misplaced mama

Oh goodness.

Here are the next 27 places of gratitude, just because I find it impossible not to finish what I started.

1. Cloudy the horse. If we squint just right at here when she is eating clovers in the field we can see that she has a horn coming out of her lovely white forehead.

2. Oranges halves with sprinkle of brown sugar and a (big)splash of Jack Daniels

3. Planting little seeds like strawflower and queen violet and hyssop. Digging in the dirt so much that my hands are a wonderous color of earth, brown skinned and cracked. Talking to the roots of each starter planting with my daughters, giving thanks to the possibility of the food that will grace out tables.

4. Sunshine. Here in the pacific northwest west I am learning that another word for hope is sun.

5. my husband singing songs he wrote, into a microphone, in the next room.

6. My daughter Zaida’s love for standing on the stool in front of the sink and washing dishes for me.

7. My daughter Mia’s words: mama, sometimes when I am running with the wind and when I say hi, he answers so me back. Or she. I can’t tell if it’s a he or a she.

8. Finding family tucked across the street along the creek. Knowing my dreams of community living are manifesting.

9. Yurts.

10. Living in a state of shock. It’s good to be shocked. It’s life electricity. It wakes up some sleepy part of you that you didn’t mean to put to bed for good.

11. Being withour internet or cell phones for quite some time. It makes me be here. Now. Nowhere else.

12. My little ibook that only holds my writing. There is nothing else on it, no other program to use but Word. And so it goes that without distractions I actually can write something from finish to end.

13. My own personal bravery. Sometimes I really think I am so fucking brave it makes me howl and yelp and dance.
    

14. My daughter Sula who told me she loved me yesterday because I was a “curious old lady.”

15. Making flower essences. I used to to do this back in the day before I had the girls and was re-inspired by a muse that lives up the street. The flowers in my valley are wildly laughing from the earth and some of them just shout out to me, hey, take me. I’m hear for healing.

16. The muse that lives up the street. Her black wings transport me to my own magic and her grounded feets show me the walk.

17. Dark beer.

18. Miatake mushroom extract.

19. My writing group. Five women splitting open to form liquid truth on the page to one another. There is just something to be seen and heard while hashing out one’s thoughts.

20. I am thankful right now that I may not be as rooted as I once planned on being. I am thankful, for whatever reasons, to be going through financial hardship. I am thankful because it once again forces us to re-think our values and lifestyle, refining it even more. There is no need to be stuck in a moment, a record skipping. Sometimes the Uinverse provides hardship so we seek easyship.

21. My town. It is so unbelievably uncool that it’s almost the coolest place on Earth. I come driving down my highway, through the garden of eden green and the heavenly blue it presents and I sigh a relief. After spending most mornings in Bellingham, the cool place, I love heading out to my country spot, where the pigs squeal and the hen’s cluck and neighbors hold 24 hour karaoke parties while BBQing their pigs and chickens.
    

22. Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twin’s album, Rabbit Fur Coat.

23. my mother. I don’t aspire to be her nor please her. And she doesn’t expect me to and for that I am grateful.

24. I am so grateful I came to this lifetime as a writer. It really is so much fun. Everywhere I go and everything I do becomes a story in my head, a chance to figure ou how to explain and describe and create and pass on.

25. Those people who hold me while I write the specific project I am working on. You have been there, not asking too many questions or giving advice, but you have been there to listen and inspire and to not run away from the largeness and, well, utter absurdity of it.

26. Tap dancing.

27. Slot machines.

I think that makes thirty.

Maybe not thirty straight days but I achieve my goals in an out of the ordinary manner. Always have. Always will.