*shrugs*

the sun bleeds orange, a broken yolk for the fading blue sky to soak up as if it was toast.

i walk out to my parked car as a truck driver saunters back to the cab, wiping his hands on a white rag.  he yells something at me and i pretend not to hear.  i get into my car and slam the door shut.

meanwhile, clouds like the ancient scales of a serpent are layered down to the crest of the hills, melting like sugar into misty light.

i pull out and onto the street, looking for places to post my flyers.  "Breathe," they say.  i'd rather be in the studio,  practicing my chaturangas.

the old osprey is holding his usual post on the bare, gnarled tree.  he doesn't sound warning this time as i walk beneath him.  his white breast catches fire in the sunset glow.

i pull into a tiny lot near a coffee shop.  closed.  a teenager in a red beanie flashes me a dirty look, shuffles through songs on his iPod as he hunches over on a bench, his feet on his skateboard.

a pocket of darkness hangs beside where the trail bends.  the creek is dry, though it was running just yesterday.  cool and green, the moss hugs the bark of the oaks tightly.

i move on, circling blocks.  outside the Warehouse, a bald man in a pink flannel shirt draws on his cigarette.  i see him standing outside the doorway often.  i wonder if he's waiting for someone.  or something.  is he the owner? a patron?  his eyes study the floor.

out beyond the grassy banks, the swallows swing in wide, fast arcs to catch a new crop of spring-born insects.  above the dance, two hawks and a lone vulture.

i park again, across the street from a red and white church.  a man walks by carrying a plastic bag heavy with groceries, muttering words under his breath.

the water is low.  ripples lap at the rocks and reeds, are carried under the soft, dark bellies of ducks.

the sound of dishes and voices carries through an old, splintered window frame.  smells of cooking waft down to the sidewalk.

i am a guest

without a name

cheese/sentimentality/thinkin' about stuff

we carry so much baggage with us, the weight of our parents' stories and their parents' stories...traumas and past lives and expectations and pressures.  we change and shift and shrug.  we become stronger and we break open.

yes. ten years ago i was--not a different person--a different version of myself: the ghost of a stone sculpture not yet articulated in sensuous curves and sharp-edged hollows.  i was a dream and a spark of what i am now...and right now, i am a spark of what i will become.

do we ever really get to reach our highest form?  yes.  maybe not while we are alive, but we are born with this perfection, this blazing joyful soul that becomes veiled as we age and learn and become burdened with knowledge and avoidance--and we return to that state in death.  i suppose select few make that transition while in human form: these are the Buddhas and Jesus Christs and Mohammeds and Mother Theresas, the anonymous ones who drag dying brothers to safety and who spend their days feeding and bathing the sick.  But most of us are trying to flip the Rubix cube while we are half-blind and roaring for affection and recognition.

i am no expert in love, though i know that i crave it and need it as much as i need water to keep my body running smoothly, as i crave pieces of dark chocolate on a select few days out of every month.  i know that love has many masks...and that love unmasked is more powerful than the weapons our government spends billions on every week.  i know that i can convince myself that i have it, that i am in it--or that i don't have it and won't ever know it, not truly.

the truth is that i am looking for the freedom that comes from pairing with a person who can look me in the eye as i lay down my burden of stories.  i need a best friend who will cherish me and call me out on my shit.  someone who is imperfect and adept like a chameleon, shifting to fit a mood, a mode of communication, a moment when i am glorious and frightening.  i need a lover who can undress me, and a confidante who can hold me when my mother dies--a partner who will have my back when i'm faced with a gang of demons ready to bludgeon me to death with their stinking fear, and a companion who will play Twister with me while Tom Waits, followed by Radiohead, followed by BB King, followed by Mozart plays on and on and on...

in return, i will offer every bit of who i am.  i will be lovely and sexy and honest and jealous.  i will cry and kiss and soothe with my fingertips.  i will complain and apologize and praise and bless.  i will be there, even when i am not.  i, too will be imperfect, and i will try so hard.  and i will back off and run away, but i will always come back.  and when our paths part, i will still love you.  and when we meet up again, i will not love you less. 

i didn't take any photos, but this might be better

there are only a few people out, not enough to be annoying, so i let my armor dissolve.

it is warm enough that i don't need gloves.  in fact, after walking up the steep hill to the trail, i want to strip down to my underwear and soak my skin.  the forest drips with diamonds, raindrops collecting around blossoms and at leaf tips.  the lake is a still mirror for the sky and the trees.  mist--rogue wisps of clouds--dances across hilltops and settles in tiny valleys.

the shades of green are myriad, like lush quilts of textured emerald hues, from the black-green of old oaks to the bright new sprouts at the trail sides--leaves shaped like moths, wings flat and round-tipped.  i want to graze on that green, taste the moisture on my tongue and feel juicy fibers crunch between my molars.  vines of ivy climb down the sides of the ravine to my right, tangling with slender switches and reaching towards the fuzzy moss that blankets nearly everything that sits out of the sunlight's reach on brighter days.

the smell is like coming home: decaying leaves, wet earth, native herbs.

if i can't take off my shirt, i'll roll up my sleeves.  the rain is soft, tiny kisses by the millions.  every nerve ending in my epidermis gets a massage.  a strand of wet hair points to the corner of my mouth and i let it stay.

the rain begins to come down faster, and the thick hush of the forest is interrupted with soft, sweet percussion.

the walnut trees, skinny, multiple trunks growing out of one base, arc up and over the trail, reaching to the water's edge.  i stop there, too, feet in the wet sand and eyes skimming the surface to find the geese i can hear, honking in approval or in disapproval, i can never tell.  veils of rain descend, bringing water and landscape closer to the same colorless color.

there is a flickering in my periphery and i look up to see a falcon slicing across the sky.  i know she is not a vulture, her movements are quicker and her tail long and slender.  the buzzards are out, too, a few of them, their wings lovingly caress the sky when they move, sensuous and slow.  they are enormous birds, so regal, but their ugly, bare heads betray the bad karma bestowed upon them, perhaps from an earlier life.  they seem to accept their fate with grace, and i quickly say a prayer that i might do the same when i begin to get ugly.

i lift my arms up to stretch, arching back in a bend that opens my ribs and reverses the heaviness of my shoulders.  it's amazing how, when i make a conscious effort at awareness, i can feel the electric current running up from the earth into my feet and up my spinal column, dispersing like little lightning bolts through the conduits of my nervous system.  even in this cool rain, i am sparked, hot, outward-reaching.  time is obliterated and there is only here and now, though i'll have to return to a place of clocks eventually. it isn't doing that nourishes the human soul...it is being.