear also encourages you to exercise your abilities as a natural healer.

Bears are associated with trees which are natural antennas, linking the heavens and the Earth.Bear also has links to the seven color rays of the Universal Lightas well as Lunar ties, linking the subconscious and the unconscious mind.It is associated with the Goddess Artemis.


Wow. Shamanism will not be denied. Ready me. Purify and guide me to the place I must inhabit. Remind me I must make this place within. Amen.

Dammit. OK

I, of course, feel the need to qualify that last post. It wasnt all skunk shit back home and it aint all golden roses here.

The last night in Tallahassee, I got anxious. For days before, I couldnt wait to leave. Suddenly I wanted to be near my family and friends, I wasnt sure if California was the right decision. I asked my sister (mi Tita!) if going to school for poetry was "stupid." At that moment, I really wasnt sure. She answered like only she could, fortifying me. I felt her honesty, her belief in me. And I was healed.

I cannot recreate that connection, and I would not trade it for anything I might find. So though this path carries me from the source of family I've gathered around me, and the lights are brighter out here, the opportunities wider, my step a bit more energetic, and though I cant hide my excitement at actually having left, there are gifts I treasure and expect to keep.

It's me back there that I dont miss. I brought it here too - first chance I got, took up someone else's problem and filled my days with it. The round trip and the soul connections got me back on track. So in this new year, I make them proud. I begin the me they sent me off to be; and since I carry them with me, I dont have to look back.

Home?

Any Floridians reading this will be miffed with me (do ya'll say "miffed" out here?). I was ready to get back. It was nice to see friends, special to hug them and be washed in their love - but dude. I couldn't stay another day, I thought I would lose my mind. Almost as if this one real escape (the coming to California - the decision and the follow-through) was in jeopardy the longer I stayed. I could see from the other side of the fence, and the grass aint greener - it's gold.

I couldnt wait for the plane to land - by the way, non-stop flights from Florida to California suck ASS; gimme a bad meal and a bathroom break, something that lets me move my leg more than once in 6 hours. We circled the city and I found myself saying, "Oh thank god, I'm Home," and immediately realized the inaccuracy of the statement, or, at the very least, the strange and unexpected application of the label.

How can a place I've known for four months be home? Still I can't help but feel better here, more in tune, more exposed to things I want to do that I havent even thought of yet. This space is finally mine. The box top is open, with no packaging instructions, no final destination. Am I wrong to feel so gloriously unencumbered, far from obligations I barely realized were suffocating me until I breathed here.

Does the simplicity of distance warrant the shedding? Am I allowed to be free of the coat of needs that those at home still require of me, should I entertain guilt at not wanting to wear it? Because I dont feel guilty, and that feels foreign. I stop in this newness that has not yet worn off, and remind myself to remember There. And it's a fondness that rises in me, though I dont stop long. I smile and send energy, but I dont really want to know what might be miserable or miserably same. I want to leave There where it is.

I cannot speak this without causing people pain. I feel I could never explain to satisfaction the difference between internal and external co-habitiation. That pains me. But I am surprised at how little. Time, maybe, to accept that finding me involves necessary loss. I just thought I would miss it more. But there seems no time for that, or reason.

The It I have missed for so long is becoming. The Instead is home now, the What Next. And the flowers along my stone steps, the lights along the mountain ridges, the city skyline, the knowledge from new mouths and pages answer "Anything."