Har den äran

High noon. I roll the car out of the garage. The top is already down. There is a blanket in the passenger seat, a book of Rumi's poetry, a bottle of water, and my camera. The weather is brilliant. I've got two days of sunshine left before I return home to Oregon, where it is raining. Of course. I love Portland for its rain, for its cool misty mornings, for the volcanic skyline and the unpretentious , surprisingly sophisticated people. But I am a California native, a 5th generation California Girl, and this--this land of golden hills and winding roads, of sunlight and fog--this land is in my blood. And in the past few days it has called to me, and I've recalled what I loved about it.

California Highway 1 again, across the Golden Gate Bridge. This time I do not stop in Sausalito, I press on, up to Mt Tamalpais, over and around, winding my way through groves of Eucalyptus and wildflowers that perfume the air with citrus sweetness. The car hugs the curves, growling up from the shaded sylvan corners into the sunny straightaways--the entire drive to Stinson Beach done in 2nd and 3rd gears. A blast of salt-scented air and warmth, and I am on the west side of the mountain, the car in neutral, gliding down the narrow highway toward the Pacific Ocean. A hawk follows my descent, gliding with me. Stinson Beach appears below, and I am awed by the power and beauty of nature. And deeply, deeply grateful that I am here to see, feel, and smell it. I am alive, despite the death and dying around me. And perhaps because of it, I am keenly aware of the joy and beauty to be experienced in my everyday life.
There are few people on the road with me. I thought there would be more, seeing as today is Good Friday, but I share the road with a few other people in convertibles and a lone highway patrolman. Most of the traffic on the road is cyclists, actually, and their stamina and svelte physiques awe me almost as much as the engineering wizardry that went into making this powerful car so very quiet. There is a 10 mile section of Highway 1 between Stinson Beach and the hook-up near Muir Woods where most of the drive is 20 miles per hour. Winding switchbacks that give teasing views of San Francisco to the South, before turning inland again.

The day, the drive, the car, me... it is all poetry. But it gets better!

Around 4pm I cross the Golden Gate bridge again, going south. I prop my camera on the steering wheel and got this shot, even:

Over the bridge, through the crossover to Presidio Park, make a right at Geary, two more rights to get onto Clement (it takes three rights to make a left in SF), and I am headed the right direction to pick up a very special cake for MR's birthday. My friend Janne is always talking about his swedish princess cakes and how much he loves them, and I'd despaired of getting one here in the States, but I found a German bakery in San Francisco called Schubert's that makes princess cakes. I know MR likes raspberry, and almond/marzipan, and I figured he would enjoy the kirsch custard and whipped cream and moist white cake. I mean, what's not to like? So I have my usual excellent parking luck in SF and got a spot a half block away from the bakery. I walk in and pick this up:
A swedish princess cake with a pale yellow-green marzipan icing, and the words "Har den äran Älskling!" which is the Swedish equivalent of "Happy birthday, my love" but literally says "In your honour, lover." It is a very light cake, airy. Even the custard is light. The raspberry layer is fresh raspberry, hardly sweetened at all -- it tastes vividly of sunlight and whole raspberries. MR approves. Yum and Yay.

Leaving Massachusetts

The sun shone. The rain came, a torrential downpour complete with thunder and lightning. And then it snowed. And rained some more. All in 10 days. I'd forgotten how bizarre the weather could be in New England.

She was brain dead but we kept her on life support long enough for them to find donors for her organs. Four people were given a second chance at life. This is a comfort to me somehow, knowing that some part of her lives on in others. Like me, she had no children.

She was cremated. Her urn is actually a beautiful wooden box, which we will take to Hawaii. We will disburse her ashes in the same place we did our mother's ashes 6 years ago.

I went to her boyfriend's house to get her things. I had this odd moment, this memory-echo, when I went to get into the rental car stuffed full of clothing and paperwork and medical supplies. I remembered Tammy and me in Hilo, standing next to my mother's car, which contained all of her belongings. It seemed so sad that her life fit into a car, and my sister Tammy sobbed then, horrible wracking sobs that echoed in the jungle with the same mournful quality as wolves howling. My other sister unpacked the rental car when I got to her place. I couldn't seem to do it. I was so blocked on it, for some reason. But she understood and did it for me.


We had a quiet ceremony at the funeral home. Just family and a few close friends. Friends of hers opened their restaurant early and served us lunch. I had homemade tortellini soup and a portobello mushroom salad. It was all quite tasty. It was the first thing I remember tasting in a week, actually.

Friday we opened her bar for a goodbye party. Last call for alcohol. It was just for 4 hours, but there must have been 250 people who showed up to pay their respects and send her off. I think she would have liked it. She always threw a good party.

I'm in Portland now, with an 18 hour turn-around and then to California to see my sister Caro before she dies. She said come now, she is tired. The tumor on her aorta makes every beat of her heart painful, and she is ready to go. And so I am coming.

Such a painful way to start a new year, with so much loss and suffering. I could make it mean a lot of different things about the world, about life... I could chose to make it mean that life is unfair, that it sucks--all sorts of things. I choose instead to make it mean that Tammy is free of suffering and Caro soon will be, and that life is what it is and every day we have is the most important day of our lives.

Solstice on the Coast

It is quiet here. Very quiet, except for the wind and the surf. It sounds like there is an airco engine running outside. The seagulls are grounded. The dunegrass and brambles are waving at me, trying to get my attention. I think they want inside. The sea is gray-green--big stormy swells with colliding whitecaps in a rush to reach the shore.

I am listening to Dead Can Dance's Toward the Within album. The Piece for Solo Flute with its haunting melody provides a soothing counterpoint to nature's rage. Solstice has passed, the sun is reborn. The days will grow longer, and yet Winter has formally begun.

There is a New Year on the horizon, hovering out there in the fog and mist, as yet unformed. I have great hopes for that New Year... and no small amount of dread. Who will I chose to be to meet the challenges and opportunities of 2008? Looking into the future is like looking into that mist, and the only certainty right now is my sister's Jan 2nd surgery to remove the cancer growing inside her.

The coffee is brewed and the muffins are cool enough to eat. My friends are awake. Time to start my Sunday.

Awake to the Weather

We've been having schizophrenic weather here in Western Oregon. The sun shines, and 15 minutes later there is a fierce storm, and then glorious sun and blue skies, with only the downed branches and the wet pavement to attest to the fact that a storm came though. The best part is that the air smells so good. It smells fragrant with flowers and clean and pure. This photo is of the Grand Canyon. I took it about two years ago, on a hike with a friend and a hail storm blew up. It was beautiful and exhilarating and bitterly cold. I remembered my trail manners and spoke to a couple pressing on to let my partner know I was heading back. He caught up with me shortly and we agreed that conditions were more adverse than we planned for. So we retreated back up to the rim and went back to our cabin, where we spent the rest of the day warming up and watching the storm form through the window.

I have a huge respect for Nature. I find in it an endless source of wonder and beauty. I also find displays of Nature's ferocity highly erotic... probably because I feel so alive, so present to the moment, pumped full of adrenaline and feeling with every part of me... even the tiny hairs on my arms. I dance in the rain. I turn my face up to the sky. I love the feel of thunder's 'boom' on my skin... I can feel the impact of the sound against my body. The lightening's flash, so jagged, seems to illuminate my mind even behind closed eyelids. And I know myself alive in a way I'm rarely awake to.

What is it about modern life that makes us numb? I think it is the routine. We like our routine, we like the certainty of knowing what our day will be, what the weather will be, who we will see, what we will do. We like life predictable as possible, because uncertainty makes us anxious. And yet it also makes us feel alive. The greatest certainty in life is death. And the greatest uncertainty is when death will claim us. And in the face of death we cling to what we can control, to certainty and predictability, and in that process, we leech ourselves of life, of vitality, of aliveness.

Reclaim the wonder of your daily life. Dance in the rain. Hike in a hailstorm. Stop what you are doing and tip your face to the sky. Disrupt your routine: try something new every day. Do something you fear. Take a bite of the unknown. Awaken to the sensual immediacy of life. Its so fucking short!

The sounds of spring

I awakened this morning at a reasonable hour, having slept 45 minutes past my usual waking. Today is the fifth or sixth clear day in a row this week--something remarkable in the Pacific Northwest. Since I'm going up The Mountain today, I brewed coffee first thing, then stepped out into my patio to enjoy the beautiful morning. I was greeted by crisp, moist air that had my nipples standing as a wave of gooseflesh swept over me. Standing outside in a silk nightie in mid-March was a bit too spontaneous. I went back inside and grabbed a robe and camera, then dragged my mic and stand outside. You see, my back yard is a golf course, and the trees are in flower, and the birds and squirrels were chittering, and the fishermen were motoring down the river, and the wind chime was singing, punctuated by the lonely sound of a train whistle. And when the weather permits I am outside in the mornings, experiencing this. So I thought I would share it.
Enjoy.

Just your average blog entry

Last week a nasty cold fell on me like an avalanche, wiping out my voice, and filling my lungs. I left work at noon on Wednesday and it wasn't until Sunday that I could get out of bed without feeling dizzy. So I stayed in bed. A dozen long-stemmed roses in a gorgeous salmon-pink colour arrived to grace my room on Thursday, a bit of beauty to raise my spirits. This afternoon, more flowers, this time at work (a big no-no): an arrangement of orchids and interesting greenery. The card read "Stubborn wench--at work when you should be at home, in bed..." I added the parenthetical "with me" that he left off of the message, probably to save the florist embarrassment.

A cold front hit the Pacific Northwest at the same time. It was interesting to look at little drifts of sun-sheltered snow on vivid green grass. Such a contrast. The culms of the black bamboo seem so dark right now, the leaves sparser and less vivid. The holly trees are full of berries this year. Big red berries that show up so well against the spiky, waxy leaves. I really need to get out and take some photos. I've been wanting to for days, but I dared not go out in below-freezing weather, not with my lungs so full of crap. Perhaps this week.

I finished a naughty story yesterday, the seeds of which started months ago but which I just didn't have time to do right. I wanted to do a D/s story, but I wanted to get the nuances right, the psychology, the dialogue, the scenario. I'm fairly pleased with it, though I know some people think I will have ended it prematurely. I just don't feel it necessary to spell out what any reader knows is going to happen. That is the thing about erotica. You know the ending before you even start reading :) I doubt I'll record this one, there is too much male dialogue.

Plans for next month are shaping up. An upcoming seminar in San Fransisco just before my birthday prompted me to take some extra vacation time to spend with loved ones in the area. It should be a very full 10 days. Hopefully the weather will be conducive to photography. I may even bring my tripod.

The intensity level seems to be ratcheting up in some of my relationships. I don't know if it is a function of my stress-level or my customary availability during this period in my work. But I am being asked on several fronts when I'm going find a less demanding job, when I'm going to settle down, narrow down the list of people I'm dating, etc. I've got some great people in my life, people I enjoy so much and enjoy dating casually, no intimacy pressure or awkwardness, a fair number of whom are 'poly' people. And then the two most intense, rewarding, and frustrating relationships are with men who are monogamous, love me, 'wouldn't ask me to be exclusive' and yet aren't happy. I've offered to end the relationships. I've offered to eliminate physical intimacy and focus on what is important: relating. But that is not what they want. No, they want me available and all to themselves. And I'm floored. They are both good-looking, personable, financially-stable professionals that just about any single woman between the ages of 25 and 40 would gladly date. So why do they want me? Or why don't I want to pick one and settle down? Oddly enough, this is not good for my ego. And its definitely not good for my peace of mind.

There is so much love in me. I think learning metta meditation, learning to project that love out into the world, has helped to diminish some of that compelling intensity I bring to my deeper relationships. But not enough, I think, for one person to bear the force of it, of what they both seem to covet for themselves--my uniqueness. I am of the mind, however, to give one of them what he thinks he wants. And see how quickly he changes his mind. I don't think either of them is capable of valuing what being in a monogamous relationship with me really means. All of my intensity, my libido, my intellect, my spontaneity, my intuition, my emotions--everything I've honed in the past 2 years I've been single gathered up and devoted to one person, focused on one person? Heh. They would be intimidated.

They both deny it, but they would. I don't know why, but even when I try to be open and warm, I intimidate some people. Daily, prolonged exposure to me seems to make my partners feel insecure or overwhelmed or whatever. I am whole unto myself, self-contained and self-reliant. I don't need any one person. And men need to be needed. They need to feel they have a purpose in a woman's life, a reason to be: protector, friend, lover, provider. But no one person can be all things to another. Its a fallacy that monogamists the world-over have bought into and try to brainwash and socialize others into believing--that you're not whole until you find your other half. And two men I love think that their individual self-interest is jeopardized by the presence of other loved-ones in my life. They don't realize that it is not the others they have to worry about competing with for me. Its me.

Change

Its been very stormy here. I've watched in delight and awe at the high winds making 60 foot trees dance like palm fronds in the hands of children cavorting after church on Palm Sunday. I've listened to the rain pounding my window; record rains that are washing out roads and flooding homes. I live where two rivers meet and every morning I've looked with wonder at the new heights the water reaches, wondering if the State parks that border my home will flood again, as they did in January.

This morning, it stopped raining long enough for the sun to peep through the clouds, creating a golden stage that I fully expected angels to appear upon, blowing their horns. It was so glorious I stopped my car and pulled out my camera and snapped a photo. People looked at me--other drivers, their passengers--they looked at me and they looked in the direction I pointed the camera, looking for what I was photographing, and their faces wore puzzled expressions. I realized that they did not see the sunrise. It made me sad that nature had put on such a gloriously, exquisitely beautiful display for us as a consolation for two weeks of rain, and it went mostly unnoticed.

The trees are still changing. Some still wear green, but many are golden and ruddy, and some look ragged, with their leaves torn from them prematurely, leaving baldspots amongst the colour. At lunch I put on my rain-slicker and my Tevas and went for a walk. And as I walked, I noticed the ground was littered with jewel-toned leaves. I chased the ones recently torn from their trees, gathering them up into my hands, delighted with their singular beauty, each one unique as a snowflake.

I walked back to the office soaking wet. Cold. Ankles muddy. Hands and nails dark with smears of leaf litter. A colleague held the door open for me, and I grinned at her, filled with a child-like glee, and showed her the treasures in my hands. She shook her head, this woman a dozen years younger than me and said that only I would be chasing leaves in a storm. Her smile was condescending. The leaves were unremarkable to her. She has a whole front-yard full of them, she said.

A conversation with a friend, someone I love deeply, oh so deeply, and whom I miss every day because I seem him so rarely. We talked and I spoke of how pleased I am with the amazing people I am inviting into my life. And we talked of change, and in his frustration he mocked me, stating that perhaps the best way for him to effect change in his life was to "start pretending that everybody in this world is fucking amazing."

That hurt. It brought tears to my eyes. I said, "Its not my place to tell you whether or not you need to grow or change, and it is not my place to tell you how. I am the child, remember? I am the idiot who chases pretty leaves in a storm. And looks like a simpleton grinning ear-to-ear because they are so beautiful to me. But they are just leaves to everyone else, you know. You are a leaf. You are beautiful to me. Perfect as you are. And I don't need you to change in order for me to see you that way. But its silly of me, isn't it? Pretending that there are so many fucking amazing people in my life? They are just people. Just leaves, you know? I find them beautiful and incredible, but to other people they are just people."

He said, "Your people aren't my people, and you seek to find the silver lining in the clouds. You are free to look at people however you like hon. What upsets me is that I feel you are telling me what I cannot do, ie change."

I responded with, "I thought perhaps it would be good for you to try being more like me, to see the possiblity and the beauty in even the littlest thing--I thought maybe if you could see the world from a perspective of change, it would give you hope and pleasure... But I want you to know that I recognize that my child-like enthusiasm for the adventure of both my inner and outer lives is not a paradigm that is for you. And I am trying to apologize for trying to get you to look within and explore the possibilities that changes inside you might create outside you, via a change in attitudes/perceptions."

He said, "Change for the mere sake of change, is a waste of energy. Change, to impact that which brings the most unhappiness in one's life, is meaningful."

I thought for a moment and said, "Indeed. Pity so much technological progress is tied to change for the sake of changing, of trying something new... "

I felt an ache in my solar plexus. I had trouble fitting my mouth around the next words, but I managed. "The truth is I should probably be more like you. Obviously, you only embrace change when it is absolutely necessary. You have your feet firmly planted on the ground and change is something that comes to you, not something you seek. You are perfect as you are. I love you as you are. And as you say you are happy as you are, I am happy, too. You don't often seem so to me, but maybe I need to grow up and live in the real world, like you do. Its rather ugly, it seems, and unhappy, too, but its real."


There are days like this when I go to bed wondering when the curse of experiencing reality differently will be lifted.

And with that final thought, I'm off to bed to catch a nap. I'll be in California for about 10 days. It will be lovely to see my friends and family.