NaBloPoMo Ends... for me anyway

I finally did it. I thoroughly flaked on National Blog Posting Month. Funny. It felt pretty darn good.

There are times when I find my Internet use spikes - and what that looks like at home is: I'm feeling lonely and bored, my "real" life is feeling kind of empty and insecure, and I don't know what to do with my time.

The end of this month evolved into something exactly the opposite. In fact, for this entire month it's felt difficult and artificial to blog as there have been so many incredible people to interact with in person.

I spent a huge percentage of the month working with artists I admire and respect with "Stay for the Cake." I bumbled along over-enthusiastically attempting to make a new friend. I patched up decade-old mistakes with an old friend and felt my heart fill up to bursting with love and relief. My family sent me a box of birthday goodies (they come without fail each year). I'm so lucky to have them. I spent Thanksgiving with my father-in-law and his wife relaxed, entertained, safe and welcome. I saw Lincoln Crockett play at Mississippi Studios last night and was transported song after song. I love my husband more than I thought possible, more each day.

The cumulative affection of a lifetime is The Thing that keeps me holding on.

I've been so engaged in others that I haven't been connected to writing. It seems like I should be able to do both, though.

Do you ever wonder where your focussed creative energy seems to drift away to? I find myself wishing I were a great writer, actor, musician, painter, whatever...yet I always come back to people and social connection - my most creative venue.

I turned 40 this weekend. For the first time in my life it was so very clearly not about how many people love me or what people gave me to prove it. It was about how to love people even better, communicate that clearly, give what I can so their lives are improved. Where the heck did that come from?! Is this my creative calling in life? I don't feel much better at loving people than writing, or the litany of other things I wish I were better at. It's just something I can't help wanting to do. Is simply loving people a form of creation and artistic expression?

Since I didn't have much in the way of words to share this month, I'd like to bring your attention to a new link I've added to my blog roll. It's not actually a blog. Rather a radio station and so much more! The Free Music Guy!

This is my friend Matt's site. He and his wife Jenya are uncontrollably creative and their drive and output have always inspired me to try to live a completely engaging life off the computer. We partly moved to Portland so that we could better emulate them in calling our own shots.

Enjoy the music. Now go out and make some of your own!

L'il Buddy

This little guy or gal was maybe two inches long, and completely unperturbed by my huge face and camera. The warmth of the sun won out. Cave Junction, Oregon, early September 2009.The sheets are freezing right now. Lucky Lizard. Hope he/she has a nice warm burrow for the night.

Warm thoughts for a cool day

Here's a nice spring memory for this business-like late autumn day:A gentle reminder that spring will come again someday and I can make madeleines anytime I want.

Moving to Portland - The Next Phase

The boxes of 20 years worth of collected stuff from my life in California sitting in my basement, still needing to be sorted out and most of the contents passed on to someone who will actually use them... this stuff was a good reason for a while to avoid the next steps in arriving in Portland.

Sure, I've been here in body, and a huge chunk of my creative self rooted right away and grew like crazy. However, my heart has been quietly turned and facing south and west since I arrived, and hasn't budged to face the truth.

The stuff in the basement masterfully does what stuff is so good at doing: providing excuses for questionable behavior. See, stuff can provide excuses for everything. The most obviously painful one is war. The recent oil wars are all about access to the stuff that keeps cars running, which allows for greater consumption of resources and, you guessed it, stuff. Cars seem outwardly like a "need," but really a car is just a piece of stuff when you boil it down. Cars allow for some cool experiences - like travelling and at times, a distinctly profound sense of freedom. However, it's also a vehicle to get stuff into your home, move stuff around, and even get stuff for, like radios, chains, repairs, and my own personal weakness: chrome skull-head gear shift knobs. I even have car related stuff in the basement to sort out from all the other stuff.

Oil, cars, and wars aside - locally, today is a blustery day. As big wind often does, it's blown the loose, surface feelings right out of my hands that I've been wanting to let go of, and it's left me feeling scrubbed clean, and my nerves exposed.

Those nerve endings are reaching up and out for human connection like healthy young twigs on trees - and they are just as strong, tender, green and vulnerable.

The difference in this autumn from the last few is that I am not dormant. Fall has always been full of awakening and growth but the last three or four years, I'd felt shut down. I am so awake now, though, it's startling.

In starting the STUFF concept on the blog this month, less than midway through I found I'd dropped it. Just looking in it's direction was so revealing that I had to take a step back.

Today, I clearly see it's not the stuff that's the problem. I'd confused the concept of "unpacking" with "arriving". It's not the stuff still in boxes holding me back from my imminent arrival. It's the heart dragging it's pulsey feet, still wandering lonely on Hwy 101, openly missing it's big heart friends in the Bay Area.

In seeing this clearly, I can at least finally take some time to indulge my heart's need to face homeward and also to turn north and east and take that big last step. Today, I'm consciously allowing my love be fly down to the Bay Area (and Kentucky, Scotland, Luxembourg, Seattle, Canada, Arizona and all the other places on the planet holding the lovely people I know) as I line a great soft nest for my heart to alight in.

The rest of me is almost here. I wonder what we'll do when I finally arrive?

I looked for pictures from my trip in August to post with this entry. Somehow this one seems to say it all.

John Magee and Buddy the Special Needs Goat - click to enlarge.

Let the Phestival of Phoebe Begin!

Sten and Cori came down from Seattle to see "Stay for the Cake" this weekend. What a lovely surprise! After a visit to Powell's this morning, Sten took us down to Multnomah Village and simply the coolest beer store I've ever seen. So Tyler got me some special brews to celebrate the big Four-Oh this month. I'll report as I crack them open.

Man vs. Beer

Moon and Sixpence
NE 42nd Avenue - Hollywood District
Portland, Oregon
Friday afternoon at 3pm

The Battle was over before it began...For those in the know, don't worry. I beat the crap out of that Guinness!

But Tyler beat the crap out of ME at rummy.

But THEN I beat the crap out of HIM at... well, actually, I only sort of moderately beat him at darts.

No depth perception my ass.

For Marc. Who is so visual. And made a request.

Broccoli.
Und zo zeh all came to ein agreement und Hansel und Gretel gave up zie sugar und zie witch gave up zie meat und zeh chopped down ein broccoli tree fur zie dinner und zeh all liffed happily efer after!

ZEE END

What dog is this?

My friend's Jenya and PAL very helpfully pointed out that were I a dog, I'd be a sled dog of some kind.

PAL sent me pictures of some sled dogs she met in Alaska! As always, click on pics to enlarge.

So cool! Thanks, PAL!!!

The thing I can relate to about the idea of being a sled dog is that feeling of leaning in, hunkering down, sticking my head out and walking really funny. What this means, we'll never know. I also keep thinking that the name of the movie I saw last night is "The Men Who Sniff Goats," or alternately, "The Men Who Smell Goats." Some things about the human psyche should remain a mystery.

What isn't a mystery is which of these sled dogs I am.
I wonder if you can post images of the dog you feel like in comments... must look into that. If not, feel free to leave a link.