TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference

-- Robert Frost

Monet. His art is a metaphor for my journey. I spent the day staring at his collection at the museum and I was profoundly moved. I never thought I liked him. That is not until I witnessed him for myself.

Things aren’t always what they seem. And my life in it’s collective this far, is like an impressionist painting. Up close the wonderful inaccuracies, imperfections and subtle ways of movement are what is dictating my compass.
The way that Monet creates swirls and crashes them into one another is the way my daily hours interact with one another – creating a temperamental and unpredicatable path. Rich and honest – no pretentiousness. It is in the brushstroke that the real story lies. The truth is in the rising, textured inches of sloshed paint and texture.

What are we looking for when we stare into them? Some portal that may open up into a world of catharsis? Some universal understanding of a momentary clarity? And, does that door open in the light parted behind the morning buildings or the orange at dusk's horizon? Perhaps it is in the unbenounced darkness of his grounds or deep blue waters. Maybe it's all relative.

My eyes strain over the grain of spectrums reflected back at me. The small slivers of violets juxtaposed with pinks. From afar the breeze is tickling the grassy knolls and the flurries of snow are still swirling up and around a dense winter. It is painting made that of molecules breathing life into me today.

I want Monet to paint me purple with a violet haze. Deep blue around my atmosphere and orange at my core. A photograph would capture me still in a moment, but his language would translate my essence – deep, wounded but hopeful. I am bursting like a ripe fruit from the inside out oozing a dark sweetness and damp with new birth. I have always been but today most keenly reminded that I am a walking piece of dotted color pulled out from his gardens and co-existing with the collective – participating in his macro feast for the eyes. I am spilling over the lines and onto other accidental pages where an entire other world exists. I blend suddenly with her white and his red. And the messiness of it all is warm and right. I am boundless in a world of boundaries and I have become a foaming tide.

I am a whisper. I am effervescent and transparent – no longer afraid of the vulnerability that renders. I rejoice in my newfound fragility. I am holding my breath within a ceramic cup - delicate and beautiful; next to a blue flame I go unfethered.

I bask in the coolness of pale yellow and warm my fingertips at the sharp edges of deep orange.
I am an organism floating on those lili-pads staring at my tiny reflection in a never-ending pond - floating beside peaceful droplets of dew - followed by my black, smudged shadow.

Thank you Monet for your light and honest renditions of our world around and within us.

The fog has arrived and it swims in my hair this late night in San Francisco. It is cool in the midst of warm air and lands on me like tiny beaded jewelry. I can see it rolling through the streets. It swishes, flops, spirals and disappears around corners and evaporates suddenly before me. It is female and temperamental in July and I am caught inbetween a moment linking all of my past and my invisible future.
I daydream out into the street - waiting for my ride. I stare through some dirty glass at the blinking lights and hear distant sounds of music and clinking glasses. I am in limbo. I am suspended inbetween gravity and space. I am inside silence herself. And just as I understand that I don't want for this moment to elude me - it does. It goes away and marries itself with other moments - linking time together.
And so I sigh, exit and jump into my ride.

Here I am. Sitting at 1am. I feel stll suspended and bundled up inside of a tight space. But for the moment, this tiny restricted space is saving me from myself and my tendancies. They to be like melted wax and want to become part of an endless ebb and flow with no destination and no beginning - just a primordial gooeyness that resents the rules of physics and form.

Which is how I've been living my life. And I pay for that.
I just want to be left alone. Can't I just be? Sometimes I do what I want. Most of the time I do what I have to. And I know that I'm not alone. Most of us live this way.

I used to tell people who were shy and afraid of public speaking to 'just imagine everyone watching you - naked.' Or, 'just imagine them all sitting on a toilet.' Isn't this where we overlap? If we were all naked - then vulnerability would lose its grip on us. And if most of us know that we are only doing what we 'have to', then why create such painstaking situations for ourselves?

At the risk of sounding a little 'After-School-Special', I almost feel the above question is rhetorical. Or maybe the little, innocent, naive, un-corrupted girl in me still holds an ember to her face. Look at me.
We don't live our lives through common sense.
We purposely take detours around it.

Being an adult sucks.
I'm just gonna watch the fog & play hop-scotch.
yay.

Today my good friend arrived from Austin. She is going to be here for 2 weeks. Her arriving is a most definite reminder that I am indeed leaving San Francisco and her presence is the symbol of a graceful overlap of my two lives: The SF life and Austin life. It is definitely a relief to have her here. She represents the safe and close familiar. It calms the vulnerability of a new beginning.

I had a restful day, though. I also purchased my ticket to go home --- a one way. July 27th I will be arriving in Austin. I don't mean to make such a huge deal about all the things I do in my life. I feel like most people don't walk around and behave and think like I do: as if they have a constant camera on them --- like they are always a star on some stage where the people of the world are always following them around. Yeah right! Like my life would be that interesting to them. It is so self-indulgent, I know. But, I don't mean to be that way. I just can't help but see the drama in every little and large event. I remember when I was 5 years old and it was the night before my first day at kindergarten, I was with my family at a park as the sun was setting. We had a bar-b-que and were cleaning up - getting ready to go home. I stood on top of a huge root that was protruding out the ground from an old, very large oak tree. And I'll never forget this. I remember staring at the setting sun, looked all around me at how it turned everything orange and gold, stared back into it, took a deep breath and thought, "Tomorrow. It all begins tomorrow."

Hence, 28 years later I find myself on the rooftop of my apartment building looking out at San Francisco and telling myself the same thing.
"Tomorrow. It all begins tomorrow." Even when I meet people I have to prepare my mind to consider their spirit and shadow. I feel all levels of them at once.

You see, I just don't live in a one-path kind of reality. I exist within the split fork in the road and I travel both at once. And I'm not crazy -- it just feels like I've always got 3-d glasses on.

And I can't help to see the action and reaction. I can't help but hear the point of sound and it's delay.
All this just to reiterate my tendency toward drama -- and I don't mean the ghetto kind. I mean the kind that appreciates the flower in it's slow bloom and the moon in its slow rising. Paying attention to subtlety and smiling at its humble ways.

Right now, I am paying attention to my toes at the end of this couch. And to the time as it tick-tocks closer to a moment that brings slow and subtle gravity to my eyes -----------

So, until tomorrow; which began yesterday.

I know - it's been too damn long since I've written. Not that I have an audience or anything. But, I am my own perpetual, internal, external and omnicient audience. And if someone else is out there - I am humbled that you have partaken in my ramblings on about the deeper things of life.
I am quite a clown, you know. I'm not all about the fall and winter, the blues and blacks, the ice and rain --- endings and sunsets.
I am about the orange in the day-glow, the red of the desert rain, the spring and summer, bright linen and the sun herself. I just find that when I dive deeper, like anything else that is the metaphor for surgery, I find tiny things in the dark that somewhere were perhaps, never meant to be found. And if you found them - the question is, then what??

I have always been a person who is all about the micro. My cynical nature is maybe the culprit behind it.
"Nah, you've gotta be lying to me," or "Aww, that's not all there is -- there's something lurking. There's always something lurking."

And my spirit, armed with a scalpel, has always searched beneath surfaces. I'm always curious about what things are made of.

My absence with bloggin is filled with both excuses and reasons. But, it is where they overlap that's interesting. Within that blend lies the minutia of life. The multi-dimensional messiness of the way things really are. Not resume perfect and finely starched. In my time away from this blog, I have lived a nano-second of a century - it seems. And so many important, life-changing decisions have been made.

It is now time for a new journey -- a journey that, like the outstretched Texas land, will never reach a horizon. I've decided to move to Austin and pursue my music, expression, the place I left behind, old friends, family, writing, quiet and healing. Most of all I am returning to my birthplace with an amazing and truly-earned sense of self. Wow am I grounded! And wow am I prepared - fearless - confident. Now, it's time to manifest these intangibles into some real world realities. Although i don't believe in the silliness of what our world deems to be "successful" and "the right thing to do", I do believe in self-actualization and the courage to put that into something that can bring some hope and smelling salt to a comatose society - as well as to our individual selves. Above all, let it be inspiring.

I will spend the next several weeks writing about my utter gratitude to San Francisco, my friends and experiences here. I will explore all of the micros related to that experience and once in a while will take you out on a hot-air balloon ride high above the Trans-America building, over Twin-Peaks, atop the cool foggy hills and towards Napa Valley.
I want to forever remember the sights from up here ----
But, I am ready - ready for the hot, territories of Texas; a mysterious place in which I didn't yet have the insight or maturity to explore. Those old grounds that stretch out to the edge of earth; forever teasing the eye to no end.

But before I arrive there I must say -
Thank you California. Thank you San Francisco --- for helping me gain the courage to go back home.

I am eternally thankful for your warm embrace in your endless cool autumn breeze ---------------

SONG: "Wunderkind" The Chronicles of Narnia SDTK - Alanis Morissette