just keep...

your pen moving, just keep your pen moving. that is what I read I don't know  12 or 13 years ago and it has stuck with me ever since. even as the pen was replaced by the screen and the keyboard but even then it holds true. just keep moving. just keep swimming. just keep swimming and letting your mind rip and roar and  get rip roarin so that you're running nekkid through the night across a roaring campfire somewhere in the woods just east of freshwater bay and it's ok because the kids are asleep and nobody cares and you've had enough whiskey to drink and what does it matter and it's just a body and it's dark and so what, live a little, for crying out loud because what are you going to tell your grandkids anyway? that you stayed up late playing X-box? or that you did the dishes on time each night? or that you walked the dogs like you were supposed to? that's all well and good but you've also got to live. you've also got to stretch yourself, challenge yourself, remember yourself and whatever it is that floats your boat and gets your goat  and for me it's not just streaking it's peaking it's going berserking it's dancing it's flinging my hair to and fro and wow-ing, it's stunning people with zingers and silly one liners and strumming the cheesiest, sentimentalyist song that ever was-iest and not batting an eyelash over it, it's getting a bad haircut and somehow making more than the best of it, it's forgetting about the sunscreen because ultimately your skin will get used to it and skin cancer from polymers in sunscreen is probably worse for you in the long run, and just keep writing and just keep writing and what's more important to me than standing still is just being with yourself and seeing what oozes out and not being afraid to look it squarely in the face and stand tall and stand your ground and grow peaceful with it and find a way to find yourself in it and forgive yourself in it and be gentle with yourself with it and give the love back even when the love isn't coming your way because that's the only way the love will ever come so you better start giving it right now and then and later, too.

stinky but loveable dog, prickly but snuggling kittenkaboodle, a pond covered in pollen scum but with rainbow trout swimming and swinging-over-the-pond-potential, finally sinking into the Gunnison groove, slowly, like a shoe gradually taking in water, slowly my feet start to go barefoot and I realize I can close my eyes and still find my way even though i'll never barely remember the names of streets around here, time moves a little differently and like an ipod playing music when you're running, sometimes it would be nice if there was a dial on the gadget so that you could speed up or slow down your soul to get in sync with the grooves that move

gunnison

it's a funny place. a place where... I come back year after year and wonder...
will I fit in?
has too much time passed?
can I weave back into these friends' lives?
am I a third foot?
has anything changed?

and each time...

it's more about me being self conscious
than it is about me being here

this place always welcomes you back
they may look at you a tad strangely
but i'm ok, you're ok

it's like getting reacquainted with a close friend after years apart
you know they know you and you know them
but it takes time
and you can't assume
but you also can't be a wallflower
it's dancing the fine line
between patience and losing all self restraint
and you can't get stuck in either for too long

it's... going back to work on Monday
or going back to school in the fall
or waking up in the morning after a night of mayhem
or sharing a gut busting bellyful laugh and then trying to focus on the job to get done

you've got to be patient with the process
or else you lose it
the cake won't rise
the mousse falls flat
the work of art goes kaphooie
and just when you can't wait one more second for things to gel
that's when you have to be

the strongest

so just wait.

what i learned on the most boring stretch of highway ever imaginable

i love road trips - don't get me wrong. i love the time, the space, the expanse, the sights, the sounds, but there is one stretch of road between price, utah and the 70 that makes me want to... want to... fall asleep and hit a telephone pole. but truth often comes in difficult packages, and here is what i discovered. nothing that earth shattering, unless you are actually out there experiencing it but here it goes...

they really need a decent radio station out there... ok, that's not it, but really they do.... here it is...

something besides the song that goes 'if god was one of us, just like a slob like one of us'

ok, no really, here it is.

the truth stares you in the face out there. it's blatantly obvious. if you just open your mouth, and have a little talk with the universe, it does speak. pretty much everything you 'think' you think is true is true. any doubts are eradicated. all those inklings and hunches are pretty much spot on. you just have to get quiet enough to listen to them. and that's what i found out along the most boring stretch of highway that ever was. and i'm glad that it's there.

quadruplekatillionbobillion

randomness, alright, here it goes... a flock of geese barely skimming the surface of the columbia river, a 7 week old kitten carefully tucked inside a woman's handbag while she waited for her coffee, everyone at a Flying J (customers and cashiers) in the happiest mood I have ever seen at a truckstop somewhere in Utah, realizing that if they would just put on better dance music on the radio in the middle of nowhere there would be fewer 'fatigued' drivers crashing into each other, but still i found some very cool songs in the middle of nowhere, realizing that i can't stand the song where the woman sings 'if you could realize, what i just realized', glad to 'realize' that it's good to be driving a long time on the road with no good music to listen to because it allows your mind to get very quiet and you begin to hear what's really important once all the noise goes away, amazed that i always forget that oregonians pump your gas for you, and... and... and... the most important/essential/significant/mind blowing/mind altering/substantial/did i say essential already?/thing i've figured out on this road trip?.... finding a hunkertatillion ways to enjoy the journey more than the goal.

this is going to be the most random blog post ever... ever... in the history of blog posts

sitting here on my backporch I am remembering sitting on my other backporch on mount pleasant road, actually pearce road off of mt. pleasant road and I ran into this lady the other day, I knew I knew her somehow but I couldn't for the life of me figure out how and then it slowly dawned on me as I stood with her ruminating in the aisles of 'sunny farms' that we lived across from each other, our kids played together oh so many moons ago on pearce road and I remembered sitting there dreaming out of my side window and writing my blogposts then and looking out the window at Canada and listening to the crows that sounded like old men burping or hiccupping I didn't know and thinking about our chickens down in the field and listening to our kids play downstairs or outside or with the neighbor girl briana and planting plants and having to kennel mojo because otherwise he would tear up the house when we were gone. it's starting to seem like a long time ago although it was only 5 years ago but 5 years is starting to feel like a very long time indeed, long because why? why does time start to feel long? is it because I have stayed in one town longer than I have almost ever in my entire life. I have moved at least every year or every other year for the majority of my life. I was born in Canada, we lived maybe 2 or 3 years in each house, we moved to highland park/east L.A. and lived there one year, we moved to Topanga and lived there one year, we moved to cobalt, Connecticut and lived there one year, we moved to NYC and lived there 2 years, we moved to Topanga and lived there two years, we moved to England and lived there 1 year, we moved back to Topanga and lived there 1 year I went to college and went back/forth from new York for 4 years, I moved near Magic Mountain in the valley of los angeles for 1 year, I lived in Wimbledon, London, England for 1 year, I moved back to California for 1 year, then I moved to Colorado and promptly moved at least every year on and on and on and on. so yes, I am used to moving a lot. and yes, this is probably the first time in my whole life that I have pretty much damn near lived in/around the same TWO areas (the Olympic peninsula and Gunnison, Colorado) for close to 5 years and that is a record breaking move. so it does feel weird and i'm not sure if it's making me feel old staying in one place too long or young. I don't know. I think moving keeps you young in many ways but I also think staying in one place and developing deeper friendships keeps you young, too. maybe deepening friendships makes time move faster. maybe slowing down enough and not moving so much makes time seem longer, spread out. maybe events from the past recede even more slowly when you stay in one place until one day, when you stop and realize it's been 5 years since you lived in that other place, you suddenly wonder what you have been doing for the past 5 years in the same town and can't quite remember it all and so you think you've lost time. I don't know. all I know is... it's weird. but somehow I am glad for it. glad that I can bump into someone who meant something to me 5 years ago and who still remembers me and somehow reaffirms that that part of my life did exist at one point. when you move a lot, you start to think that the past never really existed at all except in your imagination. so it's good to realize that what you experienced once did really happen after all and you are still the same person after all and maybe that's how you can feel young after all, too. I am still that person sitting on my back porch 5 years ago, musing over the same thoughts in a slightly transformed form 5 years later. we don't change that much, after all. which can be a good or a bad thing if you think about it too much. and I tend to be the kind of person who thinks about things too much. but I don't mind.

ho hum ho hum

hooooooo hum hoooooooo hum
it's weird, being alone, neither good nor bad totally. if you really settle into it, like the alaskan dude who lived like a hermit for 35 years in the hinterland, you realize that life just is. it is neither here nor there. you are really fine on your own. just fine. it's the media, the commercials, the looks that make you think you need a 1000 people around you at every second in order to be fulfilled. you don't really. some people sometimes yes. but you don't need to constantly be around people all the time to be complete.
you can just be. you can appreciate the wind rustling the leaves, you can think, you can remember what you think, you can remember what you feel, you can remember.

when i was a child, i could play for hours on my own. never bored. never really looking for someone to play with although if i had someone to play with that was awesome when it happened. that should be how it is when you're an adult. you should be fine just being/doing your own thing and then when someone shows up to make life more interesting then enjoy it, go for it, have fun with it, but it doesn't have to mean your whole life depends on it. you should be able to be happy just being where you are, right now. right here and now. that's what i think. nobody else has to see it that way if they don't want to. that's just how it is for me, right here right now.

hiccuping and deja vuing

paint a picture in words ~ waterfall like something frank lloyd wright would do, godsend out of nowhere says to me 'here take my house for the summer for free' and i say 'am i dreaming or what?' as the sky opened up and the clouds buoyed down this little angel with the good news and i am pinching myself wondering if i am dreaming, and this lady hands me a bag of the crispiest sugar snap peas and the sweetest good dirt tasting carrots i ever did taste and tireswings and grasshopper homemade homes and ginger kombucha in tiny dixie cups and rafting down a river with yellow tanningers saying 'hi' and old friends who remind me of memories i thought i had forgotten and buildings that are no more and buildings that are new and slowing down enough so that the inevitable speeding up of life as you get (hate the word) older is neutralized by remembering how kids manage to have a thousand days packed into one day so much so that by the end of the day you are truly bobuly tired.

it's time to ramble and roar

so so so so so so so many things to write down, don't know where to start. so i'll start with a list. what little moments add up to big moments to make it all worthwhile?
1) finally having a cup of joe and not losing my noggin when imbibing
2) a mama bear and two cubs within grunting distance
3) remembering to write down the little and the big dreams, the near and the far
4) being cut off from the internet for good long stretches of time
5) realizing how much i need to get outside this summer and hike like my pants are on fire
6) being ok just being me, sometimes/often doing nothing the rest of the time running like mad to keep up with the wee ones who always push me to the brink and keep me young by pushing me to the brink of madness and mayhem
7) being ok with just washing dishes
8) being ok with little to no time to look in a mirror or care whether i took a shower
9) wearing the same goddam pair of crocs whether i am running, walking, hiking, going out to a nice restaurant, clubbing seals (j/k), whatevers
10) buying too many books on amazon
11) riding the best damn amusement park ride i have ever ridden called 'the roundup', ohmygod that thing is awesome, it's a screamfest, it's... like your best dream at night, it's... soooo good. you are strapped into this little spaceship of a tube with a partner and then you are thrust up into the air on an axis and then like a hammer you are thrown down and around in a circle and backwards too in a circle until you don't know if you are coming and going and all you can do is look at the ground and realize you are going to scream your bloody head off just to stop the squealing wheels from churning in your stomach as you dive and smile so wide that your teeth crack open and your partner says out loud, 'lara, i have NEVER heard you scream like that before' and you are proud proud proud.