Sometimes the universe brings you gifts, and sometimes you feel alive with the knowing of it, the anticipation of it, the desire of it, the simple damn goodness of it. Sometimes those gifts come wrapped in excruciating change and pain and loss and unknowing and transformation. And that is okay. You learn to let go and go on and believe when there is nothing but shadows to hold on to.

I just received one of those gifts.

And I feel so alive.

Jes sent me a link to this site, A Softer World, this morning and because I am anal retentive I started reading the archives from the beginning and found this gem for my life. My twenty pound cat really does clean my hair while I sleep. And sometimes if he’s hungry, my face.

Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize nothing is lacking, the whole world belongs to you.
- Lao Tzu

Life doesn’t leave much desire for blogging these days, and I’m glad. My garden is half planted (watermelon, pumpkin, corn, squash, zucchini, onions, carrots, eggplant, broccoli) and the rest will be soon be done (tomatoes, spinach, lettuce, cucumbers, beans, peas, peppers, herbs). I went camping in the sluiceboxes this weekend, but forgot it was springtime in Montana, which means glacier melts and rivers rising by the feet overnight. Which means white water creeks and logs rushing down currents fast enough to knock a hundred pound girl under just like that. So we hugged cliffs and hiked the side of a mountain through brush (and wildcat scat) to get up to the highway and back down to my car. Let’s just hope the water goes down soon so we can forge back in for our things. I miss my toothbrush.

“…What is the name of the deep breath I would take over and over for all of us? Call it whatever you want, it is another one of the ways to enter fire.” - Mary Oliver, “Sunrise”

I want to write about hiking Tower Rock yesterday: about reaching the ridge out of breath behind Molly, the local exuberant volunteer trail guide; about the 360 degree panorama of mountain, river, and plains awaiting us at the top; about the intimate textures of wood and rock and moss whispering to my camera; about ditching my flip flops and gear to clamber bare-foot-and-hand up one last fifty foot temptation of nearly sheer rock where I stood at the heart-stopping top of the top of the world before slip-sliding back down to earth.

{Molly}                                         {A little shot of perspective}

About the exhilaration of all this being my backyard, my afternoon out, my alternative equivalent to outlet malls and rush hour traffic.

I bought the seeds for my first vegetable garden today. I want to write about that, too.

But instead I’m just going to reprint the last few lines of the last (and title) poem in Sandra Cisneros’ fiery collection, Loose Woman – lines that made me catch my breath and want to howl at the moon:

I strike terror among the men.
I can’t be bothered what they think.
Que se vayan a la ching chang chong!
For this, the cross, the Calvary.
In other words, I’m anarchy.

I’m an aim-well,
shoot-sharp,
sharp-tongued,
sharp-thinking,
fast-speaking,
foot-loose,
loose-tongued,
let-loose,
woman-on-the-loose
loose woman.
Beware, honey.

I’m Bitch. Beast. Macha.
Wachale!
Ping! Ping! Ping!
I break things.

“I have woven a parachute out of everything broken.” - William Stafford

The best things in life take you by surprise, are the last things you are looking for, thinking about, expecting to knock on your heart’s door and carve out a corner in your mind.

I went to Missoula last week to see a concert. I drank overpriced concert beer from a can and watched college students trying to be hippies and walked around the liberal, artsy, mountain-surrounded downtown with someone to tell me stories from his old home and introduce the bartender by name (Joe). And even though it was less than a day’s escape from my little casino-riddled, military-beset, ranch-and-farmer city, I drove home through the Rockies the next morning wrapped in the quiet, joyful freedom that spends most days with me now. I drove home to animals and art and books and a job filled with absurdities I choose to think of as writing material for the not-so-far-away day I pay off that last dollar of debt, pack my car with a few essentials and find out which road my heart will take me down next.

It’s so good to just be here now.

(P.S. Happy April Fools!)

“Deliver me from Swedish furniture…deliver me from clever art…may I never be complete…may I never be content…may I never be perfect.”
- Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

New words, maybe soon.

“I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.” - Henry Miller

A handful of miles out of the small valley of this city I call home for now, and I drive up and over and into vast skies and lingering plains. I walk along cliffs full of history and wild wind. I look around and feel tiny and torn open and alive and free. I stand on the edges of dark daring and I listen to my heart. I hear a strong voice.

There are mountains on my horizon now.

I’m enjoying this place I’m in right now — this last place I ever I thought I’d be place; this liminal place; this place of gentle recovery, unimaginable growth and such surprising Joy.

A group of older men come into my restaurant for tea and coffee every weekday afternoon. They are all retired, veterans and ex-cops — jovial and polite men of a kind so singular (and still rare) to their generation. They tip generously and stay on the good side of friendly. They talk about politics, they talk about wives and girlfriends, they talk about fishing trips, they bicker and gossip and laugh and flirt and generally make me look forward to having that kind of verve a few decades down the road.

The first time I waited on them they called me Tinkerbell. A few weeks ago they pulled out a tiny silver scale confiscated back in the day and joked about resin and white powder. Today as they walked out the door, one looked back at me, raised an eyebrow, and said, “Goodbye, little love goddess.”

And I couldn’t help but laugh out loud.

you feel it, too,
the way this flesh
hungers
with desire,
memory of
lust, touch, breath, heartbeat
in the dark — tell me
you remember
that danger
your dark desire

is a test. of patience, and a tiny flicker of wanting to be writing again online. must edit template. do not want to work with code again.

we’ll see.