Skwim

Opened the car door and was immediately smacked with an urge to kneel on the ground and push my fingers into the earth. That pungent wet forest floor composting cedar leaf odor came upon me like an opium. It was beautiful. I closed the door and walked the gravel road to the top of a gently sloping hill where the cleared home site came into view.

I stood there. Walked slowly to the center of this opening and it felt like I was entering an opening in myself. One with no edges. Just an expansiveness.

Sequim. Might you be the Home that's been calling to me?

Road To The Gate In Sunlight

Fence By The Gate

The Large Clearing At The Top Of The Hill

Clearing In Sunlight

Trail To Another Clearing

Another Trail To Another Clearing

Old Old Tree

Old Old Swing

Ye Olde Pooper

Yearling Change

This last year... earthquake change. I do a lot of navel gazing these days, although I hear that's not particularly socially acceptable, doesn't seem to matter. The truth is, with all the pain and uncertainty and chaos, I've never felt more alive. If only I could talk with the woman that pulled the rug out from under me, and thank her for such a blessing. Of course, my own heart deserves some credit, still, I am so grateful. One foot in front of the other and the path feels solid under these feet even though there is a mist that obscures any absolutes. Groundlessness. This is part of the teaching and the awakening. This is part of the understanding and the mystery, the unfolding. Thank you.

Merry Everything

Gift Of Story People

Windows

Paris 1973

My name was Moon. Lin and I made backpacks out of upholstery fabric samples and a pile of old leather that we found and sold them at a festival on Telegraph Ave in front of UC Berkeley. Our tickets cost $125 one way and we took a drive-away car (I had to explain drive-away to a twenty something the other day so I don't know if it still exists) from Santa Cruz, CA to somewhere in West Virginia and then a bus to NY City. It's a much longer story than this paragraph. Maybe some other time.

I didn't think I could draw in color back then. I had this thing in my head (probably from Easter outfit shopping with my mom, I think) that there were only certain colors that were supposed to go together. I somehow didn't understand the rules so I just left color out of it. There's a story about how that changed but, again,  maybe some other time.

Been watching a made for Amazon series (like Netflix Originals but different) called Transparent. Serious binge watching. A parent starts to transition from man to woman and how it affects change in everyone in his/her life. Centered around his family and how all their deepest darkest secrets start unraveling throwing them into a storm of evolving authenticity. Remarkable shit. I pretty much love it. And I cleaned my desk off which is a pretty major undertaking. Used to have a magnet on my fridge that said, "I hate housework. You clean and clean and clean and 6 months later  you have to do it all over again." Always helps to have some good philosophical drama to help me through it.

Hahahaha

It Is What It Is

I have some very dear people in my life. Lately they have been my comfort and joy and bring me peace of mind. Paula who always reads my blog and reminds me of stuff I need to know. Invitation from beautiful Karyn for a breakfast and then talked with my capricorn Sarah tonight after a difficult day, Erika and Becc called to make sure that the hip I'd fallen on would be ok, and here is an excerpt from an email I sent to dear Val...

"Today my angels of the Universe are chuckling and giving me some interesting messages. I just keep telling myself it is what it is. Although sometimes I get mad when I say that to myself. I want it to somehow be something else. (that made me smile). You see, my Realtor just called to tell me that she was raking and found the cap of an old oil container under the ground and that her window washer/gutter cleaner guy fell off his ladder on Sunday and can't work. So now the house is not going on the market until we take care of all that. The oil tank could be a couple of thousand dollars. :::long deep breath:::: One foot in front of the other, yes? Or maybe just to sit in the middle of the room or deep in the forest or on a beach until the direction and the timing are clear."


The house would have gone on the market tomorrow. The process was started in May of this year and just when you think you have your ducks in a row, badaboom. Clearly this is an exceptionally powerful time. Transformation is an ocean all around me and there is hardly anything known. Once again I'm reminded to pray like an attorney because you always get what you ask for. I asked for a beginners mind. See? You have to be careful.

Now it's time for a little walk. Slipped on a wet wooden stair today, hard, and although I'm extremely happy about being able to get up and walk, I don't want my very bruised ass to get stiff on me.

Latest Cob Crushes

I think I will have to learn how to build my own door.

Gratitude

A sweet day, sometimes bittersweet. Last year I spent Thanksgiving  with someone that I didn't know would be gone by New Year's day. There were memories of that dinner and family.

This year the dinner was even tastier, I think. The company was lovable. My kid's uncle who is always dear and gentle. My son who never ceases to brighten my moments with his gentleness and beauty. His other mom never looked so gorgeous and is a particularly gracious hostess. Her partner is wonderful and makes H's eyes shine. And grandma... her last words as she's walking down to her car, "I always try to keep doing the things that I can." She's probably almost 90.

We went around the table to speak of the things we felt thankful for. Our dear tradition. Me? I just feel blessed for all the wonderful people in my life, my health, my beautiful son, and all the possibilities that life has to offer. The Universe is truly conspiring to shower us with blessings. Thank you.

Practice

There are so many things I love about this city. Still, I need to go. Not too far away. So here and there I'm leaving me in little crevices with my practice. Walking along and letting the stones that want to be balanced speak to me. It's the sweetest feeling when they settle into each other. Sometimes just the drops of rain tumble them. But it doesn't matter does it? The stones don't seem to mind.

This Place Of Knowing

This Place of Knowing - -Morgan Brig

James is a fisherman and he needs to go back to New England. A kid that's acting out, a father that is too old to take care of himself now, a girlfriend that's now gone forever, the kind of reasons we sometimes find in our lives that head us back in the direction we came from.

He has a 1982 Ford Econoline Camper van for really cheap. Runs really good, smells a little like paint, needs a good airing and vacuuming, and has only 45k miles on a rebuilt engine with all the paperwork from mechanical maintenance.

Me? I will need a place to live while I build my house and maybe even live in something like this so I can quit paying oodles of dinero for all the spaces I now use. Oh, and there's still a few things in the house I'll be selling so I will be renting a storage space, 50% OFF YOUR FIRST MONTH AND ONLY A $10 ADMINISTRATION FEE, which means I could put my 425 sf of cave stuff in that until I'm done with work. 

Mantra for many years now.... I always have enough. Step by step there is a letting go of needing to control all the outcomes. Step by step my, whatever it is, I think of "them" as angels or just the Universe, show me everything I need to know and they keep me going in the direction of remembering who I truly am.

If the title that James never got into his own name turns out to be something that is transferable to me, then this particular step will be taken. I hope it works. I love the idea of helping James get back home. Home for me is on the Horizon however it goes with James. 

This Week's Story People

http://www.storypeople.com/

Jon Stewart

This guy has written and directed his first film, Rosewater, about a journalist in Iran. Looks really, really good. And I love the intelligence and the heart of Jon Stewart. I went looking for interviews with him about the movie and found this clip. He's a genius at witnessing absurdities and them to the public eye.

North Carolina

There's a place in NC where they teach you how to make straw bale structures. I don't know why I start to cry when I see these places but my heart is so in love with them and there is something that reaches inside of me and it's like recognizing something you never knew you had missed. These are some pictures of the places they have built.       Muddaubers website

Straw Bale

As I'm researching this new insight for myself I find that my heart is beating a little faster and I have to catch my breath. There is something so freakin' exciting about this concept. I have signed up for newsletters and following blogs but wow, this would be a beautiful home. Small, crafted, environmentally wonderful, affordable, and beyond delightful.


I remember when I was doing some renovations on the house I'm preparing to sell, I wanted to put alcoves in the walls. It would have taken more money that I had at the time to tear down the walls and frame for them, so instead, and I'm not sure why this satisfied the alcove need for the moment, I used plaster over the entire bedroom wall with designs from my bare hands.

A straw bale house will give me opportunity make my home a piece of art. And today I found out, through a new blog that the International Residential Code (IRC), which is the basis for virtually every jurisdiction in the U.S, is going to amend it's code to allow straw bale construction.

The awareness that there was even something like a house made from straw bales came yesterday when I visited Sun Ray in Sedro Woolley to check out a mobile tiny home he had for sale. To my amazement what I found was a huge house made from straw and cob. The entire house was a work of art. I took some pictures but they didn't come out very well so I found some others online. If you click on them they'll be bigger.

Step by step the way unfolds before me. Seriously, I find myself filled with joy when I see these houses and imagine my own.

Tiny House Family

Gypsy Wagon

Today I was on my way to see this baby but turns out I was supposed to be at my job. Details. I can't wait to see her in person.

This Is Where I Leave You

Another movie about family, their dysfunctions, their humanity, and the way we all just keep on "growing up". Jason Bateman sorta plays the same guy in each movie he's in. In this one, which is threaded with quiet humor but not really a comedy because there's so much family drama in it, he's pretty sweet, just as he is. But there's this one scene where he's lying on the ice in a rink with Rose Byrne and she said something to him, and to me, that made me stop and write this down.

JB-I've spent my entire life playing it safe just to avoid being exactly where I am right now.

RB- You know, where you are right now is in a cool rink on a hot day listening to a Cyndi Lauper classic, underneath disco lights. Cut yourself some slack, Jake. Anything can happen. Anything happens all the time.

Like tonight when I went to take a hot tub in my emptied house and realized that the electricity is turned off and finding out the "children" thought they had paid the electric bill but paid the water by mistake. Like realizing that I thought the whole city hall shenanigans around my lot line adjustment were over but found out it's only the beginning of the end at the bank getting 3 drawings notarized with my neighbors.

With all the "hurry up and wait", I am so many different people these days. The one getting all her ducks in a row. The one relentlessly romantic by herself. The frustrated one. The one who cries sometimes alone at night but laughs at and talks to playful beautiful crows in the day. The impatient Aries who is often the oblivious one. The older woman watching everything unfold. Still, there's this one that sits with my Self more constantly these days. The me that understands that all the moments, the dilemmas, the wrong turns, the traffic, the joys.... all the ways and the "ones" that I am, they are all blessings. She's the grateful one who continues to teach me about who we all really are with lessons on the source of happiness.

And then, of course, there is the one that will digress regularly.

Another really good part of it is where Deborah Monk and Jane Fonda come out to the entire neighborhood and family with a luscious kiss!!

Hurdles

Launda Wheatley  - Artist

Last January my life changed in a moment. With a few words the image I had of the future, the work it would take to get there, the sometimes daily renewal of the commitment it would take to create it, became a moot point.

Then, as life does, she went on. The shattering didn't unshatter but all the pieces drifted back and began to find their new places. Some of the dreams were gone, some took up different places within me, some were created as new. Some, I believe, are still falling and will eventually find a home.

In May I began to move forward toward one of the rites of passage as we get older. I started to prepare for a different way to be in the world. As a daughter this happened when my parents passed. As a mother, my identity as a mother changed as he became his own man. As a working woman, I really love my job and the people I work with. Still, now I'm coming to a time when my job won't be the basis for decisions about my time and energy. Like a cannon I shot myself toward retirement no holds barred. And then the whole process skidded into a limbo of various holding pattern, starting in May, until a decision I'd made 20 years earlier could be settled and sorted out. Serious flexibility training and the creation of a super hero teacher of letting go and trusting, again, that every moment is perfect.

The last couple have days have brought news that the hurdle has been jumped and the process has begun with all the force it can muster. Where I was pushing from behind before, now I'm holding on for dear life. Exhilarated and terrified all at once, there is this amazing light shining at the core of my imagination.

I'll always be a daughter, a sister, a mother, a working woman, but now I will also be a woman who spends her days creating beauty within the end of the story of her life. That feels perfect to me.

Hmmm, I wonder what will happen next.

Baboon Peace

I read a great blog called io9. Today I read about how a baboon troop became more peaceful after the death of it's most violent alpha males. Fascinating. Read here.... io9 blog

Bio Light

As a person that learns so much through the visual, although I'm not sure if that's just true for everyone, I love National Geographic. I get to travel entire worlds and see life as I have not imagined it.

Photograph by Taylor F. Lockwood

Brazil—Dozens of bioluminescent mushrooms sprout on a dead log, green stems glowing in the light of a full moon. This species—Mycena lucentipes—grows on the wood of flowering trees in the rain forests of Brazil and Puerto Rico. Its edibility is unknown.

Etsy Artist From Germany

Little pixie Matze OOAK made by Tatjana Raum

Click on the picture and it will take you to her site. Magical work.

Conversations

So I have these conversations with people/beings in my head. Therapists, friends, spiritual celebrities, regular celebrities, beings completely unknown to me, shapeshifters, ex's, etc. Recently there was this conversation about the question "why" and whether or not it's a word that inspires a tendency toward defensiveness. The players in this conversation varied, kinda like in a dream. You know how that goes. I think, at first, it was an ex, then it was my therapist, then it was Pema Chodron, and then it was Ce Lo Green. Of course, sometimes the conversations have to do with making decisions, even daily ones, like getting going in the morning with all the various reasons to get out  of a cozy, warm bed.... or not.

Often I am sincerely delighted by the depth and humor laced throughout the talks. Sometimes they are like debates and these I'm usually enlightened by and can regularly change my mind or direction based on the arguments presented. Still, many times there is no conclusions drawn and I am still left in a quandary, although a much calmer one. These are the times that I find contentment in the knowledge of the existence of Mystery.

Lately there has been a vast amount of talking about the upcoming Retirement and where I will plant myself, or if I will plant myself at all. Some of my advisers have reminded me of my beginnings as a rolling stone while others have taken me through the memory lane of times living on the land in complete solitude and discovering the joys of roots.  Mostly, all of them tell me that whatever I choose will be perfect in the moment of it's choosing and that nothing is set in concrete. Good to know.

Sincere gratitude to my head and the voices that reside there. Thank you.

Photoplay

Took some pictures with my phone on one of my sunnier Autumn walks within the city and tonight after work, with the rain singing to me outside my window, played with the photos and found it calming and way fun.

White Berries Getting Surreal

Looking Up Through Autumn Leaves

Halloween Bats On A Beautiful Door

Traditition

Last night a bunch of us went to Shanghai Gardens. We do this every year around this time to celebrate the coming into the world of our beautiful son. He loves barley green noodles, so, this is where we go. This year his adorable girlfriend was there, his best friend, his other mom and her partner and his 80 something grandma. She was a hoot. She got asked what tattoo would she get and where would she put it. Grandma thought and thought and wouldn't let it go because she didn't want to be indecisive. So much fun..

We also had a discussion about putting our kids pictures on the internet and whether or not we should get their permission. Well, I didn't get permission for this one. I hope it's ok. It's about 20 years old and he's not naked on a pad of sheep's wool or something. ( I wonder if I can find one of those )

I so love the young man we celebrate. I'm beyond grateful that he is in my life and if there were only one thing that I accomplish in my entire life, being his mom would be that with immense joy.

Magical Universe

Preview of a movie that I know I must see. Documentary of an Outsider Artist. I'm probably in love with him already and I've only seen the preview. I guess that's how I am. I love movies.

550 sf Castle

This is the latest dream that wants to be manifested through me. I once heard that you just have to keep imagining the dream very specifically and it will come to you. That's one thing I don't have a problem with, specific fantasizing, eh?  I'm making myself smile. But really, isn't she beautiful?

If you click on the picture it takes you to the company that makes these.