What happens in Vegas... is written in my blog.

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My fantastic birthday

It's late, I'm tired. I cannot go to bed without saying this:
My friends are the greatest people, we chose each other well. People have left me the most heartfelt messages, made amazing efforts, been there..
Old friends have resurfaced this week in such amazing ways.
I am so thankful to have Jon back, I missed you, you silly Bostonian.
All my old crew from Lower Haight found me on "my space". A forum I once chastised has become a useful tool indeed.
"Nicknak" from my mission machine shop days, called after a year or so. Apparently I'm still his active "Costco Wife". He continues to pay my executive membership every year though I haven't even lived in SF for over 2 years. What a cool guy. He has the biggest heart. I'm sorry to hear Roy passed. Rest in peace my friend.
Justin and Deanna have one of the cutest babies I have ever seen. I expected no less. What I didn't expect was for them to roll into town(driving back up north after camping in Joshua Tree) and call and invite me to have lunch ONE BLOCK from where I was standing. Little Iris and I are bounded souls, I dreamt of her 13 years ago while living at "the ranch" in Isla Vista. We fell in love immediately. Justin and Deanna set the bar for great marriages. We should all be so lucky.

Kelly, Kat, and Sadie(the coolest12 year old on earth) flew into town on my birthday and made last night even more special..
Ariadne, my special Hawaii pal, moved to SF and just happened to call on my birthday. She doesn't even know that yet.

No words can describe how I feel about the magnificent Toad. You made my birthday some kind of daydream. You even got me a trashcan for my bathroom! A purchase long overdue! All those amazing gifts! You rock my world.
This sums it up best

"I'm so excited I can barely cope, I'm sizzling like an isotope. I'm on fire so cut me some slack.." Steely Dan

Not so bad being 36 with Toad around!

Mikey, you are my brother, my emercency contact person, an angel FO'SHO'.
Lastly, I'll keep your names private but..

My clients are amazing people. I adore everyone of you.

M- My new Jewish Mother (her words).

H and B- Your constant thoughtfulness is enough to give hope to even the most devoted cynics.

L- You are a man among men, and give lawyers a better name.

J- you never forget anything. You make neurosis almost appealing. XO!

J and F- I wish we were related so I could spend every holiday with you and your kids always. You also have EXCEPTIONAL taste in art and music. Massages are delightful with Miles blasting in your modern living room. I could gobble up your children,they are so delicious. The fruits of a healthy household.

R- No one has EVER given me a present of this kind. I feel like a princess. Your generosity makes me weep. What have I done to deserve such a beautiful sparkly present such as this? I really love you my friend.

L and S- Are you kidding me with this tip??? You continue to be my biggest fans here, the very reason I moved here. You are like my pimps, but you don't take a cut! Hee hee.

And your Mom is the coolest lady in BH. I can't wait for the Emmy's.

J , N, and A- You are the 3 little bears. I love your words, your home, your talent, your avocado salad dressing and your jam. You are divine people, truly.

Even my cat can't believe our good fortune. Just look at him...

Easter at Lake Casitas

This picture sums it all up. My weekend was really this good.

Poetry

Bee Charmer
What do I say to a lonely morning that rides in upon
A two-month glory of loves lost reclamation?
Are my laden and muted infantile unreasons
Crying like some Beverly Hills babies’ demons?
Or do I beg to weigh in like the bellies of the bees,
That brought you all here to stay and lovingly appease,
The queen that can only perhaps be,
The solidified, strengthened, me?
I could also let the fear begin, (yawn) yet again…
Blame the courts and seer the castles keepers’ sins.
Or, maybe feel the sheet of this summers narcissistic heat
It will burn like gin,
And finally beat my heart to win,
It’s own war from within.
But
This time…
I do have merit in this quiet offering,
Inside my bags are full of your honey and my value tea.
I’ll share some golden moods
That poor out thick onto you,
And in my love I choose,
To slowly continue.
I am strewn and splayed about in earthly lady-ness.
Full from being blessed by a hungry meal of my past,
And also this, brutal, bashful, now-ness.
I could summon bad weather upon those that stay quiet,
While loudly commanding parades of selfish,
Hemorrhaging riots.
But
This time…
Silence holds a dead devils gunshot,
I’d rather sleep than once again get caught,
Running alone and far forgot,
Behind another wasted lot.

Fish
I’m packed on ice.
A big fish in a small cooler
Toxic, over-used, porous, and over-priced
I’ve been prematurely halted
From my frenetic deck flopping
Splintered and crazed on wood planks
Slimed and sopping.
That was still better than this,
Home, dummy, was merely inches away.
Yet, here I am, and almost am not,
Stopped, blocked, eyes wide and blood shot.
With a heart that miraculously still keeps a beat.
The fisherman hooked my lips,
His usage of being large never did make much sense.
Reeled me in from clear, comprehensible places,
Where life motions in constancy and delivers its graces.
Visitors swish and glide in peace and thanks
To combine paths into small, determined wakes.
Sharing the effects of their efforts with mine,
No obligatory invitations, any place, any time.
Just a pulling in of one another’s needings,
For each new passage and blessed feedings.
Now, it seems, I’ll wait here bleeding.

(This paper is so lazy it begs the pens efforts to end this pause,
Reach it’s self to cause, make some connection,
Arouse a new invention, and mark it’s own intention.
That is nearly undeserving of the word…)

I’ve heard of others from this habitat,
Strong enough to lift the cover,
Get away unheard or discovered
Leaving the hunter in dismay
“By his fare, he has been betrayed!”
This is the irony of his thinking ways!
He will share his story with his friends this fall
And no one will believe there ever a fish at all.
Not one he could catch, hold on to, or even ever call.

So push this lid you insipid slab of bloat
Use your gills in unison to escape
The prison you now devote!
Goodbye! I did it! Swim you little idiot!

Horrorscopes
Nothing thus far has ever been cast
Whether been seen nor said
That changes the way my heads lifts from my bed
Tell me to be a mouse or lizard today
I’ll behave like a cow if I wish it that way.
Elements of which I am said to be a part
Determine my time for bad luck and new starts.
You silly pig it is your year,
To bathe not in great wealth,
But in financial fear.
The IRS will put you in place
Because Saturn squared Mars somewhere in space.
Love wont be arriving this year or the last,
We told you this decade would go none to fast.
Twenty-eight will surely be as hard as it gets,
But still nothing like fifty-six,
For you’ll have to regroup
…. While removing a cist.

Dandelion seeds
My dandelion seeds fall to the bottom of a well.
Life been told but too soon to tell.
What was to become,
Has already been done

A cultural casualty, a spiritual calamity,
Becoming what I hadn’t wished to see.
I’m tripping on broken olive branches
Thrown by cautions final chances
A life in retrograde, a groundhogs tale,
An angry rabbit
Being chased by a snail.

Vaingloriously alone,
The marching band sits,
On a silent trombone.
Intend a song! That is what I say,
Dreaming of peace
But not taught how to pray.
This recycled blood, diluted by the flood,
Of women the before me
Forgotten by love.

Every leaf is a wing
Little feathers
On great big trees
Once I thought I saw
A black bird on an open crowded sea,
But it was just a
Tiny hand, holding
A quiet
Silly dream.

For my cat,King Leo
Ode to the freedom of spirits in pale orange.
He softly sleeps and then chooses to leap from my invisible cradle built on an eternal fable.
I vow to keep you safe while defying a promise to fate,
Because the choice is truly not mine.
Your path is deeply dug in the absence of time
While I attempt to force your circle into a silly ridiculous line.
You are far less fearless than the strength of my needing nearness,
So I let you go tonight to contribute to a trusting light,
And breathe in turbulence more steady than this fight to be right.
For the sake of your perfect little heart that beats in the time with a world without parts
And shows me to live to be free of sad ends and fresh starts.

FALLIN STAR
I FELL ASLEEP IN MY THIRTY-SECOND SPRING
A TlNY SPRIG IN A DYING TREE
IT WAS A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM
A STORY WITH NO THEME
MORE UNREAL THOUGH STILL THE SAME
MORE WILD AND FAR MORE TAME
TIME HAS STOPPED
INTENT DISCONTIUED
A FALLEN ANGEL TO BE YOUR MUSE
A MELTED STRUCTURE
PERMANANT WIND
LOOKING UP AT THE SOUL WHERE I ONCE
LIVED
A SPIRAL IN A CAVE
ODDLY FREE
AND MUCH MORE BRAVE
NO ORACLE CAN GUIDE MY HEART
THERE CANNOT BE A MAZE WITHOUT A FINISH
AND A START
MY ROAD BECAME A RIPPLE IN A WAVE
NO VESSEL FOR BIRTH
NO NEED FOR A GRAVE
TO FEEL ME YOU MUST BE ME
YOU MUST SWIM BUT ALWAYS LEAVE THE SEA
I HAVEN'T A WAY TO HOLD
BUT THESE LIFELESS ARMS ARE MORE YOUNG
THAN THEY ARE OLD
THIS IS THE PLACE WHERE LOVE LIES SLEEPING
NEVER MOVING BUT ALWAYS LEAPING

One of the best relationships I've ever had only lasted about ten days and it was about ten years ago. He and I just corresponded last week for the first time since then. Today he arrives in Los Angeles from Toronto. He is now doing exactly what he told me he wanted to do as he boarded a plane that would take him back to London at age nineteen. “I’m going to be a film maker and an actor, I have to go home and complete my time at the university”. We cried as we said goodbye. I was twenty-four years old. We wrote letters that came in envelopes, with stamps and paper, real handwriting, the works. We kept it up for two months or so and then we just stopped.
I met "J" while my friend Alex and I were staying at a youth hostel on Oahu's North Shore. We were on our way back to the Big Island after having spent a month and a half in Tahiti living it up with the locals. We didn't really have a plan, we were just going back to where we left from and we had been happy there. For Alex and I being happy was something you didn’t walk away from. Our last months in San Francisco hadn’t been easy ones. We had both experienced the kind of heartbreak that changes a person forever. Waipio Valley had started to become home. We had a way there, a way of being good, I mean really good- hearted and easy going, and the payoff of that kind of natural allowing was big. That was the freest I’ve ever felt. I had time. She had money and time. We had each other; we could walk for hours and talk about nothing or the biggest things. We took pleasure in any body of water, in meeting any new person, in a simple trip to town. Even the toughest local guys softened up around us. We were in scary situations once in a while but somehow those are now the funniest stories we have. Like getting lost for 6 hours in the woods in Paauilo still in our pajamas and in the middle of a 4 day fast. We ended up on a highway 3 miles from the house. I’ve never been so hungry or thirsty. Then there was the time we nearly got trampled in the dark by galloping wild horses. It was only funny because we didn’t get trampled and that was the first time our knees knocked together. They actually knocked with fear (and from the long walk down the steepest hill ever). We thought that was just an expression. It didn’t matter how long anything took because we had time. That perspective becomes less accessible as I approach my thirty-sixth year. I struggle with my inability to “grow up” and my desire to continue a youthful outlook is never ending. I don’t know how to be thirty-six. I knew exactly how to be twenty-six.
I was always the talker. I can talk to anyone. I was resourceful in a pinch.
Alex was the shy, natural beauty with a quiet but high voice. She was so uncomfortable in her own skin that it was endearing and lovely to everyone. The combination was a good one. Sometimes I got mad at her for thinking things she didn’t say when she was mad and she got mad at me for saying how mad I was too easily. I always said it was the exact same thing. I was just louder. Her face would tell everything she felt, she has never been able to hide a thought from me and I know it was exhausting for her sometimes, because I could never ignore her expressions. I had to call her on it. I always regretted upsetting her later though. I wanted to protect her from everything, including me.
I liked to be sexy and I usually got attention from men because I didn’t mind running around half naked while she wore big board shorts and long T-shirts. Men wanted to have sex with me, men wanted to marry Alex. Our current circumstances are exactly as I knew they would be. She is pregnant with her third child, has a helpful, loving, responsible husband, a great house, and pets. She calls me in tears every now then because she hasn’t slept in 5 years and can’t cope. It passes in a day usually. I let her know that I chose the easy route. She took on a braver path than I am capable of. This I know. People always said I would be a great mom. Everyone was sure I would have kids but I knew it wouldn’t happen. That takes a totally different kind of courage than I come with. I’m an adventurer. Motherhood requires sitting for long periods and staying for years.
"J" walked by me as Alex and I sat on the cement ground outside the door to our room at the hostel. We were buzzed from whatever we had been drinking with other twenty-something travelers. I slurred some ridiculous thing to him like “you look like arch angel Gabriel”. He was (is) lovely. He had curly blond hair, glinty blue eyes and full pink lips. He sat down next to me and we didn’t part for 10 days. We told each other we loved each other that night on the beach. I don’t think we slept until 5 am.
He came with us to Waipio Valley. We had a big house on 3 acres of tropical land and it was our job to clean and maintain the other houses that were rented out by tourists. One of those houses was thirty feet up in a monkey pod tree. We picked the tourist up in a four-wheel drive Jeep and bounced across 7 rivers, water slopping up on the windshield at times, and eventually delivering them to their specified cabins. "J" and I frolicked around the jungle. We cooked, and hiked, talked, had sex, drank with Alex and the other two caretakers (who, coincidently, also happened to be from London) and laughed.
It was healthy and friendly and he’s here. I can’t wait to see him.
I just received this e-mail 3 minutes ago… Such is life!

Hey you! Sorry I've been bombarded with a task to find Canadian directors for a 'live earth' festival in London in July. I've also managed to contract bronchitis! Yummy! So I've postponed my trip out :(
I'll call you soon anyway - hope all is swell.