April 26, 2005
Centered

Pay no mind to the way in which I travel, the way in which I conduct this life. One life One Love.

From racing bikes around Redlands in SoCal to Sea Otter and the Bay Area, and getting into a motor vehicle roll-over accident where a driver cut me off and I veered out of control in Santa Barbara on the 101… it was a welcoming thing to come home. Never have I been in such wanting to feel home. I have so long been waiting to come back to Oregon. It is the home. Does everyone feel nostalgic about their hometown home thing, place they grew up the smell of recent rain, seeing the forest through the trees frogs croaking in spring, moss covered trees.

What this Oregon home offers more than anything is a feeling. What is that feeling you have when you stand there speechless? What is that emotion running through you? Tears of joy tears of sadness. The moonlit night dizzy skies night shadowing colorful morning sound of the wren. I heard this bird singing this morning to hold nature that cannot be held. Captured in memory rain falling on the tin roof.

Can lay ourselves the best of plans … work to follow the path .. if you had the real thing how could you tell?

Watch the sun sink like a stone. 

I’ve had some time to think about you on the long ride home.  

It occurred to me the other day I remember what it was… was there some better way to say goodbye?

April 7, 2005
L.A., Home of the Body Bag

Dog parks and wireless internet. You can take your dog, wear him out playing with 50 other like-minded pups for an hour while sipping your latte and working on your weekly assignments. Time flies when you’re exchanging tips with your friends on ghosting and web design, wired and nauseous from caffeine of course, and parents rave about children growing up and being born. I heard gunshots earlier tonight around 10:30pm. Helicopters flying overhead and a semi truck idling in residential places. Am I just a small town girl totally out of my element?

While visiting my great friend Jason Sweet in LA over the last 2 days (he’s getting really good at tattooing and will be famous someday), he has taken me to some well-known, uptown restaurants for their slice in history:  Barney’s Beanery (pre-prohibition) and the place last night that I loved for it’s retro style, a Jewish café called Canter’s, in the Fairfax District, which has been around since the 20’s and just a crazy place to watch people if you happen on the place at 3am or even 9pm for a corn beef deli sandwich you can’t even get your mouth around. As a real bonus there’s a bakery attached that is just as insane. I really had to bite my tongue and not indulge in what peered at me through the glass cases. It peered, I did not!

But just one shiny grain of sand am I… something about to live and die… and the man on the record…oh boy.

Hanging out now with my folks in Palm Springs (and yeah, there’s some real conservatives hangin here) for a few days where it’s hot and windy and so dry I am gasping during an interval workout today. Some real idiot redneck decided to pull off the road right in front of me mid-interval and kick up dust, dirt and rocks for a few hundred feet and speed away. Was hoping the dude might come back so I could… As they say “Mean People Suck!”

I heard something on the radio the other day about finding out what our destructive patterns are and fixing them and that the fix-all is right there inside you when you have the intension and focus to resolve them.