It was difficult to collect the thoughts I wanted to write. Difficult because me heart bleeds with it everytime I try. Raw and open and still bleeding....my blood flows into pools painting pictures of things from the past...a magic mirror changing and shifting in the tidal waves.

I think I have found it, again.

The words flowing and pounding against me, out of me, mouth open with the taste of seaweed and salt on my tongue....screaming with the voice of an albatross causht in the wind and suddenly being pulled upwards on the drafts

I am bound to this place as surely as if I were anchored in the rocks...waited down with chains of my own making that slowly turn to rust welding themselves to my bones.

Collecting pieces of the pictures in my head along with sand dollars and pebbles that will go into a jar on my side board in the desert. I long for the sea and the City. Long to see the ghosts shifting through time on the streets before me, before the shops and houses I walked on years before and walk on now.

I cling to the small bits of glass, stone and shells like a rosary to spell over and over...a lifeline to who and what I was and most surprisingly, still am....slowly releasing into what I will become and where we will be again. I am obsessed with it....only admitting it now....as a lover that has run away out of desperation and aching for return. I have run away too many times in my life and now realise I need run no more.

Acceptance is strange and familiar...looking at yourself in the mirror and seeing the child reflected back. My child was curious and bold, unafraid of climbing the dangerous rocks and walking the edge of the Marina walls while my Grandmother screamed out in warning. The sea was always below me and before me....the grand tightrope walk.

I went back to the hotel room that night sick and nerve shattered...wishing silently that I hadn't come this way...it was foolish and silly....throwing up all the years of fear and insecurity....purging my body and soul of the constant running from who and what I have always been....running from my Grandmother's boogie man...the wino in the bushes....running from self-imposed pain and my own reflection. I shed it off me as a skin and looked at it in wonder.

Why?

Habits die hard when you finally cut them down. It writhed and clawed out from within me as my stomach churned and spasmed in pain. A beast within tearing its way out one way or another...everything subsiding once I looked at it and ran my fingers through its fur and called it by my own name. I accepted my beast.

Exausted, but at peace, I fell into sleep next to Tony wrapped in the soft weight of the bedsheets and his scent. I drifted into sleep like a child.

I am going back on my terms....unafraid to climb the stairs and unlock the door of the house on the Marina that has always been mine....but only....only...if I wanted it bad enough.

The child is coming home.

Saturdays

Saturdays I revel in the early mornings.....my husband still asleep, the cats and dogs drowsing around my feet. There is a feel to these early mornings that is mine alone. I am almost possessive of these times. I can sit and think....planning the magickal herb garden of my back yard. There are notes to be written, art pieces I wish to make and just quiet moments of contemplation. I study during these times or come up with a new beading project. In Spring and Summer I sit with the window open and let the Virginia Zephyrs breeze through cleansing my home. The early morning light will hit the glass bottles, shimmering through the room and painting the walls in blues, greens and yellows. These are the moments of life that have profound yet unspoken meaning.....something so simple as stained glass in sunlight on an early Saturday morning.

Adventures in the Desert

After a delightful Friday night of chills, stomach cramps and other nicities, I woke up Saturday morning feeling pretty much back to normal.

Tony and I took the truck out in search of Soda Lakes. They are two small, younger volcanoes that are filled with water (currently...with all our seismic activity...who knows?!) We arrived around 1 and were greeted by a variety of desert flowers, bees and horseflies. The view from the rim is intersting as you can see that you are standing above a caldera. We collected basalt bombs and also found some small chips of agate. Some of the basalt bombs from this area are said to contain olivine and magantite (lodestone). We did find some of the bombs had crystals in the sides. I found a really large bomb about the size of a cantaloupe. It is going in a special spot in the rock garden.

Aferwards, we made out way out past Grimes Point and over to the old, Lake Lahontan dry shores. Out there we found wonderstone and quartz, as well as lava and tufa. We also found a very large patch of agate.

It was fun to watch the fence lizards and horny toads. There were some interesting small birds out there, too. I would have loved to have had a field guide to find out what they were. We stayed out there until 6 and lazily made our way home.

There were a few people staying at the Petrogylphs. We passed by the Hidden Caves, but didn't stop. That will be for another trip. You can see them from the road. The large one has an almost ominous look to it, but that could well be due to the stories of it being haunted. When we do go, I'll make sure I leave some sage and cedar bundles for the Indian spirits, maybe some beads, too.

Today we will unload the rocks from the truck and see what we have. I'll probably sit out with a scrub brush and water and clean off many of them. There is a serenity in rockhounding that I love, even if it is a little insecty sometimes. I am always amazed at the beauty Mother Nature creates...now that's one artistic palette!

Next weekend I am planning on buying a couple of plants to start the garden. A little at a time is how I will build it.

I'll post the photos of the rocks later today.

Your Own Version and Mine

A thorn sticks in my finger and it penetrates right into my brain. There are times when I am afraid of my thoughts...scared of what my mind will conjure up for it's own enjoyment or torture.

I have been writing since 5 this morning. Unable to sleep, the poems, no, the emotions ran over in my mind ceaselessly. If I purgue this, will it leave me alone? How many times do I have to purgue it? It drones on and on as a nun over her rosary.

rerun....

change the channel

twilight zone and they are all the same show.

popcorn for breakfast with oatmeal and a dash of brown sugar with my tea. Okay, let's see where this leads me.

Where it leads you.

There is a dark side to me...glittering, knife-edged and very, very sharp. I am throwing it all up on paper, so to speak...the beautiful, bold, insecure and bizarre.

...the smell of snuffed out candles in the evening air and church confessions banging my head against the dark, on the wood confessional and the words of someone anonymous giving me meaningless absolution for sins I haven't even thought of committing.....wouldn't in a million years.

I count candles and rain drops, and tears that were shed over trivialities and nonesense whose intense meaning in my past look absurd in the now. I keep counting them. Collecting them as scattered beads on the ground, something precious to be put away until I have the patience to re-string them and turn them into something truly beautiful.

The night is young and the spirit is believing in the wax and lighted string and wisps of smoke tangled up in prayers so intimate and unspoken aloud . The silence within me echos up and the choir screams. The spirit boils.

Do you see it? Do you understand ?

So much I pick up and see. So much that goes unnoticed in everyday hurrying to work.

People pass by the building fascade and never stop and REALLY see it. They don't know about the beautiful tiles and the rococo. They don't see the gargoyal sitting placid and ready to spout water during the rainfall. The see the piece of yesterday's newspaper and dog crap by the doric column and have no idea there is a sky above. Eyes to the pavement. Attention to the bits of litter and trash.

I see it, too. I just have the nerve to raise my head. That makes me dangerous. That makes me know too much.

Laying down at Sutro gate is a cement lion. He waits and watches the decades roll by with the fog from the Pacific Ocean. He is covered in sun, covered in dew, cloaked in rain. His roar is frozen. He is wise and aware of everything that has passed before him in the stream of traffic and time that has flowed down the hill over looking the ruins of ghosts and laughter and dancing in the dark to the orchestra after oysters and champagne. Dancing on the floors of a building that you can't see above the ruins and the tunnel and the boom of the waves at high tide when the spirits run with your candle through the darkness and snuff it out on the rocks and water at the end of cave. Dancing with their ghost lights and dreaming of us as a fantasy in their mind.

Madness, you whisper.

Silent. So much is.

Lost Things on the Highway

Lost things...lost people...moments and memories. It's strange how sometimes a piece of time that is so important in a special moment gets drowned in your mind and then resurfaces. A trigger point gets touched and suddenly you're transported thirty years back....

into a old brick colored Ford that is driving through a pine and aspen filled canyon in Utah at sunset. The Moody Blues "Knights in White Satin" is playing on the radio. It was the end of autumn. The seats were warm and soft. I was sitting next to this beautiful 18-year-old boy and wishing that this moment could last, though I knew that it wouldn't.

Driving back from California last night at twilight, I was again in a canyon, surrounded by pines and aspen...a passenger counting the white lines. It was raining heavily and the highway was a dark, oily snake in our headlights. My husband and I had stopped in Colfax and bought hot coffee at the Starbucks. The smell of the pines mixed with the coffee and the rain swept air became heavy, crisp, chilly and intoxicating.

For one brief moment the sun shone through the clouds just enough to light the sky to a deep, angry pink. A flash of the something raced in my mind...Terry, a song, and the canyon. So long ago, I thought. In a swallow of coffee, the sky had changed and the colors inside and outside of my head were gone.

The drive to and from California does this to me everytime. Maybe it is the forest or a combination of things, such as the rain or the smell of strong coffee on a cold night. Time passages.

The stretches of forest on Highway 88 (and 49, 120, 50 or 80) are beautiful and yet disturbing. Staring off into the thick woods, I wonder what lurks out there past the low hanging branches and the misty thickets. My mind stirs the witch's brew of images, words, and music, especially when I'm on the road. The whine of the tires on ashalpt, clicking past the fences and telephone poles all creates a music of it's own....he song comes on the radio. I relish the moments of now....."and I love you....yes, I love you...oh, how I love you."