Realizing

Lately I have been still, too still.  Too… here.  Which is fine- all of us wayfarers need to be still for a little while.  To let the dust settle, to let our world slow long enough to recover it's natural rotation. 

But settling dust runs the risk of becoming gathering dust.  And that just will not do. Gathering dust is what chokes the air, what makes me choke.  It makes me itch. Dust brings on the Longing and puts ideas in my head. Dust brings on soul-sneezing.  

Which inevitably makes me reach for a tissue called wandering. 

And originally this was going to be a post about traveling- but it's never really about that.  I reach for a tissue called wandering; I have a nomadic, distant soul.  I recently told someone that I systematically burn my world every six months or so.  And I do it because I can- but almost because I have to.  I keep burning and burning- and then running because ash is so very similar to dust.  

And I have to go. 

And because I do this so well, because I am so practiced at the burn-and-run… I keep everyone at arms length.  I keep distance- however fractionally measured. Inevitably I push people away, not because I don't love them, not because I don't feel so deeply and so profoundly.. but because I am bound to hurt them by burning, by running.  I am bound to hurt the people I know simply because I cannot be still, I cannot be wanted.  I go so often that I forget what it means to stay. 

Most days I am fractional, marginal, existing on the edge or fringes because I put myself there.  There is safety on the edge.  I jump and am gone. 

I jump and am gone. 

201

After two hundred posts this is where we are.

From point A to point B: New Hampshire, China, New Zealand, New Hampshire, China, Malaysia, Austrailia, North Carolina, New Zealand, North Carolina, Iceland, Alaska, Mexico, North Carolina, New Hampshire.  Beginnings and Ends and beginnings in ends.

I think I stole that line from someone.

The point is… here's to a lot more.  A lot more places, a lot more blog posts.  So many more reasons to write.  Here is to 201 more.

For my Loves-

Here's to you.

Short, Sweet, and to the Obsessions

I may or may not have skipped a month in my obsessions confessions. Possibly because one of my obsessions was just WAY TOO embarrassing to throw out there... ever.  Possibly because I am still obsessed with the same stuff as earlier in the summer.

But because I owe my leery followers something... I give you a short and sweet obsessions list:

KEXP.  How the hell long has this been around and I'm only now figuring out the level of awesomeness of Live on KEXP performances??  In particular, I am digging on this linked performance- but I'm pretty sure I've already exalted the greatness of Augustines.  In fact, Henry and I had their album cranked this morning, driving home to Windsor from our weekend adventure with Auntie Iris in Maine.  Coffee and Cruel City kept me awake while the pup napped on the front seat. 

The Gaslight Anthem (yes, most definitely still still obsessed with them) releases a new album in August.  (Holy Shit, yes I did just get tickets to see them in Boston in September).

Aaaaannnndddd this song is on that album.  And it's not just that it's GA or that Brian Fallon sings the way a wood fire smells (okay, maybe a little)... it's what the song is saying.  It is absolutely what the song says: And I came to get hurt/Might as well do your worst to me. That idea slays me- absolutely slays me every time I consider it.  It is the heart-on-the-line version of picking a fight.  I came here to get hurt.  I know it's going to happen.  I want it to happen because at least it's something.  I came here with knowledge- bad knowledge- and I am accepting it all.  I want to be hurt (and maybe I want to hurt you a little, too)- so let's rumble.

Tom Wisdom.  Surprise!  An actor crush?!?!  Who, me?

Also, this dude.  16 saves later, the US still lost.  But hell.  Tim Howard?  Yes Puh-lease. (Also, for those of you who like a good game of doppelgänger- head to the Wild Rover in Manchester, NH.  The head chef there sports a striking resemblance to Howard.  Which is to say, he's beautiful.) 

This one is bad.. but Facebook on my phone.. ugh.  I hate even admitting that, and I'm certainly not dignifying it with a link- but who knew it would be so useful for posting in the moment?

I think that is all, for now. 

Until next time, My Dears..

Dead Horses and Depressed Dogs

One of two things was going to happen as I let my Internet browser pop up.  I was either going to google 'is my dog depressed' or I was going to write a blog.

I will google that query a bit later.  

In the meantime… 

I have been all over the world- my adventures are what initially inspired the creation of this blog page. It has surely become abundantly clear by now that I do love traveling.  I love that I have been all over the world.  I love that my passport expired with only one blank page left in it.  I love that there will come a point in time when I get to look back on my unholy mess of a life and think 'yeah… I did that.' 

And I have traveled with others- friends, parents, lovers.  I have traveled on my own.  I have moved across the world, across the country on my own.  I have driven tens of thousands of miles on my own; logged the same amount of flight distance on my own.  Been on trains, on boats, on my own.   

And it is never the big moments when I feel on my own.  It is never the big moments- staring at the aurora borealis under a foreign sky, seeing foreign mountains in their full glory, watching the sun set over and over in more perfect, more fiery and foreign and golden ways- when I feel lost for wanting someone near me.  It never is.  

It is, rather, the small moments.  It is shoving my carry-on into the overhead storage space, knowing that in x-many hours I will be touching ground and having to pull that thing out and start all over again. It is carrying a fifteen pound bag of dog food, while pulling along a fifty pound dog, up to an empty apartment- over and over and over again.  It is finally settling down for a second... only to feel the drip-drip of a leak in the ceiling of said empty apartment.  

A not-pink paw shot of DJ Jazzy Hen-Roots

It is countless gallons of gas pumped into a slowly-dying jeep.  It is the laughter and love that I feel every day, laughter and love that is even directed toward me, the luckiness I am constantly reminded of, the goodness of my life… on my own.  It is the plan- the stuttered, scared life plan that never comes to fruition because it's a bit sad, planning a life of one (two if you count the dog).  It is the fear that my dog is depressed… but no one to bounce that off of (excepting google).  

Those are the moments when 'on my own' is not on my own anymore, but alone with a hint of lonely.  Those are the moments of containment, of putting myself away for another day.   And don't get me wrong (this line I have used so so so many times- it is like beating the hell out of a long-dead horse), I love my life.  I own my life, all of my mistakes, all of my moments of grace.  

But once in a while, I'd like to share what I own.  

With someone other than a maybe-depressed dog who currently sports hot pink front paws- Henry-1, Hi-Lighter-0. 

If You Knew

How I miss you- 
You would not stay away, today…

Fuck all, Mr. Buckley, get out of my mind.

For a long time I have had two… sort of impossible romances.  Impossible because both of my others… are dead.  And both have been pretty present in my life of late, for their own reasons.

Jeff Buckley.  Jeff Buckley.  Great Scott- he had me from the first sigh of Hallelujah.  And his story, so tragic, so rock and roll, has kept me ever since.

The son of Tim Buckley, the had so very much to live up to.  And yet… he did.  Grace.  Need I say more??  Grace, the one album he released while living, stacks up beyond anything that anyone had done at his age, during that age.  At 31 he died, drowning in the Wolf River.  All that passion, all that potential- gone in the wake of a passing boat.  But still his voice and the things he did with lyrics are timeless (impossible).

It's never over- 
My kingdom for a kiss
Upon her shoulder

It's never over-
all my riches
for her smiles when I slept 
so soft against her

It's never over-
all my blood 
for the sweetness of her laughter..

I mean, come on.  What on earth else does a girl want to hear but that??  What else does any one want to feel but the profound need to be with their impossibly never-ending (it's never over) other??  And who but Buckley could express that, like a miracle?  Like marveling?

And so he is on my mind for what he knew of love.  Of impossible love, of my love.  Of the way I think or want or wish love could or to be.

And then there is Eliot.

If there is one person who I could revive, literally bring him back to live simply to kiss him on the lips and tell him that his talent is visionary and bold and yet beautiful and mystical… it would be TS Eliot.  And I know that I have been on and on about Eliot.  All the time and forever.  But I started 'All Hallows' Eve' by Charles Williams, recently.  Which is a book for a book club of sorts- a book for which Eliot wrote the introduction.

And in it he wrote about Williams:

'To him the supernatural was perfectly natural, and the natural was also supernatural.  And this peculiarity gave him that profound insight into Good and Evil…. '

And next to that, in the margins, I wrote… Thank God.

I wrote that in the margins because we on the margins understand the significance of marginalia: Because Eliot, in interpreting Williams, somehow managed to interpret me.  Or at least managed to make me feel not nearly as alone in my interpretation of the natural…and everything else.  And so I had to add myself, in scribbled pencil on the side of the page, to this book.  

And Eliot, these days, seems to be doing a phenomenal job of expressing exactly what I am feeling. His poetry perfectly maneuvers the complications of the heart- spiritually, psychologically: with emotion.  Eliot, in his honesty and challenges, brings me a sort of literary and human ecstasy.

I suppose the reason I know and love these two so well is because they have each known and defined some version of me.  These are the two, although there is another, who I come back to as touchstones of goodness- of grace- of Love.   And I suppose the reason they have been on my mind so very much is this fear that third

(Who is the third who walks always beside you
when I count, there are only you and I together…)

The third who knows me and knows love… The fear that I have lost the third.

And until next time.. Be good.

Rules: Or How I Keep Them (And Try to Keep My Heart Not-Broken)

As a rule, I don't have many rules to live by- fewer even to live and die by:

-Try really hard not to hurt anyone in any way (I regularly fail at this one, but it is a rule, nevertheless).

-Don't cast for hearts or for harm (the caveat there, as always, is no casting for hearts or for harm unless it is my own heart for which I am casting or my own self that I am harming). 

-And never ever plan anything for more than six moths in total- or six months in advance.  I know- or think- I have mentioned this before.  

I don't plan in advance because planning disappoints me.  Always.  Plans fall through.  Or if they don't, they certainly become something else.  Something… not. 

Plans are not to be made by the likes of me.  When I make plans they come with expectations (my 12 letter dirty word).  Inevitably- they come with expectations: I expect to have things go as planned; I expect to have made good, right decisions; I expect to have known- to know- myself.  At least well enough to make whatever plans or decisions I need or have to make. And then… 

Nope. 

Because it's me (me) and I seem doomed to a life of… 

I seem to set (or have set) a pattern for myself: make the choices you need to make.  Do the things that need doing.  But beyond that, other than that, don't put thought into anything- because thought, and plans, brutalize the soul.  Thought and plans break this heart. 

My park season this year ends on October 31st (the Witch's New Year, of course).  By November 2nd, I have no idea where I will be.  Maybe I will stay here- Henry and I will learn what New England, in her winter glory, really feels like.  Or maybe back to the warmth of my parent's home in North Carolina.  Or maybe I will hightail it wherever the wind takes the pup and I.  

Maybe, maybe, maybe… 

But, and this is key, maybes are a part of the rules; my Golden Rule.  'Maybe' is so much more free than 'definitely', 'maybe' is the wiggle room of the soul- especially of this soul.

The rules- the rules are for me, for myself.  It is how I work, or rather, how I try so hard to work: if you make a plan- make it for yourself, Kiddo.  If anyone else hops on… the more the merrier.  But please please, Kiddo, build your world and your walls around you.

Please at least do that.

Until Next Time… 

Illimitable Chaos

I stole my title from Virginia Woolf.  But that's only just a little significant.  The more significant is it's meaning.

Illimitable Chaos. It pretty often seems like the perfect definition of my life.  And on this day of celebration for parenthood, it seems even more perfect, even more poignant.  Especially after calling my  beloved father this morning and, after wishing him the Happiest of Father's Day, having him inform me that the State of North Carolina wants to… blah blah blah- basically, one more sticky situation out of which I have get myself.  By myself.

And that led to me thinking about a) how much my father and mother are just the tickets in this looney life of mine and b) how very many things I do and have done over time with the solitude of independence and under the auspices of… Kate.*

In a few months, I will reach that weird ticking-clock moment of assumed badness that every lucky soul reaches at some point… 30. And at thirty (again, assuming I make it and things as they are now have not changed much) I will be single and childless.  I will be the wander-lusty parent to a dog who is great company when he's not trying to chew some part of my life apart.  I will be the chaotic wild-child who prefers chance to choice and who seems to make all of the wrong choices when forced to.  I will be the anorexic, struggling to get well.  I will be the sister and daughter, the witch and the friend.

I will be the one who people look at, sigh and shake their heads because I am a hopeless cause- a whirlwind of illimitable chaos.  The questions will get more and more difficult to answer- until those same people just stop asking them:

"Don't you want to [insert some appropriate life path here]?"

"But don't you want to [see above]?"

"Do you even have a biological clock?"

The answers… the answer… The jokes won't cut it after a while.  "Don't you want to get married?" "Haha.. I'd love to, but don't know anyone who could put up with me for long enough to accomplish that task"… Not going to fly anymore.  "Don't you want to have kids?" (see above, again, for a similar answer).   "Do you even have a biological clock?" …

Well Hell, people, I should be dead by now anyway, at least two times over.  So whatever biological clock I do or do not have has either been broken or overridden.  I have cheated it enough times.  So it's either not ticking at all or ticking merrily away just like everyone else's.  And I'm okay with that.  And at thirty I will be okay with that, still.

My chaos is mine.  And I made it that way purposefully.

But on days like today, I am reminded of how truly singular that purpose is, that chaos is.  Because at thirty, and at this time next year there is still a very good chance that I will only ever be saying Happy Mother's Day to my own mother and Happy Father's Day to my own father.  That my longstanding relationship with chaos will still be very much intact and active.

Here's to growing up and getting it.

And until next time, Happy Father's Day to all you Fathers.  Happy Mother's Day (late) to all you Mothers.



*Don't get me wrong.  I fought tooth and nail for that independence.  I love it and I love what I am, in my own way.

Breath Held

Immediately before something big happens, it often feels like the universe is holding its breath.

In the initial inhale, there is silence: the silence of early anticipation; the silence of fear.  It is the silence of suspicion.  That a storm brews on the wind; that the coming fight will be the last.

Then comes the actual holding- the actual anticipation- the actual fear.  The holding is when the storm comes to fruition and the sparring partner walks through the door, takes his or her shoes off, and comes to the mat.  Events are becoming ready.

And when the breath is held too long, the universe begins to quake- it seizes, trembles and shakes to it's core.  And shakes you to your core.

And that is even before the exhale, the eruption- when the universal breath releases and all hell breaks loose.  And whatever big event has started culminates in creation and destruction and destruction and creation.

My universe just inhaled.

And what is getting ready to happen?

I have no idea.  Not a clue.  Could be any number of things.

I know what the universe feels like- but I will be damned if I can read it's mind.  I know that some things have grown slower, quieter, more careful.  I know that time seems more circular- things that have been are becoming again.

Things what were not meant to be are falling away- drifting detritus.

Until next time, We shall see…

Obsessions Confessions- Part May

I'm overdue for an obsessions post, no?

Oh but you are in for it… for this Kate is feeling mischievous and slightly misbehaved.

I'm going to throw this one out there- without explanation.  Consider it a mystery of my life here… Blue Smartwool.  Consider it a challenge, a code to decipher.  Just what, Kate, just what is the point of the Blue Smartwool?  Mine to know- yours to decode.

This song.  It's old.  But I found it again this weekend.  And here's the thing about it:

Well I wish I could kill you, 
savor the sight. 
Get into my car, drive into the night- 
Then lie as I scream to the heavens above, 
that I was the last one you ever loved.

That is, without a doubt, the most delicious series of lines in a song.  This is the dark side of love: wanting to be the last in a line of lovers.  Wanting to be the one who makes the most (or is it the least?) sense and making your lover forget everyone and everything else.  Only a band from New Orleans could make that desperate and that sensuous of a point.

And really, my obsession with Better Than Ezra is a long time running- ever since the first of many concerts I attended.  I watched the lead singer essentially make love to the microphone.  I was done for.  Seriously.  Done. For.

This song, too.  Much newer, but all the same- significant in it's own way.  This is the kind of dream that I imagine dancing to.  I imagine my other, my lover, my partner in crime coming home to me cooking, listening to music.  And there, in the kitchen, he pulls me to him and we dance.  What better place is there to dance than the kitchen?  And to what better song?

I beyond adore tattoos and tattooing.  All of you know this, I am incapable of denying it.  It has been suggested that I get a tattoo of 'Atlas'.  Which is brilliant and will absolutely happen when I find the right design, right artists.  But birds might have to happen first- birds along the collarbone so that I can take flight by lifting my arm: birds from feathers.  I have also considered the merits of:

FEE
FI
FO
FUM…

But I have no idea where.  My wrist?  The back of my neck?  Behind my ear?  Where or where does one put the words of the blood and bones of an Englishman?

Get ready for it!  Actor obsession.  Love this dude.  For sure love this dude.  Because of his delectable badness…. Yum.

Also… mountains. Mountains, Mountains, Mountains.

Always mountains, my loves.

Until next time…

One of Ten Thousand (Impossible Dreams)

Every single time I read something, one more component of one more facet of one of my ten thousand impossible dreams becomes a little clearer, a little more cohesive- cohered in my brain as equal parts manageable, reachable and utterly far-fetched, absurd and (as the name implies) impossible.

On the plane from Charlotte to Philadelphia, I started 'A Good Year'.  I continued it on the plane to Manchester.  It is the kind of book I take on when I feel like an easy read to get me back in the flow of things; when I haven't been able to sit down and properly devour a book in a while, I need something charming and nostalgic to get me eating again. And it did exactly that.

Half a book later, I landed in New Hampshire after a weekend of glory in North Carolina, wanting to immediately hop another plane and restart life in France. How much trouble could I possibly get into, right?

Yep,  one of my ten thousand impossible dreams- to leave this North American life behind and take up, myself, my dog, a straw hat and espadrilles, in France.  Perhaps Spain- either would work honestly (where do I sign up for a relative to bequeath me land?).  The landscape of Provence charms me at the moment so that component of place takes shape with ease.

What I would not give for an ancient farmhouse, table set outside in the violet sunset, air shimmering with summer heat and fragrance.  What I would not give for a love with whom I can share wine and laughter and the sweetest and simplest of lives in that farmhouse.  What I would not give for the opportunity to feel alive and part of the landscape- to feel good; to walk through a local village and make up stories for the old men playing boules, the same old men who yell in savory foreign languages at me when I accidentally walk across their courts.

One of tens of thousands of impossible dreams. 

At the same time I pick up Frank O'Hara's 'Lunch Poems' and immediately being that great of a writer is set into my dreams as well.  It is a movable impossible dream- to be a great poet, a great writer; great enough to make a living because other people actually want to read what I have to say- in poetry, in prose, in essays or long works of (non)fiction. 

Combine the two, and another element solidifies in my mind's eye.  On top of the table that is set outside is a manuscript, half typed, half hand-written and waiting to be typed.  It sits under some trinket that I bought on a whim at the airport, or maybe at the local antique market, that I use as a paperweight.  It has been discarded, for the moment, in favor of the every-evening drink which keeps us company as we witness the sunset.  It has been discarded in favor of a bowl of olives which are oily in their dream-goodness, crackers with soft cheese and maybe anchovies or artichoke hearts.  It has been discarded in favor of bare feet, languorous stretches, and head-thrown-back laughter (although if is even beginning to be possible, I am not nearly that graceful, the laughter would be through the wine, which would be spit or spilled).

And then Henry (he's inevitable) starts barking. 

Back to work, Mom.. Bark to work.

The sigh of the impossible, Friends.  Until next time.