I get a body

I borrow it for a time

Running sweating dancing 

Even floating 

Mine

 

This is Not My Car

    In the vibrant yellow of a butterfly's wing, there is summer. I am young. I am hungry. Each day feels necessary. Alex G's new album comes out later this month. Caterpillars are nesting in my heart, clearly whispering notions of a nearing personal transformation. Already, I have found that I wasted this early summer season feeling stuck in an energy of confusion pertaining to my future. Being this age feels like a never-ending leap backwards and forwards between knowing how young I am and yet knowing that there is a multitude of time left. The very real need to set up the rest of my life exists here and now. I wish an elder would just laugh at me and how clearly my age I am acting. They seem to know this phase well. 

    I was worried that I was leaning into an energy of inaction. That I was pushing away what the world had drawn up as vital movement towards my future. I stopped yesterday and asked myself: What would I want my life to look like if it were completely up to me? If I could choose it all? I figured that I would be a writer and a Spanish teacher. One that frequents bathhouses and is well-versed in yoga. I would have more energy and patience for the world. I dreamt of having enough money not only to travel to distant places but to become intimate with these locations. To take a piece of each of them with me everywhere I find myself next. It would be my hope that if I were lucky enough to end up with the dharma that is a wealth like this, that I would be able to easily give it away, knowing money is energy and sitting on massive amounts of it while others go without could hardly stir good fortune going forward. 

    This woman I would become would leak blue hues of salt water, straight from source, into everything. I would listen more than I talk. In my belief that words are spells, I would stand tall. Spinning magic threads of honey as a philosophy. When I entertain this future reality and all it would encompass, I sense that these desires do not stem from me being unsatisfied in my corner of the world but rather are a natural urge to deepen my encounters with God in a new way as I enhance my awareness. Learning by doing. I fail at nothing in this place. I learn everything. It has come to my attention lately that I become increasingly more anxious the longer I go without having a teacher. 

    Always have I identified as a student. My spongy mind loves new information, theories, science, wisdom. It desires newness and seeing over the valley of what I've learned to find a vast forest of all I am ignorant to. My hair stands on end with a new book in my hands. This summer I did not enroll myself in any courses due to lack of resources to continue my education. Truthfully, I am no stranger to this non-linear world of on and off schooling. But my sadness grows in a very real way when I do not have an elder or teacher to look to. Thankfully, the anxiety around not being in school right now has dropped significantly. 

    This is no small step I am choosing for myself, after all. The fork in the road is big and domineering. No matter the intimidation, I return to my heart and remind myself that choices are privileges and I am not without luck or protection. The other night I was laying on my yoga mat thinking about all the roads that I can take to "have a career" and buy into some American dream to play out. Like a semi-truck made of flowers I was softly hit with the real inclination that I very well know why I can't seem to choose a distinct path at this time. All I want to do is study God. Not in an organized, theological classroom environment but in the only place I really like to learn: my big fat heart! Duh!

    If I had the choice, I would make every day on Earth my opportunity to learn about it. About the creator. How had I not seen this as a genuine path for myself? It's complicated. Learning about God through birthing goodness into every action I do and person I meet doesn't always translate onto a resume or into a rigid workplace. I don't know that that's going to award me with a great job. Girl has to eat. My appetite craves only God's words from God's mouth. There may not be a structured road to take in this moment. I am resting in the knowing that this isn't my car and I'm not really on this highway. God does not roll dice. Why should I? 

We Will Not Go Unchanged

    In the iron house, where the iron lady lives, she sits at her favorite window. The view from the window looks out unto infinity. The wheat and shrub outside run free. An animal in the distance meets her iron eyes. A graceful moment of recognition. A sigh commences in her lungs, replicating steel factory noise. There is no release here. This thankless place. She enjoys seeing the animals grazing far away into the distance. Their aliveness captivates her. A feeling of unique smallness grasps her. Unsatisfied, she knows her window is the only escape. A portal to a world awake and merciful. Bitterness pushes her out of the iron house and into the fields.

    The sun had possessed her this day. The soft, external world calls her by name. The cows move slowly, eating long strokes of grass, smiling inwardly. She runs to them.

"Do not distract us.", They say, "We are praying to God." 

    A smile forms on her inflexible face. Placing stiff hands onto the soft hide of an animal, she belongs to something for the first time. The cow lays its chin on her head and exhales. She cannot help but let out a whimper of love. All the iron begins to flush away, seeping into soil, giving nutrients to everything in its path. This leaves her exposed, thoughtfully laced with cells and flesh. She will never be the same after love. 

    

Breathing Dirt

     There's a lotus flower seated between my blue eyes today. Today is my day and I wish I could call Sotce on the phone. It is good to have guides and gurus, and it is also necessary to know that the answer waits patiently for you. Asking around can be helpful and yet only you can save yourself. I am imagining being in Greece today. That does not mean that I do not want to be here. In fact, here is such a good place to be that it hurts my bones. Last night we made spring rolls. My hands, road-mapped palms from millennia to millennia, rolling the ancient recipe. In my dingy 70s kitchen. Years go by and we do the same things. This makes me feel that I am exactly like everyone else. A comforting feeling. One of belonging.

    California never seems to change. Does it shift, taking on alternate shapes and beliefs, just in time to revert upon my annual arrival? I get the selfish sense that the land wants me to melt into childhood. To recall everything. When the plane dipped under thick cloud formations to expose those deep, green rolling hills I know so well, my heart exhaled. My shoulders released. My eyes closed in humble recognition of the Cajon Pass. Looking to the mountains and valleys that I asked my questions to for twenty years; I was brought to a conclusion that I could never be spiritually separate from this place. 

     It was a special visit home. On the flight there, my love and I weren't seated together. It felt silly that this made us miss each other so much. He finished Kerouac's On the Road, mid-flight and made his way to where I was sitting. He held my hands with tears in his eyes and told me that he couldn't quite explain how he felt just then. I understood exactly. Words can be such roadblocks. So bulky and finite. A look tells me everything I need to know. It would be pivotal.  He, going back to his seat. I, remaining and left to sit with that feeling. Mid-air. A brewing taste of future joy. 

    My cousin got married and she was the most beautiful bride I have ever seen. Like making spring rolls, we meet, we cook together, we promise to tie our futures together until we die. Cycles completing. Filling buckets up, pouring them out, passing it down. Under the wild and primitive desert night sky, Jake and I discussed what we foresaw. Fortune-telling and guessing. I felt far away from all my routines and usual mind-paths. The next day he bought me a book from an older hippie woman. She looked as though she breathed dirt her entire life. I mean this in an awe-inspiring way. I'm seeing this for myself, with a hopeful heart. 

    Getting to visit my faerie Bee was an overflow. Suddenly she was much older. My dear friend Caleb, too. A mother and father to a baby kitten and stewards to the first home of their own. The sun beat down on me and I could have died of happiness. We got to watch Bee and Caleb try Mediterranean food for the first time and we laughed about the perfect mix of carelessness and divine protection. I was full of Baklava and melting with an overarching feeling of good karma present in all of our lives. Jake, Bee, Caleb, and myself. Bee and I used to sleep in the same bed every night, bong-kissed, with reality tv fog around us. We would sit on her carpet before winding down and talk about our dreams, all the weird boys I've dated (Bee has a much better track record), and laugh about things I cannot now remember. In those days, she was my big sister, my little sister, and my star twin. Now she seems to me just Bee. No better way to describe her. The name itself encapsulates everything. She is everything and will become everything. 

    Before heading home, we pulled the blue rental car over (blue cars being good luck as told by the rental car service guy Manuel) and took some pictures of us with some Joshua trees. In my Portuguese sandals and a flowing light blue shirt that Steve Nicks would envy, he took a picture of me next to my favorite tree of the bunch. I've always wanted to end up with somebody who is fond of detours. Once you find yourself open to detours, everything seems to equalize. 

    Maybe one day we can buy a small house out there in Joshua Tree. 

    I will never meet the view of my city from the plane with an even-paced heart. It strikes me with thunderbolts of love each and every time I return. The rivers, the towering trees, the millions of people just tinkering. Todo es un milagro. I finished Patti Smith's Just Kids that night in my familiar bed, mourning it instantaneously. Something in my heartbeat today, the one that is already longing to travel again, anhelando ser un extraño en un lugar extraño, is telling me that although I am like everyone else...some of this has got to be extremely unique. At least some of it.