retreat. review. release. reset. reconnect. recommit.

on my mind, as of late :: love, in all its forms. my abiding love for my kitties, my dutiful but fierce love for my parents and brother, my nurturing and awestruck love for my garden, my grateful and vulnerable love for friends, my tumultuous but certain love for myself and, of course, that elusive love that can loosely be labeled 'romantic love.'

i know i'm capable of a great and magical (romantic) love :: soul-warming intimacy, wild adventure, growth-inducing discomfort, laughable monotonies ... but it has been so long since i've loved like that or been loved like that in return that at this point, it seems like uncharted territory on the distant horizon that i question whether or not i'll ever reach.

on a city street, over coffee, a friend suggested yesterday that i make a list of what i want and need in a (romantic) love partner. this is something i've done time and again over the years, but it's always changing. it seems that as i learn more about my capacities as an independent human being on this earth, the more i realize that i need other people. and i need them to help me through things that aren't always fun or pretty or easy. i've lived in relative solitude and i've also had intense immersions into community. i can say without a doubt that the moments where i open my life up more intimately to other people are richer in every way. the intimate reflection and witnessing and sharing make it so. having strong community around you is like walking on a moving walkway. you progress so much more rapidly than when you're walking along alone on the path.

need.

• i need (right now, in particular) someone to gently push me out of my comfort zones, someone to supportively lead me along to new horizons ... the pushing and the leading won't be forever their role. i'll play that part, too, but right now, i may present less as the instigator because i'm a bit frozen. i've been thawing out for a few months, but i'm still a bit of an ice cube with significant interia. how i got so cold is a long story, but suffice it to say, my heart and spirit were broken. and hardening up seemed my only way to forge forth. and thus, i need some gentle rustling.
• i need intimacy and i need closeness and i need physical touch.
• i need quiet time and personal space in relationship, it's true. but that has manifested as such because i truly just need the freedom to be responsive. it has been my experience that people, when coupled or familied, become less responsive and more commitment-dependent, as if they have no choice but to follow the lesson plan laid out or agreed-to. this terrifies me. because i'm in constant assessment of how i feel, not by choice, but by nature. i like to engage when i'm feeling present and available. that's when the magic i have to commute can be dispersed, in any case. my desire to retreat or be alone comes not from disliking people or interaction with them, but from wanting to get back to the place where i can engage with them most authentically. and the fastest route back to that, for me, has been in solitude. but i'm always thinking of others when i'm in that quiet space! i'm the most community-minded, remarkably-introverted ambivert i've ever known.
• i need someone who is reliable and who shows up, someone who is honest and authentic and responsible and who holds himself and me accountable.
• i need someone with a grand sense of humor. who'll excuse all the silly things my body does and the imperfections is has (and herein lies my biggest self-consciousnesses) and who'll weather my giddy explosions of energy that come without warning or my quick plummets into silence/my own inner world. 
• i need someone who listens. who reassures me even when i don't ask for it. who can intercept my vata highs and bring me back to earth with a strong hug, a deep gaze and a quiet share of breath.
• i need someone who is utterly clear in their interest in me. someone who'll persist through the labyrinth that is 'getting close to keri' and not be deterred by the time it takes.
• i need someone who believes in and practices self-care
• i need someone who looks at himself in the mirror and feels the love. 
• i need someone who nows how to say no. to others and to me.
• i need someone who wants to get jiggy with me and who can fall utterly powerless when faced with my naked beauty and who enjoys shifting power dynamics under the sheets. 
• i need someone who earns money and has a roof over their head that is a space where i feel comfortable and cozy. 
• i need someone who is accountable to things in his life beyond me
• i need someone who likes cats. 
• i need someone who can eat and enjoy a fair amount of the food i make.
• i need someone who is truly and deeply kind.

want.

• i want to be somebody's valued and protected, prideful accoutrement; i want to live alongside someone comfortably and lovingly. i don't want to be someone's everything. but i do want to be someone's person.
• i want my partner to have a healthy community surrounding him that opens their arms to me when i'm present, but which is still a comfortable and nurturing place for him to be when i'm not.
• i want someone who can lie on my bed and dream with me. who can work alongside me creatively and quietly be with me. 
• i want someone who can handle my fluctuations. 
• i want someone who speaks my language and understands my history. 
• i want someone who says yes more than no, who smiles more than frowns, who laughs more than snarks and who knows how to build a fire. and use a drill. and how to cook a meal with kale, rice, and sweet potatoes. 
• i want our love to create a safe and inspiring space / example for our community.
• i want someone who doesn't play emotional games, but who'll certainly play board games and other fun games. 
• i want someone who loves music. and reads books. and drinks wine. and who laughs from his belly. 
• i want someone who has interests and passions that keep his fire burning; i want him to lose himself in his world from time to time because i certainly always will get lost in mine.
• i want someone curious and communicative who can express himself with a flair. 
• i want someone who's game to be my partner in projects. 
• i want someone who can call me out. and talk me down. and lift me up. and make me smile.
• i want someone to create traditions and ritual with. someone who moves soft and slow. who can explore with me sexually. and forgive me for lagging behind in experiences if that shows to be the case. 
• i want someone who reveres the earth and wants to live close to it. and who'll haul chicken shit into the garden with me and hula hoe the beets.
• i want someone real. and courageous. who'll consciously sign up with me as a partner in this grand adventure while understanding, of course, that there are no guarantees and that our time together may be long or short, and that we'll never know.
• i want there to be differences between us. and comfort in the places we overlap. 
• i want someone who, at the end of our journey, can say he loved me, and that he loved me well.

i spoke at length with my friend sky on the phone last night. i love to listen to sky's voice; his cadence and intonation are familiar to me at an instinctive level and regardless of the subjects we wander into, i have the feeling of being in deep and necessary conversation. two years ago, he left the urban sprawl to pursue his dream of building a permaculture farm near mount lassen in the small town where he grew up. we corresponded via phone, email, snail mail and several visits as he situated himself onto his piece of land and continued living his legend. let me back up for a moment and provide some necessary context. when i met sky in oakland a few years prior, he was working at the local building and home reuse store - a place where one can wander amongst hundreds of used toilet bowls, doors, windows, shutters, chairs, tables, books, records - and i immediately sensed a kinship with him. we familiarized ourselves over bonfires in trash cans at the corner permaculture center, he would show up on his cruiser bicycle with his ukulele and elderberry branches and spin stories about the time he'd spent living off the land in the santa cruz mountains; i would be cooking soup for a crowd in the makeshift kitchen, sharing vintage tins full of homemade cookies and promoting my effort to start the first public seed library in oakland. we didn't immediately connect with ease (we were both equally intrigued and intimidated by the other), but we hovered around each other, easing into the energy that resonated between us. at the time sky had just moved off of a boat that he was living on and restoring in the berkeley marina and was living in his airstream that he parked on the driveway of a dilapidated mansion and urban farm in a rough part of the city. i was transitioning out of a small studio apartment near lake merritt where i'd been for nine years, living in various sublets across the city while the bulk of my belongings were put up in storage, looking for a new place to land. in those moments when we were easing into knowing, i convinced myself that sky was one of those wild rambling men who i always found so enticing, but who would never think twice about a girl who tended more towards staying than traveling, more towards peaceful retreat than the wild unknown.

*my morning inspiration...
entire passage taken directly from Good Tempered Food by Tamasin Day-Lewis:

Pandarus: He that will have a cake out of the wheat must tarry the grinding.

Troilus: Have I not tarried?

Pandarus: Ay, the griding; but you must tarry the bolting.

Troilus: Have I not tarried?

Pandarus: Ay, the bolting; but you must tarry the leavning.

Troilus: Still have I tarried.

Pandarus: Ay, to the leavening; but here’s yet in the word ‘hereafter’                    

                  the kneading, the making of the cake, the heating of the oven,    

                  and the baking; nay, you must stay the cooling too,                    

                  or you may chance to burn your lips.                    

~Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida

It seems to me that this passage tells us as much about what’s wrong with our attitude toward food today as it does about what, at best, it should be. We are not prepared to ‘tarry.’ In fact, in modern doctrine, the very idea of tarrying is stigmatic. We worship at the altar of the instant, we are governed and seduced by the words ‘easy,’ ‘fast,’ ‘quick,’ ‘simple.’ Leapfrog the process, vault over the preparation, skim, short cut, and bypass the stages that true cooking rather than assembling is all about, and you have bought into the culture that Pandarus was warning Troilus against around 400 years ago. In the absence of patience, of tarrying, fast food is your reward.

Look, I am no purist hardliner. There are days, if not weeks, when I crave easy food: a quickly frazzled bacon sandwich dribbling unsalted butter; pasta with handfuls of fresh herbs and raw fava beans from the garden thrown after them; a crab-and-avocado salad spritzed with lime, for which Phil, my fishmonger, has done the picking and pressing; a one-pan, flame-colored pipérade or Spanish omelet oozing a tangle of oily wilted onion and spinach and yesterday’s potatoes. But none of these quite fits our notion of fast food, which is as much about provenance, or the lack of it, as it is about speed and convenience, two words which fill me with the same sense of gloom as “hygiene” when applied to food.

The very expression “fast food” is a misnomer, an insult, an indicator of something inferior — mere fuel to be ingested at speed, to provide energy, be convenient, serve a purpose. Does this equate with pleasure, goodness, love, care, attention, nurture? To the scents and smells of a fresh yeast loaf cooling on a rack, a stock simmering, a chicken roasting, a stew stewing quietly and unobtrusively in its own juices, the bitter whiff of January’s Seville oranges filling the kitchen as they osmose to marmalade, clots of strawberries bubbling into jam, the raw depths of a garlicky aïoli, toast cooking, cookies baking. Food cooked slowly isn’t better by definition, but every process, from conception, gestation, seeding, fruiting, to picking, plucking, peeling, paring, preparing is also about waiting. As in cooking itself. The alchemy of food, its transformation from raw to cooked, or raw to plate, is about our transforming touch. Once we are no longer involved with that part of the process, once we don’t know how to perform the simple but satisfying tasks that even basic food demands, we are no longer cooks, nor are we heir to the traditions that food has been about since man first cooked it.

Somehow we have fallen for a myth: the notion that food that isn’t fast-prepared and fast-cooked is inherently more difficult, more time-consuming, more of a sweat, almost not worth the effort, or, at least, only worth the effort some of the time. I lay the blame first at the feet of the supermarkets and fast-food outlets whose interest, and by that I mean profits, this is in; second, with the consumer, easily led, lazy, wanting to spend less rather than invest in quality, better nutritional value, taste, and sustainable methods of production; third, with the food manufacturers whose advertising, as dishonest as it is, is often brilliantly executed and faultless in its powers of seduction; and fourth, with the television chefs who are force-feeding their audience a diet that perpetuates the myth, telling people how quick and easy everything is, and choosing recipes that make-believe technique is unnecessary, time a luxury you can’t afford, patience and attention to detail curious anachronisms from the past.

Well, I’m here to tell you that slow-cooked food, and what I like to call “good-tempered food,” food that you can cook a bit of now, a bit of later, prepare today for tomorrow, or the next day or even next week, tinker with, macerate, freeze, finish, or reheat in another life, add to, subtract from, reincarnate, is what proper cooking is really all about. In fact, it’s the chief pleasure of cooking, and if you find cooking pleasure enough to read about, buy into, and experiment with, you’re being short-changed if the writer is advising you exactly how to get the whole thing over and done with as fast as pulling a tooth, so the pain is past tense, and you can get on with things that really give you pleasure.

Cooking is a test without the paper, the questions, or the answers, in the sense that you, the cook, are constantly trying to please a disparate bunch of people, who most often, being family, will not hold back on the criticism. You are coping with other pressures — budgetary constraints, an imperfect kitchen, no kitchen slaves to scrub, chop, wash up — but still, something as simple as a clove of garlic sizzling in good olive oil, shelling a tightly packed pea pod, smelling the readiness of the simplest of dishes can transport, relax, infuse with a degree of pleasure that the smallest of things can so cunningly do with the greatest of impact. Take the lid off a fat piece of pork belly that has been idling in the oven doing time for five, maybe six, maybe seven hours, steeped in its gluey juices, black-breathed with the sweetness of molasses, brown sugar, star anise, and you should feel not far short of paradise.

It is, after all, appetite that induces pleasure and inspiration, and which, on contemplating the creating of something out of nothing, is all the better stimulated. The elaborate and the refined have their place, too, but food was always a necessity before it was a luxury, so maybe it is down to some ancient atavistic urge that the most satisfying of dishes are usually those that excite through their very simplicity and through the power of memory.

Let us not forget the simple art of roasting, and those of baking, poaching, pickling, preserving. More than that, the greatest gift we can bestow on the next generation is educating them in the art, science, lore, tradition, and pragmatic experience of the kitchen: the quiet, unhurried, unchaotic ritual of preparation for the table, its simple repetitions, its satisfying processes, and its accompaniments — conversation, music, a glass of wine. Savor them, enjoy them, afford them the time and the respect they deserve. They are more than what life is all about; they are life itself.

"In all the questioning about what makes a writer, and especially perhaps the personal essayist, I have seen little reference to this fact; namely, that the brain has become a kind of unseen artist’s loft. There are pictures that hang askew, pictures with outlines barely chalked in, pictures torn, pictures the artist has striven unsuccessfully to erase, pictures that only emerge and glow in a certain light. They have all been teleported, stolen, as it were, out of time. They represent no longer the sequential flow of ordinary memory. They can be pulled about on easels, examined within the mind itself. The act is not one of total recall like that of the professional mnemonist. Rather it is the use of things extracted from their context in such a way that they have become the unique possession of a single life. The writer sees back to these transports alone, bare, perhaps few in number, but endowed with a symbolic life. He cannot obliterate them. He can only drag them about, magnify or reduce them as his artistic sense dictates, or juxtapose them in order to enhance a pattern. One thing he cannot do. He cannot destroy what will not be destroyed; he cannot determine in advance what will enter his mind."

~Loren Eiseley

...in someone else's terms: "Loren Eiseley likened the brain of a writer to 'an unseen artist's loft' in which 'pictures from the past' were stored and brought forth to be magnified or reduced in order to form a pattern."

~from the Loren Eiseley Society website

This speaks to me. To envision my mind as an artist's loft, not cluttered but decorated with creations and arrangements, some half-finished, some crumpled and intended to be forgotten, others pinned to the wall and referenced daily...that feels about right. They're not all my own arrangements and creations; some are collected from other artist's oeuvres. My own streams of words and twists of the pen and catalogs of associative properties combine with words strung together by others that have grabbed me from yellowing pages in worn-out paperbacks or through shoddy headphones connected to whatever device at the moment is delivering my dose of vocalized poetry...collectively, those curated snips and segments decorate the space that I report to daily to do my work...unnamed work, unpaid work, undefined work, but work that I know, without question, is imperative for me to engage in.

Sometimes I write to document ephemeral feelings or unseen trials that despite their demureness carry rich and valuable messages. At other moments I write in pursuit of my own deep inner wisdom which, in its coquette moments, demands to be pursued at a frenetic pace with scribbles from micro-tip pens on college-ruled paper or, in its deep and sensual moments , asks for a slow and deliberate approach by way of long rambling poetic sentences calligraphed into a sketchbook...

But back to what Eiseley was saying. The dragging, the magnifying, the reducing, the juxtaposing to enhance patterns. For me this looks quite literally like using scissors and tape and push pins and post-its and vibrantly colored markers and highlighters and page tabs as it they were borne into my possession. Carrying notebooks and favorite pens with me all the time to capture insights and clarities and questions that can arise at any given moment from any given source. Using my bedroom walls and refrigerator door as giant bulletin boards. Reading 4-5 books at one time. Ingesting as much visual inspiration as possible (often this means looking out with a sense of wonderment and not expectation and asking many questions of and listening for answers from the natural world surrounding me, listening to and keeping beat with the rhythms of the earth). Soundtracking my days with poets who sing to a place in me that feels untouched. Spending 30-60 minutes a night writing, just writing. About anything and everything that comes to mind. Then rereading all that and pulling out the good parts. Saving them up for those rare days where I do attempt to collage their disparities together until consistencies resonate and emerge. It's a lengthy process, a chaotic and disorganized one that cannot be directed but that requires deep attention, persistent responsiveness and constant readjustment. 

A few years ago I went to a hypnotherapist and the memory from the journey I took that day hangs on the 'referenced-daily' section of the wall in the loft of my mind. I forget what the intention of the journey I took that day was, if there even was one. Eyes closed, situating deeply into the seat of my Self, I set out. The journey began, not too shockingly, in a kitchen. It was the kitchen of an old house...the kind of house with wooden entry floors and curio cabinets and linoleum kitchen floors and a rickety screen door out into the backyard. I was drawn out into the yard and down some stairs. I remember asking that my little cat Ginger come with me; I knew she'd like to be along as I descended into the unknown. Together, we were led, by whom I don't know, but he was kind and elderly and wise, into a basement much like the one I remember from my Grandmother's home in Eastern Pennsylvania. In that basement were dusty Ball jars and warped boxes full of papers and trinkets, all lined up on shelves. There were cobwebs all over and a faint musty smell permeating the air, the smell of imprisoned wisdom and shrouded memories. I picked up some of the glass and blew its dust off, then started to shine it with my sleeves, revealing brilliant and reflective surfaces. In my searching the shelves I also came across something that I can only now remember as solid mylar heart, deeply red. I told my guide that I'd like to bring my discoveries into the light. He encouraged me and I brought to the surface my excavated repositories, presumably for further shining so their luminescence could speak. My journey came to an end as consciousness regained control, but I later found a trinket that reminded me of the mylar heart I discovered and that heart hangs above me now as I sleep. And I think often of bringing dusty brilliance to the surface and unburdening it so that it may again shine. And I think of that when I write. And it ties into what Eiseley was saying about bringing forth pictures from the past and magnifying them....

More to come, slumber insists I concede...

my body, a dignified and weathered big city brownstone, creaking and squeaking as it settles and shifts; my mind, a flea skipping round and round at a circus of its own kind, curiously exploring and rapidly forgetting; my heart, a voluptuous Renaissance-era woman lying on her side, soft and supple, with a distinct air of sadness and distance in her eyes...

autumn has arrived.

this year, it came without the precursive struggle of an extended indian summer. rather, on its first day, the rains came, and for a few nights thereafter the winds picked up. gusting strongly through the trees on the street and percussing together the wooden shades drawn over the just open window in my room and rustling the tiny metal chimes in the garden, the winds acted the part of a boisterous and overly punctual ringmaster welcoming in the next performance with hyperbolic promises as summer was still ushering its serene act offstage.

still, after these lofty promotions, autumn emerged from the wings without urgency and with a quiet dignity, with not a hint of the hype that the ringmaster winds had blazoned. as it grounded itself in the spotlight, the hue deepened from warm and golden to marigold and sienna. my pupils widened in the darkening tone and an awakening began to stir within me; as my eyes began grasping for light, my sprit began foraging for revision. i lifted my gaze to find myself at a distinctive beanstalk of a post in the rusted wire and wood fence that had long been visible only at a great distance across rolling hills and tall field grasses. i laid my hand on the wood, worn and carved so differently than i'd imagined it would be, and i spoke quietly to it. i told it how, for a long time, i'd imagined arriving at the reach that it marked, a distance i thought i could travel in dreams. i admired its stature and all that had gone into making it stand so tall, a beacon across the landscape: its extensive support system, its physical resilience....

on a retreat to the sierra foothills, to a place that is slowly becoming a home of sorts...a home where the heart is. each time i visit this place, my soul resonates with the vibration that is uniquely orchestrated by the instruments of this land...

tall trees of pine and redwood and oak and maple, shrubby manzanitas or madrones, i am never quite sure...cold and clear waters tumbling over the rocks of deer creek...dappled sunlight shining through decomposing leaves that have fallen into expertly-crafted spider webs...wise and knowing breezes blowing through the tree branches at night under skies sprinkled with the glitter of distant stars...

i come here alone, but i come here for conversation...guiding words and illuminating visions that are whispered and revealed by the earth under my bare feet and by the invigorating winds that dance through my hair and across my cheeks...

today i heard, saw, felt....

• looking through the tiny river rocks for one that was shaped like a heart, i found one that, instead, held a heart inside its form, visible only if viewed from the right angle. i was reminded of the time i hiked for four hours in yosemite looking, again, for a rock shaped like a heart. i ended up getting lost, having spent so much time looking at the ground for a small signal, missing the large ones that were guiding me. when i finally found my way back to the trail, at the very end of the hike and where i had started, i came across a heart sculpted out of rocks. what i hear, see, feel from those experiences is an assurance that i will find what i am seeking, but that it likely will appear in an unexpected form. my task, then, is to continue the search and the seeking, but to not be so focused on an imagined treasure that i end up missing the richness that lies right before me.
• i'd carried the key to the house with me down to the river out of habit. i hadn't even locked the house because i trust that in these hills, my sanctity will be honored. still, i took the key with me in my back pocket just in case something happened...and as i started to explore the riverbed, that key started to gouge into my leg. i stopped and reflected. a strapping of supposed safety and comfort was causing great discomfort. how do i, i thought, cause myself discomfort in my life by hanging onto supposed forms of security when letting them go would free me up to more fully embrace and enjoy the exploration?
• this one just came as words...words descending upon me, osmosing into me...'there are no universal truths'...which i felt to mean...my heart is a trustworthy, if unconventional, guide that i can trust to lead me on journeys that others may urge against taking.; although my heart guides me through rough and challenging terrain at times, the vistas i reach from these struggles offer me perspectives that broaden my vision.
• i felt, as i often do, the sense of a lover with me as i sat and watched the water tumble over the rocks...the lover wasn't distracting me or asking anything of me, he was simply holding me; together in our separateness...i felt a deep understanding that i can't quite put to words yet, but it was an understanding of the winds that will dance between us, of the space that we will share but still be alone in...an understanding that we will not envelop each other, as i'd once imagined we would...an understanding that he will be hand to hold, a warm body to hug, eyes to gaze into, a mirror to reflect, and in him i will see pieces of me because at the deepest level we do hold pieces of each other, all of us...but we will, for each other, support ur independent conductivity....i will not grasp, i will hold on gently, but with a great reverence...
• as it always does here in this place, i felt a deep satisfaction in returning to a place, a place that has a strong earth and land-associated identity. and i was able to understand and feel the threats to and tragedies experienced by our natural world. i felt that i'd stepped back into a role that feels familiar despite never having fully taken it on...that of being a liaison between the earth and the development/society/people around me...i got the feeling of having waited far too long to visit an ailing grandmother at a nursing home...the feeling of being present in a space where i know there is so much for me to hear, for me to learn so that i can know and so that i can carry on the message...