feels like coming home

it feels like coming home
when there are bumps in the road
and the memories are everywhere you look
and the people that surround you
are the ones who can ground you
and you realize you haven't changed so much

and you're taking in the air
like it's your very first breath
seeing things as if you you had been blind
realize that life is just a prequel for death
and that you can do is to be kind

Your family and friends are
the ones you can depend on
to bring you back when you've been far away
and when you're feeling down
they'll be the ones who come around
to pick you up and help you on your way

and you're dancing in the air
like you were just another star
lighting up the sky with every move
finding out how good it feels to be who you are
knowing that you've got nothing to prove

there's no better place than this
no better time than now
the opportunity is yours so take it
and when you look behind you
there'll be something to remind you
of those along the way who helped you make it

and you're taking in the air
like it's your very first breath
seeing things as if you had been blind
you realize that life is just a prequel for death
and all that you can do is to live kind

Rain and Thunder

love me like I know you can
with tender lips and rugged hands
hold me up and lay me down
cause me to make funny sounds
taste me like your favorite dish
grant my every single wish
put yourself inside my body
give me freedom to be naughty<
roll me 'round and fold me under
I'm the rain and you're the thunder
make my legs shake with fatigue
wear me out then cuddle me
watch me as my eyes grow heavy
I'd be yours if you would let me
you always leave me feeling inspired
beautiful, brilliant and deeply desired
forever is not long enough to explain
how long my desire for you will remain
for you'll be with me when my body has died
you're part of the spirit that's living inside
and for all of the strength that you've helped me discover
I thank you for being my friend and my lover

Port Orford

Poet

poet you're a fighter
you're a soul that lifts me higher
'cause you're freein' up the truth
from the walls they've built to hide it
your words are flowin' from your heart
into your fountain pen
they're coming through my speakers
to return to heart again

now I remember seeing you
on Fridays in the day
an air of peace surrounded you
'cause that was just your way
I knew you were a poet
'cause it lives there in your eyes
you possess a beauty
that I can not fail to recognize

saw that you were blowin' up
and man it made me smile
I realized I hadn't seen your face
in such a while
I heard you on the radio
and elevated faders
It's loud, I'm proud to see you now
your life is what you've made it

poet you inspire
all the people to aspire
to be liberated from
all the chains that we've acquired
to educate ourselves so we
can see the world for real
open up our hearts again
allow ourselves to feel

poet it's a blessing
how your rhythms are addressing
all the inequalities
that our society's possessing
your ancestors are smiling
as you tell the world their stories
and you will always have the gift
of love's eternal glory

poet you're a fighter
you're a soul that lifts me higher
'cause you're freein' up the truth
from the walls they've built to hide it
your words are flowin' from your heart
into your fountain pen
they're coming through my speakers
to return to heart again





for Gabriel Teodros

http://www.gabrielteodros.com/

like glass

I am like the ocean
when the surface is like glass
laying in a patient wait
for another phase to come to pass
in my depths the creatures lurk
consuming one another
everything was born of me
and yet I'm no one's mother

I collect the sunshine's heat
and carry it with currents
I collect the moon and stars
and move with their inertia
I will swell and I will crash
and I will become stormy
I will raise my levels
as the earth continues warming

get caught in my rip-tide
feel my currents pull you in
I'll take you under
then let you surface again

I will hold the answers
to the questions no one's asking
I will be a mirror for
the face that you are masking
I'll reflect upon the sky
I will create clouds
they'll rain tears upon the land
to bring my love into the ground

I will gently rock the boat
that's resting in the twilight
I will sink another
only when I feel the time's right
I will give and I will take
and when the storm has passed
I'll be like the ocean
when the surface is like glass

get caught in my rip-tide
feel my currents pull you in
I'll take you under
then let you surface again

I'm rising like the tide
that's swallowing the shore
I hold so much inside
can't hold it anymore

strange feeling

It's a strange feeling.

Earlier this morning I was looking at my life, and seeing how far I have come. Had I gotten married several years ago as was planned, I would have had to forsake all that I have accomplished since then to devote myself to a life (and a family) that never fit me. It was undoubtedly the right decision, and yet, I still have fond feelings for the man I was once engaged to. With the Sasquatch Music Festival coming up this weekend I began to reflect on going to the same festival with Ken when we were together. It occured to me that he might be going this year, and I was excited at the possibility of running into him. I gave him a call to see if he would be coming, and left a message on his voicemail. Then I decided to call my Mom to tell her about the assistanceship I was granted for graduate school. My mom was always fond of Ken, so I shared with her the possibility of seeing him this weekend. She thought that would be nice, and agreed that he and my boyfriend Roy would probably like eachother. They are both horn players from Kitsap, and are both Aires. It would also be cool to meet Ken's new girlfriend.
Well, I'm in the middle of this conversation with my mom when Ken calls on the other line. I tell her I'll call her back and answer the other line "hey Kenny." We talk for a while and I tell him about my job at the radio station. He tells me he's not going to Sasquatch and I am disappointed. Then he tells me he's getting married. The first thing I noticed is that it's strange to be hearing this, but the strangeness is quickly replaced by relief. Now I can finally stop feeling guilty about leaving him five months before we were supposed to be married. It's off my shoulders, and now we can finally be friends..... right?
WRONG!
Appearantly the new one has decided that he's not allowed to be in communication with me at all. In fact, he's even thrown away things of mine that were left in the house... things that I thought were safe there. Perhaps I took for granted that we would always be friends... after all, that's what we promised when we broke up. I feel both betrayed and concerned. It seems that after Ken's evil mother chased me away he has decided to marry someone just like her.
I am understandably taken aback. It's like the tables have turned and now he's breaking up with me. His parents actually LIKE her too. Maybe it's because she's as controlling over him as they are. Or perhaps I'm just being bitter and she has a perfectly legitimate point in insisting that he be in the now with her, and not in the past with me. It's just hard for me to understand because I always stay friends with my ex's, and my boyfriend is very understanding of that even though he usually cuts all ties with his.
Anyway I guess it's all just a big cycle.... and maybe I will finaly be able to let go of some of the regrets I have about that relationship. It's just such a strange feeling that I don't know what to do with it. I don't want to call my mom back, because I don't feel like talking about it just now. I'm sure she will understand when she reads this. She is, after all, roodblog's most loyal reader.

Thanks Mom. I'll call you soon.

wind

The wind is to Ellensburg what the rain is to Seattle. It comes through the mountains and descends upon the valley with vigor. While a good head-wind can nearly double the time it takes me to walk to or from work, it seldom gets really good till after dark. The wind passes quickly through Ellensburg much like its transient population of truckers and college students.
Now that the snow has all melted and spring is unfolding into summer, the afternoon breeze carries the smell of lilac through the air. I breathe it in like it's a sacred tonic for my spirit.
In the morning I walk east toward the sun down a gravel alley way. It has the appearance of an old country road... the kind you'd walk down in Roslyn. It makes me feel more at home and puts me in the right frame of mind to embrace the day ahead of me.
It's funny how my internal compass has changed since I have lived here. As I mentioned before, I walk east in the morning.... only in truth it has always felt like north to me. What is north feels west, west south and so on. I believe it has something to do with the magnetism of the area. Some have suggested that it's because of Mel's hole. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel's_Hole)
Most likely it's because this little valley is surrounded by rolling hills that all look the same no mater which direction you're facing. Where in Albuquerque I had the Sandia mountains, and in Seattle the water to orient me, here I have nothing but.... but the wind which always blows in from the west like an urgent message from the ocean carrying the smell of lilac into my nostrils as I go about my relatively simple existence.

Like a Spider

I was sitting on the front porch couch staring at my garden when I saw a large black spider scurry out of the corner to collect a meal from it's web. The spider is a smart one. It has found a very secure home where the two beams supporting the ledge just fail to meet leaving a gap just the right size to comfortably shelter it's resident. Outside the spider has constructed a horizontal net that easily catches everything in it's path. The net is the spiders own front porch, and she, like me is steping out for a spot of fresh air. She goes back inside and moments later an unsuspecting beattle struggling against the Ellensburg winds finds it's way to her steps. As the gusts get stronger the web is filled with seeds and small plant particles. She does not mind though. She has eaten well today, and now there will be something to tuck away for dinner.
I am afraid of this sizable arachnid, and yet I would not dream of killing her. I respect her inginuity. It has been what's allowed her to grow so thick and creepy. I begin to think how, like her, I also cast a net out into the universe to see what I could catch. My persuit of happiness is much like her persuit of sustanance, and we have both managed to find exactly what we didn't know we were looking for.

foggy and clear

It's as if I have stopped fighting the way life relentlessly twists and turns and stops and jumbs ahead. Nothing surprises me anymore. Everything is at once defeat and victory. We are all far too facinated with ourselves and invested in our own egos. The existential crisis is only a crisis because we assign a feeling of loss to the realization that nothing means anything and that there are no truths but those we create in our mind to help us through the days and nights. I have experienced this as emptiness, but in doing so have failed to recognize the density and beauty that exists in simplicity.

Howdy from nowhere

My first impression of Ellensburg was that, as a place, it amounts to little more than a truck stop between destinations. Never in my wildest dreams would I have considered it a destination in and of itself. And yet, as the mysterious forces of the universe would have it, I find myself living in this truck stop town trying to discover what lessons this form of existence has to teach me. Before moving to Ellensburg I had lived in Roslyn for about three months, and had found the experience rather pleasing. Roslyn is a much smaller town that Ellensburg, and yet, I did not feel confined by it. Perhaps because it was so small, the people there took great interest in me as a newcomer, and most were overtly friendly. Sitting on barstools, my stories were devoured by people who were not afraid to show their enthusiasm and ask lots of questions. The most common was why I had come to Roslyn.
To be honest, I was never certain I knew the true answer to that question, so I rattled off some vague nonsense about escaping the high pace and traffic of the city to embrace a quieter existence. I am not saying that there is no truth to that, just that it is not the whole truth. The reason for my departure from Seattle would depend upon the mood I was in when asked about it. There were too many reasons to individually list, and at the same time, there was really no reason at all. The question continued to puzzle me until I moved to Ellensburg and it changed shape. I stopped asking myself why I had moved to Roslyn, and started asking why I had left the city I had called home for the last ten years.
I repeated the question so often in my head, re-living the last months of my life in Seattle that I made myself sick. I needed relief from my isolation. I needed to find a few little places in Ellensburg where I could feel comfortable. The public library quickly became the first place where I felt some level of comfort. The librarians were friendly and warm. They exuded an air of openness and passion for quenching the intellectual thirsts of Ellensburg's public. Receiving my library card was to me, the first step toward grasping at new citizenship in a place I still couldn't comprehend living in. Even worse to me than the idea of living in Ellensburg was that at that time I was still commuting to Cle Elum each day, driving thirty miles each way to work the same taco job I'd had in Seattle nearly ten years ago.
As I slapped refried beans onto tortillas, and later tried to peal the same crusted beans from metal pans, I couldn't help wondering how all my education and experience had led me to this miserable existence. Perhaps I should not have trusted that whim to throw myself into the wind…. just look where that wind blew me! I would try to think of the dishwashing as an opportunity to meditate, and see the experience as a lesson in humility. Most of the time I was able to put it all into perspective, but then my nineteen year old boss would yell "when you finish the dishes take out the trash" and return to a sit at a table with her friends to gossip and eat. I took deep breaths and reminded myself that it was only temporary.
After work I would come "home" to a town I was still terribly unfamiliar with. Due to poverty, there was little I could do to try and enjoy my new home, so instead I put my mind to finding a job. Ellensburg may be too large to have the overt friendliness of Roslyn, but at least it had more opportunities for work. I knew that at the very least I would not be forced to work in food service again and I wouldn't have to commute. On my first day off since the move, I put on the cleanest clothes I could dig out of the mess of our closet and set out to look for work. I stopped at the courthouse to see if there were any job postings there, then walked across the street to the bank. The clerk at the bank told me that I could apply online, but I knew I didn't have any money to sit in a wi-fi café and use the Internet. I would simply press on and look for places where I only needed to fill out an application. At that moment I looked up and saw a sign that said, "work source." I walked in, filled out a form, and was allowed to use their computer to print my resume. I pulled it up threw an email and printed copies on resume paper. One of those resumes ultimately succeeded in landing me a job, though I think at least some of the credit belongs to the experiences listed, and not just the fancy paper.
The woman at Work Source seemed very interested in helping me, and wanted to know the details of my situation so she could be of more assistance. I told her that I had this was my first day in Ellensburg. At some point in the conversation I mentioned I was hungry. The truth was, that it was the end of the month and I'd used up all my food stamps. She could see by the desperation I must have been exuding that I was not exaggerating. She called the local food bank and told them she was sending me over. I walked over to the Methodist church across from the library and was given a box of food consisting mainly of canned food and industrial generic bulk items. The box was incredibly heavy, and I had to carry it fifteen blocks to get it home.
My injured back agonized for the first ten blocks. I staggered down the street setting the heavy burden down every twenty feet to momentarily relieve the burning ache. As I approached the corner of University and Water, a woman in an SUV noticed me struggling and offered me a ride home. I was truly grateful for her kindness. She pulled up to our house just as Roy was getting home from work. He gave me a strange look that I knew meant he was upset that I had "hitch-hiked" again. I brought my bounty inside to show him and we began to concoct that night's dinner from its contents. It would be the first food I'd had in almost two days.
Catty-corner from the food bank I had seen a sign for a radio station in the doorway of business complex. I thought it would be strange to walk in with a box of food and ask for a job, so I decided I'd come back with one of the fancy resumes I'd just printed on my next day off. When I did, found the owner (Jack) there alone spray painting file cabinets inside. He was impressed with my experience, but I will not deny for a moment that part of his interest also seemed to be in the physical package that experience came in. It didn't bother me. His flirty nature instantly revealed his humanity to me, and I felt very comfortable in his presence.
After hours of conversation he asked me if I really wanted to work there, and I replied by saying "no, I just came in here to huff paint." He smiled and asked me to come back in two days to meet with him and the stations two employees to pitch my ideas. I was working there the following week. The pay was little more than I had made slinging burritos, and I was working less than 20 hours per week. I had been so excited for this job, that I became very depressed when I realized it would not improve my financial situation at all. I'd decided to take a second job one day a week at the local cable station in Roslyn. I'd have enough to get by, but nothing left over to pay off bills.



Before we had made our move from Roslyn, I had sent my resume to the general manger of the college radio station KCWU. When I visited the station an employee told me that most positions were volunteer and were reserved for students. I would not be a student till fall, so I didn't expect anything to come of it. Shortly after beginning my work with KQBE, the manager of KCWU (Chris) called me for an interview. We had spoken briefly before, and he had mentioned that he was taking a leave of absence to do relief work in New Orleans. I came in and was interviewed with intensity. When it was over, they asked if I could give them ten minutes and come back. I thought it must be a good sign. When I came back, they offered me the job of Interim Station Manager. I was ecstatic.
The next day I went in to KQBE at 8am to co-host the tail end of the morning show with Tom. During a long set of music, Jack came into the studio and looked at me strangely. "Are you awake?" He said. I asked him if he'd be around for a while because I needed to talk to him. "You're not leaving already are you?" I told him about the job offer I had received the previous day, and how I couldn't refuse because it was more money than I had ever made, and would look great on my resume. He understood, but being a catholic was obliged to give me a guilt trip. "Jillian, you are bringing up all my abandonment issues." The next day he told me that he'd love to have me back full time when Chris returned from his adventure. Before I left KQBE, I managed to network with two local high schools to create a partnership with the station giving kids in the area an opportunity to create public service announcements and youth events calendars to share with the whole community.

That Sunday, Roy treated me to breakfast at a dennyesque restaurant called Perkins. I ordered strawberry waffles with loads of whipped cream and a side of eggs sunny side up. The waffles were fantastic, but I couldn't eat the eggs because the whites were not cooked and had the consistency of mucus. During the course of our meal, I decided that I wanted to go to the truck stop next door and study the cultural objects I found within it. I readied my notebook, while Roy winced at the idea of being seen with me while I walked around the mart taking notes. He worried that somebody might arrest me, but nobody seemed to notice. Perhaps the employees thought I was a secret shopper.

The short list of what I found inside the truck stop goes something like this:

o Self extinguishing ashtrays
o Maps and bulbs
o Hot dogs
o Tire thumpers (resembling small baseball bats)
o Pin ball machines
o DVD's, CD's, and audio book rentals
o Diesel Treat fuel conditioner
o Portable 12 volt everything
o Glass figurines of unicorns, kittens, and American flag clad electric guitars
o Velvet coloring folders (to keep the kids busy on road-trips)
o Bendable novelty animals with hearts (for Valentines day)
o US Army postcards
o Travel sized everything
o And best of all…the "Howdy From Nowhere" Ellensburg souvenir snow globe.

Fascination

The following post was transcribed from a musical jam session I had with my friend Dallas and several of his friends from popular bands such as The Morning After Girls, and The Dandy Warhols. Of course, Dallas was kind enough not to tell me who they were at the time because it would have made me even more nervous about singing in front of people than I already was. I was not told ahead of time that I would be singing at all, so I had to pull lyrics from my head as the music in the room inspired me. I was rather shy, so many of the vocals were difficult for me to interpret from the MP3's Dallas made me. In such cases, I tried to meditate on what was on my mind that night, and in many cases, I invented new lyrics where the original words were indistinguishable due to my lack of projection and annunciation. The session took place shortly after my return from Ecuador in April of 2006. I had been working night and day to edit footage from the jungle into something presentable for a film festival I was presenting at. I hadn't slept more than a couple hours a night for three weeks, and in my delirious state of being I just went into a meditation and let words flow from my self unfiltered by concsious thought. Anyway, here is what I came up with.



fascination
I feel I'm under pressure
I've been trying to save the earth
I've been dying for rebirth

fascination
I feel I'm under a deep sensation
when you told me life is hard
I want to love you but my heart is scarred

fascination
feel my heart is under sedation
can't seem to find the truth
by focusing on the past

fascination
this is such a crazy sensation
I'm feeling scared and a little frozen
then I see it's the path I've chosen

fascination
this is such a crazy location
I want to flee to a civilization
that's never been cause it never was

someone's putting their eyes on me
I turn myself around so I can see
all the bounties that have been lost
'cause the companies ignore the cost
doing for business what business takes
quite a path for a president

falling into a web of extremists
and wealthy white men
tranquility is my gift
this is all that I have within me
this is all that I have within me
this is everything

tranquility is my gift
passion is the voice that guides me
tranquility is my gift
passion is the force that's within me

fascination
this is such a crazy sensation
I'm obsessed with a place so far away

got my head so deep in the jungle
got my mind wrapped around a lie that lives
got my head so deep in the jungle
got my mind on a truth that has to give

fascination
feel like I've been under sedation
and now I see that I have begun it
I thought I was lost but now I've found it

hey you, where you going?
hey you, what time have you found?
feel vibrations under your feet now
dig your roots into solid ground

hold it up to the light to see through it
there are places I'd rather be
expect the night to consume all my worries
asking truth to come permeate me

I'm not so lost that I would follow you
couldn't find the innocence I had
wishing I could hold onto something
there's nothing left of what wasn't meant to be had.

Sentimentality

On sunday Roy and I got all my things from my storage unit in Seattle and moved into our new house in Ellensburg. At first we put all the boxes (most of which haven't been unpacked for the last five moves or so) into our spare bedroom to be dealt with at a leisurely pace. However, last night Roy decided that we should bring them all into the living room to force us to unpack, sort, put away and/or get rid of all the crap I've been carrying around with me for years. Watching him tackle my boxes with his perfectly logical sorting method makes me realize why I have never been able to conquer the stacks myself. You see, when I go through these boxes, it's like being flung head first in to a pile of memories. I can tell by the contents which move a particular box was packed during. Old letters and momentos jostle me back and forth between different stages of my life. Photographs of old lovers make me think of patterns that I can't be certain I am not still repeating. I relive all the beutiful moments... the disappointments... the heartaches, and the moments of inspiration. At 28 it feels as if I have lived a thousand life times. As I sort and discharge posessions, I consider what my family and friends might learn about me from what I kept if I were to die tomorrow. Then I think that maybe by sorting through everything, I will also be forced to sort through the longings and the regrets to unburden my psyche. I am greatful for Roy's approach. Perhaps I will be able at last to reconcile some of the contradictory aspects of my personality and find a balance in my relationships and my life.

life after death cont.

I'm feeling rather cozy in my velour pants and Roy's oversized sweatshirt as I sit in the room we are currently sharing and spend quality time with the six dogs who are coming in and out for little doses of affection. I am the only human in the house at the moment, and the solitude and stillness is appreciated. After making a visit to the hospital the other night, It's been determined that I have an advanced bladder infection. It explains what I thought were several isolated incidences of random illness. Now I have two days off, and I am taking advantage of the opportunity to rest and heal. Still, there is so much that I need to be doing, and my illness and fatigue are only getting in the way. It seems there is always something pressing and deadlines hanging over my head. It certainly doesn't make it any easier that I have to pee every ten minutes.

Last night I managed to drag myself out of the house to go to a party at my friend Magenta's house. Magenta is one of the most fantastic people I have come across in Roslyn, or anywhere. We met one night at the brick after I first came into town, and before my second trip to Ecuador. I had been out with my friend Brent earlier, and time had distorted, as it's known to do here. When he dropped me off at my house, I was sure it was nearly 2am. It felt like the end of the night, and I was appropriately ready for bed. However when I got home and discovered it was only 9:30 at night, I suddenly got a second wind and walked into town. When I got there, the place was relatively empty, as if I hadn't been the only one to experience the time shift.

Brent walks in and is surprised to see me there. "I thought you were going to bed?" I strike up a conversation while I'm ordering a drink, then, abruptly pause it to listen to the woman singing across the bar. She's singing Summer Time, the tune my Dad whistled everywhere he went. It's always been one of my favorites. In fact I sang it for my final exam in a voice class I took in college. She sings it perfectly, and I have to introduce myself. For the rest of the night, Magenta and I sang together. We left the bar and went to my house to sing for each other, read lyrics and listen to music. Then I left for Ecuador and didn't see her again for nearly a month.

My time in Roslyn has been short, but significant. Tomorrow after work I will drive to Ellensburg to get the keys for our new house. We'll have to go to Seattle this weekend and clear out my storage shed. We had to sell my truck to get the money for first/last and deposit, so we're not sure where we're going to get the money for gas to get there, or to rent a U-haul. My mom sent us a check to help…. I just hope it gets here by Saturday.

Now that we have managed to find a house that we can reasonable expect to afford, with a fenced yard for our pack I am starting to look forward to the changes that are rapidly approaching. Of course the move itself will be dreadful, and Roy and I will both have to work the following morning. In other words, we're not out of the woods yet, but by Valentines Day we should be all settled in. The radio station in Ellensburg is looking for a new DJ, and I'm hoping that I will be the one. The job would be perfect for me, and I perfect for it. I just realized that I'm almost as horny as I am hungry. I think I'm going to take my food stamps and go to the grocery store, since buying food at a restaurant is simply not an option at the moment. I'll take care of the other business later if Roy is up to it despite his cold.

life after death cont.

With one move down, and another soon to come, I am again reminded of why I had the words "here" and "now" tattooed on my arms. At the time I had just moved in with my then lover Chrisopher Blue. It was January 2005, and it was my forth move since the previous April when I left my fiancé to reclaim my independence. After a five-year relationship with relative stability, I was again flung into the chaos I had once left behind. I often awoke not knowing where I was. I didn't know who was making sounds around me. Was I in the home that my fiancé and I had bought together? Had all of this been a dream? This disorientation gave me great anxiety. I began writing those two words on the inside of my wrists everyday to remind me that no matter where I had gone I was still here, and that there was no use dwelling on the past or worrying about the future. I am here and it is now.

Chrisopher went with me to get the tattoos. We went to our friend Ian who had done all of Chrisophers work. It felt like I was turning a new leaf. I was moving in with the man I loved after we had spent the holidays traveling by car up and down the California coast. He had been so afraid before to admit that he loved me, and now he had asked me to move into his apartment with him. Getting inked, I felt, was a perfect way to devote myself to this time I was living in… this time with him.

Of course that time passed and led to this one. Life with Chrisopher fluctuated regularly between ecstatic and miserable. We brought out the best and the worst of each other until the worst became unbearable. Chrisopher moved to California to live among the red woods, and I ran away to South America twice before settling down in the quiet mountain town of Roslyn.

The tattoos on my arms represent an ideal that I hold logically, but have difficulty obtaining. They function as a reminder…. a reminder that now in the throws of winter I only see in the shower. In fact, as I think about it, my other tattoos are also concepts that I understand and yet cannot accept. The very first one came about on the day after my 18th birthday. The night before I had bought a pack of cigarettes, visited a porn shop, and done almost anything I could think of that had been illegal for me to do before. Then I went to go see Bob Dylan at the Kiva Auditorium and smoked a joint on stage with him while looking down in the crowd at my high school English teacher.

I went with my friend Kevin (aka Kaos) to the Route 66 fine line tattoo parlor because he said he knew the owner and could get me a deal. The artist working that day was an attractive young man whose face lit-up when he saw me. "I know you…. you're that girl that smoked me out last night at the Dylan concert." For twenty dollars he tattooed a black sun with eight distinctive rays on my back. I had chosen this symbol because it represented chaos. Since I moved out of my parent's house at 16, my life had been chaotic. I had studied chaos theory and felt it was time to embrace its force over all things. Still accepting the results of chaos on my life proved difficult. I continued to live it, create it, and despise it.

My second tattoo was a tribute to my dead father. In his life, he had worked many jobs, and was once given the nickname "Rood Dog" by a group of construction men he had worked with at Intel in Rio Rancho New Mexico. The name stuck, and when my father took work over seas, he addressed all his letters to me "to Littlepaw" and signed his name using a paw-print. I had the paw print placed on my right ankle to honor his life, and my connection to him. Despite the tattoo, accepting my fathers death proved to be as if not more difficult that embracing chaos or living in the present moment.

It seems there are so many things my mind can conceive of that I can't seem to actualize in my life. My mind is a factory of thoughts and ideas that are being produced 24 hours a day. When I am awake I stare off into the distance to hear my thoughts. In sleep they surface in bizarre and complicated dreamscapes. It is never quite. There is never peace. I still wake up wondering where I am and which portions of my life have been a dream. There is nothing I can fully accept as fact. There is nothing that is impossible. All that is real is chaos and loss, and I am trapped in its past and afraid for its future.

Sometimes I feel it is my frustrated ambitions that make me crazy. It is the ideas that I never found the energy to pursue that fill my dreams, and the exhaustion that kept me from them that haunts my waking life. Perhaps, in a body that were not as wrecked as mine has become, my busy mind could be satisfied with manic spells of great productivity. However, chronic pain has skewed my bi-polar disorder to favor depression over mania for pure lack of energy. When the mania does surface, it usually results in nothing more than a sleepless night and a rapid pulse. I wonder how I will achieve greatness with all the obstacles I have collected to carry with me. I wonder if it is possible that I will be healthy again in my lifetime.

I am sitting across form the food court in the student union building at Central Washington University. With my own belly full of noodles and sweet and sour chicken, I watch as students choose from the five varieties of grease delivery systems posing as food. Once a week I sit here for approximately two and a half hours while Roy goes to his class on renewable energy. I could stay home if I wanted, but I like to take the opportunity to read, and write, and be alone in public. I prefer to sit upstairs where there are comfy chairs and couches, but this evening I was forced out by the horrible music emanating from the "Campus Crusade for Christ" that is going on in the ball room.

I have to wonder why they chose the word "Crusade" for their event. Are they not aware of how bloody and (pardon the expression) god-awful the crusades were for the victims it claimed? Could they possibly be implying that were it not illegal they would hunt and kill every person on this campus whose way of seeing the world differs from their own? Do they think that Jesus Christ would be honored to have such horrors committed in his name?

I'm currently in the process of applying for graduate school here at CWU. Having graduated from UW in Seattle, I can hide my sense of superiority from everyone but myself. I am months away from beginning school here, and I am already board with the campus and its relatively homogeneous student population. I hope that as a grad student, I will be too busy to be annoyed by this place. I hope that my classmates will be as separate from these loud obnoxious undergrads as I feel right now. I hope that among the truck stops and cow-patties of Ellensburg I will somehow find an intellectual community that will satisfy my yearning for educational stimulation. I grow weary of writing, and decide to return to the novel I am reading: "Skinny Legs and All" by Tom Robbins.

fire.

burning with a fire
there's no where to go but forward
looking through the tunnel
for a light to canter toward
holding on to what is left
'cause there won't be no more
and living is an expense
that I can't even afford

burning with a fire
that has yet to be extinguished
from masses lost to apathy
I try to be distinguished
what is lost when flames go out
is so hard to relinquish
the work that there is left to do
no one will ever finish

burning with a fire
that is raging on inside me
shedding all the masks that they
have painted on to hide me
waiting for the bells to toll
to see who stands beside me
waiting for a sigh to give me hope
and love to guide me

burning with a fire
I can make it if I try
even though some times
I feel so tired I could die
and when exhaustion is enough
to make me shake and cry
I know there is no answer
thus no reason to ask why

Life after death continued....

It is a cold and blustery winter night. Outside the rapid winds blow the foot and a half or so of fresh powdery snowfall into places it normally doesn't fall. The front porch of the house I'm living in is covered in it, and a thin layer of ice is beginning to form on the high traffic areas. In the last days of my nearly four month stretch of unemployment, I have taken to reading the pile of unread novels and non-fictions I had rescued from my storage unit weeks ago. I find myself consuming the stories within their pages like an addict consumes their drug of choice. When I have finished one, I am pleased, and yet unsatisfied and must quickly begin another. The perspectives of the narrators, the characters they describe, and the lessons inherent in their anecdotes swirl around in my mind making it difficult for me to sleep at night. When my night time meds kick in and drown me in drowsiness, the images left behind in my psyche begin to weave themselves into dreams that make me want to sleep late into the afternoon in order to grasp the lesson they are trying to teach me.

Tomorrow I must move out of the vacation home I have been occupying to allow the owners their vacations. Because of my circumstances, I will move in with Roy and his room mate John (also known as "Wagon"). John is a kind animal loving individual, as he would have to be to be so calm about the chaos that is rapidly approaching his domicile. I myself have two dogs. Lili is a pudgy blonde mix that at the very least involves Beagle and Shar Pei. She is the smallest, but also the oldest at approximately 6 years. Before she was rescued from the pound in Austin Texas by Chrisopher, (the heart-breaker), she had given birth to several litters of puppies. The tattoo placed between her large pink utters is to serve as a warning to any future shelter that she has indeed been spayed. Because she got it at the pound, I affectionately refer to it as her "prison tat." Most of her nick-names (and she has many) are food products like "corn-dog" "sausage" "snausage" and "pancake."
Lili's sister Guinta is not any older than 2, and is a mix between a Rottwieler and a German Shepard. Her name comes from my time in the jungle of Ecuador, and is the native Huaorani word for Dog. So yes, essentially I have a dog named "dog," but it's an odd enough name that it makes for a great conversation started at the dog park. One of her many nicknames is BDD. It alternately stands for Big Dumb Dog, and Behavioral Disorder Dog. Perhaps it was her chewing habit, or her love of fresh garbage that landed her in and out of shelters before she came to live with me. I knew that others had failed to love her enough to allow her to continue shredding their precious belongings every day, but to me, nothing was more precious than her obvious desire to please me. In addition, she is very respectful of my two cats. On her first visit, my eldest cat Leo went to check her out, and as he entered the room she bowed. He gave me his approval, and I signed the adoption papers. I have even caught her and my enormous female cat Luna almost snuggling on several occasions.

Roy also has a dog. Her name is Sage, and like Guinta, she is a Rottwieler mix. Roy keeps saying her other breed is Labrador, but she is much smaller than the Rott/Lab mixes I've met in the past, and she has a little white cream puff on her chest to match her single white paw. By her size and intelligence, I have to assume she's some kind of collie. Sage is already familiar with two of the other three dogs that will be present at Wagons. Shady is another older female… the first Lili (the alpha bitch) will have encountered in their own territory. Each of her eyes is pale blue on top, and brown on the bottom giving her stare the look that earned her such an ominous name. She is older than Lili, and her arthritis makes her snappy. Her bark is piercing, but she is otherwise a relatively gentle dog. Other than my cats having to adjust to a house with six dogs, the relationship between Shady and Lili is what I worry most about.

I have been procrastinating. As I always do with change, I deny they are happening until I am in its throws and can deny it no longer. I put on a CD of Jack Kerouac reciting prose in front of a jazz band as if to distract myself from my own nostalgia by borrowing his. I struggle at first with the shear magnitude of dirty dishes before me, but as they become more manageable I go into a Zen like state and zone out. The music reminds me of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, and I wonder what else Jack Kerouac and Fred Rogers had in common. Later I'm packing up my portable hard drive, mini DV tapes and cables trying not to think about all the work I had planned to get done here, and how much still needs to be done. I try not to think that this fire burning in the woodstove will be the last I light here…. that my evening romp with Roy before he left for his second shift may be our last in this bed….that these boxes I'm packing will be unpacked and packed again in a matter of months. Leo jumps on the table and shoves his furry head into my face, as if he has heard my mental plea for distraction.