Iron & Wine

 

I flew like a crazed little bird from my 9 hour class day back to the house to a least throw on a kiddie barrette and scarf before heading downtown. Picking up friends a long the way with our personal Iron & Wine pre-show playing on my sad little stereo. There’s something exhilarating about driving into downtown, all lights and shining glass ahead on the horizon. Iron Wine at the Orpheaum. Perfect. Xylophones, Violins, Cellos, and accordions with a backdrop of wise deep red velvets, buffed gold, and vintage chandeliers. Grandeur and hippie lullaby’s all mixed into one night. Only to be topped off with bacon wrapped hot dogs and onions sold on the corner of the street off of makeshift skillets.

So Good.

 

belated thanks.

For little sisters. Married sisters and new brothers. For 100lbs of apples from the canyon. Apples turned to apple crisp. Tom Petty. Thanksgiving morning country runs with best friends and studly dads.  Sweet buns from roadhouse. Bright blushing cranberries in a ceramic bowl. Winding mountain roads. My little red car that could. Fire colored trees. Little black drugstore gloves. Waterfalls. Campfires. Checkered table clothes. REI sales. Hatchets. leftover apricot cobbler out of to go boxes on a cold morning. Harmonicas. Laughing. Camelbacks. Cliffbars. Over-sized jackets. The Psalms. Skipping rocks. Crossing rivers. Campfire talks. Red wine out of tin cups. Pocket knives. Sunrise. Long hikes. Cheese. French pressed coffee and prayers by the creek. Tea with old friends. Home.  Unexpected community. The Christmas lights next door. Night runs. Love. Peace. Contentment.

“…Full of God’s thoughts, a place of peace and safety amid the most exalted grandeur and eager enthusiastic action, a new song, a place of beginnings abounding in first lessons on life, mountain building, eternal, invincible, unbreakable order; with sermons in stones, storms, trees, flowers, and animals brimful with humanity.”

                                                 —— John Muir (Yosemite)

4:30 am departure is creepin up on me. The gang and I decided to retreat for a couple days. Can’t wait!

 

“Future LA marathon trained me” was pretty pissed last night at past “oh-too-conveniently busy & sluggish to move me.”

With all the wedding huff and puff I missed about 17 miles of training last week… which is why you better believe I wasn’t about to initiate the “hey what time do you want to meet for our thursday run” phone call. No way, I was going to curl up in my covers, rocking back and forth mumbling to myself sweet nothings of pathetic laments of why I should most definitely not run today, tomorrow, or ever again. And beg & plead with the heavens that matt would forget.

The thing about running is that once you start you can’t stop. Because if you stop your body has EVERY intention of letting you know EVERY step of the way of the following run just how pathetic and ridiculous you are for thinking that you were going to get away with that little lapse in training judgement. The ugliest of all scoldings. The physical equivalent of getting sent to the principals office and THEN having to call your parents. And then having to endure the long silent painful ride home. And if you happen to have the privilege of a running partner, they are like the little tattle-tale skipping freely, un-windedly along next to you.

About exactly how I felt yesterday:

Where troubles melt like lemon drops…

Finally here… After waking this morning to study for midterms, bake cookies, try on dress, print fliers, wrap presents, pack car, enlarge prints, get gas, take midterm, hit the road, bachlorette, nails, farmers market, and gelato… a foggy ride home, a few deer, unpack the car…and all is finally quiet again. Like happy little sardines our boxy cottage is filled to the brim. My one remaining lamp over the kitchen table. I can hear my little sister and our cousin whispering upstairs on the pull out, the studio is full, air mattresses have been blown, and couches made into makeshift beds.

It’s better than Christmas…

I love this place, our funky house, the old barns (one of which we will be having a beautiful reception at), the open ranch space, the way the coastal fog rolls in after sundown and fills the air with pine and saltiness.

Thankful.

heal the world with my own two hands

 

 

 

 

Sometimes you have weeks where your world seems like it is going to implode from the inside out. And then there are the weeks when for some unknown reason the world decides to heap onto your plate the reality of ALL her troubles & ALL her pain. And then asks you to deal.  You feel like you were just skipping rope and then turned a corner and found yourself in Armageddon.

This is good. This is where I want to dwell.  I want to see, feel , hear, and think about that reality. THE reality. I don’t want to live in my sterilized, comfortable, and catered-to box. I don’t want to cover my eyes when things get messy. I don’t want to cross to the other side of the street.  I don’t want to pretend like it is someone else’s job, someone else’s problem. I don’t want to be paralyzed by fear of poverty, death, illness, and injustice. 

I don’t want to believe that it is too big.

But honestly this week, it has felt too big..too much…fire hydrant let loose on unsuspecting girl who was just looking for a little drink of water. 

1. In class I spent a couple hours looking at hundreds of pictures of women displayed in the media  (hence previous post). Always encouraging. Yet, felt like the class atmosphere and consensus was acceptance rather than of outrage. Like, “Well hey that sucks for you chics but it works out well for us. That’s society baby” 2. Working on a paper on a book called Affluenza. 3. Film on human impact on the planet focusing mostly on our arrogance & damaged relationship with the earth. 4. Had my first interview/training session to work in skid row. Estimated about 12,000 homeless living in one square mile. 5. Third time this semester a girl in one of my classes has come to class covered in bruises. 6. Another paper, this one on the film Supersize Me. 6. Just received an email from a friend of mine who is in the Middle East right now describing life around her. Her words conveyed how what she is seeing is so eerily accepted and painful at the same time. Because the violence is not new, what she is seeing has been the climate of that area for hundreds of years. I don’t even know how to care about that.

Tonight Jen and I are heading downtown to see Ben Harper.  She surprised me by snagging some tickets for us earlier this week. I am thrilled and also reminded of my privilege. Yet, this couldn’t come at a more appropriate time.  I have been digging him so much these past few months. I hadn’t listened to him in years, not since dorm life.  And hadn’t realized how GOOD he was. Organic-feel good-go change the world lyrics. Yes please. I’ll take a second helping of that, thank you Mr. Harper.

Fog

This morning woke me to smells of an old chest, musty yet filled with anticipation and old stories.  Our heater is running for the first time, I realized,  as I lay in bed and eventually heard the faint click click and then the deep slow breathes. It’s foggy outside and quiet. I love mornings like these. So much that I would  just like to wrap myself in a blanket of fog and drink it out of a big ceramic mug.  I remember first moving to Bakersfield and as a little girl experiencing my first season of fog. It was like nothing I had ever imagined, it was eerie and made you believe that at just about any moment you were going to turn and see the grim reaper walking beside you. But it was not long before I learned that fog is a California  girls only hope for a school delay.  By 5th grade every kid in the class knew the best recipe for a heap-ful of fog for the following morning; some fog the day before, maybe a little rain, then clear and sunny in the afternoon before the temperature drops.  And then the next morning waking eagerly praying that as we peered out the window the house across the street would be barely visible and then the sweet confirmation as Miles Muzio would read the list of school districts on the local morning news.  I remember in college making the trek back home. Usually in fog season I would wait till late morning when the fog had burned to drive home, but for whatever reason I couldn’t wait this time. I had a girl with me from my dorm and I will never forget as we got deeper into the fog, I followed the same routine I had for so many years. I turned off my brights, opened my window, and crouched a little over the steering wheel so I could see the orange dividing hash marks only revealing themselves in pairs one by one. She stared at me saying that she believed with all her heart that we had died and descended into hell, and if not yet, well… then very soon.

Though, what is outside my window right now could probably be classified better as schmog. I will take it. I find myself wanting home around me a lot lately. This has been a strange season for me, and although I am probably being more successful right now than at any other time of my life, my insides feel unfamiliar and ungrounded.  And at times, (most often when I am sitting in traffic on any given Los Angeles freeway) I feel like I must look like Alison in Wonderland (Without the drugs of course.) Eyes Bugged out, 1/2 lost, 1/2 shocked,  and 1/2 excited of what might be around the corner. Yet, Such an outsider in that little pinafore dress.  I want home around me, not necessarily in a place, although sometimes that helps, but in the palm of my hand. Like a little rock you rub when the going gets tough and immediately your wish gets granted. I am sensing that I am being asked to redefine home, to again scratch what I had on the drawing board of security, confidence, and even myself.  Not because it is all wrong, but I am growing out of that skin again. The continual process of awkward stretching, a little painful, and a bit unnerving as you let fall to the ground all you thought you had “all figured out.” Honestly God, I didn’t want to do this again. Things had been so hard for the past couple of years that I just wanted to sit and rest awhile. Just a little bit longer? Please? But, I am reminded that If I sit here too long things get stale, itchy, and even start to smell a bit.

God, thank you for a quiet foggy morning. For good coffee and little post-it’s left on my door. For a clean house to be in.  I am positive that after nesting without sleep for 2 days in the living room, I left in my wake a mini oblivion of 1/2 drunken cups of tea, blankets, stale plates, Kleenex, papers, and books sprawled across every table and couch available. I am thankful that when I came home late late last night that they were gone and in their place a note from my sleeping roommate and some dinner saved for me. You knew I needed it.  I thank you for November. She seems to be bursting at the seems and I thank you that amidst all her chaos you promise me peace if I seek it.