The Bisexual Soccer Mom's Guide to the Universe

moved back to tribe - ttfn

2009-05-02T22:02:00.000-07:00

after a few months over here on blogger, i moved back over to tribe.

you can find me by searching my name: kinnari

thanks to the few kind folks who made comments here (and also to those porn star wannabes who posted their links here only to have them removed before they ever saw the light of day - in that brief moment when i saw that you, pussylicker2000, had a comment for me i thought you might be real. and those few minutes were worth something now weren't they?)

see you on tribe.

Celebrants at inaugural concert

2009-01-21T22:51:00.001-08:00

Celebrants at inaugural concert
Originally uploaded by futureatlas.com

i love this picture!!!!!!!!!!!

finallly, a celebration at the capitol that looks like our REAL america looks!

not just white corpies in suits!

banana split

2009-01-14T21:39:00.000-08:00

he bound my wrists in the new purple fuzzy restraints we got in a seedy head shop on telegraph. he covered my eyes with the purple and black velvet blindfolds.

he spread my legs and i heard a "pop" as he opened the whipped cream and chocolate sauce. i felt a cold liquid on my nipples and then his warm tongue as he slurped up the chocolate and cream. then he kissed me with his mouth full of sweetness.

he kept this up all over my breast, chest, clit and pussy lips, tormenting me with his tongue, till i was bucking up to reach his mouth and crying out for more.

he tongue fucked me, reaching his mouth way up inside me and plunging back and forth as if he had his cock inside me. i was about mad with pleasure.

he peeled a banana and shoved it up my pussy when i begged him to fuck me. it felt so good, so naughty, so perverted, so right.

it was hard and soft at the same time, just like his cock is.

he licked and sucked on my clit as he pushed the banana in and out, in and out. i arched up to reach his tongue and moaned, begging him not to stop. "you're making me come, baby. oh please, baby, please...."

he reached in and sucked the banana out of my stuffed pussy. then, with his mouth covered in chocolate and cream, he brought his lips to mine and kissed me with the banana that had just been in my cunt. now that was dirty and raunchy and so wrong!

and i loved it. i loved every minute of it!

Snow Day, Nevada City, California

2008-12-16T19:47:00.001-08:00

Snow Day, Nevada City, California
Originally uploaded by haikuluke

we got more snow last night!

covered over my footsteps from my virgin snow hike yesterday.

i made snow angels and went sledding!!!!!!!

so much fun!

Deer Creek, Snow, Nevada City, California

2008-12-16T19:46:00.001-08:00

Deer Creek, Snow, 2/18/06, 258pm, Nevada City, California
Originally uploaded by haikuluke

gorgeous!!!!!!!!
and this is what it looks like now but with more snow!

Snow Town....aka Nevada City

2008-12-16T19:45:00.001-08:00

Snow Town....aka Nevada City
Originally uploaded by bellarosebyliz

i love this!!!!!!!!

slowing down (in the gold country) part 3

2008-11-23T19:42:00.000-08:00

i listened to a handsome turkish man in a western suit read sufi poetry this morning in his native language. then in english.

it was truly moving and beautiful.

he's a prof at uc davis. and he was visiting our little unitarian church in the gold country for a service about the gulan movement. fethllulah gulan is known and loved the world over and won the foreign policy magazine peacemaker award and yet we here in the west know nothing of him.

the speaker this morning decided to correct that.

she had visited turkey with a group of 20 other volunteers as part of an interfaith cultural exchange. they stayed with sufi practitioners, in homes of those who embrace moderate islam. they were there for a dialog on western perceptions of the moslem faith.

she was a striking older woman with beautiful silver hair, wrapped in a gray and gold pashmina, who spoke with such passion and tenderness about the turks she'd come to know.

interfaith dialog.

that's what mlk was imagining for our future in his "i have a dream" speech. he painted a picture of a world where "protestant and catholic" (a specific reference to the WASPy prejudice against JFK) and "black and white" get along.

this morning we sang a rumi song and held hands and swayed. we listened to a duet play hauntingly beautiful sufi music on exotic looking instruments.

it was truly wonderful to hear this message of peace and respect for diversity in this small town!

in the south, small towns are associated with poverty, ignorance, intolerance, and racism.

i hadn't realized how much that shaped my view of traveling in rural areas. i always assume it will be like that and am so pleasantly surprised when i'm wrong.

felt so right to sing rumi:

"come, come, whoever you are..

wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving.

ours is no caravan of despair.

come, yet again, come."

slowing down (in the gold country) part 2

2008-11-23T18:54:00.000-08:00

i joined the choir at the little unitarian church up here in the mountains.

i've been visiting here for 2 years now, catsitting for my colleagues who live in a gorgeous cohousing development.

while they travel the world about 4 times a year, i get to have this lovely new 3 bedroom condo all to myself so i feel like i have a second vacation home in the woods and that's a pretty special treat!

i get to experience all the pleasures of the four seasons; each day i walk the wild and scenic river or some small unnamed creek, or some winding country road or around some old gold mine diggings. i walk and walk among old growth forest and new. ancient trees, shooting way up high for miles around me. tonight i did yoga under the trees, outside, facing the mountains while i watched the sunset. the sky changed from pinkish yellow and violet to smoky purple and vivid orange.

i could smell fire and see the smoke from a controlled burn in the woods not far away. it is a delicious smell.

one thing i loved about the ashram is that each night, i'd build a fire in the ginormous room they assigned me. (i was the only one in the women's dorm room, a former huge master bedroom.)

each night, i followed the ritual the didi (yogic nun) taught me, and which reminded me of how my father taught me to build a fire.

first you must sweep up last night's ashes. then roll up the newspapers for the first layer. then you gather twigs and place those on top. then you strike a match and light the edges. and you wait. you wait to see if this fire will take off.

it's always astounding to me how you can sometimes have everything flammable, have plenty of oxygen, and a definite source of fuel - a big stack of wood for christ's sake, and sometimes, sometimes, you just can't get that sucker to burn.

that seems to funny to me. how you can have everything right there, all ready and you DESIRE it to burn. but it won't catch. it just sparks a bit and then fizzles.

and then, against all desire, a stranger can start a whole forest burning with a single carelessly tossed cigarette.

so life burns sometimes where you least want it to and it fails to catch fire where you most want it to.

life is just like that!

today i toured an old mine. they always depress the hell out of me. the disparity of the owners and miners lives, their history of child labor, of union oppression, of murder, lying, deceit, manipulation, greed, and poisoning the environment - just so disheartening.

the local paper is full letters to the editor and articles on the current controversy over reopening a mine in this area.

my grandfather was a coal miner. my great uncle discovered coal on the many thousands of acres he inherited from my great great grandfather. uncle willy was the first born SON, though my grandmother was the first born of 11 children. she had no rights of inheritance since she was a girl - it all went to her brother so she ended up a sharecropper on "his" land. and her husband, my grandfather, went down into the mines and worked each day to make a pittance. he got black lung for his trouble. but he kept food on the table through the depression and put his two kids through college even though he'd only gone to school till the third grade.

so i love to tour mines and think about my ancestors. my cousins are very wealthy from the fortune their's made on coal. but i like my grandmother's legacy better. she was a farmer, a mom-and-pop general store owner, and the best oral historian of appalachian ways. i could sit and listen to her stories for hours on end. tales of saving her siblings from bobcats and snakes, of squeaking by through long hard winters, of how to properly can a tomato or how to slop the hogs or how to collect the egg from under the hen. where to find the best blackberries.

i loved to watch my grandfather with his animals. he really loved his bulls and cows. he adored his horses. he got a small check from the government each month - a payment for the hazardous health conditions from being a miner. he'd laugh ironically each time he opened it. i don't think it was for more than 15 dollars.

what price do you put on a man's lungs?

i told the park ranger today about my grandfather's black lung. she said the miners here in norcal got "white lung" due to the gold being buried inside quartz.

i walked down, down, down inside the earth today. down the stairs constructed for tourists to see where miners descended every day of their lives to work for a few dollars from sunup to long after sun down.

it was suffocating. it was frightening. it was dangerous.

wow, my life is sooooooooooooo easy compared to that.

i breathed in especially deep when i got back up.

i walked and walked among the old mining buildings and forested paths and tried to imagine what life was like back then. no one but white men allowed to work at the mines. no life for women outside the home.

the owners of the diggings lived in a huge mansion right by the mine. gloriously landscaped gardens, a sportsmen's club for the mining elite and those they needed to entertain (read: bribe): local politicians, bankers, a visiting president. (herbert hoover was an expert on mining.)

there was a big bible on the expensively carved 19th century table in the owner's mansion.

the pictures of the miners show how poor they were. hard working immigrants, covered in dusty tattered work clothes, roughed up boots, smiles with missing teeth, some of them still children or barely teens.

i wondered again for the thousandth time: how did we end up with such an exploitive capitalism in this country? why didn't we revolt?

howard zinn documents it well: the constant fights against the working man and woman, the threats to labor organizers and union members.

and now they want to reopen a mine.

much of the goldmine state park i toured today was off limits due to the lingering toxicity of the soil, water and air. many trails were closed due to "known carcinogens" including arsenic, lead, mercury.

i thought about the letter to the editor i'd read from a local united methodist minister. she was offering a counter opinion to the many "pro-mine pro-jobs" letters which the paper had published.

she said the real gold was in the beauty of nature here. and we mustn't let renewed greed spoil that.

as i walked under huge maples, on a carpet of yellow leaves, and watched the golden sun set, i had to agree with her.

i hope the environmentalists win. i hope the shortsighted "jobs at any cost" crowd loses.

i hope mother nature wins this round.

slowing down (in the gold country)

2008-11-23T18:01:00.000-08:00

i'm in the gold country for the holidays.

i've been purposely slowing my life down. i've been so whirlwind busy: traveling for months, figuring out housing (moving out, moving in), getting adjusted to new housemates, reconnecting with my lover and friends from the bay area, and then packing everything up again to take off for the gold country.
i'm up here for almost 2 months. been here 2 weeks now.

i've been doing consulting work for an ashram up here. (not ananda village which i visited and wrote about this summer - i would NEVER work for them. i just found out the founding guru is a convicted sexual predator and a financial fraud.)

i lived at the ashram for a week while i got to know them as an organization. they follow p. r. sarkar, a renaissance man/guru, who was a prolific writer.

they found out about me after i wrote another ashram in the bay area, which was listed in the WWOOF directory, and contacted me to do some work for them.

it was not easy being there, far away from the excitement of the big city and from the basic pleasures to which i've become accustomed. but i came away with a lot more insight about yogic philosophy, PROUT economic theory, vegetarian sentient yoga diets, and the didis (e.g. nuns - the word means "sisters") and dadas (brothers or monks) who live the monastic life.

i summed it up this way in a post i made to my burner camp listserv:

"i must say that after a week at an ashram where the yogic nuns remain
celibate, do not watch tv or have working internet, avoid chocolate, eggs and
meat, my first impulse was to have wild sex with the first kinky
passerby i found, eat gobs of pastrami, fry my breakfast sunny side
up, and consume mass amounts of ghirardelli. i accomplished most of
it within the first 24 hours.

still looking for that kinky stranger though...."

oh and i forgot to add "watch internet porn." i'm just soooooooooooo not an ascetic!

and i honestly feel sorry for people who are. i wish i could shed my judgmental ways, but after reading about their diet and following it for a week, i wondered: how can some religious leader declare mushrooms, garlic and chocolate a sin????? wtf?????? didn't whatever creator/life force/god/dess you believe in give us these wonderful treats????

i don't get that and i don't think i ever will.

i did not make a good ashram guru follower. i tried to join in to the worship services a couple of nights but chanting while facing a picture of a man just doesn't do it for this feminist. they were good hearted, compassionate, hard workers. the leader played guitar and sang and led us in meditation each night. but i just found no inspiration in it, unlike what i've felt at buddhist temples, or pagan rituals.

they had an odd custom which struck me as very funny. they'd cook up a delicious dinner, indian ayurvedic or chinese inspired dishes (the nuns were from malaysia and taiwan) - often with vegetables from their garden and always with exotic spices. the smell would be so enticing and it would be all hot and ready to be eaten; then they'd let it sit there while they left the kichen to go chant and meditate, letting the food get cold. perhaps they only did that while i was there; they are in a very isolated rural community so they cooked each meal for me. but i found that very strange. perhaps a ritual of self denial? a practice of delayed gratification?

i was absolutely thrilled to leave the ashram. after living a life of christian service and always putting myself last as my fundamentalist religion proscribed for women, i'm just not interested in committing any more time to delaying my gratification. i've been seizing life by the collar and dancing till dawn and grabbing all the gusto i could get for 2 years and it suits me!

i do balance my hedonism with buddhism, goddess worship, pagan ritual, and an occasional dose of eckart tolle or some other new age writer. and i find that very meaningful.

but i found myself pitying these nuns. they seemed quite unhappy. behind their smiles and courtesy, they seemed so negative and frustrated with their work most of the time. my heart just ached for one of them; she told me she'd spent months and months nurturing lambs on the small farm there only to have them eaten by a mountain lion - on her birthday.

i longed to share with them my path of following pleasure - of hedonism - but felt that would have been very arrogant so i remained silent except to cheer them on for the work they'd done.

which is pretty amazing: in a primarily white, christian fundamentalist rural county, they've managed to create many outreach programs and educate the community on indian philosophy. that's no small feat. plus, they have a beautiful river reclamation project there and they've recruited many local environmentalists to work with them.

they are busy making their corner of the world a little more non-violent, a little kinder to the animals, a little more healthy. there's a lot to be said for that.

madonna! "you gotta give it a HOP! tick tock tick tock tick tock!!!!"

2008-11-11T22:07:00.000-08:00

oh my god! after my meltdown we had the best time! my lover had bought us madonna tickets months before it sold out.

so we left the halloween party after my nap (only to return later that night) and had a blast watching madonna rock her 52 year old ass off!

she's really just amazing!

i don't care if you hate her or her politics or her music or her fluid gender identity or her kinky sexuality or even her kiss with britney: GO SEE HER LIVE SHOW!!!!!!!!!

really, it doesn't matter what you think of her, you will come away astounded!

that woman can dance for 2 and a half hours, sing straight through 20 songs, get the crowd to chant OBAMA for five long minutes, and rock your little world whether you are a middle aged overweight office worker (like the women sitting next to me) or you're a teenager newly discovering "like a virgin!"

seriously, it doesn't matter what you have to pay, go see her if she comes to your town!!!!!!!! drive or fly a thousand miles if she doesn't. it's worth it!!!!!!

she's one of the best paid performers in the biz so she has the most baubles to play with. the best sound engineers, the best video artists, the best back up dancers.

it was like the best live vegas floor show combined with the video music awards combined with ten or a dozen of the best modern dance performances you've ever seen!!!!!

really, just astounding level of entertainment. she really blew me out of the water. i was on my feet dancing and screaming her name and singing the choruses out loud (with the other 50,000 fans) from the nose-bleed section the whole time!!!!!

wow! i'm still just blown away thinking about her and what she's able to do with her little bitchy, dead mother syndrome, catholic messed up childhood, angry father bashing self! she's just so goddamn kick ass!!!!!

she really is one of a kind and she's really changed music, and how we view female performers, and what we think of sex, religion, and rock and roll, forever!

my lover loves her so much that he cried through much of her performance.

his favorite song is "la isla bonita." and i hugged him while he sang along in his beautiful off key, out of beat, persian accented voice. i really just adore him. i can't help it.

it's little things like watching him watch madonna that make me love him so much. he just lights up from within. and he waxes poetic when he talks of how she's changed the world with her music!

on our "day of the feast of all senses" (a holiday for two that we just made up for ourselves), we used to lay in bed after fucking each other silly and listen to her videos and sing and dance along.

and he loves to listen to her lyrics about god and spirituality and obama. it really inspires him.

she belongs to the world and my lover is a world citizen, born in a capital city with 10 million people in the middle east, schooled in italy and canada, and well-traveled in costa rico, indonesia, brazil and countless other places.

i love him and i love madonna.

(and i looooooooooooooooooooooove justin timberlake! good ole tennessee boy! make me wanna dance and hollah!!!!!!)

halloween extravaganza part II

2008-11-11T21:20:00.000-08:00

that night after a nice fuck in the hottub with my lover (and another man who helped me live out my dream of dp - just with a finger though, not a dick!), i barely slept! the partyers had been invited to stay over but we didn't realize it was only the inner circle who actually would take them up on it! the rain forced those in tents on the lawn to come indoors so there was almost no place to sleep!

turns out my lover had been to a million parties with most of the inner circle anyway so we made ourselves at home. (i never felt really comfortable, and later i found out he didn't either.) we camped out in the living room on the floor while the host's friends had sex, or snored, or got high, or shared loud drunken stories all around us.

we fucked a little more in our sleeping bags and it felt really good. it had been hard to "get a good purchase" (as he likes to say) in the hottub; we'd slipped and slid all round each other and not fully orgasmed.

after making love, we fell sound asleep for a few hours; i was shocked i could rest with that much going on around me! but i'd come prepared with ear plugs, and sleeping pills.

now even on a good night, i need about 9 hours to feel fully human. and my body is very particular; ever since my health began to decline 16 years ago, i've needed to go to bed before 11 pm or i feel like shit the next day. (this isn't to say i usually do this. since i'm a night owl and love to blog or read till 1 or 1 am, i wake up a lot of days and feel like absolute crap!)

at burning man, i taught my body to party all night and sleep all day, something i'd NEVER done in my whole life. (remember, i was a "good girl" all through high school and college!)

but after getting only a few hours sleep from about 5 am-ish till 8 am-ish, i was just not hitting on all cylinders the next day at that party.

we were awakened by friendly folks in full halloween costumes making scrambled eggs and serving kahlua and cream with coffee, the good kind.

i ate sooooooooo much! i was starving! partying all night wears me out and makes me hungry even though i still don't do ANY drugs, even pot.

we ate like pigs, like burners actually! you know that feeling when you wake up on the playa (after a night of walking miles and miles to 10 different parties and dancing your ass off till dawn) when someone's cooking breakfast and you can smell the bacon from your tent, your jiz spattered, dust covered, day old feet smelling tent! yes, that's the feeling i had that morning in marin! your brain screams, "BACON!!!! BACON, NOW! I CAN EAT A POUND OF IT!!!! MORE, MORE, MORE BACON!!!!!"

and i did! i ate my weight in bacon. there were no carbs to be found, (or even forks or spoons or coffee mugs,) but by god there was bacon! and i ate my eggs with my hands like a good camper!

we flirted with strangers, chatted with friends of my lover; it was all very surreal cuz the house was still decorated for halloween on nov. 1 and the guests were in their costumes leftover from the night before. the mantle over the fireplace (where we ate with our fingers, in the dining nook off the kitchen) was covered in skulls. rat skulls, cayman skulls, snake skeletons. i began to feel a little disembodied, like i would soon wake from this strange dream.

my lover and i got into a little spat over him flirting with too, too, too many women without introducing me properly. (we're in an open relationship and he's only my "secondary" - he has a wife and i have a boyfriend, but hey, you can be polite or rude!!! and in my book, he was very rude.)

finally by the afternoon, all the anonymous sex, and the flirting he was doing, and the aggressive guys who were constantly hitting on me for no good reason, and the kahlua that hit my teetotaller brain quite hard and the sleep deprivation.......... i had HAD it! i wanted to GO HOME!!!!

i just couldn't face another 24 hours of hard partying with people who never met a drug they didn't like! and never heard a story they couldn't retell a thousand times drunk!

yes, these were fascinating people that i'd never have access to in the south: globetrotters with houses in bali, world class writers and artists and musicians. but I WAS TIRED OF THEM!!!!!!

tired of them and their free love and sex and debauchery. tired of smelling other people's cum. tired of watching the disparity between the host, who felt free to hit on anyone, and his wife, who was cleaning the house frantically and seemed so stressed out, worried about a thousand party details, and distraught at having that many people under foot in her sanctuary. (i didn't blame her and began to wonder whose idea it was to have the party!)

after a huge fight, during which i called my lover every name in the book, he refused to take me home and i discovered i was too broke for a cab. there is NOOOOOOOOO good public transportation in that part of marin so i was stuck. i threw a shitfit!

i confessed that i'd fallen in love with my married lover and that i didn't think i could do an open relationship with him. i confessed that i had a double standard. that i wanted to be able to flirt with and fuck any man woman or transperson i found attractive but that i wanted him to be celibate.

i confessed that i didn't want to be a free loving woman, that it made me feel slutty and that i wanted to go home, eat my mama's cooking, vote republican, get married, live behind a white picket fence and be buried near my ancestors like a good southern girl would do!

oh dear sweet lord jeebus, what had i become!

well, that set us to laughing! the fact that i could confess to all this complexity inside me. that sometimes i don't feel at all like the openly sexual being, the LGBTIQQ activist, the progressive person i've become. sometimes under stress, i want to revert to my fundamentalist values for safety's sake.

wow! what a revelation!

so, i asked my lover to hold me while i took a nap.

and he did just that.

i know he's not going to leave his wife. i know i don't actually want to live with him. i know i'm not going to give up my freedom to cater to a man ever again in this lifetime or the next!!!!

but it felt good to get my feelings all out there; even the scary ones of wanting to own my lover. even how scary it feels to take responsiblity for all my sexual choices. even the ones i now regret.

so he held me and i fell asleep on his chest on the sofa on the back patio by the heated pool, under the veranda while the partyers laughed above us.

and it felt good.

hallowed moon

2008-11-11T20:30:00.000-08:00

i'm so tired i can hardly keep my eyes open and it's only 8 pm. the transition to the fall time clock always takes me some getting used to.

but i just saw the prettiest sight AND i just talked to one of my best friends for the first time in 33 years, so i have to write or i won't be able to sleep.

i ate dinner at a chinese restaurant in the small gold country town where i'm staying for the next 2 months. there are a few chinese americans who still live here, descendants of railroad workers, launderers, cooks, and miners from the gold rush era. (becoming manual laborers was the only way chinese people could emigrate back in the day and they were prohibited from owning land, from marrying, from even holding on to their gold claims if they were lucky enough to find any.)

i'm walking everywhere since i no longer have a car. i love walking, even at night! it really forces me to interact with nature. this town is really safe. (the local newspaper's police blotter reads like this: "homeowner at 5235 willow street called about the dog barking loudly and a suspicious character at the house next door. the person was identified by officer as the electric repairman at 5234 willow street." seriously, EVERY day they report incidents like that! it cracks me up!)

so tonight after talking to my friend forever on the phone i got to walk home under a full moon! the sierra nevada mountains were peeking over the top of the little shops "downtown." (pop. 3000) the beautiful pines, firs, maples and even some redwoods were outlined in silver, with the mooonglow also highlighting the few clouds that floated by high above. the victorian homes and the white church steeple were lit up by tiny white lights. it's really picture postcard perfect here!

connecting with an old friend after so long is really amazing! we talked on the phone, she from chicago, all through dinner. we had been very close in junior high, attending the same school and living just a few streets apart. we did everything together for a couple of years and i adored her! she was spunky and funny; smart and cool and self assured. her mom was gorgeous and her dad was handsome, if intimidatingly intellectual. and we had great adventures together. she remembered so many funny things we did!

but the first thing she reminded me of was that, about 3 years into our friendship, my parents had forbidden me to see her when her sister was busted for pot. i had totally forgotten that.

there we were, still little girls really - i hadn't even hit puberty yet (though i lied about it). and i complied with my parents who had a shitfit that her sister was "on drugs!" my parents treated her like a pariah. and i went along. why the hell did i do that?

i remember feeling torn inside, wanting to be a good girl and following my parents, but feeling that they were wrong somehow. (like the time they coerced my youngest sister and brother to tell on my older sister when she wore a bikini at the pool and then grounded the guilty party - who was ALREADY IN COLLEGE!!!!!)

we found each other on facebook after i connected with a bunch of other high school friends following my 30 year reunion. quite frankly, there are very few people i have any interest in knowing, since most of them are still fundamentalists, like our school taught us to be. but she's one i want to know.

her dad was an atheist, a proud outspoken "non-believer," in a town where your social connections, your reputation, and very likely your job depended on your fundamentalist alliances.

he got non-profit status for his home and held regular "religious" gatherings there - for atheists - because he was sick of churches getting a tax free ride! ha! that just cracks me up - that he had the balls to do that in the deep south! what a guy!

it's strange coming out to high school friends. i've done it with almost everyone who's contacted me since the reunion. most of them, i come out because i no longer give a flying fuck what they think of me. but some of them, i haven't yet, because we are still close, they were there for me through the years i was battered, through my divorce and losing my kids and i can't bear to disappoint them. yup, i'm still chicken shit about some things!

still, i believe in listening to my heart and coming out when it feels right to me, not on anyone else's time table.

it feels like i have to come out over and over and over. to my lesbian friends, i come out as bi. to my vanilla friends, i come out as kinky. to my married friends, i come out as polyamorous. to my straight friends, i come out as gay. and to some, i never come out. it just doesn't feel safe.

i'm not quite ready to lose all my best high school friends and i know they would disown me if they knew i was bi and an atheist. i don't think i can bear it just yet. i've lost so much; i can't take that just now; maybe later.

my friend and i talked about raising our daughters, she's got one, i have 2. we both have a son. we talked about good marriages and bad ones; she's 1 for 2; i'm 0 for 1. we talked about the diff between socal and norcal. she HATED LA! but loved big sur. i love norcal and am trying to talk her into coming back!

we talked about leaving fundamentalism and the fake social veneer of the south behind for more authentic ways of living. and finding a spirituality that makes sense to us. she and her hubby wandered through scientology, (and landed at an eclectic paganism as did i). she discovered the writings of carolyn meese and i waxed poetic about pema chodron.

we talked about good men and bad. the cruel kind who would violate our daughters, or our own selves, and the tender kind who stick with you through challenges and love you through your own fits of rage.

it was wonderful to reconnect with her. and it was great to hear her acceptance of my sexual choices. she's very non-judgmental; she said she'd had to work on that since she inherited a sassy mouth and strong opinions from her father. i totally related to that!

i walked home under that full moon and i told her i loved her and how thankful i was to reconnect with her after all these years. she said the same; we're planning a trip to see each other next summer hopefully. she's happily married and i want to meet her kids.

i described the view i was seeing. she said, "let's do this, let's look at the moon at the same time, you in cali, me in chicago. now we're looking at the same moon!"

and you know what! that moon had a halo big as texas! and it was rainbow colored! i mean it! it really was!

48 hour halloween extravaganza: descent into hell (or was it hole?)

2008-11-05T22:01:00.000-08:00

there are some days when i blog as a discipline. since i really want to write an updated southern gothic novel (or would it be memoir???), i practice writing all the time.

there have been many days when i wanted to write but the internet was down, and strange as it may seem, i simply can't write just into thin air anymore. i can't use a word processor. (i think it's cuz it reminds me of the thousands of papers i had to write in grad school or of the millions of words i've written for nonprofit reports and grant requests. feels like WORK! whereas blogging feels like chatting with a best friend - the one you can pour out all your secrets to and she doesn't judge you.)

i wanna catch up on my life adventures. there have been so many lately, it's dizzying.

for halloween, i shopped at the goodwill store on university in berkeley, and found some great accessories for my gypsy fortune telling outfit. (a 7 foot long black and blue fuzzy stuffed snake and a crystal ball!)

my lover had cautioned me that the party we were attending was extremely exclusive and that i should take great pains over my costume. (i am unimpressed with exclusivity and never spend more than an afternoon primping so i just rolled my eyes at him.)

i did however, dye my hair with henna, get a pedicure in a glowing gold tone, and have my hair cut and styled. (i NEVER get mani's or pedi's unlike my high maintenance daughters! i find them too frivolous and plus, having asian women kneeling at my feet makes me really uncomfortable as an immigrants rights activist!)

and i played with all my burning man costumes for hours, trying on this and that thing, planning what i'd impress everyone with.

my lover seemed anxious and that made me nervous too. we drove to marin and fought a little over how we'd treat each other at the party. i recalled that while i love the way he treats me when we're in private, i loathe the way he treats me in public. when he's at my house or on my turf, he knows i don't put up with any macho bullshit.

but i've noticed that when we're out at a party as a couple, his middle eastern treat -women-like-they're-possessions personality comes out. ICK!

i gave him some guidelines and told him if he treated me at all like his property, i'd leave the party and he'd never see me again. i felt like we'd come a long way and he'd really progressed. i find him to be usually very teachable and truly eager to learn how american women want to be respected.

plus, it's my first time to date someone from another culture seriously, so i wanted to give him plenty of chances. i'm sure i've offended others from foreign countries with my own cultural ignorance so...fair's fair!

we lugged all our camping gear and tons of luggage up to the balinese style mansion in a ritzy neighborhood in marin. actually he did the lugging; i have a double standard about gender equality. i find that if i put on my makeup while the man does the heavy lifting, this works well for me. (:

there was security at the door and you had to have id to get in and your name had to be on the VIP list. wow! never been to a party like that! they even issued little "all access passes" to my lover and me!

i felt like i was wayyyyyyyyyyyy out of my league when i walked inside. i'm just a soccer mom from the south. and i revert to middle school insecurity when faced with people who are way smarter, way more well traveled, way better looking, tons more wealthy, and wayyyyyyyyyy more cultured than me. i suddenly go into time warp and feel that same old panic i used to feel worrying over my level of popularity back in junior high! it's NOT a pleasant sensation!

but before long, i was chatting up strangers and laughing with my lover's friends and several people started hitting on me. a roller blading self proclaimed son of god in a fabulous silver lame evening gown (we dubbed him "sexy jesus" since there was also an authentic jesus "just looking to get nailed!" at the party too) danced with me at the roller disco. (yes, the basement of the party had a roller disco complete with live dj, light show, pool table covered with percussion instruments so people could play along!)

then he began kissing my neck and he was quite cute and at least 15 years younger than me so i thought, what the hell, it's all harmless.

my lover and i had negotiated guidelines that we would check in with each other if either of us wanted to make out/fuck another person at the 3 day long party.

but i couldn't find him and sexy jesus was coming on strong so i decided it wouldn't hurt to snuggle!

the owners of the house had set aside their bedroom as a play room (as in sex play).

so we went there to cuddle. another couple, a white bi guy (dressed as elton john in glowing red sequins) and his hot japanese date (dressed as a domme with a large black bullwhip) lay beside us. they were friends of my lover, so we pupply piled all up and began stroking each other playfully!

the room had at least 3 king size mattresses inside huge dramatic balinese headboards and frames. the lights had been dimmed and there were red velvet covers on the beds. a fantastic boudoir with sculptures and objets d'art everywhere! exotic lamps had long satin tassles. after laying on my back a while i realized that attached to the headboard were all kinds of kinky sex toys. they were hard to see since the beds were made of intricately carved wood, hundreds of years old, and gloriously detailed.

at first i thought the house must be specially decorated for halloween but i found out they have it that way all the time! the wife is an author of vampire erotica, ala anne rice. in her office, which looked like a voodoo antique shop in the french quarter, she had altars on every shelf. these were not the kind of light airy goddess altars i make with my pagan friends. these were dark, brooding, voluptuous, bloody, and rich with catholic iconography and dark arts' haitian spirituality.

the husband is an artist in demand the world over. i got to tour his studio, a converted garage. he makes metal "paintings" etchings into silver, gold, aluminum, platinum, which are 2 dimensional but feel 3D since they seem to change shape like a holograph as you move about the room. truly stunning work!

clearly they are doing quite well for themselves!

so sexy jesus (is there anything sexier than a man in a dress?) and i were kinda making out a little when in walks my lover. ooooops. but he's a huge flirt and i figured he was just casing the play area to establish a place for his nightly catch, whomever that might be.

but i felt guilty so i bowed out politely, explaining to the son of god my lovers' and my rules. i felt a little silly. it was a wild party, not a citadel king gathering or a polyamory potluck where people readily talk about boundaries. this was a full on bacchanalia with no rules!

i found my lover and he introduced me to lots more of his friends, we danced a bit, and ended up back in the boudoir.

he lay me down and we began kissing and teasing each other like we enjoy. up came the host of the party, the artist owner of the place, dressed like the zorro(the elder one played by anthony hopkins) with dark eyeliner and long silver black hair, his own. as soon as my lover was done introducing me, zorro, who looked more than a little dangerous, started kissing me too. and playing with my ass, and before i knew it, he'd worked off my pants, pulled up my undies, and started licking my asshole.

that's right! he greeted me to his party, me a good little southern girl who always tried to live right, me who never did drugs or partied all night in my youth, who kept her almost virginity till marriage.....

me! he kissed my asshole!

i was just flabbergasted! and not in a good way.

normally, i would just slap a guy like that and tell him off right then and there.
but trouble is, i've come to enjoy wild kinky sex and i've come to like bad boys and want to find out what they have to offer.

and well, it felt good.

my lover has done that to me a couple of times, but only rarely since that particular sex act seems so.....well.....unseemly! plus, i'm a pretty healthy person and a safe sex advocate so licking someone's asshole is NOT my cup of tea. (no hepatitis for me thank you very much!)

but i found myself just giggling like a schoolgirl!

what the fuck!

what the hell was wrong with me?

my lover, i could see, was jealous and unsure what to do. we both didn't want to offend our host. he's clearly several gigantic social strata above us and we both rather wanted to be invited back to his enclave to meet more fascinating artists, authors, world travelers, story tellers, performers.

damn, what to do?

how exactly does one tell one's host to remove their tongue from your ass in a polite, inoffensive way?

amy vanderbilt didn't cover this subject. emily post had not said anything about this at all!

i caught my lover's eye, mouthed "what do i do?????" and he clearly had no clue.

so i consulted my inner southern bitch. she has always stood me in good stead. and i asked myself "what would an ethical slut do?"

i concluded that an ethical slut would enjoy the ride if it pleased her and get off at her convenience if it did not, host be damned!

and that's exactly what i did!

i lay there, allowing that man to lick my ass. i squeezed my lover's hand and stared him in the eyes since i figured it just might turn him on and allow him to relax and enjoy it too.

it felt good, and i was enjoying myself, and no one was getting hurt.

so there you have it!

more adventures later; it's getting late!

teaser: the host went down on me for hours the next night when he could have had any of a million young lovelies. and my lover got to comfort, snuggle, and intimately caress the hosts' wife while he was fucking me! haha! more to come!

kahlua and (kinnari) kreme

2008-10-28T19:45:00.000-07:00

i dipped my finger in to the champagne flute and wet it with kahlua and cream, then painted his sweet cock, dripping a little on his balls.

i knelt down to lick it off.

i kept painting him up and down, stroking and playing with him gently.

i was sitting on him cowgirl style as he lay on my bed, occasionally taking a break from my watercolor kink to lean over, kiss his lips, and let my breasts rub up and down his perfect chest.

after a while, he tired of my toying with him, flipped me over, and started fucking me right hard in my ass, which i've come to love. he's the first person i've ever done this with and it's really been fun learning how.

we've been playing with lots of .........well........ass play.

i think i've come to fetishize asses since they are just ever so naughty. and he adores coming in mine.

he's getting better and better. he was always gentle and sensitive and caring like a good lover should be. and he's always been amazingly skillful at making me come from any position.

i can't believe that after a year together, we're still discovering fun fresh ideas of what to do to each other in bed! we are really perfecting the ass fucking thing. he comes in very slowly, and holds very still till i adjust to his girth. and then when i want him to, (in fact, i'm begging him) he pumps in and out. sometimes he growls in my ear: "i'm gonna fuck you very slowly and torment you, baby." oh god, that just about does me in!

i can't believe he can make me come that way! last night, it seemed like his every stroke was making me orgasm.

damn, he's good.

i love my persian!

he'd come over straight after work to make sweet love to me and to entertain me. we can sit in bed laughing over silly little stuff for hours, discussing our hopes and fears about our careers, spiritual lives, kinky perversions, significant others, and what we're into lately.

he started taking level 2 of an improv class in the city. (San Francisco: for those of you who don't live here; that's what people who live in the burbs, like moi, call it.) i love to watch him act out various new things he's learned.

he was telling me all about this party he wants to take me to this weekend. he's so excited. he's been talking about it for weeks. it's an all weekend halloween extravaganza put on by friends of his burner crowd. tons of burning man campmates will be swimming in the heated pool, showing off their costumes, playing music, fire dancing, lounging around the beach house in the chi chi neighborhood in marin, and camping in the backyard under the (airlifted in!) royal palm trees.

oh and there will be nekkid hot tubbing; it still cracks me up as a southern girl, that all the stereotypes we learned about californians are so true; many of my new friends believe anything new age, are totally into astrology, and go swimming au naturel routinely. i love this!

he already bought his costume: he's going to be "sultan peppah!" ha! get it? he loves to play with language and speaks many of them fluently. he knows i find him irresistible when he whispers naughty things in my ear when we're in bed together. last night he was extolling the virtues of my ass in italian with a few french phrases thrown in. i love when he teaches me how to say naughty slang in another tongue.

daYmn, i'm happy!

the last few days we've been eating tons of indian food (we found a great place in my new neighborhood), slurping down mango lassis, fucking like rabbits (making up for lost time while i was on the road having adventures), and cracking each other up with stories of all we've been through while we've been apart.

he's also been helping me downsize from my 1800 square foot condo to a 100 square foot bedroom. i want to stay in just a small space when my kids aren't with me and i like communal living. so i gave away most of my furniture and belongings i'd accumulated since i moved to the bay area 2 years ago.

i can't believe it's been two years! i started housesitting in Pleasant Hill 2 years ago! then housesat in orinda and moved into the city to bernal heights.

i still have gotten clients from the original folks who had me out here 2 years ago, and am headed up to nevada city to housesit for the holidays. i'm so excited.

i think my kids are coming for xmas and if so, i'm taking them snowboarding in lake tahoe, just an hour from where i'm staying.

i also got a gig with a buddhist community in the gold country doing some consulting work. i love how one thing always leads to another for me.

i love being foot loose and fancy free. wheeeee!

all my life, i've been such a good girl: perfect wife, caring mom, loyal daughter to aging parents, hard worker. now it's my turn. and i'm having a ball!

this evening, i walked my adopted berkeley 'hood again for miles. i always discover something new! i found a toddler park with an art center. the kids had made these amazing photo collages of civil rights hero(in)es for voter awareness. there was frederick douglas, such a stunningly smart and beautiful face. there was malcolm x, elizebeth cady stanton, and many others unknown to me. (i'd never heard of alice paul so i need to read her story.)

the building was covered in murals the kids had done over the years, so colorful and cheery. watching the moms took me back to when my kids were little.

and i love strolling the blocks looking at all the different types of architecture, from bungalow to victorian. and the landscaping. it still blows me away that i get to live in this fabulous climate where lemons and oranges and bougainvillea bloom year round!

i chatted with dear friends and fam back home in tennessee while i walked. tomorrow's my birthday and they've been calling and writing.

just as i was nearing my house again, i stumbled upon a large, beautifully decorated brazilian dance center, holding capoeira classes right in my new backyard! yay!!!! i wanna take a class before i leave here.

last night, after we'd fucked each other silly for hours and we were both certain we couldn't possibly come anymore, he was talking on and on to me, just as i was drifting off to sleep...

i wanted to shut him up, so i playfully stuck my finger in his mouth. well, he began very erotically to suck my finger, up and down, nibbling and stroking with his nimble tongue.

(he's bi and has sucked cock very well before. this is one thing that i find astoundingly attractive about him.)

daYmn if that boy didn't put me in the mood again. i climbed on top of him and made him describe his cock sucking adventures while i lowered my lil cuntie down on his already hard again dick. as i was coming, he reached up for the crystal glass, took a sip of kahlua and cream, and kissed me with the taste of it on his lips, giving me a shotgun liqueur kiss! god, i love that man!

he's taking me to asiasf, the "gender illusionist" nightclub, for my birthday tomorrow and to a madonna concert on saturday. yay! will report back on my adventures!

curses and blessings

2008-10-23T20:45:00.001-07:00

yeah!!!!!!!! FINALLY!!!!!!!!

i can blog again!

i've been dying to blog but i've been crazy busy and the house i moved into has very limited connectivity sooooooooooooooo.........i had all this stuff all bottled up inside me and no where to put it!

yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i've been going through pure unmitigated hell lately so i've been trying to find the blessings in all this. i hate pollyanna theology and am a confirmed atheist. but i do believe in finding the good things that come after* suffering.

blessin's: (that's the way we say it down south, we generally drop the g at the end of everything.

i got my new library card from berkeley public!!!!!!!!!!! and guess what: it's tie dyed!! yes, YOU CAN choose a tie dye pattern honoring the legacy of hippies! red, green, blue, yellow swirls adorn my new card. and i spent many happy hours there yesterday and today. i love libraries. one of the first thing i always do when i move anywhere: find the closest library!

it's only 5 blocks from my house!

i moved in with a burner couple who are way cool. we camped together in 07 and this year too, and they'd come to a party at my house. i don't know them well, but i like their vibe. the woman of the couple has really clear boundaries and an amazing way of putting rich concepts into words. i'm loving getting to know them. her partner walks around nekkid at home so i've gotten to brag to my friends and fam that i'm living in a half naked hippie commune (either delighting......or horrifying them and confirming their worst fears about what would happen to me if i moved to cali! ha!)

at first i was shocked. then i realized, hell, this is why i moved to cali: to BE SHOCKED out of my southern complacency and hum drum living. now i just feel happy to see him so comfortable in his own skin!

it's really messy and cluttered here but they are way laid back about it. at first i thought it would drive me crazy and not be a good fit. but i like them so much that i tend to just overlook it now. i'm not sure i could handle it forever but for now it works. i'm a huge slob in my car but in my home i tend to be neat and organized.

however, i'm a hoarder and i come from generations of hoarders so i recognize their addiction. there is stuff EVERYWHERE! but they are very non-judgmental about my shit and my stuff being everywhere so it's all good. and i feel very grateful for this opportunity!

this housing fell into my lap just when i needed it most. i had just found out about my landlord attempting to illegally evict me from the place where i was living before i went off traveling -it's been confirmed to be illegal! met with a lawyer who specializes in landlord/tenant law- when i met up with them at the burner party and they told me about this place.

that was just a week and a half ago! i can't believe all i've lived through in such a short amount of time!

curses: last saturday i had to go get all my stuff from my condo. i found the tenants had stolen much of my furniture and other belongings, and they'd trashed the place. they argued with me and my movers over my own stuff - truly amazing shit! the lady started threatening to throw us out while we were moving my stuff even though i'd waited patiently and foregone accepting an out of town consulting gig just to accommodate her schedule!

i'd asked a friend to come along and be a witness. i honestly thought it would all go down okay since i'd warned the subtenants that i was bringing a camera and a witness to document their shitty behavior. i figured they'd be well behaved on camera and with my friends around.

but noooooooooo, she actually started throwing my furniture around and blocking our way by stacking up stuff in the hall so it would take us longer and cost me more (caught on film!!!) and threatening all kinds of crazy shit** while we were trying to pack up. i called the police AGAIN!!!!!!!! on her. it was truly amazing the way she lied and tried to get them on her side.

i told the police she'd hidden my furniture in her car in the garage and locked it up so i couldn't get it. they wouldn't even bother to come look; they said it was a civil matter and that i'd have to sue. which i'm doing. it's just amazing to me what shitty people can get away with!!!!!!!!! at least i have photographic evidence!

then i found out the other roommate (who'd trashed the property as well and stopped paying rent) was going around spreading lies that i had "kidnapped his cat and held him hostage." this is truly outlandish.

he had left his cat abandoned while he worked long hours and left town. the cat was so sick that the other renters had had to pay to take him to the vet since he refused. the poor cats eyes were running so bad and were so infected that one was glued shut! the litter box was overflowing, and the smell was so bad his housemates were refusing to pay rent since they alleged they had to spend the night elsewhere.

so when i arranged to take the cat to a no-kill shelter, he started.........well, trouble! amazing how crappy people can treat their own pets but if you intervene on behalf of the animal, they shoot the messenger! i found out he'd done this so many times before in colorado that his former roommate had the exact same situation with him!

i will NEVER trust another person like him again! i have learned my lesson!

blessings: i am walking my new neighborhood and loving it. there are really cool shops close by and banks and BART and grocery stores within walking distance. i've been walking 3 miles a day for over 10 years now so i'm in good shape to get wherever i need to go.

i found a million stores which cater to new americans (a more inclusive term for immigrants) of middle eastern or south asian countries. there are posters for persian, pakistani, iraqui, and indian cultural events everywhere. that's exciting to me. i love meeting and befriending new americans. like my parents before me, i have always been involved in immigrant outreach and have benefitted from knowing people all over the world.

when i was a kid growing up, my parents would always invite international students from local universities and visitors from all over the globe (friends of friends or colleagues) to our large welcoming home. dad and mom would help them find jobs, tutor them in english, and mom would cook southern meals for them and try to learn their language and how to cook their favorite dishes. i loved it. i never thought of it as unusual.

(now i look back on all the africans we had in our home growing up and all the cross cultural friendships we made and realize that was very uncommon for the south in the 60's!)

anyway, it just makes me really happy to be in such an international city. i have always loved berkeley! long before i visited here it was a symbol for me of the power of community organizing, of youth rising up to fight an overpowering and unjust military dictatorships: our own imperial presidents!

i was thrilled that my son took a tour of cal berkeley uni when we visited the bay area as a family for the first time. and my daughters and i have since found many favorite "root locations" here: internet cafes, thrift stores, used book shops, parks.

curses: car trubs force me to walk and bike; and i don't have enough money to replace my car till i sell my house in the spring. but i'm excited about learning more about car-free culture and bike culture. there is no better place in the world to do that than berkeley!!!!!!!! in fact, one of the first people who befriended me here - a fascinating man my father's age, a community advocate and architect for affordable housing - educated me about the car-free culture movement. so i should call him up again!

last night, my lover was telling me about the european "slow" movement which values centuries old city planning around pedestrians - rather than the car dominant culture like the america of post WWII. (i'd known of the slow food movement and practiced it myself.)

and i'd already been researching scooters for months so i didn't feel as horrible as i thought i would when i had to say goodbye to my trusty little corolla who'd taken me everywhere. i've loved her well and will miss her sporty red, progressive bumper stickered, knocked about frame. but it feels almost cathartic to let her go. maintaining a car in san francisco is EXPENSIVE!!!!!!!!!!

i'm so happy tonight.

even though last week was one of the worst of my life, good things are coming my way.

curse: the illegal eviction and threats from the tenants and landlord were causing my IBS and PTSD to really act up! especially since i'm very frightened of lawsuits and lawyers and courtrooms due to my ex's nonstop legal battering. but i was brave, researched the law, asked the lawyer a million questions, and documented EVERYTHING! and i feel confident about everything turning out okay. so my health is gradually improving through meditation, stress reduction exercises, healthy outdoor walks, and lots of great sex.

plus, my loverman and my boyfriend have just continued to be so amazingly supportive.

the persian and i live so close now to each other's neighborhoods (AND we're making up for lost time while i was on the road) that he comes to see me every couple of nights and we have wild wonderful fanfuckingtastic sex till the wee hours.

his wife's out of town*** so we're hanging out at their place all this weekend and next week. we're going to have another day of the feast of all senses. (we have our own private holidays that he just makes up. yesterday was cupcake wednesday and he brought me my favorite: chocolate!) next weekend, he's taking me to a burner halloween party in marin at some fabu artist's beach house. it lasts all weekend, plus we're going to madonna's concert next weekend too! i'm soooo excited! madonna's one of my biggest sheroes; even if she is a bitch. every woman needs to pull out her inner bitch more often. (and what other woman can take as much credit for putting kinky sex and women's assertive sexual pleasure at the forefront of popular culture, fashion and lyrics!!!!!!!!)

and my sweetie, my boyfriend, has called me each day to encourage me. he's been on the road again with his band. a long distance relationship suits me fine. i miss him but i can have my (cup)cake and eat it too!

tuesday night, the my new burner housemates took me to a poly potluck. and i got hit on by a lot of guys (none of whom interest me but it did my self esteem good.) it was at a beautiful house in the hills overlooking the bay. awesome hottubbing under the stars in their gorgeous back yard too.

life is soooooooooo damn sweet!

*note: i didn't say "because of" suffering. i've spent decades developing my theology/philosophy of suffering and i don't believe we cause it nor do i believe that some god or force is looking out for us. i believe suffering is random and i reject the notion prevalent in much of buddhism, christianity, islam and new age that we cause our own suffering. to believe that, you'd have to believe that women, children, the poor, sexual minorities, the disabled, and people of color deserve more suffering and that's just bullshit.

** i had told her to please hold my mail for me since next week is my birthday and my friends and family always sends cards and presents and checks. she actually said in front of my movers (and witnesses) that she'd throw out my mail. what kind of cruel person won't keep your birthday card from your own mother for you! what a crazy freak!

***we're not cheaters; we're both in an open relationship. (: yippeeeeeeeeeee!

meltdown and revival

2008-10-15T22:38:00.000-07:00

wow! kindness makes all the difference in the world!

i feel 1000% better.

yesterday, i had a huge emotional meltdown from all the stress of the eviction (for my subtenant/roommates who wouldn't pay rent.) and my sweet boyfriend (ok, we broke up a few weeks ago but he wants me back and is calling me constantly and writing me and i'm considering it) was just fucking amazing! he's so fucking supportive!!!!!!!! good god, he's a good man!

and my current lover was a huge help!

i just admitted that i was just way too stressed to deal with all the shit going down from my subtenants! it's so hard to cope with them fucking me over. i try to be honest and do the right thing; since i was raised to be a really good christian, following the ten commandments just comes really easy to me even though i'm an atheist buddhist now. so it still blows my mind when people just lie to your face and steal from you! and threaten you.

the subtenants sent me many emails saying they had contacted the police and would press charges if i attempted to get my stuff from the house. "press charges for what?!" my boyfriend demanded. "it's your stuff! and they're not paying rent!"

i'm truly frightened of my subtenants now since they've behaved in such insane ways.

i've been a landlord for my own property for 10 years now and i helped run my parents rental property business when i was still in high school! so i know what crazy tenants act like. i swear in cali, they are even more fucked up than anywhere. i've never been treated like this in my whole life!

i'm still reeling from shock!

so yesterday morning i just had a major meltdown since my landlord isn't helping me and is making my life much harder by trying to evict me for their shit.

i figured out she made a back door deal with them to sell them the place and that's why she's willing to shaft me for the money which they owe instead of pursuing getting it from them or at least helping me get it from them. she's a piece of work. i'm still just astounded at how people will cheat you over money. i would never do that to anyone so it still amazes me that people can live with themselves after failing to follow the golden rule!

anyway, my sweet boyfriend talked me down from the ledge, and he and my lover loaned me some money (till my next payday) to rent a new place here in berkeley. (i was hemmorhaging money from having to come back in town and having no place to stay or cook or park while i deal with the subtenants).

this means i'll have to stay here in the bay area and forego WWOOFing just now since i've got to deal with all the court dates, meet with lawyers, file papers, etc. etc. etc.

good lord, wears me out just thinking about it!

plus, i was so worried sick by monday night that i didn't sleep but 2 hours. i was awake till 5 am worrying over getting an eviction on my record! and trying to figure out how to motivate the tenants to pay the fucking rent, dammit! they have more money than me and they are trying to outlast me but i'm crafty and an extremely good researcher.

nothing like getting sued by your ex over custody every year to make you pretty savvy in a legal library. so, while lawsuits are uberstressful and horrible, at least i know the terrain!

my new friend, linda, is such a total sweetheart!!!!!!!! she and jason and i are active with the bay area bi network and they have hosted me during my weekend trips back to the bay area while i've been on the road for the last 2 months.

today she called a friend of hers from unity church who works with nolo press. it's a publisher (and networking org) which specializes in low cost legal info. linda fucking rocks! we drove over to nolo and out came one of their top people who GAVE me 2 books worth $75 on california landlord/tenant law. (i promptly made a donation to nolo!)

i've considered purchasing rental property out here so i need to familiarize myself with the laws anyway, not just for this case. plus, since i used to be a public policy wonk, i actually enjoy reading legal tomes. go figure!

i think it's the fundamentalist in me. if you grow up being forced to go to bible class for an hour every day and argue ridiculously inane religious law for days on end, (weeks, years even) you pretty much are set to make a good lawyer.

i loathe lawyers, except for public interest ones.

but i do love to read case law!

my sweet lover took me out to dinner last night and cheered me up; he can make me laugh so easily! i just adore him. he just lets me cry on his shoulder and he just holds me and tells me he loves me and that i'm full of light and love and how beautiful i am and how it's all gonna work out for the best.

and the cool couple i hooked up with at the burner decom party accepted me as their new housemate with no downpayment or deposit. and i can rent month to month so i can still do my housesitting gig in nevada city next month. yay! i love going there!

which means i have no rent to pay from tgiving to christmas. which means i can spend all my moolah on my kids! and my dear sweet momma.

yay!

and my awesome ex-boyfriend called me each hour to check on me and gave me multiple pep talks and told me he'd do anything for me. he's so good to me.

and i love my new housemates. they are cool former one tasters and they are kinky, poly, and i suspect bisexual. whooohooo! which means that i didn't have to be embarrassed when my strap-on fell out of my moving boxes. ha!

and i love my new room!!!!!!!

it's a sunny cream color with the palest yellow in it. it faces east, my fave direction to face in a bedroom. i love to wake up with the sun streaming in on me. and tonight the full moon rose right in my window!

and i loooooooooooooooooove berkeley. it's the brokely part of berkeley kinda.

but i much prefer mulitculti hoods to boring ass all white 'burbs!

today, some boys were in front of the house while i was moving in. (i haven't unpacked my car since well before burning man!) and they offered to help. they were the cutest little school boys on their bikes. all different ethnicities. all of 'em around 10 years old. the leader, a young african american cutie with bitchin sunglasses, was a real go getter. he strode right up to me and asked me if i needed help moving in. hell, i remember being 10 and needing money for candy and what not, so even though i'm broke as hell, i said, "sure!" and he organized the boys and they all helped.

so i paid him and he looked proud when he rode off to join his friends.

his buddy had a kickass bike with a homemade paint job so i told them about the bike workshop at crucible. turns out the ringleader had been there. i hope i run into them again. they are all my new neighbors now. yay!

i'm going to bed on my new furniture. the owners set me up with bookshelves, a large futon, and a dresser.

i'm at peace even in the middle of the storm. i think i can rest now.

goddess, bless my friends!!!!!!!!!!!!

how he fucked me - today

2008-10-13T23:45:00.000-07:00

i love documenting my adventures. it gives me hope during hard times.

i snuck my lover into the hostel tonight. (he'd been feeling hurt and rejected and i adore him.)

you are seriously not supposed to do that.

i waited till the 3 british girls were at dinner. (i had suggested a restaurant and shopping area which i knew would take them at least a couple of hours and off they went!)

i planned his exit (if they showed up early) by scoping out the fire escape and the adjacent empty rooms with their open windows.

i'd brought my condoms and lube and carefully hidden them by my (bunk!) bed.

well, of course we were in flagrante delicto when one came back early. she turned out to be irish, not a friend of the others at all, unlike what i'd assumed. and she caught me, head between my lovers legs, and vice versa. oh, how very civilized!

the strangest thing happened. i was NOT terribly embarrassed. (my mother would seriously die of a coronary if she knew her southern belle was up to this amount of no good.)

i decided i'd rather get thrown out of the hostel than lose a good fuck. so i gambled my $25 a night bed on the fact that she wouldn't tell. and she discreetly went into the bathroom and started the shower while we finished.

except that she didn't take very long. so we weren't quite finished.

we were just both coming as she came back in. and my lover knows i make noise so he had his hands over my mouth trying to hide my gasps. well, that set me to giggling.

so here we have this innocent college girl (climbing above us on her bunk) whom i'm assuming is asexual since all she seems to do is read the koran and go to bed early, while my lover's hard on is tenting the sheets and i can't quit laughing.

we decided if she was game, we were, so we finished. ah, what a finish! never came so very hard from that position! (ass fucking is a brilliant invention! hits the back of the g spot if you do it right!)

i seriously could not stop laughing for a good long time. he left - after lots of naked scrambling around the room to grab his clothes and mooning "the good little muslim" as he called her - which is truly ironic since he jokingly calls himself a good little muslim boy when he's performing a particularly perverse sexual act which delights me. he was raised fundaMENTAList too though in iran so we have our intimate jokes about what our mothers told us would send us straight to hell!

i then explained to the irish girl that we'd been apart for several months while i was on the road and we barely had time to see each other before i left again. i promised he wouldn't be back and i apologized within an inch of my life.

she started laughing too and explained that if her boyfriend was here from ireland, she'd be doing the same thing so not to feel bad. what a sweetheart!!!!!!!!!

what a relief!

bloggerrhea

2008-10-13T23:24:00.001-07:00

*late night update: ohmygod! i just got another message from an old high school buddy who looked up my email on the reunion website. he just told me he'd carried a torch for me all through high school and i never knew. wtf? and he told me all these really sweet things he'd thought about me over the years!

(i decided to come out to him and banish his hopes of a mid-life fling - he was asking for photos and my current hometown. he's probably still a fundaMENTAList and i kinda adore shocking them.)

i'm broke, middle aged, wrinkled, and i'm 40 more pounds than i was in college. but i do love myself and i love life. maybe that's the best aphrodesiac!

i like how my lovers can call my bluff and really nail me to the wall and get me to mature more rapidly than i would prefer.

my persian overheard me on the phone talking to my reunion friends who'd called. he said, "honey, you still care what they think, don't you." (i'd decided to just go ahead and come out on the phone to my child hood friends.)

and he was right! why on earth, after 30 years do i still care if my small town friends accept me the way i am? why should it matter? i think it's because i grew up in such a sheltered environment thinking that the entire world revolved around whether they approved of you or not, that it's still hard to shirk those feelings of inadequacy.

if people tell you during your entire upbringing that your value as a girl depends on if you are beautiful and popular and making all As, you're bound to get a little fucked up.

(i came from a long line of beauty queens and cheerleaders who weren't content to be just cute. no, they had to go and be valedictorians too! or the first female pharmacist in the state or the most sought after speaker on the circuit and the first labor organizer in the church or........ad nauseum!) to this day, i still think i got bad grades and when people find out my gpa, they laugh! i got almost all As. but since Bs counted for nothing, and Cs were shameful, it feels like i must still try to be perfect.

i'm struggling too with the shame of poverty. i still often dress middle class, i speak middle class, i buy in middle class neighborhoods, but i left the respectable middle class over a decade ago when i fell into poverty after my divorce! my trans girlfriend nailed me on it. she too comes from respectable middle class which refused to accept her transition from male gender assignment to female actuality.

so she confronts me every now and then on my clinging to middle class ways for advantage.

i really struggle with class (natch) struggle! i was volunteering with my parents in public housing by the time i could toddle. i taught countless poor inner city kids to read throughout middle school as a peer tutor and i was leading low income neighborhood improvement projects by the time i was in high school.

but i realized that until i lost all my money and privilege, i had no fucking clue what poor people had been going through. i still struggle with the guilt of southern white privilege. as soon as i saw the astounding poverty of brooklyn and the bronx (during my summer job in college) on my home visits to my clients, i changed majors and became a social worker.

but i had no clue what it would be like to be on the other side until lately as i've wandered the mission, not sure if i had enough money to make it till the end of the month.

i'm thankful for bell hooks who taught me that race, gender and class are all hopelessly intertwined. that privilege and oppression is a hard egg to unscramble.

but i still feel unbelievable sadness at all the struggle around me on the faces in the mission or the tenderloin.

i think that what i'm being taught through my hard times is this: when i had privilege, i could maintain the illusion which pema chodron talks about in her amazing buddhist essays, of otherness. i could be the helper, they were the clients.

now it's just all of us struggling down here together. i've learned the hard way that money truly doesn't buy you happiness. freedom and authenticity do.

money just gives you a really nice cushion to fall on.

burner party!!!!!!!!!!!!! and back to the future of high school

2008-10-13T12:17:00.000-07:00

i came back to sf just for the burner decompression party last night! and boy was it a doozy!

[the location sucked, a really nasty street, under the freeway, which smelled of sewage and was right in the middle of the dogpatch industrial neighborhood. but in a way, it's kinda cool they got thousands of burners to go down there! they have a huge clean up after party where they try to leave the nayb better than they found it. so all's good in the hood! and since i bought into an up and coming indy-turned-residential neighborhood in the south, i know how hard community groups fight to improve their neighborhoods!]

i met up with many fellow campers from polyparadise whom i adore; especially one man and his girlfriend who are one of the coolest couples i've ever met.

they came to my thanksgiving potluck last year and, even though we'd camped together, i didn't recognize them with their clothes on!

they just had a big blow up at a sexuality institute where they'd been living and working. unfortunate but i think i could have predicted it. it was one of those cult of personality places which are so popular for brief times and then go up in flames through discord.

but this couple are really evolved. we sat around for hours on thanksgiving and talked deeply about everything till the wee hours of the morning! and last night, we discussed the possibility of my renting from them in berkeley when i return to the bay area so i'm excited! i'm going for coffee with them tomorrow! can't wait!!!!!!!!

and i was very happy to see a guy i had a crush on at burning man whom i'd gotten to play with. he seemed to be happy to see me too and we got to hang out and explore the party - for both of us it was our first time. he is just simply gorgeous and is very humble - seems to have little idea of his affect on women, and a total gentleman. (and that's really rare!) i felt so thrilled when he touched my back and held my hand. just like the crushy feelings you get in high school.*

we saw the flaming lotus girls' mutopia and got to push the buttons that make it flame up! i got to whack a hammer at fandango! we ate hot fresh beignets and delicious chicken curry!

i danced my patooty off at ripe and opulent temple's deep end. amazing djs, flaming art, fabulous food, and stunningly gorgeous people and costumes!

*speaking of which, i had my 30th high school reunion this weekend. and i didn't go. it's my first time to miss it - we have it every 5 years. so my old boyfriends and my still current girlfriends all called me from the reunion!!! (i was at a movie about sex addiction with my bisexual lover - how much farther can i get from my republican religious right upbringing?)

one of them even played piano for me ON THE PHONE! i had a huge crush on him in high school. (unrequited unfortch!) he was one of the most popular guys, witty and talented. (my mom liked to brag that only he and i got incredibly high IQ scores on our tests - they called in his mom and mine to announce that we were gifted.)

i was a cheerleader, and an officer in the same club as him so we'd often travel together for sports or civic events. i remember so well him being in my hotel room, kissing another girl, and wishing it was me. but he'd written me the sweetest letter a few years ago, when my dad died and described him as a legend and a really important mentor for him. that really touched my heart.

and the first boy i ever kissed got on the phone too and called me by my intimate nickname. (my maiden name rhymed with a word for derrier and he liked mine so he made up a lewd little song about it. hahaha! he sidles up to me and sings it in my ear at every reunion! i know this is extremely shallow but since he married the head cheerleader and homecoming queen, this gives me great pleasure since it makes her jealous. wow, hard to believe i'm really that immature!)

of all the boys who proposed to me there is one that my mother just can't let go of. he inherited a family biz which made him a millionaire. my bro is his lawyer (and that made my brother a millionaire as well.) he lives in a mansion just down the street from my mom and she will sigh when we drive by and say: "you could have had all that!" i remember he took me to the top of the roof of his business after we'd dated only months in college and proposed. (he actually had told me that if i married him, i could "have all this" meaning the wealth he'd just showed off.) i was stunned! i felt like jesus being taken to the top of the mountain by satan and being offered the world. i broke up with him pronto!

instead i've chosen a life of poverty and independence. and i'm so glad!

it's still hard to believe i grew up at private schools, with horses and sailing and pools and country clubs, and then married a lawyer who became a multimillionaire and then left him for a life of poverty. i'm still truly shocked some times. especially when my finances are tight like now!

i truly have lived hand to mouth ever since my divorce. i usually have not known where my next paycheck was coming from since i'd quit any job i didn't like, to savor my independence.

i do own my house out right and my car and i have no debt so i'm actually better off than most single moms by a long shot! and my ex pays for their college and grad school (and ridiculously opulent lifestyle!) so that's good for my kids that they've never had to struggle.

but sometimes it feels so strange when i wake up in a hostel in a crime ridden neighborhood (since i can't afford a fancy hotel any more) next to three total strangers (snoring messy but adorable british girls who are half my age) and climb into a dirty shower, and then go to ride the bus with the lunatics or pick up my run down, beat up car.

i could have had everything, but i chose independence.

and i'm happy! i have my self! and that's something that none of my southern fundamentalist married women friends can say.

tribe v blogger; hard times fall on the southern girl

2008-10-13T11:28:00.000-07:00

oh my god! so much has happened since i last blogged.

i notice that on blogger, since i have no viewer controls, i don't blog about my hard times as much as my happy times.

on tribe (which i much prefer, but which is having so many difficulties keeping their doors open and consequently so many tech trubs, i gave up!) i had viewer control. i could set some blog entries to private and so only reveal my hard times to my friends.

but it seems i have no readers on here or at least none who leave comments so what the hell? why'm i proud?

i miss the reader comments i use to get on tribe!!!!!!!!!!! i had developed a loyal following and always got feedback. it feels very lonely on blogger, like i'm shouting into the wind - just whistling in the dark. but i believe that blogging has been a very healthy outlet for me so i'm keeping it up.

also, i'm really determined to create a feminist "on the road" version of traveling around cali ala kerouac.

i finally read his _big sur_ (and then toured some of his haunts, including nepenthe). a bunch of run-on sentences and drunken ramblings, but damn, he's a fascinating drunk! and he was brave enough to write about his own wretchedness and self loathing. while he struggled with extreme internalized homophobia, (hell - who didn't in the 50's?) he did write with great tenderness about his male friendships. that takes some guts!

where to start on my last 2 weeks: it's been a whirlwind of activity!

i dated a couple of guys i met in the central coast, both of whom did not get second dates. one local guy bored me to tears in between being fascinating and the other was an indian immigrant who was absolutely clueless about american dating customs. he actually said this to me: "can we do the oral now?" are you kidding me? wtf????? you'd think he was fresh off the boat but no, he'd been in this country for 3 years!!!!!!!!!! he was a young doctoral student who gave me a boring tour of the dairy department at the uni. he was besotted with me and begging to see me again after one evening. oh boy! seriously, he just needed to get out more! telling him i had a son only slightly younger than him did not put him off.

you know how guys complain that girls pressure them to call and then bitch about how they don't call after a date. well, this guy pressured me and pressured me to get together for a second date. i really hate to lie to someone and i pride myself on being honest but i must say, i lied a blue streak to this poor guy just to get rid of him.

all my life, guys have been interested in me way out of proportion to the duration to which they've known me. wtf? it's flattering to a point but after a while, it gets tiring fending off attention that you don't want. i really don't get this! i love myself but i'm no great beauty. i was always popular but learned early on that popularity only gets you so far - you really have to develop morals and a deep sense of yourself to get where you want to go.

i think, perhaps, because my dad and mom trained me in the art of conversation, and they both could make you feel as if you were the only person in the room and the most fascinating one at that - that trait got passed on to me. everyone in my family is genuinely interested in every one they meet. they are not flatterers, but they do have the gift of making other people feel at home and making them feel that they've been heard. we are good compassionate listeners in my clan.

therefore, i've developed a theory about these guys (and a few women) who just get so struck with infatuation after only a little time with me. i think they are falling in love with themselves. i think they've probably not had too many people pay close attention to them and give a crap so they confuse my kindness and genuine interest with romantic intent.

plus, i'm a hopeless flirt. i can't help it. it's how girls in the south are raised!

the local guy wrote me poetry after only 1 date. that's a bit much! but he did know many very interesting details about his community and he pointed me to some cool places i wouldn't have known of otherwise. so i thanked him and politely disengaged.

meanwhile back at the hostel - the owner's ex came by and they're going through a divorce- during which she had a meltdown and fired all the volunteers! she actually was nice enough to give us all till the end of october to find another WWOOF site but i was getting bored and ready to move on so i just left in a huff.

sometimes my temper gets the best of me no matter how hard i try to be a good buddhist. i had kept it in check the whole time i'd been there even though the hostel owner had been wildly emotional and criticized all the volunteers to the point of tears, where they were all seriously hurt and looking for other placements, afraid of her whims causing them to be homeless for christ's sake!

finally after she accused me of pouring out her tea (she kept accusing all of us of anything the hostel guests did as if we were personally trying to make her life hell!) i had just had it. i let her know that i had plenty of other places to go! and i told her that i thought her parents must have given her very little praise and very strong criticism since that was the only form of communication she seemed able to give the WWOOF volunteers. i've spent 20 years in nonprofit management and service, and have learned that just because you are a volunteer does not mean you have to take shit!

the other volunteers privately cheered me on, told me how much they admire me, and we plan on remaining friends and perhaps wwoofing together. but i kinda wish i hadn't blown my cool. i wish i'd behaved more professionally. ah, but sometimes life is short and you just have to lay your cards on the table.

so i'm back in the city, back in san francisco. my favorite city in the whole world! i came back for a burner party.

and it was soooooooooooooo worth it!!!!!!!!!

more later.

just found out my two subtenants have stiffed me for October rent again and the landlord is threatening to start eviction AGAIN! i cannot believe i've had to go through this 2 months in a row. what part of pay your rent on time do people not understand! shit, being a landlord is sucky! being a leasor trying to enforce sublessors rent payments is even suckier!

i contacted a tenants rights organization which said they'd help me so hopefully i can get the subtenants to pay the rent. they are a lesbian couple (doctor and rental tsar) so they should be responsible!!!!!!!!!! wtf - they make like ten times my salary and they can't come up with rent?

the other one, trouble (his name is so apt) moved out without telling me and then failed to pay rent, yet again! (i actually was able to be civil to him in public at the burner party last night but it took every ounce of my graciousness not to call him out in public.)

which means, i could have been living in my huge condo all of october or at least renting it out and earning income on it. but no, he didn't tell me. just moved out with no notice and stiffed me for rent and deposit! and the landlord and other tenants claim he caused all kinds of damage for which i'm now liable.

what an asshole!

last time i deal with burners as roommates! they're cool but californians seem to me to be a flaky bunch!

i really wish i was not a drama queen. i've tried so damn hard to eliminate the drama in my life.

but it seems like it finds me.

what can you do when your tenants don't pay rent except get drama?

how do you deal with a volunteer placement where all the volunteers get let go - by a paranoid depressed woman going through a messy divorce - without drama???????

how do you deal with a jealous lover without drama?

one of my lovers, my favorite one, my steady one, the one who gives me the most mulitiple orgasms, the one who quotes me beautiful poetry in bed, got really jealous over me.

i can understand, since polyamory is hard, and i get jealous too sometimes.

but all the same, it's hard to be on the receiving end. we're going to have lunch today so hopefully we can talk through it.

we have a pattern of doing great when we're in private but he seems to really get upset when we go to parties where i'm interested in other people and they flirt with me or wanna hang out and he feels rejected.

i really love him and care about his feelings so i'm trying to sort out what i'm responsible for and what i'm not. being new to polyamory doesn't help since i still feel so clueless half the time.

but i know i'll find my way.

damn, i've come full cicle back to tribe.net: that's one of the main things i miss about tribe is that it had such a strong polyamory community and i could post questions and have a million answers in no time. people on there gave really good advice and were really experienced.

and i miss my blog readers.

ttfn.

San Luis Obispo Farmers' Market

2008-10-02T23:28:00.001-07:00

San Luis Obispo Farmers' Market
Originally uploaded by clicktonomy

just as beautiful as it really is. wish you could hear the laughter, the street musicians, the little tiny donuts frying.

and smell the kettle corn, and the cinnamon sugar sprinkled on the donuts, breathe in the fall night air with a hint of ocean breeze.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmm delightful!

sol at the farmer's market in slo

2008-10-02T23:26:00.001-07:00

Ask him
Originally uploaded by Pianoman75

this guy sol played fiddle so beautifully. and he tapped a jangle with his shoe.

berry good

2008-10-02T23:25:00.001-07:00

berry good
Originally uploaded by Pianoman75

got to try golden raspberries tonight!

Farmer's Market, San Luis Obispo, California 8-28-2008

2008-10-02T23:23:00.001-07:00

Farmer's Market, San Luis Obispo, California 8-28-2008
Originally uploaded by Trader Chris

i love this lady. she's so sexy and she teases all the customers.

i would sooooooooooooo do her!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mission San Luis Obispo

2008-10-02T23:22:00.001-07:00

Mission San Luis Obispo - 4/4
Originally uploaded by Matt (mistergoleta)

bear fountain is splashy fun!

Avila Beach, California

2008-10-02T23:21:00.001-07:00

Avila Beach, California
Originally uploaded by dave.mendez1

sunset at avila beach.

i was there last night.

farmer's and new dates

2008-10-02T22:45:00.000-07:00

last night i soaked in hot springs mineral water while watching a movie. only in california. then i'd step out of the mineral bath, really a small pool and into the heated olympic size pool to swim a few laps on my back and stare up at the stars. the place was surrounded by palm trees and i could see their silouettes against the night sky. really just stunningly beautiful.

i had been asked out by a local guy. tonight we met at a farmer's market (at the date stand) and walked around chatting. he's interesting but not my sexual type. i enjoy learning about local culture and he's very well versed in that. plus, he's athletic and outdoorsy which appeals to me. he bikes, hikes, camps, swims. so do i.

the san luis obispo farmer's market is the best one i've ever been to. they shut down the streets on huigara close the mission the town is named for. it's beautiful, i toured it tonight as well. a beautiful walkway and tree lined courtyard (with bare barked eucalyptus), lovely small garden with concord grapes growing on covered trellises. a fountain with a sculpted bear splashing children and fish. there were pomegranate trees, with their erotic pinkish red fruit hanging low, and all kinds of flowers, tall blooming hibiscus bushes - trees really!

last night, i was worried over meeting this new guy. but he was a perfect gentleman. he massaged my feet while we soaked and chatted. he was very amiable but i remained chaste since i wasn't really into him physically. i'm impressed with his idea for a first date though. it was quite a lovely soak! and simply magical to swim under the stars!

before i met him, i hiked at avila beach. absolutely beautiful! the harbor was full of brightly colored sail boats at anchor. i walked and walked the beach at sunset. high golden rocky cliffs and rolling green mountains sink into the sea there.

life is so sweet.

this afternoon, after work, i hiked moonstone beach and watched seals relax on rocks or ride the waves, their little heads bobbing up and down - hundreds of them. slivers of sunshine spiked through the fog. it was so gorgeous.

i feel so blessed!

the owners of the sustainable business where i'm working made fresh jam, homemade salsa (with garden fresh tomatoes, peppers and cilantro), and lentil soup this week. i've been eating well. they feed us 2 meals a day and give us a stipend for the rest. i can't believe i get to live in this charming town.

monday afternooon, i moved into the little cottage by the side of the inn. i sleep in the loft which is drafty but at least a little more private. and the other volunteers here (we just got two more) are very friendly and fun and interesting.

there is a young couple who are very much in love. they are at the stage where they can't keep their eyes (or hands) off each other but i heard her telling him off yesterday so i guess they are also having little lovers quarrels.

we have the most interesting guests who stay here. one british woman described suddenly getting vertigo at the top of the statue of liberty and the police had to shut it down and get EMTs to talk her down. she just froze at the top of the lady's torch and couldn't come down. it took hours and the whole park was shut down because of her. she laughed and laughed telling us the story. i love meeting strangers who are touring around. we get lots of europeans, (dollar is LOW!) belgians, aussies, french, a couple of netherlanders, a hungarian holocaust refugee, many germans and brits. it's fun telling them about the area and hearing their impressions of california. they all love it.

nighty night. i'm happy as a clam and off to bed. i'm touring hearst castle tomorrow with my new friend, a fellow volunteer. she's a friendly young woman, very feisty and hilarious. and even though she's young enough to be my daughter, she thinks i'm a lot of fun.

wish me luck. i got asked out by a college man and i'm going tomorrow, maybe. he said he i was a "sexy milf." ha! and a "cougar" experience. that just cracked me up! if only these young men knew what a good girl i was raised to be!

(wow! you gotta love this inn! it's a pension. and a really hot young blonde man just staggered out of his room in his boxers and nothing else, to use the wc. it's a great life.)

that does it!

2008-09-30T22:31:00.001-07:00

ok i've had it with obama.

i'm voting for nader i decided. that will make 3 elections in a row.

i loved obama; i really did. and i really wanted to vote for him. i believed in him after i read his autobiography. and god knows i was proud he was a community organizer like me. i loved everything he stood for, until lately.

first he voted to excuse AT&T and all the communications companies who spied on americans illegally.
then he said nothing about all the HUGE corporate donations and back room deals at the DNC.
then he kept saying "mr. mccain is exactly right" in his debate, probably coached by some PR person. (grow some balls and tell mccain off!)
then he supported the corporate excess bailout.

i've absolutely had it with him.

i'm done.

i know folks will say my vote is worthless and may cost lives, but i'm voting for the revolution.

if nader had won in 92 or 96 or 2000, we wouldn't have had 9/11. he supported cockpit locks decades ago.

if he had won in 00, we wouldn't be in iraq.

if he had won in 04, we wouldn't have had a financial mess on wall street.

i'm using my one tiny little american vote for democracy.

the way he fucks me

2008-09-26T21:12:00.000-07:00

he grabs me from behind and pushes up against me at the side of the cheap motel bed. he pulls me close and growls in my ear "let's fuck a little, baby." i push back against him and feel his hardness through my clothes. i'm already breathing heavier just at the sound of his voice.

his knees part my legs from behind. through his clothes, he pushes his cock into the part in my ass and begins a slow fucking rhythm and times it with his kisses.

he licks my ear, bites my neck, whispers "take your jacket off." it comes out as a command. i like to be ordered around sometimes.

i slowly peel off my clothes while he watches.

i fall on the bed and he rips his clothes off. he's on me immediately. i love the weight of him, the way he presses me against the mattress. his coffee chest is so beautiful. i could stare at it and play with his hair for hours. he has the absolute perfect amount, not too much, not too little. it's dark now and i can't see it. this afternoon, i watched him while he undressed and marveled that i get to make love to him.

i suck on his nipple but he doesn't go for that. (my boyfriend does and i miss doing it.)

he climbs to the foot of the bed, parts my legs even wider and plunges his head in between my thighs. i feel him licking my clit, tugging on my lips, sucking my wet pussy and i get wetter immediately.

with every other guy, it always takes me a long time to get excited. with him, i go from zero to sixty in seconds.

i let out a long low moan. he pushes a thumb into my wet wet cunt, and i scream as i come. he wets his finger and pushes his pinkie into my ass and i scream even louder. he makes me come so many times i lose track of time, of where i am, of anything but his fingers and his tongue. i come and come and come and come. no one can make me come like he does.

i'm spent from coming and yet excited and ready for anything. i tug on his shoulder and beg him, "hold me." i love to be held after i come. and i love to feel his whole body covering mine. he sinks on to me. he whispers in my ear "i love you, baby." we lay holding each other while my heavy breathing slows. we clutch each other like lovers who have limited time do.

finally, he rolls off me and lets me lay on his shoulder. i start to touch him but he says, "just enjoy your afterglow, baby." i throw my leg over his. i could sleep now and be happy.

but the feel of him and his energy flowing between us excites me again.

we start rocking together. pushing against each other and enjoying the tension and release. push, rock, push, rock, push, rock. i can feel him getting hard again.

i climb on top of him and tease him with my body, my cunt rubbing up and down, up and down, back and forth. i snake my body up and down on him, massaging his cock with my breasts. he whines a little, "mmmmmmmmgggggggghhhhhhh." compared to me he's pretty quiet.

i'm playing it cool, but suddenly i can't stand it. i have to have him inside me NOW. i take the condom from him and roll it down on him. then take him firmly in my hand and push him there, right there, inside me. i love that first thrust, that feel of dick sliding into wet pussy, him so firm, me so soft and moist. he pushes up up up into all of me. i feel him filling me and i gasp. that first thrust, so mmmmmmmmm! there are no words.

i ride him cowgirl style, up and down, up and down his cock till we are both ready to explode. he's the only man who can make me come this way - through intercourse alone. no one's ever been able to do that. i'm shocked to feel myself coming again. i moan in his ear, "please, please, you're making me come again baby, please." and he knows that's his cue to fuck me harder, deeper, faster till i peak, riding him like a piston.

i roll off of him and onto my side away from him but close, so close. he snuggles up to my back and wraps his arms around me. we continue our rhythm, his hard cock pushing all up on my round ass, then pulling back, leaving me wanting him all over again, any way, any where, any how. i need him; i'm not satiated yet.

and that's when he says it. the thing that drives me crazy for him. "do you want me to fuck you in the ass now, baby?" that's what he does to me. he makes ME want it.

some idiots push a woman or threaten her emotionally. but no, he makes ME want him, there in my most naughty of places. he makes me want to do bad bad things. he makes ME want him bareback.

we get the lube. we're both well read on this subject and know it takes lots of lube. i love putting the oil on his erection. i love the feel of him putting lotion on my ass. he rubs in a finger and i nearly scream from the sudden, intense pleasure. he massages me back and forth, readying me for his much larger cock. i'm scared. but he's very gentle and he knows to go slow.

he's at my entrance and i'm guiding him in slowly, ever so slowly. then we begin our dance. careful at first, measured and gentle. then harder and more passionate, thrusting in and out, in and out. with each withdrawal, i push back against him.

his breathing gets more and more labored, heavier and i know he's close. "i'm going to come inside you baby, you want me to come now, baby?" before i can answer, he yells, the only loud sound he's made all night, at the same time as he plunges deep inside me. and he pumps a few more times as he moans.

then we fall back on the bed in exhaustion, each totally spent from the intensity. we are completely wrapped up in each other's bodies. arms and legs tangled together, inseparable, for the moment at least.

soon, his breathing gets slow and i listen to him drift off. i love that he's able to sleep in my arms. he's never been able to do that before, he says. and before long, i join him in my dreams.

we only have this one weekend. he goes back to his wife* on sunday. i leave for another city the next morning. our time is precious.

*we don't cheat; we're both in open relationships.

how i spend my days here

2008-09-24T19:06:00.000-07:00

in the morning i rise early (for me, anything before 10 am is EARLY!), greet the sleepy or cheerful hostelers with offers of hot coffee, tea and delicious homemade tart red berry jam on locally baked bread: sour dough, oatmeal and cinnamon.

then i make up beds and scrub toilets. not glamorous by a long shot. lately i've wondered what in hell i'm doing here: i have a master's degree for christ's sake.

but i like it here so much. and my afternoons and evenings are completely free. i lolled about on the lawnchair today reading one of my favorite author's isabel allende, a chilean feminist and award winning novelist.

more later; i had yummy fresh lettuce and organic tomatoes on my california blt (made with locally grown avocadoes) for lunch made by the proprietor and i'm off to another great meal....

a fellow WWOOFer fried up herbed polenta in butter and olive oil and i sauteed veggies the other night so we're having a feast. mmmmmmmmm the polenta was perfectly crunchy on the outside and warm and chewy on the inside.

then we sat around giggling at each other's favorite silly youtube vids. a night well spent. i was looking up recipes for "apple pan dowdy" something my mom used to make, since we have tons of apples here. my mom used to sing a little ditty every time she made it and i thought she'd written it. turns out, it's an old dinah shore song, "shoo fly pie and apple pan dowdy" which i found on youtube!

i really adore the people here. the hostel is run by twin sisters, very hearty big boned cheerful outdoorsy gals, with translucent skin, lots of freckles and beautiful long strawberry blonde hair. they are soft spoken, kind and friendly.

they are also very picky about how things are done and i felt rebuffed when they critiqued my housekeeping but frankly, they are so unfailingly polite and generous and they acknowledge their nitpicking and inconsistencies with a laugh and a self deprecating air, so it's hard to resent them. i manage it though. the first day i spent housecleaning i wanted to quit. the second day i hated it. but this morning i felt like i'd gotten into a little groove.

and the rewards are great.

very great.

the house is absolutely charming - just the kind of house you'd expect a doting grandmother who keeps chicken and dumplings on the stove would have. and they exude a warmth that pervades the house. they have really turned this hostel into a home away from home.

the colors are soothing or cheerily bright. the windows are sunny. the garden is in bloom. there are comfy chairs for the weary traveler everywhere, on the sun soaked lawn, where you can just hear the sea birds and inside, by the big stone fireplace. there are good books for leisure reading and plenty of lamps to read by.

they clean using only bio friendly products (vinegar water and simple green or bioKleen) and recycle all their gray water (what's used in dishwashing and laundry and showers) into the lawns.

and the little town is within walking distance - literally half a block away. it's divided into two friendly sized villages with lots of local shops and restaurants offering slow organic california cuisine matched with locally grown wines. there is more wine grown here than anywhere in the country with the exception of sonoma and napa. there are countless wine tasting tours and vineyards with weekend concerts. there are delightful bakeries, wine and cheese shops, and fabulous blown glass art galleries and even a blacksmith's forgery.

yesterday i walked through the catholic cemetary. the fog misting over the redwoods and the spanish moss dangling from big pines made everything a little eery. there were so many italian names on the headstones, many said "native of switzerland." swiss italians help settle this area. and many of their descendants are here to this day. there is a little catholic shop called "pedro pio's" with statues of saints and mother mary everywhere.

i went to bed late last night, and i'm very tired today. (you try hanging 10 queen size sheets out to dry and lugging a vacuum up and down stairs and climbing up lofts to make beds! it's better than yoga for a work out!)

but i'm happy. there's nothing like the reward of hard physical work, which i haven't done in a long while. and my body feels good.

i'm a confirmed WWOOFer. this life agrees with me for the time being at least. all's well in my little world.

seals and babies and laundry on the line

2008-09-22T22:21:00.000-07:00

i held a french baby named rose and rocked her almost to sleep in my arms. she smelled so yummy - nothing smells better than a newborn who's just been bathed.

i watched seals frolic on the waves in the kelp.

i got sand and sea water on my feet and splashed around in the waves in my flip flops.

i got a farmer's tan.

i toured an organic farm and picked tomatoes, red bell peppers, green jalapeños, lemons, limes, and oranges no bigger around than a half dollar but so juicy and sweet! the farmer had offered me lettuce but it was still too young. i'll go back next week.

i bought some more veggies, avocados and yellow crook necked squash, at an unmanned fruit stand, through the honor system, at a farm called dos pasos. i placed my quarters in the piggy bank.

i hung laundry out to dry which i haven't done since i was a little girl and my grandmama was in her 80's.

i sauteed my veggies in olive oil and sea salt. mmmmmmmmmmm!

i listened to french, german, spanish and the musicality of international speakers who know english ever so much better then i know any other language.

i love what i'm doing.

i'm wwoofing around california. it's an affordable way to travel. right now i'm on the central coast and loving it!

diary of a former sexually frustrated housewife

2008-09-21T22:37:00.000-07:00

tonight: i'm in a gorgeous charming hotel in cambria where i have an interview to do some WWOOFing (volunteering in their garden in return for free housing and food.)

saturday (last night): got hit on by a bunch of cute guys at a sexy kinky party at the san francisco citadel. and got to make out with this really cute young guy. he was so adorable and really shy. that was so sweet! left the party with my lover who expressed that he was angry with me on the way home since i had spent little time with him at the party. (i think he was jealous. but hey, we're polyamorous so we decided not to go together to kink parties cuz the main reason i go is to be with new people which is my fetish.) i love him so much and don't want to hurt his feelings so i apologized and made it up to him. i pampered him late into the night - we got a cheap motel (since i'm still "homeless" while i decide where i want to land) in the berkeley area and had fun till the wee hours of the morning.

yesterday (saturday)- had afternoon delight with my loverman before the kink party. he made sweet love to me all afternoon and that was fun. then i hiked in the berkeley hills - i love the parks there, especially the small one by the rose garden.

friday night: my sweet new friend (from the bay area bisexual network) treated me to a spiritual tantric workshop. it was very deep and i went into a meditative state while he was speaking. felt very healing.

she had me over for lunch beforehand and that was nice since i hadn't realized how lonely i'd become on the road. it's nice to do girl talk after doing without for a long time! my best friends for 10 years have been guys - my boyfriends and ex-boyfriends whom i'm still close with. i had a huge group of girlfriends in texas and tennessee and i miss them soooooooo much!

(just had a nice long conversation with my ex whose mom just lost her license. she's got dementia and the cops took her license away. he's having to care for her in ways very similar to how i cared for my father. and we were able to love up on each other over the phone. he adores my kids and loves to hear about them. he loves to ask detailed questions and is a great conversationalist. makes me feel very loved.)

that afternoon i took a very long hike all through wildcat canyon - my friend's house backs onto it. and there are trails everywhere. the sign said to sing out loud or talk so you won't startle a mountain lion. so i sang and clapped my way all over the canyon.

thursday night - was back in the bay area but was "homeless" - (see below).

thursday - shitty; had to get police intervention on my rental property since asshole roommate refuses to move out but is making the place such a mess that the other renters refused to pay rent. one of the other renters is truly insane; she stole my keys when i came over to check on the condo and evict the asshole. she then locked me out of my own condo to prevent the eviction when her wife had asked for my immediate intervention. a really crazy bitch! insane to the membrane! so the police helped me get all my stuff back that the woman had locked up inside my house which she wouldn't let me access! a real nutcase! she'd locked my purse and computer in the house and wouldn't let me in! she lied to the cops about the other renter so they would not allow me to complete the eviction without a court order. so now i've just decided to let all the crazy people live together and lose my deposit over this. they are all too much trouble and i don't want to deal with any of them anymore!

so bottom line - i had nowhere to stay since the roommate who was supposed to move out on the 15th didn't! but i'm glad i didn't move back in to my old place - tooooo much drama!

but i'm happy. having nowhere to stay bumped up my time to WWOOF - volunteering in return for housing on organic farms (or sometimes conference sites or hostels). and i've wanted to WWOOF for years!

my interview is tomorrow to see if they want to keep me and if i want to stay. so far i love it here - the people are nice and the town is absolutely charming! wish me luck!

down Bohemian Highway - a garden of pleasures

2008-09-17T17:11:00.000-07:00

this is my friend's description of the cabin in the woods where i'm housesitting.

"My place is comfy for one or two people. There is a double bed and a futon. A sunny deck off the kitchen, and front porch/deck w/picnic table, a TV w/dvd/vhs capabilities, NO cable TV, NO dsl, NO cell phone reception. I doubt you'd need the woodstove but it is there w/wood. I live in a truly remarkable place about 2 hrs from SF, north of Jenner. It is quiet, the air is forest sweet, sometime besides hearing the ocean roar I can smell the sea, the tap water is deliciously satisfying, the deer eat all my flowers on my porch, and the back deck has a great if now fading flower garden. Sometimes if the wind is right I can hear the seals at the mouth of Russian River at Goat Rock Beach."

isn't that wonderful?

i slept long and hard last night, waking up only briefly due to pain. i rarely have to deal with my pain any more. i think being happy and following my heart has healed me to a great degree! but worry and stress cause me a few sleepless nights and i was worried over my roommate situation last night.

but i woke determined to shake off my blues and found a lovely hike - the sonoma coast vista trail. i hiked about 3 miles on and off trail, down to the cliffs above the sea. during the last portion, i crawled so as not to go tumbling off the edge down 300 feet below to the rocks of the shoreline. i watched a long time as sea birds glided just above the water, seals poked their little noses up for a breath of fresh air only to dive down again, and the waves made swirling patterns of beauty and chaos below me.

a motor boat sped by way out below the horizon while a sailboat seemed to remain perfectly still in the light breeze.

i could see all the way to goat rock where seals come to bear their pups, but not at this time of year. now they are out at sea.

i lazily wandered down bohemian highway and got directions to occidental arts and ecology center. (OAEC)

then i found the best lentil soup and fresh baked raspberry turnovers at the charming howard's cafe. mmmmmmmmmm similar to the fried pies my uncle used to buy in bucksnort tennessee. i love fruit pies!!!! the crust was so tender. the filling so delicious.

i've been on OAEC's mailing list ever since i read about them on the intentional communities website. they offer all kinds of cool classes and programs and even a summer chatauqua theater series.

i saw the site today - a beautiful small amphitheater in the woods right below the north garden where i joined volunteers weeding onions. (wednesday is volunteer gardening day.) about 7 of us weeded an entire row of all kinds of onions and filled up several wheelbarrows full of sweet red onions and savory white ones. i enjoyed the camaraderie of my peers. we laughed and told stories while we pulled. it made the work go faster.

the onions make a very satisfying "thwamp" sound when you pull them up. some were bigger than my fist. the bigger, the noisier, the more satisfying. then there were little cute ones with maroon skin and many long white tendril roots.

nature is so beautiful. so complex and simple at the same time!

i'm in the sonoma county library right now.

i'm doing some of my favorite things today:

1. find new places to hike
2. tour intentional communities
3. work out in nature
4. visit libraries in each small or large town you pass by
5. eat fresh baked goods

i'm very happy today.

i'm proud that i can pull myself out of a bad mood. i've developed many skills to do this and it feels good to have tools in my toolbelt. i used to feel swept away by the blues, by depression, when it hit. like i was out of control and overwhelmed by emotions.

now i feel like i can make friends with it, ask it what it has to teach me, meditate on that which i'm grateful for, hike even if i don't feel like it, and before i know it, i'm no longer blue.

yay!

franti rocks! "say hey!!!!"

2008-09-16T16:42:00.000-07:00

Grrrrrrr! i'm so angry i could just spit tacks! my former friend and roommate hasbecome a total asshole! besides bouncing checks to me and then having emotional meltdowns (for which he blames me when he bounces checks and i confront him with the fees), he's now causing my subtenants to have to stay in the community guest house since he trashed the place so bad. according to them, he left a used condom on the floor of the bedroom where their son sleeps (i find that a little hard to believe so i defended him from that!), failed to flush the toilet after having a massive bm (ick! gross!) causing the entire place to smell, and his cat is wreaking havoc and messing up the place. and there are now fleas everywhere! GREAT! i could just kill him with my bare hands!

(not feeling like much of a buddhist today!)

he's such a sweetheart in person and such a sweetie at burning man. but i should have known better than to rent the place out to a person whose nickname is trouble!

arrrgggggggghhhhh! i'm so frustrated. he told me he was moving out on sept. 15; but yesterday he'd made no plans to move out, hadn't found a new place or packed up or anything. how irresponsible can you get? how can you have someone who functions so well at burning man who acts like such a jerk in the default world. he trashed his own room so badly that i couldn't show the place to sublease it. the maid charges $80 for the entire house and he charged $100 just to clean trouble's room since he'd made such a colossal mess. it took him 8 hours to clean one small room! it was truly disgusting!

ahhh, i'm sick of it! he's been causing me trouble nonstop since he moved in and i'm evicting him now. i'm so tired of dealing with his shit! i'm very angry that i have to spend my time dealing with it! i wish he'd grow up and act like a responsible adult!

back to my travelogue:

i'm housesitting outside Jenner, a tiny town on the Pacific in Sonoma, where the Russian river meets the ocean. Gorgeous woods but a little too isolated for me. i'm feeling my loneliness tooooo tooooo much out here in the woods so it's time for me to get back to civilization and hook up with my friends and my beloved community.

last friday, i drove home from yosemite after getting stopped 3 times by cops for my overdue registration. 3 times!!!!! in less than 24 hours!

speaking of acting like a responsible adult: i'm not one when it comes to registering my car. i'm always late! so now i have to pay hefty fines. the first cop ticketed my car in yosemite for "failing to properly store food from bears." that's right: i got a $100 ticket for leaving food in my car. i'd read all the signs and faithfully hidden my food each night from bears but on my last night there, i'd stopped at the lodge to use the internet. so they ticketed my car while i was inside. they were about to tow me just for having food in my car when i came out. when faced with cops, i've learned groveling is the best strategy. don't be cocky, apologize for whatever it is they are hassling you for.

and in the process of getting stopped and ticketed a record 3 times in 12 hours, i lost my driver's license. i think maybe one of the cops accidentally kept it. i contacted them and they said if they found it, they'd mail it to me.

i'm very bummed out about all of it. i was on such a high at burning man and then:

1. my roommate became unmanageable.
2. i got 4 tickets in 12 hours.
3. i broke up with my boyfriend.

i met up with my lover on friday night and we stayed at a friend's house in el cerrito which is right on wildcat canyon. they are a sweet poly couple i met though my bi activism.

we had mind blowing sex for hours then fell sound asleep in each other's arms. i adore my loverman. he's the most generous lover! and he just adores going down on me. he can make me come sooooooooooo many times it's really amazing!

that helped me feel better!

and we are really emotionally supportive of each other. he's deeply spiritual which is so important to me. and he's really on a path of personal growth - he's about to get his black belt in aikido. he makes beautiful websites for really cool clients. he is taking improv classes specifically because it scares him and he wanted a challenge. he already took a bajillion one taste sexuality courses. and he reads widely.

we drove part way up to laytonville for earthdance which he treated me to on sunday.

we found a cheap nice clean motel in some little town and had more mind blowing sex the rest of saturday. he's such a sweetheart! he loves to pamper me and take me out to eat and treat me to goodies. he's so sweet to me. he's kind of old fashioned about some stuff in that he thinks the man should pay for stuff. since women earn less than 70 cents on the dollar compared to men with the same education, i let him pay when he wants. but i cook for him and do little things to pamper him too since i don't like to feel indebted. and i like relationships which feel balanced.

sunday morning we got up and drove to earthdance, 150 miles from the bay area. we danced all day and night. my absolute favorite performer was michael franti!

what an amazing man!!!!!!!! he's uber hot physically but mainly he's hot because he's so in tune spiritually! he dances so fine! he wiggled his little fine butt back and forth while he plunked away on his guitar for a really cute song that had a great rhythm. his band is sooooooooooo kick assssss! they just tore it up. i was fresh from seeing my boyfriend's band and hearing his musicologist analysis of various players so i had that in my head when i listened to the keyboard, lead guitar, and bass players and the drummer. they were just astoundingly good!!!!!!!! we danced our little asses off and that was so inspiring.

michael franti works on all kinds of issues that are important to me: social and economic justice and peace and community building. AND he sang this song he'd written for his son (who was in the audience) about how much he loved him and believed in him. what son would not long to hear that from his father??? how beautiful a man he is!!!!!! beautiful inside and out! mmmmmmmmmm!

Yosemite - Mirror Lake

2008-09-11T20:31:00.001-07:00

Yosemite - Mirror Lake
Originally uploaded by FotografeRx

Hiked up to Mirror Lake today (which is dry in Sept but has a gorgeous view of Half Dome).

met up with some brits on my way back. had fun visiting and talking to people from all over.

met a volunteer who's here for a month from pennsylvania. she'd joined the yosemite association since you get free camping in lower pines (one of the best campgrounds) if you volunteer. i'm gonna do it! she was really friendly and answered all my questions.

Merced River, Yosemite

2008-09-11T20:28:00.001-07:00

Merced River, Yosemite
Originally uploaded by ute.mueller

I hiked Merced River today. Went wading up to my neck and walked across the river since it was a hot day and the river was nice and chilly. You could see to the bottom it was so clear!

I planned on going skinny dipping - since I was out in the middle of nowhere - and was down to my t-shirt and skivvies when a bus full of people drove by right by the river. I had no idea I was right on the shuttle raod! Ha! There was nothing to do but splash and wave.

Had lunch on the banks; marcona almonds roasted in oil with rosemary, fresh raspberries, lots of cold water, (I love my new cooler!),white cheddar popcorn, and dark chocolate covered almonds for dessert. MMMMMMMMMM!

Le Conte lodge

2008-09-11T20:00:00.000-07:00

le conte lodge
Originally uploaded by chasingbluebirds

this lodge is a tribute to the man who started the sierra club (with john muir.)

much as i hate patriarchy, it's very heartening to see these beautiful tributes to the men who helped save yosemite.

women were so confined back then and so limited; it gets frustrating reading history which obliterates women's contributions. you just know as old joseph le conte was ready to set out to save nature, his wife (saw a pic of her at their 50th golden wedding anniversary) was cooking biscuits, caring for the children, doing the wash, and making ends meet.

i sat here for hours in the hottest part of the day and read book on edward curtis' native american photographs. they are such powerful images.

at the same time that the american government was committing genocide on the indians, environmentalists were building ahwahnee lodge in native american style, with the hopes that the culturally and wealthy elite who came there would work to save yosemite. how ironic america is! we celebrate the heritage of these people we wiped out. go figure! i wish i could go back in time and stop it all - the ruthless carnage. the broken promises, the land grabbing. our racist history saddens me no end.

but they did save this place. and i'm here now. and it's beautiful. and i'm so grateful.

i especially enjoyed reading the history of yosemite which involved a fellow unitarian, thomas starr king, who helped create the national park system through his advocacy for yosemite. yay!

Tuolumne Lodge

2008-09-10T21:15:00.000-07:00

ate yummy salad and creamy potato onion soup for dinner on a cold night here after a long drive by mono lake.

they serve you family style with a huge salad bowl and i sat next to a very friendly6 man named gib. he's been coming to yosemite each year since he was a boy growing up in cali. i loved talking to him.

that's the beauty of traveling alone. i can strike up a conversation with anyone and feel right at home.

i've talked to people from all over the 50 states, aussies and brits, and heard many germans, italians and spanish speakers here. with the dollar low, we are getting many tourists!

this building was built in the early 1900's; it's basically just a tent. they have red checkered tablecloths and candles and old photos everywhere. feels like you're stepping back in time.

Ahwanee Lodge

2008-09-10T20:59:00.001-07:00

Ahwanee Lodge
Originally uploaded by grkoutnik

i love visiting old camp lodges. a couple of years ago, i went to the camp where roosevelt stayed on mount hood, outside oregon. it's so similar to ahwanee, which i toured today.

ate dinner here outside with the massive granite ranges in front of me tonight after roaming the halls and elegant dining areas. (and snagging a writing pad with the hotel name on it. whoohoo! unmanned conference areas rock!!!!!!!)

yummy artichoke and crab dip with fresh sour dough bread. mmmmmmmm

then i lolled around reading leisurely in the hotel lobby as if i owned the place. (i'm good at looking confident and like i belong in places where i haven't paid to be......)

then i hiked a short ways out back under the trees and granite cliffs (with strikingly sheer drops) and lay down on some soft grass and stared up at the sky.

now that's perfection!

Yosemite Falls

2008-09-10T20:53:00.001-07:00

Yosemite Falls
Originally uploaded by drona

i hiked here today; wish it looked like this now. it's dry in september but still the views are stunning. i'm writing from the yosemite lodge; i'm camping close by tonight and tomorrow.

i'm so proud of myself: putting up my little tent. dragging all my belongings to walk in camp. hiding my food and toiletries from bears in the the bear proof lockers....

i feel more tired than usual but i think it's cuz i'm getting used to the elevation changes. i've been changing altitude so rapidly lately. 3 weeks ago at 4K. 2 weeks ago at desert. last week at mile high denver. last weekend in vail which is higher. and last night at 8K and then today back at 4K. whew! it's tough on my body!

but i'm drinking plenty of fluid and remaining physically active even when i'm tired as i know it will help me acclimate.

i miss my boyfriend sooooooooo bad. i'm kinda wishin we hadn't broken up. but that's why i don't want to talk to him. i'm afraid if i do, we'll just get back together and it won't be best for either of us.

being here reminds me of how lonely i am. but i'm also very happy. i feel the loneliness as a choice i made. i choose to travel alone. i chose to break up. i chose to be far away from friends and family to get my head straight and to be close to nature which always heals me.

i don't think loneliness is a bad thing necesarily. usually i'm a very gregarious person with a million friends who loves to go to parties and give them.

but i feel this need to get away from everyone and everything for a while. really commune with my inner self.

and i feel very much rewarded with clear thinking and purposefulness.

i was frustrated today by having to work so hard for the little things, like you must do when you camp. sometimes when i'm going through physical hardship (even minor like lugging all my stuff to my camp which was the farthest location from the car), i think of my ex and all the money i left behind. i know i could be staying at the fanciest lodge here if i'd stayed. and to stay within my budget i'm staying at one of the least expensive camps.

but why should i be ungrateful. i caught myself pining for more money and luxury while i was washing my feet in the camp bathroom. i had to hike my foot way up and stand on one foot, since there was no shower and internally i was grousing about it. then i thought, i could turn this into a meditation on gratitude. i could be grateful for water, for soap, for dirt, for nature, for my foot and how it supports me.

so i did. i am able more and more, thanks to buddhism, to catch myself feeling ungrateful and just pause in the moment and make a conscious choice to be thankful.

nothing like getting back to the basics of primitive camping to make you thankful for the little things, like running water.

thank you goddess for the beauty of this place. it's absolutely a miracle of geology that this place exists and i love it!!!!!!!!

Lembert Dome

2008-09-10T20:40:00.001-07:00

Lembert Dome
Originally uploaded by Misfit100uk

camped near here last night in toulomne meadows area. what beautiful place names exist here!

tuolomne

2008-09-10T18:48:00.000-07:00

yosemite 045
Originally uploaded by Highpoint Press

camped at toulomne where it got down to 28 degrees last night!

i was a sight!

in bed i wore my multi-colored himalayan wool hat, my pink and blue oxford sweatshirt from england, my new pink pashmina scarf from denver, and my old flowery pj pants. i froze!

goodbye

2008-09-08T22:36:00.001-07:00

how can you love someone so much and it not work out?

how can you give so much of your heart and receive so much love and the relationship still doesn't work?

i came back to reno early yesterday; got a flight out early from denver after breaking up with my boyfriend. i was supposed to stay a week; i made it 4 days.

i felt so guilty doing it. but i felt like we'd grown apart and that he wasn't there for me.

he's been my best cheerleader, my biggest support, my best friend for so long.

i miss him terribly already.

i'm afraid if i talk to him, i'll just go back to the way things were and it won't work all over again.

we've been in love for 6 years. and we were friends for a year and a half before we dated. i had a huge crush on him before we went out.

he's shy with women. i love that about him. he's tender hearted.

but yesterday, he just exploded in anger, yelling, cursing and raging at a car in the next lane right beside me, who he felt had cut him off. i was shocked at the outpouring of such anger. he was like a volcano. then he turned that anger on me for the slightest things.

and that scared me. he did that once at the beginning of our relationship and i told him if he didn't control his temper, i just couldn't be around him since it reminded me of my abusive ex. he was so apologetic and most of the time he really is gentle.

but that's not the only reason i broke it off. he had no time for me when i came to see him. and during what little amount of time we had together, he was too tired from working so much to do anything fun. and that's pretty much the way things were a lot when we were living in the same town.

i love this man so much but i always felt that his career came wayyyyyyyyyyy before me.

and that's fine for him but not for me. i don't want that anymore. i had it. i was married to that.

i had a rare relationship with my father; he came home every night and tucked me in bed. he told me stories each morning and read to me from the time i was very little. he took off each weekend and played with me and my siblings for hours on end. my father was not a saint, but he was there for us. he put my mom and us first.

and i want that same kind of attention from a partner. i want to be with someone who puts fun and relationships first, not second, or third.

my boyfriend wants to put in 60-80 hour work weeks right now. even though he's working more hours right now than when we lived together, he's always been a workaholic.

and i have lived with those choices for 6 years. and felt neglected. and felt like fun was passing us by.

i love him and he loves me but we can't make this work right now.

i don't think we ever will. i used to hold out hope for the future but not anymore. i think i really saw him for who he is, and why should i try to change him? he is happy with his work and if that's what makes him happy, then why should i be miserable and lonely waiting for him.

he has been the most loving and kind person i've ever been in love with.

i'll take away many lessons that he taught me, especially about buddhism and meditation.

i hope we can remain friends because i respect him more than just about anyone on the planet.

he is so gentle and loving 99% of the time.

and i feel so grateful to have been allowed to love him in this lifetime.

if i could talk to him without breaking down, i think i would say:

"i love you my darling and i always will.

i wish it had worked."

but i must follow my heart and i feel more ready to do it than ever. i feel stronger.

Gore Range, Vail Colorado

2008-09-06T11:33:00.001-07:00

Gore Range Vail Colorado
Originally uploaded by Michellepio124

i love to read the history of places. gore, for whom this range is named, was a wealthy irishman who, in the 19th century, hunted and killed thousands of buffalo, elk, deer, and bear all over these mountains. (fitting name, no?) he camped in high style with silver tea service and 100 servants in his retinue.

we're just going with the band. no servants in our posse.

Beaver Creek, CO

2008-09-06T11:27:00.001-07:00

062407 Beaver Creek B3
Originally uploaded by ethanbeute

this is where we're staying tonight after my bf's band plays a country club up there in vail. we're staying overnight in a condo with a fireplace. yay!

and hiking vail tomorrow.

we both love to hike!

all work and no play....

2008-09-06T10:00:00.000-07:00

DIY workaholic tee
Originally uploaded by Bubi

i got very frustrated with my bf yesterday and rehashed the same argument we've been having for the past 5 years. i adore him but he's a bit of a workaholic.

he's working nonstop from the time i arrived till tonight. 12 hour days that leave me isolated and bored.

and that can make for some pretty lonely times for his girlfriend.

he's so loving and the perfect gentleman and he's so deeply spiritual and he's handsome and funny and he has the best heart! and he snuggles me just like i like each night all tucked in with his arms wrapped around me.

so why can't i just be happy with the way things are?

i decided to do just that.

i decided that despite my getting upset with him over lack of time together to just goof off and have fun, it's gonna all be okay.

there is a reason i left him behind when i moved to cali. if i'd been completely happy, i never would have left him.

and without that lust for life that pulls me onward, i wouldn't have found i love being polyamorous.

so i think any troubles we have only lead us more toward the path we're supposed to be on. even though i'm an atheist, it feels good to believe in buddhism, that all trials only lead us to where we were meant to be in the first place.

so i accept that my bf is a workaholic and that's not the lifestyle i choose for myself.

and i love the life i'm living. so i'll just be grateful for what we have together, cuz when it's good, it's really, really good.

he was so hilarious today. he's in a really good mood. slapping the air with his towel, dancing his butt dance (a private performance which only i get to see!), singing, smooching me all over.

i worry i'm not in love anymore but i don't think any relationship can maintain the constant closeness which we once had. and without these strong desires to find something else, i never would have met my lovers whom i really enjoy.

so i guess, in the end, it's all good.

tea and crackers anyone...?

2008-09-05T21:24:00.000-07:00

tea and crackers anyone...?
Originally uploaded by mommybug29

this is all i had all day friday: tea and crackers, more tea, more crackers.

i was supposed to go hear my bf's band play but i was sick as a dog.

i think i got food poisoning (like several of my fellow burner campmates) from the sands hotel in reno.

DO NOT stay there! it's awful!

i'm really sick of tea and crackers.

but i feel better today and we're going to vail for the weekend.

wheeee!

Denver Buddhist Temple

2008-09-04T23:21:00.000-07:00

Denver Buddhist Temple
Originally uploaded by E_Journeys

went here too on thurs. ugly on the outside but beautiful courtyard on the inside.

Denver Public Library

2008-09-04T23:20:00.000-07:00

Denver Public Library
Originally uploaded by cruxphotography.com

truly one of the most hideous pieces of architecture i've ever seen.

a real monstrosity of which most denverites are very proud.

ah, well, they have good books......

Denver Art Museum

2008-09-04T23:18:00.000-07:00

Denver Art Museum
Originally uploaded by smenzel

i m pei, the same architect who did the newer features on the louvre (love it or hate it), created this denver art museum building.

i like it. it's stark modernity at its best.

i went here on thursday.

dinosaur tracks!!!!!

2008-09-03T23:31:00.000-07:00

dinosaur ridge morrison colorado 12
Originally uploaded by greenfrog808

just outside red rocks amphitheater, this is really close to my bf's house and we went over here the first night i was in town. dinosaurs rule!!!!!!!!

Needles of Color

2008-09-03T23:17:00.000-07:00

Needles of Color
Originally uploaded by williscreek

i went hiking here in o'fallon park right along side a little creek on wednesday night. so beautiful!

Red Rocks Amphitheater

2008-09-03T23:14:00.000-07:00

Red Rocks Amphitheater
Originally uploaded by rainierez

we went here my first night in town. the beatles played here.

everyone famous has played here!

my bf's band has played here too!

there are beautiful hikes all round here!

Poly Paradise!

2008-09-02T14:29:00.001-07:00

Poly Paradise!
Originally uploaded by errantember

my home for the last week!

burn baby burn

2008-09-02T13:44:00.001-07:00

Burning Man 2007
Originally uploaded by andrewhoshkiw

i miss burning woman already.

can't wait till next year.

i almost cried when i left yesterday.

it was my very first time to stay all week and i was so scared but i did great!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

yay!

posting from reno, post burn

2008-09-02T13:40:00.001-07:00

Reno, Nevada
Originally uploaded by Rees Mogg

my poor lover man is sick in bed, lying beside me naked, hot with a fever.

we were planning on having a little honeymoon before i leave again since we'd been apart during my travels all summer, but he's so ill.

poor baby.

i love him so much!
he's so adorable.

i love being poly.
i can love so many people and it doesn't diminish my love for others.

we got to spend sunday together at burning man after missing each other on friday and saturday.

but i got into more fun on those nights so i wasn't unhappy.

had a blast with my poly paradise campmates and got to know some really cool people and see world class art work. and i got a little crush on a fellow camper (who was gorgeous and gentlemanly and exciting) and that was so amazing.

half the fun of burning man is meeting so many cool, amazing people!!!!!!!!!

the art is just astounding but for me the sweetest thing is the sense of community. i met several folks, who, like me, are really into intentional communal living. tree bressen, a facilitator who travels the globe teaching folks how to build communities, was in OUR camp. and a guy from twin oaks in virginia facilitated a workshop on funology with tobias from germany who'd posted about qu!nks - the measurement of fun.

tomorrow i'm off to see my sweet boyfriend for a week. he's been working the dnc in denver, working 16 hour days and getting no sleep. he is a sound engineer and fronts a couple of his own bands and plays in his bro's band too, so he had nonstop work entertaining obama fans.

i used to love obama till he picked lieberman; ooh, ick. do we really need more old white men in office??? puhleez! i still love him as a person, (amazing memoirs!) but am doubting he's much different than most dems. still, would be awesome to break the hold of white men on the oval office. how powerful for our country to have a person of color in office. still, wish he'd have picked a woman to run with him and that he was more supportive of lgbt rights.

i have never had such a wonderful shower as yesterday (after packing up in the hot sun and cleaning up moop in the dust and a 3 hour wait on the exodus outbound)!!!!!!!!!!

after a week in the desert, running water becomes such a miracle again, you remember to be thankful for the little things.

my persian wasn't sick yesterday so we had ordered room service for dinner, enough to feed an army we were sooooooooooooo hungry!!!!!!!! onion rings and banana spits and salads and omelets, and.......

we lay in bed, naked and clean, finally, mindlessly watching tv, something we never do. (i don't even have a tv at home anymore.) it was fabulous!

i had the best burn ever. i have so many happy memories!

here are a few:
lolling around with other half naked campers on the big blow up
mattress listening to the funology session with great conversation
about the next big art/music-change-the-world festival - Wind fest
with turbine power. (reasoning: getting all four sources covered:
earth festival is rainbow gathering, fire festival is burning woman,
so we still need water and wind festivals.)

wandering around aimlessly with autowitch and tree on one of my first
nights there, not knowing where we were going but enjoying every
minute, allowing my case of "Burner ADD" to take us to whatever was
blinking.

getting to know newcomers; getting to know regulars better.

showering in the hot sun, tits in the wind, and finally feeling cool.

not caring if my feet are muddy and my legs are covered in dust and my
hair is standing on end from playa "mousse". (this is huge for this
very clean girl. i'm starting to enjoy being dirty and camping out
since it's inevitably messy.)

roaming the playa with a pillaging band of paradisers which included a
demented scientist (dr. evil), a beautiful butterfly gone bad, a
handsome pirate who actually managed to appear dangerous despite his
lacy collar, a man confident enough to wear fluffy blue fur all over
(and not much else), and a slightly drunk yet witty ex morman. fun
fun fun!!!!!

getting stuck in the white out in center camp post temple burn with my
lover (who'd travelled to Paradise 3 times looking for me on foot all
the way from 5:00 and Jeep - for those who don't know playa mapping, that's a longass way!) while it was dropping down to 30 degrees;
huddling on the sofa with strangers for warmth and loaning a young
woman from denmark my sock monkey pajamas for her bare legs. it began
to rain during the dust storm so it was raining mud!!!!!

the strap-on-a-thon at camp beaverton!!!! joining in with 4 other
women to bring one woman to orgasm. group sex has never been so
tender and empowering!!!

dancing to "FIRE" with strangers and paradisers while the man burned.

walking all by myself all over black rock city, and feeling more alive than ever.

that's not me but...

2008-09-02T13:35:00.001-07:00

"The Dust is In Tents" - PUN Burning Man 2008 66.365
Originally uploaded by redheadjokes

this is pretty much what my tent looked like. i got cabin fever on sat am and left the playa for a day in gerlach. i accidentally left my tent open, wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide open.

(really, you haven't lived until you've spent an entire day in a smoky bar with no wifi amidst the constant pinging of slot games with nowhere else to go since it's the only damn place with air conditioning and it's 100 fucking degrees outside but that's another story...........)

thanks to the kindness of strangers who closed up my tent so there was only an inch of dust all over everything instead of 3 inches.

"floss," a fellow burner campmate who got his nickname from the tan line around his thong, told me the way to salvage my pillows:

carefully remove the pillow cases; wash the pillows in hot water with strong detergent , then wash them in vinegar again, then air dry them a day or two. then throw them out.

haha!

shirt cocking

2008-09-02T13:28:00.001-07:00

6694
Originally uploaded by DangerRanger

i planned to go shirt cocking my final night at brc. butttttttttttttttttt....
big bad dust storm and 30 degree weather and rain put a dint in that plan.

i brought a harness i've never used which a dyke friend gifted me.

and i've won several new dildoes at the parties for which i volunteer so i was so excited to try it out.

but alas, it came to naught.

i'll try it again at some bay area afterburn party.

mutopia

2008-09-02T13:26:00.001-07:00

mutopia
Originally uploaded by john curley

my friend volunteers with the flaming lotus girls and he's trying to get me to do it too. i keep meaning to go. i want to learn welding.

i wanna get in touch with my inner pyro.

i love their shows!!!!!!!!!!!!!

relaxomats jump

2008-09-02T13:23:00.001-07:00

relaxomats jump
Originally uploaded by sgoralnick

temple

2008-09-02T13:22:00.001-07:00

temple
Originally uploaded by rosidae

i got to watch the temple burn all cuddled up with my loverman.

very sweet.

very spiritual.

very deep.

i learned that i will never run out of love.

no matter whom i'm with or where i travel or how many times i move, i will never run out of love. there will always be love waiting there for me to discover it.

yay!

Human Carcass Wash, Poly Paradise

2008-09-02T13:10:00.001-07:00

Human Carcass Wash, self-explanatory
Originally uploaded by Caterina Ballerina2006

our gift to the playa.

very burnery!

love watching the transformation of shy self doubting dusty internalized-homophobic half clothed people into bold naked clean lgbt lovin new friends.

all it takes is a wash or two.

that's my camp!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(and i did NOT take this illicit photo; just borrowed it.)

The Tinnery - Nevada City, California

2008-08-25T13:03:00.000-07:00

The Tinnery - Nevada City, California
Originally uploaded by stuckpixel

photos of nevada city where i spent 3 weeks this summer.....

gorgeous!

why i love the sierrra nevada mountains of california

2008-08-24T15:38:00.000-07:00

i love the "gold country."

there is a new spirit of social justice and redemption and eastern wisdom here, even though the past is full of racist abuse and environmental pillaging. many hippies from the bay area have settled here.
there is great community radio which features amy goodman's democracy now, local bluegrass musicians, a women's collective and world music.
there's a real sense of community. just yesterday there was a farmer's market in the morning, a community picnic lunch in the park, and lots of people walking around in the evening enjoying the cool weather and music from the local restaurants which feature organic cuisine.
people are friendly. today i was sitting eating my lunch in the wisdom cafe (all alone since i'm traveling solo) and the woman next to me struck up a conversation about her life's passion, using feminine energy to heal the world, the environment, the global to local economy. we ended up talking for an hour about our deepest spiritual longings, favorite books, about organizing for justice, and about sexual repression.
people you meet are likely to be very evolved: i overheard my waitress talking about her trip to vietnam to study with thich natch hahn, one of my most influential spiritual mentors. she actually got to meet privately with him and ask deep spiritual questions. she did walking meditation with him and we bonded over our love of his and pema chodron's books. i asked her about sitting meditation groups in the area. she's new in town but she knew of one to attend. and another person sitting next to me overheard both of us and offered me another place to do meditation.
the architecture is beautiful. i love small towns with charm and character. this place has both in spades! it's touristy but not tacky at all. it's verrrrrrrrry upscale and tasteful. eastern influence is everywhere. it's not often you see victorian and asian influences combined outside of california. but here they flow together beautifully. i've seen many victorian homes with fascinating details - curlicue woodwork, lattice panels, tri-color paint coats, widow's walks, - and then you go inside and they have buddha statues of every material - wood, glass, bronze, stone - everywhere, waving multi-colored prayer flags, small fountains, zen artwork, tinkling wind chimes with chinese characters, and walls painted the red and green and golden colors of tibetan buddhism.
there is natural beauty everywhere. even on my brief drive to the pizza place last night, i could see the mountains towering above me, while the redwood trees and firs and pines shaded my path.
the weather is fabulous; it gets hot enough to swim by day and cool enough to wear a sweater at night and leave the windows open all summer. it's incredible! even on the hottest days, a cool breeze comforts you if you sit in the shade.
it's close to lake tahoe! one of the world's most beautiful bodies of water!
there are wonderful charming places to eat. delicious california wines paired with gourmet meals of locally grown veggies, fruits, and organic meats. alice waters has greatly influenced the local cuisine. but they still offer cornish pasties, the old fashioned miner's meals!
community theater is rich and diverse! i've seen tony award winning musicals with excellent acting and there's a theater or two in each small town!
the music scene is awesome! i hate to miss the upcoming celtic festival but i'll be in argentina by then, i hope. utah phillips, legend and labor activist in the musical tradition of woody guthrie, is a celebrated local hero here. he just passed away but i'm happy i got to meet him at the unitarian church.
and there are wonderful film festivals year round! the wild and scenic film festival features environmental films, the nevada city fest features local filmmakers.
they care about the homeless, there's a very active habitat for humanity; i just donated to them this morning, a small amount, but at least it's something. their volunteers are building 5 homes near the unitarian church and the unis go over and take the workers lunch. what a community spirit!
the awesome women's group! they are reading the new earth by eckhart tolle, and we had a wonderful time discussing it last thursday night.
the local sustainable economy movement is very vibrant! and one of the cohousers told me of founding a post oil economy group which is studying bellingham, washington's sustainable economy movement based on "patriotism." they are reclaiming the word (from radical fascist right wing christian warmongers) and using it to subvert the walmarting of america. they are asking folks to be patriotic by supporting the local merchants. isn't that cool!?
there are farms everywhere! i love the grass valley farmer's market on thursday nights. after buying organic pluots (plums crossed with apricots), i met an interesting seamstress with her own clothing line. it's made of simple muslin cotton and makes you feel relaxed; soooo california!

i just love this place! it makes me so happy!

do your thang

2008-08-24T13:06:00.000-07:00

Originally uploaded by larry&flo

typical sight in nevada city store windows.

way cool hippie vibe.

Sierra Moon at Dusk

2008-08-24T13:05:00.000-07:00

Sierra Moon at Dusk
Originally uploaded by Beej Jorgensen

moon over mts... is what i come for....

Green Garage, Nevada City, California

2008-08-23T13:04:00.000-07:00

Green Garage, Nevada City, California
Originally uploaded by haikuluke

love this lighting. this is what it actually looks like!

Ananda Village Crystal Hermitage

2008-08-20T21:41:00.001-07:00

Crystal Hermitage 2006 - 16.jpg
Originally uploaded by Joyful Photography

this was taken in the spring and everything's brown now with the drought.

but it's still so beautiful!

deer nibbling on grass around the fountain tonight.

lotuses in full bloom on the pond.

beautiful swimming

2008-08-20T21:37:00.001-07:00

Nevada City
Originally uploaded by evilcatno1

swam here today!

only 20 minutes of laps down from 30 each day since i was going on a hike and also doing yoga.

fun fun fun in the sun!

Ananda Village

2008-08-20T21:35:00.001-07:00

Ananda Village Springtime-42.jpg
Originally uploaded by Joyful Photography

i visited here today. did yoga and ate delicious vegetarian dinner:

lentil soup, best ever!!!!!!! subtlety of flavor combinations

(note: i was surprised it wasn't vegan; cheese and sour cream were offered as toppings and they were yummy. lots of free range, organic dairies around here though....)

grilled zucchini with tamari sauce and olive oil and garlic

mashed sweet potatoes topped with white potatoes

homemade whole grain biscuits

and warm fresh from the oven zucchini bread for dessert

and yogi tea - my fave tea!

did a full hour of meditation there and i feel so much better!

i just envisioned all my anger and volcanic fury over incidents which cause me to want to spin off into wild emotions as a force of nature which could be tamed (or wild) and beautified. like the volcanoes which made hawaii.

i can either become as beautiful inside as hawaii or continually erupt in angry volcanoes. it's my choice.

i choose beauty!

Happy Naked Pagan Dance

2008-08-20T21:29:00.001-07:00

Happy Naked Pagan Dance
Originally uploaded by larry&flo

shop window in nevada city where i'm on vaca.

housesitting trials and pleasures

2008-08-19T13:00:00.000-07:00

some days i feel that i fight a war of flesh versus spirit. i don't like thinking in those terms. i feel that those terms were handed down to me from a very limited christian ideology. always the war of the body against the mind.

and yet, as i read gems of buddhist wisdom today, i see that this "war" has been going on through the ages. buddhists describe it in different ways than christians but there are many similarities.

a war of hedonism versus asceticism. a war of the pursuit of pleasure versus a life of the mind and living in moderation.

i want both. pleasure of body and calm of spirit.

i don't want to be constantly swung back and forth. because i struggle with depression and anxiety and physical disabilities, i am acutely aware of the life of the mind and the body. my mind sometimes torments me with visions of pain, from past abuses to current failures to future deprivations. my body sometimes torments me with pain, from aching knees going upstairs and down, and constant intestinal and abdominal pain to the inconveniences of growing old. and these torments interact with each other. sometimes the mental anguish leads to physical suffering. sometimes vice versa.

i'm here relaxing in the mountains of the sierras, where i'm housesitting in a cohousing community.

last week i traveled back to the city briefly to be with some friends of mine from nashville. they took me out to chez panisse for a treat. so delicious. the lemon sorbet was what meyer lemons were made for! the beets, never a favorite of mine, were absolutely delicious. and they brought such a balanced beauty to my plate of grilled polenta. mmmmm! so yummy.

sometimes, it's very hard for me to enjoy expensive nights out like that. i look around and see the level of people i used to hang with when i had money. the people who can afford to eat like that every night and i remember being among them. i feel such a pang of loss. i see the families celebrating their children's birthdays and the kids consuming $20 desserts, dropping much of it on the table and floor, as if it were nothing. and i remember giving my children treats like that when we were wealthy.

it's not so much that i want to live that way all the time now. i don't think i could enjoy it knowing of others' poverty, and it never brought me the kind of satisfaction that it did my husband. i always thought it was a little wasteful and pompous and exclusive.

but i do so envy the casualness which they seem to feel with each bite. ever since i left my ex, money worries have dogged me. life has been a constant financial strain for 16 years. and it never seems to let up. the minute i save up a little amount, some glaring omission comes to haunt me - like some huge bill i forgot was due. or some crisis happens, a medical problem or a wrecked car or a ....ad infinitum.

i have come to a belief that i must be happy no matter what is in my bank account or i'll never achieve any happiness at all.

i'm so blessed to be able to housesit in this gorgeous setting.

i'm hounded by loneliness while i'm here, far from loved ones. but i have chosen this life. i chose to be apart from my boyfriend when our needs weren't matched. i chose to leave my kids' hometown when my own desires for time with them were disregarded by my ex and the courts. i did not choose separation from my kids; that was imposed, but my kids have chosen to live in separate places from me and i must live with their choices and honor them. i have chosen to leave the bay area behind for a bit of travel, even though i have a loving sangha and many friends there which ease my loneliness. and i've chosen to leave behind my lover for a while, as i travel.

these are all my choices. and i'm glad to be here. i want the experience of travel. i long to leave everything behind and just go, off to explore somewhere i've never been.

often, i'll throw clothes and food in the car, not knowing where i'll end up, and just drive off into the sunset. like thelma and louise but with a happy ending.

and i'm beginning to make acquaintances, if not quite friends, here in this gold mining community.

the cohousers here recognize me and are friendly. the people at the unitarian church are very welcoming and engaging and encourage me to move up here since i like it so much.

i swim laps each day as a physical outlet for the pain of my body and the anxiety of my mind. also, just for the sheer joy of it!!!!!!!! i love to swim. it's my favorite sport. i've always loved the water. our family went swimming, sailing, canoeing, in ponds and pools and lakes and oceans from as far back as i can remember. i'm so glad i was raised to love the water.

it gives me such great joy to float in the pool. to feel my strong arms slice through the water. to feel my legs kick and propel me forward. each day it gets very hot here, unlike the bay area's temperate climate, there is great contrast here between night and day and between seasons. when the sun beats down on me and my skin is sweating, and the air is clammy with heat and my body feels lethargic, i love to splash down, down, down into the cool water, and feel it invigorate me. i love the chi of rushing water. i love to make it happen with my own movement.

all in all, despite my loneliness, i'm happy here.

i have much more detachment now from my anxious and depressed feelings. they don't seem to overwhelm me as much any more. i credit buddhism with that. if they do begin to overwhelm me, i have tools i can fall back on. i can call my therapist, a very kind man i found through a holistic counseling program, who was able to see me for only $7 an hour since i don't have insurance right now. i can go for a walk through the little town. i can read buddhist texts and meditate. i can call my friends or my boyfriend or my lover. i can count my blessings. i can stop and look up and just be in the moment.

i can be grateful for so many things: the silky sheets on my bed. the new mattress which the homeowners bought which feels so comfy. the very loving and beautiful calico cat whom i'm taking care of - she's so loving. the olympics, the joy of watching these world class athletes and the thrill they give us. also the lessons i learn from watching them, they go on after defeat, they smile even when they are hurting. they seek the support of coaches and team members. they love their single mamas. (go michael phelps' mom! isn't she just precious!)

yesterday, i shopped and researched all kinds of things for burning woman. i'm trying to avoid heat stroke and planning like crazy around my needs there. since i have fragile health, i'm careful to really plan ahead. i went to four different thrift stores and shopped till i dropped, looking for very lightweight dresses made of natural material, mostly cotton, that will allow my skin to breathe in the unbearable desert heat!

i'm scared but i love to do things that scare me.

i love to look at a challenge and say, "well, it looks really hard but i bet i can do that."

i'm rather proud of myself.

maya angelou described (in an interview i was listening to yesterday) why she wrote her autobiography. an editor had approached her over and over to write it. she consistently turned him down since she was a playwright and poet. so the editor went to her friend, the profound writer james baldwin, and got some advice. then he came back to maya and instead of asking her again, he said, "you're right to turn down this opportunity to write your memoirs, since writing biography as good literature is impossible." that did it; she immediately said, "i'll do it!"

she said, that as a black woman that's what changed her mind, the idea of being told she can't do something.

i'm the same way.

i sat down and thought of my slim bank account. i thought of what i'd do if i had all the money in the world. and i knew immediately what i'd do. i'd travel! so i determined to myself that i wouldn't let a little thing like money stand in the way of my travel adventures! i'll do it anyway!

so i've taken every opportunity to housesit and learn the history of this area. i'm reading a book on the native american experience in the sierra nevada foothills. i'm reading the history of gold rush women and the chinese railroad workers. i'm doing the thing that i would be doing if i were rich. i'm traveling and growing and learning about other cultures. that's what brings me great joy.

i also decided that the peace of mind that all that money would bring me is something i can have now. all i have to do is just breathe. just breathe and be grateful for all that i have right now, right now this very moment.

stopping (literally) to smell the roses

2008-08-11T17:32:00.000-07:00

i lead a pretty busy life. most people with my disease cannot walk for long distances, can rarely work by the time they are my age, and spend much of their time in unremitting pain.

i hike regularly, work when i feel like it, and have relief from my pain for many hours at a time, sometimes stretching into days.

today i wandered the little shops and coffee and tea houses of the gold mining town, nevada city. they are quite delightful. a friend of a friend, when he was visiting the bay area described to me his need for finding "root locations," places you feel at home to be yourself in a strange place or a new place. i realized that i've done this all my life. whenever i travel, i always seek out some place, whether it's my hotel bed, or a lovely garden or a pleasant cafe, where i feel "at ease." at one with myself and the universe. not hurried, not worried.

i have a favorite coffee shop which i frequent each time i visit here. they have wifi and i can work from there and drink my favorite fair trade, organic brew. the sandwiches are superb, all locally grown food, free range meats, with bread from area bakeries.

they have a little library book shop and locals hang out there. i eavesdrop on the gossip and the personal sharing of their conversations. the people here are more evolved than in the south. i enjoy the topics they discuss. the men aren't afraid to hug and express deep pleasure at seeing one another and to talk about "risk taking" with jobs and relationships and projects. i listened to a local water board activist talk with a partner about her strategies. now to look at her, you'd assume (if you're from the south, like me) that she was somewhat of a dropout. she took no care over her personal appearance; she looked like she just rolled over, threw on a tie dyed batik housedress and walked outside to greet the day. yet, obviously, she was a mover and shaker of this small community; she was discussing her agenda for lobbying sacramento legislators about pollution of local waterways and various other aspects of local progressive politics.

i love that! i love that women out here don't have to conform to society's norms of incessant personal grooming. women in the south are so damn high maintenance. they've been taught to hate their bodies and fight aging.

but the women in norcal seem comfortable in their skin.

i took my kids to the farmer's market on saturday and gave them 10 each to spend. i told them about my new ritual of going to farmer's markets each week and cooking from locally grown foods.

i watched the locals browsing and playing music and selling vegetables and fruits, catching up with each other during their weekly visit. the women wore natural fibers, cotton, linen, bamboo; little makeup, and their hair looked very like the goddess intended, not dyed, straightened or permed. it made me happy.

saturday afternoon, we drove over to lake tahoe, about an hour and a half from here.

it was so beautiful. i got to watch my kids just being themselves and that gave me such joy. i adore my children and find them endlessly fascinating. they stretched out on the sand, in the sun, and lay back reading their favorite books. like myself and my mother, they always bring books wherever we go. our family is never without good reading material!

the night before we had watched the opening ceremony of the olympics. this is a family tradition for us.

my son is a little ocd, like this mom and dad, but it's really cute! before we arrived in gold country, he had researched where we were vacationing, which cable company is used here, and what time and channel the ceremony would be on based on that data. he was determined not to miss it. we laughed at him and teased him and he said, mom when i want to watch a show, i make it happen. i stayed up till 2 am and watched all the games in the world series (during his junior year abroad at oxford). there's no way i'm missing the olympics on tv!"

my oldest daughter is into track and field, and is a sprinter for her college team. it was fun to listen to her take on the athletes in the olympics. to hear her rooting for someone by name whom i'd never heard of. it makes me so happy! title 19 really worked! there were no team sports for young girls when i was young. the landmark case of the girl who fought to be allowed to play in the little league shocked and horrified our southern mothers. and in high school, the girls sports were underfunded dramatically (and underattended and underreported!) compared to the boys.

she showed me her power point presentation of argentina, where she will be studying in the fall. i'm so proud of her and so happy for her opportunities. i feel so grateful that my kids have access to a wonderful education. their grandparents were the first generation to attend college in their families. neither of my parents finished.

to think that my kids get to go to grad school and study abroad just blows my mind. i feel so utterly grateful.

it gave me great joy to just sit by my daughter and soak in her enthusiastic, buoyant energy. she reminds me so much of myself when i was her age, all bouncy and effervescent.

i just soak it in, the sound of her voice, the feel of her little arms next to mine. she brought her stuffed animal, curious george, even though she's in college. that really touched me. she kept posing him doing funny things and then taking pictures. she talked to him and about him, and posted her pics of him on her facebook. she posed him "catching up on brangelina" reading people magazine on the back porch in the sun on a white rattan chair. that just cracked me up.

she takes him everywhere and poses him; he's been to russia, sweden, england, france, malibu. and now norcal!

she hugged me so big when we were at lake tahoe. she said, "mom i'm so glad you brought us here; this is the BEST vacation! it's so beautiful. when i get older, i'm going to live here and i'll say it was because of YOU! you are so great, mom!" i couldn't believe my ears. she kept saying she really wanted to live in california.

i'm just happy as a clam that both my daughters are attending college in CA and both of them got the heck out of TX as soon as they graduated high school. my youngest daughter, who's still boycotting me for speaking out about the domestic violence of her father, didn't come on vacation with us and that about broke my heart. but come fall, she will be here in cali, even though it's southern cali and far from me and i'll see her about the same amount (very little), it's still a hell of a long way, mentally and physically from texASS! (rhymes with "sucks ass.")

yesterday, my son drove my oldest daughter back to the airport; i only had her for a very brief 48 hours. but it was so precious to me. he searched at 8 places for the NY Times on the way home. (his sunday tradition is reading that with a cup of earl grey tea. he has loved newspaper reading since he was a little boy and published his own newspaper when he was 8. he couldn't sell any copies - it was news of what happened in our neighborhood, with headlines like "bobby fell skateboarding but he still beat jeffrey from down the street." he moved on to publishing comic books with a fellow collaborator and they sold them to their school friends. that was a success, 25 cents for each edition. he wrote the copy and his friend and he took turns doing the illustrations.)

so when he got home, we sat out on the porch swing and rocked back and forth, drinking tea and reading the times. when we found something amusing, we'd read it to each other.

there was a wedding going on in the common house of the cohousing community where i'm housesitting. and the string quartet was playing so the beautiful music wafted down to us as we rocked in the shade.

it was about as good a way to spend a sunday afternoon as i know.

this morning we got up early (9 am is early for me to be up and out; i am sooooo not a morning person.) and hiked the south yuba river trail. it was hot even that early, but we were headed to the swimming hole at the end where the snow melt rapids cool you off immediately. it was such a pleasure to watch him hiking in front of me. i felt such a surge of love and pride for my one and only son.

my kids have always seemed to be allergic to nature and nature deprived with their urban upbringing, always preferring to be on the computer than to be outside. this had saddened and concerned me since i grew up spending hours in the woods, camping, building fires with my dad, hiking waterfalls, shooting cans in the forest, and learning archery in the meadows.

but my son studied in the french alps this summer as part of his grad studies at oxford. oxford keeps a little cabin up there and regularly sends young people (with a couple of professors) toting their water bottles and flashlights (there's no electricity.) they read for a day and discuss what they read in small groups. then the next day, they pack a lunch and take off for an 8 hour hike.

it pleased me no end that this child of mine (whom i used to have to bribe to get to walk a short jaunt around my favorite lake!!!!!) is now buying hiking maps and wanting to explore the mountain wilderness.

i feel at peace and utterly blessed.

i still miss my baby girl who didn't come. i still feel deep anger and resentment about my ex's control over my kids bodies and minds and spirits. i still worry over money. i still suffer from depression and anxiety sometimes.

but it's not as intense. i can recognize it and face it head on. i can give my monkey mind a banana and take it for a stroll in the sunshine.

i can be at rest, mentally and physically and emotionally. i can more frequently, just BE in the now.

the goddess must be crazy, drunk with love

2008-08-03T22:34:00.000-07:00

my mind is still reeling, my body still spinning.

the persian was here all weekend. we did another round of "lay in bed and fuck all day" interrupted only by a few delicious meals, some light snacking, a lot of cuddling, and the occasional movie watching - all done naked in bed. well, except for the two meals we ate out: a repeat of the vietnamese meal we love - he gets beef sauteed with orange slices, and i get lettuce wrapped egg rolls; and today we tried a new thai restaurant.

he has the most delicious cock; i love love love to put that man's cock in my mouth and suck! and i really could just stare at his chest hair all day. his skin is the color of mocha latte, and his smell is so manly. i adore lying down beside him and putting my tongue on the inside of his arm and smelling him. mmmmmmm

and i love watching him writhe on my bed while i make him come, with my hands and tongue massaging his plum shaped balls, and and running my lips all over his body. we fuck fifty different ways from sunday. i can't even remember all the many ways we make love. we end up laughing and giggling so long in bed together. it's not like we have one session of sex and then we're done. we make love a million different ways (he likes to say a "brazillian" different ways) and then we come up with new ones each time we're together.

like today, we'd already fucked cowgirl style with me on top, and he'd already licked my pussy and expertly made love to my cunt with his tongue deep inside me. i'd already orgasmed a million times. but after watching a couple of youtube videos and making each other laugh like little kids with what we found (dancing hamsters, steeplechase jumping rabbits), he started bucking against me with his cock nestled in my beautiful ass crack. (he worships my ass and i love my ass too so we are both satisfied deeply when it gives us joy. we laugh and talk about it for hours. he loves it when i dance wildly with my ass shaking at the burner parties he takes me to. and i love that i have finally become the best feminist ever by stopping wishing i had my 20 year old body back and loving my 47 year old body just fine! he has really helped me be proud and love my body. and i've helped him do the same.)

anyway, there he was, fucking me from behind, not penetrating me but just fucking my ass with his cock without going all the way in. he had his arms wrapped so tight around me and we were moving in perfect rhythm together. his hands were massaging my breasts and i was in heaven. i just about lose my mind when he fucks me. he just takes me to this other place where time just stops existing and all there is is pleasure. and then i wanted him on top of me so i rolled over and pulled him to me. i love the sounds he makes when he's happy inside me or when we are making love without penetration or a condom. we found a new way for him to come today. and i loved it; it felt so good!

i lay on top of him and rubbed him up and down with my pussy and my breasts on his chest. he loves to reach up and kiss my nipples and bite softly so that i moan and while his lips are doing their work on my upper body, his cock is driving me wild on the lower body. he rubbed his cock up and down and up and down my clit. he didn't go in, just rubbed me back and forth until i was just wild with desire to be penetrated.

some guys are such idiots and so boring in bed. some guys have no creativity at all when it comes to making love to a woman.

my persian is a real artist though. and he lives for the moment's pleasure like i do. this is what i love about him. he never bores me and i get bored with men really easy. most of them don't take the time to make themselves very interesting. but my persian is fascinating. i adore him.

we tell each other stories in bed, long stories about this thing and that, a silly joke we heard and where we heard it, or something that happened when we were kids, and we just giggle like two school children, having a ball.

we watched two sweet movies today. we get naked and cuddle all up in my single bed. i don't know how we fit - actually yes, i do! we are practically on top of each other the whole time. he's such a sweetheart; some guys hog the bed; he always shares and makes room for me and hugs me tightly just the way i like.

our energy can go from sweetness and light to passion and fireworks in the breadth of a heartbeat. i love that. we both read energy and can tell a lot about how the other one is feeling.

i've never taken a class on tantric sex though i want to, but we've both done enough work on ourselves and read up enough on sex that it feels like what we have is sacred sex that reaches all my chakras and energizes them. my whole body just feels so delicious when we make love.

and afterwards, he's really good at the afterglow. some men are just so fucking clueless about the importance of holding a woman after she comes but he's really good at that. he NEVER leaves me hanging all vulnerable and body-lonely after an orgasm. that's especially when he loves up on me.

he loves to make me come. and he thinks as do i, that he's changed my biochemisty and my bodyspiritmind wiring. since he can make me come within seconds of touching me or kissing me, i agree! he gave me an eargasm today, by kissing my ear so slow and sexy. i was tingling all over, and pressing my body's curves all up against him. i love the feel of his arm on my cheek. i love to nestle into his shoulders and strong arms while he fucks me so slowly. mmmmmmmmmm i love how he takes his time and makes me come and come and come.

i've just never had it so good. i really had no idea such explosive sex was possible. i really thought this kind of thing happened only in the erotic short story collection i was addicted to: herotica, best american erotica, anything edited by susie bright.

but now i'm too busy having awesome sex to read them anymore. haha! that's too funny!

mmmmm i love my life.

it can be very hard sometimes.

i still get heartsick with loneliness for my kids.

i still have a hard time financially cuz i'm not willing to do jobs that suck my soul dry.

or where i have to suck up to some man just cuz he's powerful or some woman who knows less than me or someone who's arrogant. i'd rather starve.

i still have difficult situations, like this week my roommate bounced another rent check and screwed up my finances very badly; then he had an emotional meltdown and blamed me for it.

but, life is always full of challenges.

i've learned that from buddhism, that the rose always has thorns.

but oh that rose, that rose is so sweet, its petals are so soft, its fragrance so delightful, so airy, so sweet and tender, so fresh.

life is so full of sweetness, every where i look.

View from the Greenwood Pier Inn

2008-07-29T12:58:00.001-07:00

View from the Starfish Room, Greenwood Pier Inn, Elk
Originally uploaded by Debbie Mac

there's a statue of kinnari here as well!

in the little sunny garden shop with a charming spiral stairway.

lots of beautifully carved wooden statues and colorful painted furniture from burma, thailand, and bali.

along the redwood trail

2008-07-29T12:51:00.001-07:00

along the redwood trail
Originally uploaded by ue06

still camping my way back into the city. having a blast!

camped here last night. after driving through redwoods.

i'm so proud of myself for setting up my tent each night! i'm getting to be quite the outdoorswoman!

i keep a few trashy novels with me and read them by lamplight. ha! and this morning i read from "gems of buddhist wisdom," lying back on my sleeping bag with the redwoods and sunny skies as my ceiling. (my tent has a skylight dome with noseeums-proof mesh.)

am eating a HUGE brunch and writing from the greenwood pier inn; it's just breathtakingly beautiful.

just went hiking and fed horses carrots at the elk guesthouse. her horses were grazing all round the house and garden on the bluff above the ocean. they walked right up to me and let me feed them.

the owner is a harried, friendly, messy mom who was happy to share her stories of fixing up the house with me. we laughed about the messes she and her kids had made everywhere. but the view is spectacular!!!!!!!!!!

today is ,my youngest's 18th birthday; she finally called me last weekend after boycotting me all summer for speaking out about the domestic violence of her father, but still refuses to make plans to visit. it's a hard time for me, but i'm finding joy and courage in the journey.

yesterday, in a charming little bookshop in mendocino, i read the memoirs of a woman trapped in a polygamist cult who was battered and whose husband abused her with custody suits and withholding care for the children. so much like my story. i couldn't believe what i was reading.

guess where the founder of the cult moved when it got too "liberal and open minded" for him and his followers in utah? to texASS! spelling emphasized! and just recently, their cult made national headlines when courts in texas overturned the decision to remove children who'd been sexually abused from their abusive environments. the texas courts gave the children back to the abusers and penalized the Childrens' Protective services and trashed the social workers who were trying to save the children!

it was really painful and scary to read this woman's life story since it felt like living mine again, but it made me realize how deeply committed i am to telling my story no matter how much i'm opposed by my kids or my family of origin. what if abused women never told their stories? what if we all waited till we had our children's and family's blessing? i'm beginning to realize that none of our stories would EVER have been told!

it's amazing how deep my brainwashing was around my family. i'm still just coming out from much of it. it helps so much to be in california. when i tell my story here, it's so obvious, i grew up in a cult! when i see the lives of my very good, kind CA relatives (on my father's side) and how different their lives are, not dominated by church of christ dogma, it's so eye opening.

and to be exposed each day to eastern thought and to world views which are so different from my own! it's so heartening!

just now, at this lovely inn/cafe where i'm sitting, there are buddhist statues and eastern influences in the landscaping and decor. this brings me such joy and peace and hope!

even though many of the buddha's views about women represented not much of a departure from the sexism of the brahmins he was trying to elucidate, it's still a lifesaving message for me to follow the buddhist path. and with the LGBTIQ and feminist influence on the dharma in CA, it's even more liberating now.

i think i've been trying so hard to live as a bodhisattva without the proper training or the community. i used my social work and christianity to save others when i couldn't save myself. now i can choose when and how i want to live the bodhisattva life; it's not now.

i want to just take care of myself for now and let others be. trust that someone will come along to save them, but it's not my turn just yet. maybe not in this lifetime.

my buddhist friends would be proud of me: i'm learning to let go and not fight each battle that comes my way.

i'm living minute by minute and in the now much more often. i'm finding peace within myself and within the world even in the midst of hard times.

Mendocino Coastline Sunset

2008-07-28T13:42:00.001-07:00

Bright Sun Going Down
Originally uploaded by meganpru

here's where i am! yay!

summer vaca

2008-07-28T13:36:00.000-07:00

went to an awesome silent retreat for buddhist queer women.

bought a tent and i'm camping my way down the coast back to sf/bay area.

love the views! saw this lighthouse yesterday.
www.pointcabrillo.org/

and camped here last night.
www.parks.ca.gov/

here's a vid about where i spent yesterday.
www.openroad.tv/index.php

i'm in a little coffee house in mendocino by the headlands state park.
www.floatinghome.com/fh/Category.aspx
gorgeous!!!!!!

i'll be housesitting near lake tahoe most of august.
www.visitinglaketahoe.com/

then, i'll be at burning man the last week of august till labor day.

happy summer!!!!!!!!

tea and sympathy

2008-07-22T22:39:00.000-07:00

i just had another amazing experience, one i could only have in the bay area.

tea and dharma.

it was held at teance in berkeley, which has earth friendly tones and a minimalist japanese sensibility in the decor. ecodesign throughout, even in the gorgeously appointed bathroom. advertisements for tea from asian magazines in the 20's and 30's were used to paper 2 of the walls. torn paper collage all over the wall.

when i was a kid at fundie school, about the only relief i got from my strict teachers' watchful eyes was at art class. one hour a couple every friday was all we got. but oh, that one precious hour! torn paper collages were one of my favorite activities. mrs. cole, a widower with a very cute son my age, was our wonderful instructor. i loved how she'd trust us 10 year old kids with sharp instruments and let us make wood block carvings. how patient and kind and funny she was. i love her to this day for that.

the other walls were covered in green stucco and embedded with young, thin bamboo chutes set randomly, about 5-9 inches apart. it was so simple yet so beautiful. i've never seen anything like it. at the top of one of the walls of stucco, a large rectangular space had been left for a scroll painting which was glued to the wall just like wallpaper. it was also so simple, yet so stunning. black and white scroll. green and tan earth colors for stucco and bamboo. red and white for the advertisements. and it all went together beautifully.

the sink, instead of being hollowed out like all european and american sinks, was instead, a long slanted slab of marble tiles upon which water poured ever so gently, making a waterfall of sorts down into another marble trough. i could have watched it for hours if there wasn't a drought and i was trying to conserve.

we gathered around a tea bar, in a circle, while a young looking middle aged man served us; so friendly, so gracious, such kind eyes he had. he went through a measured, calming ritual of heating the water, pouring it over the young green leaves, covering it with a lid, letting it steep ever so slowly in individual pots for each person, and pouring it out into a waiting cup in front of us. the cups were small and delicate, softly curved, robin's egg blue. it was such a pleasure to sit still and watch him serve each person. slowing down from my busy day. melting into my seat. softening my stance, lowering my voice, quieting my mind, listening to the sounds of the tea pouring.

what a humane ritual. wouldn't the whole world be a better place if we did this every day. just sit. with our tea. just sit and wait for water to boil, for tea to steep, for leaves to infuse water with just the right amount of flavor and color. for life to slow down.

how could we start wars if we drank tea with our friends and neighbors and enemies each day? how could we abuse our children or spouses if we were sitting, drinking tea. how could we honk the horn and give the finger to the driver next to us if we expected to see her at a tea ritual later that day?

i felt all my tensions and problems just slip away. just slip right away in the steam of the tea. in the calm of the tea master. in the color of the leaves. in the lightness of the voices of everyone in the room. in the company of strangers. i felt so alive and so full of nothingness. of oneness.

i'm pursuing buddhist studies every chance i get. i find that the more i read about buddhism, the more i want to read. the more i sit in meditation, the more i want to sit.

i've always been drawn to the life of the spirit.

and in buddhism and paganism and unitarianism, i've found what i was lacking in christianity: a sense of myself. a huge space for my self to just be. not to be in judgement or lack or shame or guilt or any of the other millioin needy feelings that christianity causes to arise in me. but just to be. a sense of acceptance of the universe as imperfect and all human existence as suffering but a sense of peace with that.

have you ever read "onward christian soldier?" really read it? it's one of the most widely known and sung hymns in all of modern american christendom. it was written just before the civil war and it's about the abolition movement. but it's so damn bloody. it's so militaristic.

jews and christians have been using military metaphors for as long as there have been hebrew and apostolic scriptures. the bible is rife with military themes. such a warring god, such a warring religion. such a call to war with oneself and one's neighbors.

oh, no wonder, i'm such a hardass sometimes. no wonder i'm such a bear to live with sometimes. no wonder no matter how hard i try not to be, i'm very judgmental.

as my lover said, "if i could take a vacation from myself i would, so how can i expect someone else to want to be with me all the time?"

but this buddhism calls me back to myself in such a calm loving way. i can still see all my flaws, all my imperfections that i strive so to hide from the world. i can still see all the million things i wish i could change about myself and my circumstances, my family and my world.

but somehow, they are easier to bear. somehow, these flaws that are glaring at me are not so blinding. somehow, i have more mercy for myself and others. somehow i can see that we are all pretty much the same. we need pretty much the same things. we want to feel loved. we want to feel that we are not alone in the universe. we want to feel appreciated. we want to feel cared for. we want to feel special.

i can do that. i can offer myself that. i can show a little patience for my own imperfections.

and if i did that, how would i feel? how would i treat my neighbor who annoys me? how would i treat the guy who cuts me off in traffic. how would i react to my child who rejects me?

somehow, i think i'll react with just a little more graciousness, a little more ease. a little more understanding.

i'm liking this new me. this new me i'm becoming in california is a pretty cool chick!

we walked upstairs to a small room overlooking the tea shop and gathered around a monk who was sitting in front of a statue of Kwan Yin. we sang a few "american buddhist folk songbook" songs interspersed with beatles and james taylor songs about friendship while he strummed his 12 string guitar. the monk was very engaging, very humorous, very friendly, and very wise. he gave what i'd call a brief dharma talk on the three levels of human awareness: things, relationships and awakening.

in the level of things, we are still grasping to ego, still defining ourselves by our possessions, our jobs, houses, cars. in the second level, we are defining ourselves by our relationships, our children, our spouse, our lover, our status. but when we are awakened to the third level of awareness, we realize that all the rest is just ego, just grasping at straws. we realize that suffering is inevitable no matter how many lovers we have or how big our house is.

in this level, we realize our oneness with all humanity, with all sentient beings, with all who suffer. and we realize that sharing and loving and being unselfish is all that really matters.

i liked the monk very much. i liked how he let everyone have a turn at talking. i liked how he was so laid back and approachable. he had a wonderful laugh. he made everyone who spoke, whether it was the former gang member from the wrong side of town who'd joined the army to get his life straightened out or it was the artist yuppie who lived in berkeley.

at the very end, the monk took an old stephen foster american classic, "dixie," and changed the lyrics to be about nirvana and the dharma and buddhaland. it was really funny.

yesterday, i was feeling just so depressed about not seeing my kids yet this summer; i was missing them so bad, i could just barely stand it. i knew if i stayed home or tried to work, i'd just ruminate on this unhappy situation. so i decided to take myself out.

this always works well for me. when i'm depressed, i just hit the road and i'm happy as a clam in minutes!

my father was this way; he'd often pile all us kids in the car and we'd be off to have an adventure. who knew where? even he didn't know. but we'd end up somewhere, a snake ranch, an apple orchard, a rock quarry, a salvage store. and he'd get out and find the person in charge and ask all sorts of questions. and we'd be fascinated.

i'm the same way. the summer i lost custody of my kids, i rented a boat and took them out on a lake we'd never been to and gave them each a dollar to swim from the boat a few feet away to a little island to explore. they loved it. i loved it. (they didn't know what was coming so i gathered them around and explained that from now on they couldn't see me most nights or even each week. i don't think they knew i was dying inside because i was determined that they were going to have a great summer vacation and go on adventures just like i did when i was a kid.)

i drove us to a crafts school, one in tennessee that was created to preserve appalachian folk arts that have been handed down for centuries and which traveled over from scotland and ireland. we watched glass blowers, basket weavers, wood turners, bead makers. it took our minds off the pain and got us engaged in beauty again. i remember i even helped them select a beautiful hand carved gift for their dad for father's day.

so yesterday, after crying myself to sleep on sunday night missing my dear children so badly, i made myself pack up the car, not knowing where i'd end up. i packed enough for a couple of days in case i decided not to return.

and i got in my car not knowing where i'd go. i had enough gourmet crackers, nuts, fruits, and cheeses from trader joe's to last me several meals and i'd made a fresh batch of southern fruit tea with fresh mint.

i considered consulting a map but didn't. i just took off and followed my hunch.

i had an idea that i might like to hike up mt. tamalpais. i'd never been and there it is looming above the bay. i've hiked in the sierra nevadas, and in the san bruno mountains; i've hiked along the coast in big sur. i've walked up mt. diablo. i've hiked the berkeley and oakland hills a thousand times. and i've gone on long walks with my sweetie along the oregon coast. but i'd never been up mt. tam.

so i did it.

it was so therapeutic.

it's just damn hard to feel depressed when you are sweating and all you can think about is putting one foot in front of the other so that you get to some shade. and once you're at the top, it's pretty hard to feel sad when you can see such an amazing view, the bays and islands of san francisco all laid out before you like jewels. the fog rolling in so swiftly over the foothills. it was just a stunningly gorgeous place to be.

and i couldn't feel too sorry for myself up there.

it worked wonders.

i munched happily on blackberries, raspberries, sesame sticks, soy covered rice crackers, dried goji berries, cashews, chocolate macadamia cookies.

sunday i'd hiked the berkeley rose garden and the cordonice park before attending the Nyingma Institute training on Buddhism and Psychotherapy.

the Nyingma Institute is a little jewel of architecture and gardening, replete with brightly painted tibetan buddhist prayer wheels going round and round making a whirring sound! red, green, blue, and gold paint adorn the old structure just above the university. there is a fantastic view of the bay from their upper windows as the building itself climbs up the side of a hill.

i'm making friends with my depression. i'm not judging it. i'm not sitting in condemnation of myself that i can't get over the loss of my kids. i'm just becoming curious about what spiritual paths can transform my pain into something that is valuable for me and for my family and for my world.

and i'm feeling much happier, much more peaceful.

Bomberas!

2008-07-19T23:36:00.001-07:00

Taina Teaching the Next Generation of Bombera
Originally uploaded by Eriqua

Fantastico!!!!!!!!!

i just got my mind blown again by bay area culture (which is what i came out here to get blown.)

Performance tonight: "Cimarronaje: A Neofolkloric Journey Celebrating the Lives of Revolutionary Puerto Rican Women"

it was incredible!!!!!!!!!!! gave me so much hope about my own situation of losing my kids to church and state! the more we stand up against both, the more we lose, but the more we also gain!!!!!!!!!!!

the struggle is soooooooooo worth it!

amazing spirit in the performers. they told the stories of these revolutionary women, not just with their talking voices, which wove incredible oral history in with the astounding music, but they told it with the movement of their hips, their skirts, their eyes, their shoulders.

wow! this was a transformative night!

and i feel so deeply loved.

my lover came and brought me a cupcake last night even though it was friday! (cupcake wednesday is our tradition but i'd been busy at queer sangha on wed.) yummy white cake with real chocolate butter frosting. mmmmmmmm

then this morning he showed up with his playful sensations toy bag and proceeded to give me mind blowing orgasms all day. i swear each time he makes love to me on our "days of the feast of all senses" he finds some new way to make me come! last night, he made me come just from sucking on my nipple. of course, he'd already made me come from drinking my mango juice. he loves push me up high so that i'm sitting up on my bed, spread my legs, and go to town on my clit and cuntie. he adores my juices. he's pretty astounding as a lover. we have explosive sex all the time and i've never, i mean NEVER had it so good. what woman wouldn't love a man who adores going down on her? and i mean he seriously adores it. he loves to talk about how good i taste and he loves to lick his fingers after he fucks me with them.

damn, that boy is so hot.

and he's so hilarious too! instead of serious bdsm toys, he bought what he calls a "thwapper." one of those fake reflex hammers which clowns use to hammer people but they don't hurt, they just make a silly honking sound. he couldn't wait to use it on me. he was so adorable, like a little kid. we really bring out the playful inner child in each other. he also got a stethoscope with a plunger on the end just like clowns use; now normally i hate clowns. always have since my dad and mom took me to the circus. but this boy, he's so fine. he used the plunger to cover my breast and kiss me deeply. we were giggling so hard!

he told me about this movie he'd seen with the ROCK, the only "pro" ie fake, wrestler i've ever loved, called game plan. in it, this arrogant sports star has his world turned around by a little child who turns out to be his daughter; she bedazzles every one of his prized possessions, heisman trophy, autographed pictures, etc. so my lover said we should bedazzle each other when i showed him the dessert i'd gotten him from the farmer's market: raspberries, blueberries, strawberries and whipped cream.

so i did.

it was sooooooooooo much fun!

we laughed so hard.

i sprayed whipped cream all over his torso - i fucking love that man's chest! - in a big hourglass figure outlining his manly chest hair while i was astride him and we were buck nekkid.

then i decorated him with the red and blue berries. then i slurped them up with my tongue and offered him some while french kissing him.

daYmn, that was fun!

what a great weekend!

and my sweet boyfriend called me whom i adore.

we're planning when our next vacation together is.

he's my biggest cheerleader. i told him all about the bomberas and how i can place my own struggle (to protect my kids and losing them to the batterer) in historical context with other revolutionaries.

battered women are often isolated and shamed.

that dance tonight made me want to shout from the rooftops that i'll never be ashamed of being a battered woman. i'll wear my scars proudly like a war hero! i'm a peace shero! i'm a brave rainbow warrior! i did my best to secure a safe place for myself and my kids and i've done it. even if they don't choose my route of freedom and self awareness and radical living, at least they have a good example! and i'll fight church and state to the death and never give up on telling my story of how i got away - who knows who it might save? who knows who might get inspiration from my story just like i got inspiration from the stories of the revolutionary women from puerto rico?

women who were enslaved from west africa, shipped to the "new" world, put to work on plantations owned by evil colonizers, first the spanish empire, then the american one. women who lost children, women who were raped and beaten, women who were imprisoned, women who were shamed and publicly humiliated, women who lost everything they had.

they are MY heritage too! so there!

so i'll fuck who i want, when i want, and i'll dance to whatever music i want to, and i'll love whom i please. and i won't apologize or bow my head. i'll stand up proudly and take bold measures, and i'll speak up in meetings and i'll act out!

and i'll have a blast doing it!

Chopping the veggies for Chinese Stir Fry

2008-07-17T22:34:00.001-07:00

Sweet & Sour Chicken Noodles with Chinese Vegetables
Originally uploaded by electrolyte2006

i spent hours today cooking a cohousing meal for my neighbors with a fantastic chinese american chef. she's not a pro but her meals are always fabulous! plus we live really close to chinatown so she always gets the food there and makes it taste to die for.

i adore her and her little doggie (who's not allowed in the kitchen at the coho).

she's way cool.

and i ate till i was stuffed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Night Courting

2008-07-17T22:31:00.001-07:00

Night Courting
Originally uploaded by jombisupastar

i love this artist! i met jombi online first on tribe.net

then we bumped into each other at the sisters of perpetual indulgence's easter shebang, forgive the pun, where he was competing in the hunky jesus contest.

i recognized him from his online pix.

so we chatted each other up and became even better fans of each other.

he runs a fun subversive crafty group in the east bay with his mates. i keep meaning to go.

we almost had the pleasure of becoming roommates but then a burner took the extra room where i live.

jombi's one of my favorite artists ever!

fuck love

2008-07-17T22:27:00.001-07:00

Originally uploaded by mina j.

loss

2008-07-16T21:32:00.000-07:00

i'm home from a day at the beach, sitting with the Queer Sangha at East Bay Meditation Center, and fighting off depression and anxiety.

i've had a life long struggle with depression only i didn't know it till i was deciding to get a divorce, since that was the first time i'd ever paid for therapy.

i just knew that sometimes my emotions would overwhelm me, whether they were worries or fears or sad feelings. i knew that i'd enter black periods where nothing would seem pleasant and life would not seem worth living. it used to be very rare, often many years apart, when i'd enter these sad times; until i got married.

that stunned my system so much that i could no longer deny that something was wrong. i had no idea what it was: at first i thought it was just my locale. i hated lubbock with a passion.

it was so flat and so ugly. so boring. and i was fresh out of college and dorm life in nashville which i loved. for the first time i was having to pay my own way in the world, exist with no support from my mom and dad, and live far from home. inside i was a wreck. i was miserable every day.

i had no way of analyzing my experience. i had no lense but self blame and the fundamentalist guilt of failure and the protestant "try harder" ethic of my upbringing.

i had no feminist analytical tools. women's studies wasn't offered at my fundie school. so i had no way of knowing that getting paid a non-living minimum wage for doing extremely demanding child development work by day and getting slapped around and raped by my husband at night was simply part of patriarchal culture.

i had never read the feminine mystique. but if i had, i would have found that betty friedan's socialist analysis of the indoctrination of women and the forcing of them into the slave wage class was mirroring my experience.

i just knew i was homesick, starved for genuine affection, and becoming more and more of a "liar" to explain away why picture frames and windows and bottles and dishes kept breaking at my house and why i was so glum. (my husband threw stuff at me every week and when i'd duck, it would often break a window.)

i thought i was just missing my dear college friends, and the fun pranks we pulled, and the camaraderie i felt from dorm life. i thought i was just longing for my mother's cooking, longing to hear my father's laughter, see their kind eyes, feel their hugs. i thought i was just missing my brother and sisters and all the noise of our big family.

i had no clue i'd fallen into a huge depression which was entirely normal for someone who was getting battered and was far from home, stuck in a dead end job.

i made a vow to myself that i'd get back home to tennessee one day soon. but my husband didn't want to go so despite promising me i could go home once he got out of law school, he sabotaged all my efforts to return. i once called my parents to try to ask them if i could come back, but they told me that if i failed at marriage, there was no place for me in their home. and my husband threatened to tell them about my abortion of his baby just before we were married the one time i got enough courage to drive to the airport and try to leave by myself. i knew if my parents found out about the abortion, i'd be disowned, ex-communicated. so where in the world would i go?

i didn't know to get help.

plus, i was suddenly pregnant. i didn't want to be pregnant, but i knew nothing about birth control and felt guilty for asking. only occasionally had i been able to talk my husband into using a condom.

now i look back on my young mother self and know that i suffered horribly from post partum depression. and that my longer and more frequent periods of depression and paralyzing fear were battered women's syndrome and traumatic stress disorder.

i had no reference point for mental health. no awareness that anyone, save lunatics, sought out and received therapy. there was no oprah; there were no PSAs about domestic violence in that small texas town.

i remember my mother and father lecturing us about the evils of modern psychiatry and how they were pointing people away from the bible and god as our only source of wisdom and healing.

how fucked up is that?

but that's what fundamentalism teaches you: that to go outside of the "one true source" is anathema.

so i just plugged away at being a good wife and mom. i just kept it up as best i could. and somehow my love for my newborn son kept me going, then my first daughter and another daughter. i knew i had to keep on going for them, if not for myself. they were the only bright spot in my life. well, that and the women's bible studies.

now that i look back on it, it seems absurd that we never dealt with domestic or sexual violence in any of those classes. i went to four each week. i got promoted to leadership at my church and in my neighborhood for being such a good christian. no one knew i was dying inside.

my husband, whom i'd put through law school, was advancing in his career, we'd purchased a home, and we dressed well. i volunteered in my neighborhood, at my children's schools and at church. i bought matching outfits for myself and my children and had our pictures taken. we looked like the perfect family.

each day i listened to james dobson on the radio and tried harder to put his ideals into practice. his explanation for why women had to stay home and do the housework was that, well, someone had to do it and it sure couldn't be the man. that made sense to me.

plus, each time i tried to discuss equality with my husband, the esteemed sunday school teacher and church of christ minister, he'd just say "equality has no place in a marriage." and he'd quote some bible verse to back it up.

i'd get confused, end up crying, and he'd leave me with the kids to clean and cook by myself. when i got so physically ill (during my second and third difficult pregnancies) that i couldn't keep up the house anymore, i begged him to hire a maid so i could at least spend some quality time with the kids.

i kept driving car pool. i kept teaching bible study. i kept smiling.

when we'd fight, i'd call the christian radio hotline, ask them to pray to heal my marriage, and go to bed in tears only to be woken up to get raped. repeat, ad nauseum.

when i'd try to leave town for a brief bit to collect myself, or go to a friend's house, my husband would warn me that if i ever dared to leave him, he'd take the kids, the house, the furniture, the money, the only bread-winning career, and he'd tell everyone that i was crazy. i'd be left with nothing. by this time, he was winning cases for huge polluting, maiming corporations and was becoming something of a local celebrity in the field of litigation, so i knew i didn't stand a chance against him.

plus i honestly didn't know that what he was doing was wrong. i'd been taught that my body didn't belong to me, that it belonged to god. my father had taught me that the main reason i existed was to please my husband. my mother taught me that men's wishes came first, no matter what.

finally, after 10 years of imposed pregnancies, 2 miscarriages and 1 abortion, i just couldn't handle it anymore. in 1992, after being raped and battered and sodomized and impregnated only to be battered again so badly in the first trimester that i lost the child, i simply couldn't go on.

i called my ob/gyn and told her i felt like killing my husband or killing myself so i "knew it must just be the left over hormones from the miscarriage and could you please prescribe something for me to make me right again."

well, in texas, you don't say something like "i want to kill myself or kill my husband" without getting yourself a nice little trip to the insane asylum. and that's what i got myself.

my ob/gyn told me to get a better haircut and to take better care of my appearance.

the christian therapists and christian psychologist sided with my husband, telling me "it wasn't rape to him; if you don't want to have sex, you should wear a granny gown to bed."

they never once told me about battered women's services. never pointed me to a shelter, never once gave me a political framework in which to view my experience."

as soon as i went to grad school, these same fundamenalists therapists believed my husband when he described the "damaging effect" the feminist professors were having on me. they cautioned me not to take feminism to heart and to keep reading my bible as the foremost authority. they scoffed when i described how he threw my books and study material on the ground in a fit of rage. how he came and took all the children's toys and books away when i was with my study group.

but i kept studying my way out of domestic and sexual violence; i kept reading feminists. and i finally found a feminist therapist who saved my life.

now people who are ignorant of battered womens' issues, often wonder why they don't leave.

i answer: why should they have to? don't women have a right to be free from abuse in their own homes?

what kind of world do we live in where women have to flee their homes just to keep from getting raped and beaten?

that's insane! and if there's one thing i'd finally discovered, it was that patriarchy is an insane way to run the world. but it was the only world i had and patriarchs still make and enforce the laws that are on the books.

i finally got free. it took me many attempts at leaving. it took me many tries. i was never physically safe in my own home until after my divorce. and i haven't been emotionally safe ever. not so long as my ex has the power to hurt me and my children. and he continues to prove that he will do so till he keels over.

he has never been repentant, never made any attempt at restoration. he has only attempted to bribe everyone who knew any part of my story, including my family of origin, my friends, and my children.

so today, after ruminating on the fact that my children are punishing me for finally speaking out by not visiting me this summer, i finally just gave up trying to fix this situation.

i accept the fact that my own children have been turned against me.

i accept the fact that i've done the best i can and they still feel hurt and betrayed by me.

i accept the fact that this makes me sad and aggravates my depression and anxiety.

i accept it all, even that for a time at least, it seems that my husband has won a far greater victory over me than i had ever anticipated. i knew he could steal their bodies, but i didn't anticipate that he would steal their hearts and minds as well.

but i also accept that i feel free.

i feel true to myself and my experience.

it has been paid for with the highest of prices.

i have lost everything that was dear to me.

my children, my mental health, my physical health, my financial wellbeing, my family of origin.

but i have gained everything.

i have gained my very self.

i have peace of mind much of the time.

i'm not lying about anything.

i'm not covering up for someone.

i'm not ashamed of who i am.

i've got myself back.

i've got me.

and for now, that's enough.

Department of Spontaneous Combustion

2008-07-12T12:46:00.001-07:00

Department of Spontaneous Combustion
Originally uploaded by jason_chinn

nothing says outlaw pyrotechnics like "skull art!"

fire arts at the crucible 2008

Omega Recoil, by Omega Recoil

2008-07-12T12:45:00.001-07:00

Omega Recoil, by Omega Recoil
Originally uploaded by jason_chinn

watched two humans dance with electricity at voltage which would normally kill you in this omega recoil show!

amazing!

a woman and a man acted out a love story: first date while getting struck by lighting the whole time!

The ChakraTron & The HypKnowTron, by Gaspo

2008-07-12T12:40:00.001-07:00

The ChakraTron & The HypKnowTron, by Gaspo
Originally uploaded by jason_chinn

Worked the Fire Arts Festival last night at Crucible in my 'hood.

yay!

so much fun!

my favorite way to spend a friday afternoon: old oakland housewives' farmers' market

2008-07-11T15:03:00.000-07:00

the perky cute young brunette stands behind 3 ironing boards in primary colors, red, yellow, blue, upon which are stacked cookies and scones. i ask her about them, but really i don't care, i just want to chat her up. she describes the scones so well that i buy some just to keep her talking. i tell her the ironing boards remind me of my grandmother who used to iron her line dried cotton sheets and pillow cases. she throws in some cookies with the scones.

i wander over to the cheese stall and bug the same guy i bugged last week for a free taste of his "sharpest cheddar." it's clear he loves to talk about the cheese; he works for a small dairy and brings his cheese to market each week, just like dairy farmers have been doing for centuries. i'm lured into buying his colby jack, though i'd have rather had a tangier version, they were sold out. i'm lazy; i love to sleep in and i've missed both the savory quark and the sharper cheeses. but i haven't yet tried his lemon quark so i get some to go on the scones; i've had the vanilla bean and loved it.

i sit down by an office worker, a young asian american woman, who's gotten the afghani bread and roasted garlic eggplant topping for lunch; i often buy it and we chat about how good it is. the blues man sings and plays his guitar in the background; he has a semi-regular gig here and he's my favorite. usually his daughter comes and belts out a few numbers while tapping her four year old feet; but she's missing today.

the office worker moves on and another man comes to sit down. we bond over our love of fresh, slow food. the scones melt in my mouth, the quark is a wonderful mix of sour and sweet. we talk for half an hour about our college age kids and how we can only keep up with where they are by checking their myspace or facebook pages; his are on a band tour in middle america, mine in summer-abroad study programs .

the market is about to close so i gather up my lunch and walk up the closed off normally-busy downtown street to buy my vegetables and fruits for the week.

new red potatoes, thin wiry green beans, yellow crook neck squash, fuzzy okra which takes me back to the south. they will make a few fine suppers!

the organic stalls give me two for one since it's about closing time: bright shiny strawberries and raspberries so plump they make your mouth water. they press me to eat a tart plum while i stand there, juices dripping down my mouth.

this is contentment, this is peace. this is what i moved here for, this is love.

this is coming full circle: from the hot fields of my childhood, behind mama's house where i used to go pick the tomatoes and help her can them for winter, to my progressive sustainable bay area farmer's market.

i'm so happy. mama and papa, my mother's farmer parents, would be too, if they could see me now.

Vespa Siciliana

2008-07-11T11:59:00.001-07:00

Vespa Siciliana
Originally uploaded by d_cherubini

i went shopping for vespas and other mopeds, electric bikes, cycles, scooters....

in the city on tuesday. it was so much fun! i asked a million questions of every biker i saw. they were all surprisingly helpful and friendly, glad to share their knowledge of bike culture with a total stranger.

i saw so many cute scooters in the dykes on bikes march.
and with gas prices so high, i wanna ride a bike more often.

mr. lover

2008-07-11T11:08:00.000-07:00

i put the whipped cream on his cock after licking several drops of it off his nipples.

and i smeared it on his balls. he loves that. i pushed through the cream and placed my hand firmly on his shaft and worked my magic on him, using the cream as lube to transport him away from his workday worries. it turned into liquid on his warm cock as i rubbed up and down, playing with him. he was moaning and writhing in pleasure. i love how he thrashes his head around and bucks in bed when he's about to come and how he whimpers at my touch.

he'd already made me come.

i wasn't really in the mood for sex but he's so damn fine and sexy that i pretty much can get in the mood fast. as i told him, he takes me from 0-60 in no time. i love that about him.

last night we talked and cuddled and sighed and giggled in bed - we chatted about politics, (obama's telling support for FISA, allowing those criminals, AT&T and other telecom companies, off the hook for spying on americans illegally), about his amazing stories of his and his family's migration from iran, through spain and italy, ending in canada.

he went to college for two years in tehran, then applied for med school in italy. most of the students study for a year to learn all the technical terms and to pass the entry test. he had a week to study and pass the test or lose his student visa and be shipped back to iran. and he was learning it in italian, not his native language. there were 900 questions in his study guide. he memorized all of the answers. his sister was so scared for him; she'd chosen to study architecture since there was no entry exam. she was worried sick he'd never pass. his brother-in-law, a doctor, helped him study. they prepared for a goodbye party in case he was to be deported.

but he passed with flying colors! in fact, he made the highest grade of all the foreign students and tied with an italian, only one other student, who made the same high grade.

he's so fucking brilliant and colorful, my persian. i'm so happy i had him all to myself for the last 2 weeks. we've had so much fun! going to countless Burning WoMan parties, eating out at delicious restaurants, cuddling and making love late into the night. his wife's on some buddhist retreat with her friends so he comes to sleep with me each night. (we're polyamorous, not cheaters.) i love that when we're just about tired of each other, she comes home and he leaves.

we had a staycation while he was here. we stayed in town but treated each night and weekend like we were on holiday. we ate delicious foods, fresh from the farmer's market outside my door. peaches, apricots, plums, cherries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries are all in season, so i bought plenty and fed him in bed, luscious bowlsful of stone fruits and berries covered in whipped cream. and we love our breads of india restaurant, just downstairs from my urban loft. they serve us as regulars now, always bringing our garlic naan and mango lassis to start, then chicken tikka masala to fill us up, and finally galub jaman for dessert. they use free range chicken and fresh organic vegetables every day. we linger over dinner and hold hands and talk of everything and nothing.

he tells me that i am his honeymoon. we don't go without a few rough patches, especially when we're together for longer periods of time than our normal 2-3 dates a week. we have little disagreements or hurt feelings, but he's very mature. he can easily identify and talk about his feelings and ask for what he needs and wants. he's been through a lot for someone his age and he's traveled the world and seen many different ways of doing things so he's ever so much more evolved than american men. i love him.

i love the coffee color of his skin. i love the way his chest hair splays out in an hourglass shape on his ribs and abdomen. i love his thighs, they are perfectly sized and muscular and lift me up on to him when i'm riding him and he's thrusting into me. i love his shoulders. i love watching him when he's drinking my mango juice and eating my pussy. he dives down like a true olympian, arching his shoulders, and parting the waves of my thighs. he rests his head on my powerful legs and nibbles at me, his tongue like a little fish, darting in and out, in and out. last night and the night before, he made me come so powerfully, i had to bite my tongue and bury my mouth in the pillows to muffle my moans. i was afraid of waking the neighbors.

damn, he's good.

i'm off for the farmer's market for lunch. this is my new weekly ritual and it makes me so happy. i shop with my little red cart on wheels, just like the old chinese housewives i see all round me, and bustle from one booth to the next to compare prices on fresh organic cheese, curvy green vegetables, lanky beans, ripe cherries of all kinds - white, pink, red, burgundy.

i know to wait till the very end of the market to buy my flowers, then they are half price and so are my favorite tamales. i try to turn down the fattening kettle corn but usually the aroma of fat and salt and sugar is too much for me. i get pulled in on the tractor beam of transfats. damn, it's delicious! fresh popped, salty and sweet.

i'm emptying my vases today of last week's flowers, pink and white of round blooms in my bedroom has faded and it's time for new ones. the purplish blue of the tall thin stalks on my dining room table has not faded even though they are 2 weeks old. i empty the blossoms into the mulch around the green and yellow lemon tree at my front door. the bold petals make a perfect potpourri to greet my visitors.

life is very sweet.

day two: in which i become enlightened

2008-07-10T12:05:00.000-07:00

i'm reading the accidental buddhist by dinty moore. (isn't there a dinty moore stew?)

he makes me laugh. i love this book because the author doesn't take himself too seriously.

sometimes i think we as americans have been sold a bill of goods with all the buddhist material that is available to us now. i was looking at the cover of the spring rock, ca, retreat center catalog which shows an ancient statue of buddha draped with a creamy silk cloth in a natural setting with trees surrounding it.

you don't have to be a madison ave. salesperson to know they are selling "peace." plain and simple: peace. which of course comes at a stiff price. you cannot go to spirit rock unless you have a couple hundred dollars to blow on a weekend and you have your weekends free. which pretty much means that you have to be a yuppie to get there.

and i have fallen out of the yuppie class. i was kicked out to be more accurate.

and i feel the sting of it every day. i'm glad of it, really. i'm glad i'm no longer a yuppie, with the mindless pursuit of corporate lifestyles and comfortable suburban middle class existence as my goal. but i do miss it. i miss that feeling of never worrying over my bills. i miss knowing that i'll see my kids each and every day as they come home from their yuppie schools to my yuppie home. i even miss my mini-van.

but this road i'm on, though it is hard and has many pitfalls, is more exciting to me. and ultimately, i think it is more rewarding.

i would have never questioned repeating my parents lifestyles had it not been for my divorce. i would never have known about feminism, that gender analysis would make me value my work and my female ancestors' work and come to see my own unpaid labor in a completely different light.

yesterday, i was cleaning house and creating a lovely gift basket for my lover, when i came across a beautiful photo album my mother had made for me. in it were pictures of my family taken over a period of many decades. there was my young mother self with my precious babies, here in the swimming pool, there climbing a tree, here with my father reading them a book, there on the playground with him pushing the merry go round.

all of a sudden i was weeping. weeping for my lost father. where is he now? where is his spirit, so full of life and energy and fun? i was weeping for my little children, all grown up and too busy to visit me. i was weeping for my young self, who was about to be battered and raped and beaten and lose her children along with her faith and her belief that the world is fair. she's about to have everything ripped out from under her but she doesn't know it yet. she is sitting by my mother on a porch swing, smiling out at the world. what she doesn't know yet will just about kill her but she is just sitting there.

i'm weeping because i cannot go back and save her from it. i can only look at her, my self, from this end of it all, and say, i'm here. i'm here to take you away. i'm here to help you. i'm here to hold you.

i cannot actually look at pictures of my young self or pictures of my children when they were young without falling into PTSD symptoms which make me feel very strange. PTSD can grab you at the oddest moments. i know some of my triggers, so i know to put away old photos and not to look at old albums. but yesterday, i couldn't resist. i was missing my kids so badly. i wanted to see their little faces. i wanted to touch their round, baby fat cheeks with my mind's eye, lovingly gaze at them uninterrupted. i wanted to remember what their little arms felt like around my neck, hear their young voices laughing, singing, calling me "mommy," telling me they love me. i wanted to feel them here in my home.

but they're not here. i don't even know what continent they are on. they are world travelers with their father's considerable money always available to them. and they have picked up his habit of never planning with me till the last minute if they want something from me such as to come visit or to have me fly somewhere to see them in some event. i'm pretty fed up with it. i've lectured, i've begged, i've thrown hissy fits, i've cried, i've pleaded: please plan with me.

but no, they wait till the last minute to say when they're coming to see me.

i know this is disrespectful, but i'm left with accepting that behavior or not seeing them at all. and i think they've learned that they have this power over me. that i'm so desperate to see them that i'll accept them anytime, anywhere and make it work.

only twice have i ever stood up to them about this behavior: once with my son and once with my oldest daughter. it was over vacation scheduling. they had each waited till the last minute to plan the times they were coming to see me. (since their father took them from me over 10 years ago, all my visitation rights were denied by the courts; only their father could decide at his whim when they were allowed to see me.) and as it happened, with both of the dates, i had already planned something major. i had grown tired of sitting around at home waiting for them to come or call each holiday or summer vacation. so in a great step toward emotional health and self-respect, i'd actually planned trips for myself with a friend and my boyfriend. i was just heartsick when it turned out that the only times my kids would come were when i was going to be out of town.

but i decided to go through with my trips. what better way to send them the message that my time, just like their father's, is valuable. that i'm not sitting around pining for them, that i'm moving on with my life.

for a few months afterward, they both got better at planning with me when we'd be together. but this year, once again, my youngest daughter didn't plan till the last minute, a big trip she wanted me to take with her two best friends to see me in san francisco and then fly together to see my mom in nashville. so i was stuck paying for a very expensive full fare flight. but i did set my foot down. i told her she'd have to repay me the amount. she's almost 18 now with a job. it's time for her to get more responsible and to show some respect for my time and my mother's time.

oh, damn, it's so hard to be a non-custodial parent! it's so hard to teach my values to them in the extremely limited time i have with them. when we lived together i had each day and night to teach them values i hold dear: honesy, creativity, inclusiveness, social justice. but now i have a few hours every year. it's so different and still so damn hard!

and so, each morning or afternoon or evening, i sit and meditate. i sit and try to be grateful for all i have, for all i have become. i sit and try to just be in the moment, and not worry about the painful past which i could not prevent or worry over the future which frightens me so with it's looming financial crises. i sit. in the now, i sit. and i sit and i sit and i sit.

sometimes i feel more enlightened. sometimes i feel irritated. sometimes i feel my mind's "monkeys have ADD and need ritalin" as dinty moore put it.

but i sit some more and sometimes the monkeys quit throwing shit at me and others for just a few brief seconds and i find peace. it never lasts. it's always fleeting. but i enjoy it when it comes.

as i know it will, if i will just sit.

my ass hurts!

2008-07-08T23:12:00.000-07:00

i rode all over sf today trying out my new (to me) purple bike.

i had it fixed by awesome mechanics for free at crucible's bike workshop on sunday while i volunteered with the kids who were there to get their bikes fixed or to learn bike maintenance.
and since i was helping at the art table, i decided to teach the kids how to pimp out their bikes using beads and metal wire. we created bike necklaces of many colors. that was fun! i picked pink, purple, & blue, the BISEXUAL flag colors. it's shiny!

and i wore my ass out all day figuring out how to weave in and out of traffic while not getting killed during rush hour in one of the world's busiest downtowns!

i'm the queen of free shit. i got my bike free on BASAPPHO, an awesome listserv hosted at queernet for lesBIan women in the bay area. a friendly dyke in el cerrito gave it to me just for the price of picking it up. (you would not believe the crap i've been able to cram into my little corolla! i've lugged futons, dressers & tall floor lamps, i found on freecycle, often at the same time!

yay! me so proud!

after eating a meal in a cup at jamba juice (my kids introduced me to this and i am addicted!) i sat mesmerized at the GLBT Historical Society's Passing on the Pen program. Queer African American storytellers Jewel Gomez and Frederick Smith read from their published works. Gomez also read from her new poetry and her latest novel - both works in progress.

they were funny and poignant and so down to earth. i loved it!

i had biked to fisherman's wharf today to get practice biking in a busy urban setting mixed with rude auto drivers, intimidating buses, oblivious tourists, madmen cabbies, and other bikers.

it was terrifying.

i'm so goddamn proud of my little selfie! i can't believe i really did it!

the ONLY biking experience i have is:

childhood lessons from my dad which consisted of him rolling me down a hill and cheering me on (surprisingly enough, this worked great!)
desperate mother biking with my 2 arguing daughters (strapped into a toddler trailer on the back but within hair pulling, knee kicking view of each other) and my adventurous son in front escaping my watchful eye (with his own training wheels)
leisurely biking at Edisto Island south of Charleston years ago with my dear friends while i was recovering from surgery when my parents gifted me a week by the sea

in other words, NO URBAN EXPERIENCE!

it was hair raising. but i did it.

and i felt this soaring freeing feeling of moving under the power of my own two feet using no war profiteers oil company products. i felt this wonderful comraderie with every fellow biker i saw. i asked one young man about his tattoo (of a 19th century biker). he was so friendly when i told him it was my first day biking in the city. he cheered me on and gave me info on critical mass which i wanna join. (my former lover/still dear friend does the music for them on their rides.

and my ass is proud and happy!

Dinner before Bi Request June 2008

2008-07-06T23:21:00.001-07:00

Dinner before Bi Request June 2008
Originally uploaded by emilydrennen

Bay Area Bisexual Network hard at work.....

ah the sweet life!

Bay Area Bisexual Network SF PRIDE 2008

2008-07-06T23:16:00.001-07:00

Babn contingent 2008
Originally uploaded by emilydrennen

chillin pre parade

too too too much!

2008-07-06T11:26:00.000-07:00

bisexuality shorts and documentaries, dyke march, pride parade, hosting another bisexual fundraiser, doing PR for the Bay Area Bisexual Network......weighing in on church scandals both in liberal and fundamentalist denominations, visiting more cohousing communities, watching fireworks in the fog at the embarcadero with about a million people, dancing till dawn at burning WoMan parties -"no, no you can't do it wrong at anon salon" was my fave rap song the other night!-that's what i've been up to.

oh and my lover's wife is out of town (we're polyamorous, not cheaters) so he's been here for the last week and i have him till friday.

so i've been an activist by day, partying at night, sexing it up till the wee hours of the morning, and now i'm EXHAUSTED! but i've got to run up to the crucible for the bike workshop today to volunteer. i love volunteering at the crucible.

more later!!!!!!!

(with plenty of pix!!!!)

another cool blog about the bi doc: Bi the Way

*i been way toooooooooooo bizzy to blog lately and stupid fucking blogger shut me out of my blog due to a technical glitch. but i checked the discussions at blogger help and found out this is not an uncommon thing for bloggers here. so i don't know if i'll stay here or migrate elsewhere! i love the functionality of this site but don't want to experience another almost 2 weeks of being shut out of my own blog so i may choose another host.

Bay Area Bisexual Network in Pride 08

2008-06-29T21:04:00.001-07:00

pride7267
Originally uploaded by marymactavish

yay! this is our fabu banner!

2008-06-23T22:30:00.000-07:00

i just met 2 of my new sheroes! pauline park, a korean american wisconson born ny activist trans woman. and ally sheedy, someone i've lusted after since i first saw her in seventeen magazine a million years ago! and i didn't just meet them; i got to gush over how much their movies meant to me! i saw both of them tonight at the frameline lgbt film festival.

i loved all the films i saw today!

they were so amazing!

one was about an austrian woman and a dutch man who'd fallen in love at a youth camp in the 60's and rekindle the flame after many decades AND after he had become a SHE.

being an old school feminist, i still have really mixed feelings about a lot of trans issues, like whether people who are pre-op should be allowed into places where ciswomen want to gather for just females. as a very experienced community organizer, i believe strongly in the power of "separation" politics for organizing means. ie, i think blacks have a right to organize without the presence of whites, women without men, gays and lesbians without straights. i think oppressed people have a right to be alone with each other in a sacred space without the presence of the privileged party even if they are allies.

last year, i stood up for a friend of mine who leads a private club of bi women after she was attacked in the printed press and online media for being anti-trans. i really thought the attack was grossly unfair. and the way it was done was really insensitive since this woman had stood up for trans issues and organized for and with trans people for many years.

i still think she was treated really unfairly. when one pre-op trans organizer found out about my position, s/he ripped me a new one! s/he spread very vicious lies about me and the other woman organizer and left me with a very bad taste in my mouth about trans issues. i talked it over with my trans friend who was my lover at the time and she felt very passionate about discrimination as well but was not rude or mean. she patiently taught me about how trans people feel without attacking me. that spoke volumes to me.

while i'm still wary of trans organizers who are so angry that they eat their own, i've painstakingly tried to teach myself about trans issues by reading, dialogging, and attending panels and lectures.

tonight i got to meet pauline park after watching a doc about her trans activism. she's an international leader and helped get the trans human rights ordinances passed in new york which protect people against gender variance discrimination. she was amazing! and she was incredibly gracious!

i can see why she's so successful. she really makes you want to listen to her story and to empathize with anyone who's felt that their body doesn't match their internal experience. and she's declined surgery and testosterone which puts her in the minority of trans people. watch the film if you get the chance. you'll learn alot about why gender variance laws are so important and why old school feminists like me have a lot to gain by passing such laws!

the final film i saw was "steam," a pungently delightful romantic dramedy with three main characters, all women. even though the writer/director was male, he really got it right! it's so rare to find a male director who writes complex pieces for middle aged and older women. this was an awesome movie! castro theater was packed and there was gasping, clapping, and "right ons" going on throughout the film it was so dead on! and the Q & A session afterwards was very rewarding. ally sheedy played a single mom with a real dick of an ex-husband who jerked the mother of his son around and threatened her with custody battles. (so much like my ex!!!) the storyline was so perfect, i told the director it felt more like a documentary then fiction! he laughed and said he'd based the character on his neighbor!

ally talked about what it was like to play a complex middle aged woman, and she told me privately when i complimented her on her role that her ex was much like the ex in the movie! get out of town! no way! no fucking way! no wonder she played it so well.

chelsea handler had a supporting role and she was a total scene stealer. she was hilarious as ally's sidekick soccer mom!

ruby dee played a church going widow who's sort of given up on life and her beloved piano playing music ministry after falling into a depression over losing her husband. she finds love late in life though and it's touching but not overly sentimental!

a gorgeous freshman coed discovers the joys (and trials) of realizing she's a lesbian and falling for an assertive bisexual hottie. she also finally stands up to her overbearing Catholic parents in a very humorous scene after she gets arrested for.... well, i don't want to spoil the movie for you.

i cannot tell you enough: go see this movie! it is terrific! i'm adding it to my favorites!

2008-06-22T22:45:00.000-07:00

i'm so full of conflicting emotions: deep joy and contentment over being here in san francisco and being OUT; deep sadness over missing my kids so much and knowing how alienated they feel from me for my activism on domestic violence. huge pride at our fabulous LGBT pride culture. (it's pride week and everything is rainbow flags all over the city!) deep grief over all those lost to AIDS and other catastrophic illnesses. deep loneliness over the existential angst and essential aloneness of life. deep exhaustion from staying out late partying this weekend. elation over life - that i'm here now; this is all the life i have and it's pretty fanfuckingtastic!

friday night i met my lover at the burning man party precompression. it was unbelievable! a truly world class party for only $15 $25 if you wore street clothes but you got 10 bucks off if you were dressed in playa insanity! i got in for 15! i took my fuzzy pink floral mini-skirted bathrobe, magic wand, pink sparkly sandals, pink bikini bottoms, and purple hair dye and lipstick (same outfit i'd shopped for and worn to primal last weekend, again with my lover.) but i ended up not wearing any of it, save for the sandals, it was just too damn hot!

the music was killer! and there were 3 levels with multiple stages and diff djs and moods on each level. my favorite were drum corps, all dressed in red. my lover said they did a samba beat with brazilian rhythms. i didn't know what it was, i just know it moved all my chakras, and he and i danced like we were posessed on the front row! the whole place just erupted when they were on! there was a very hot powerful roundish woman leading the bass drummers, and she had a solo song with a low alto voice. she was to die for! mamma mia! i wanted to just throw down and make love to her and the crowd of dancers moved in and took turns moving with her. one luscious young woman with long flowing spiral hair danced so erotically with her very hot butch lover who was all in camo with a shaved head. (ask! tell!)

tonight and friday i worked the LGBT Frameline Film Festival. it's a trip! friday's film was painstakingly slow but so moving! today's matinee, the goodbye and no regrets tour about a man named Gregg Gour, who travels the country - in an RV with his dog - to visit his beloved friends and family before he ends his life after battling HIV/AIDS for 24 years, made me weep. i got to tell his mom how much her son meant to me even though i just "met" him today.

and tonight's film was a series of beautifully shot stories from china, drifting flowers. may, a young girl who falls in love with her older blind sister's "boyfriend" who's actually a dyke. an alzheimer's sufferer who imagines that her new housemate, her long lost gay husband, is her old female lover returned to her. and diego, a harassed but fierce butch trying to find her place in a world which leaves her no inheritance since she's a girl.

yesterday, i just stayed home and made love to my persian all day. he fucks me so good. he makes me come so many ways i've never come before and he's so playful and generous. he's the best lover by a million that i've ever had. i'm wrestling with the fact that we have oral sex with no protection and the consequences which that may bring. we talked about it the other day, since we're both poly and have other lovers, i'm concerned about stds. i haven't resolved this to my satisfaction. or rather my satisfaction has come before my health concerns. and i'm cumming and cumming and cumming. but i still worry over having oral sex unsafely!

but when he puts his tongue on my clit or talks dirty to me and tells me what he's going to do to me, i don't care. i just want him, THERE! now! damn, he's good.

it was so goddamn hot yesterday and my condo has no AC. we kept taking mini-showers and turning the fan on us to cool off. it was still about 90 in my bedroom and i was just scorched! so he went to the freezer, got a popsicle, made me close my eyes and lay down naked, and ran the tip of the frozen treat all over my body, then he'd lick the juices off me. my hips, drip drip lick lick. the inside of my elbow, drip drip lick lick. my thigh, drip drip lick lick. my belly. my fingers. suck suck. my cunt. ooooh that felt so good i squealed and squirmed the whole time!

he loves to take me out to dinner whenever he comes, there's a great indian place just below me which is our usual hangout, but it was closed so we crossed the street to le cheval. i hadn't been there since i'd fainted there 2 weeks ago and the EMTs had been called to take me to the ER.

i felt weird going back, like it was bad luck. it was so hot and there was no air conditioning but they seated us under a fan, and brought us a large pitcher of ice cold water. i took a fine white cloth napkin, discreetly poured the ice water on it, and placed it around my neck. he ordered orange beef, i had french rice and lettuce wrapped chicken egg rolls. ohmygod was it good!

i'm so happy recounting all this. i'm so blessed! even if my kids won't talk to me since i've finally started speaking out about all the violence i lived through, my life is very precious. i miss them everyday, painfully so. but my life, all by itself, not as just a mother and ex-wife, is important! and i have great pleasure every minute of every day when i focus on all i have. when i live in the now.