So when my friend could not make breakfast, I took myself to The Breakfast Cottage in Venice. I gazed at the awning next door thinking how little one hears of ukuleles & how interesting a word it is, not often used in conversation.

The Breakfast Cottage had no Hawaiian motif, more Bee Gee oldies playing. There’s always something to write about, tho. This tiny journal alone starts in 2015 with a riff on moving to the Delaware beach, wet towels slung over railings, single flipflops on the beach, sandpiper races along the tidal edge. I am ten years older than when I started it.

Time capsules litter my landscape, an upended medicine bottle of life. Years of massage now packed into one. Office work reopened & spilled out, granular fear playing a whack-a-mole with Rescue Remedy & Hyland’s Calm along the way. Invisibility revisited: I hang my cape in an old phone booth & walk on. I lost my taste buds to Covid, my Volt to an attack of acute metrics, my eyes to the 2-fer $89 glasses special, my hair to diminished vanity & so much more. I gained faith, trust, health, friends & a cool new restaurant as of today.

I get my new teeth next Tuesday!

I’ve written a lot of that which delights me. Today I am accosted by sadness, by all the projects undone or not started, by the way my foot hurts from being stepped on in the dance.

Obtaining a job online – it’s like computer dating – the chances of finding tall dark n handsome offset by the stupids: list every job you ever had, dates & times, titles, locations & reasons for leaving. Well, my job history is pretty long. I might could tell you my first job was as a dishwasher was with Fitzgerald’s Drugstore in Wildwood & I left in September 1962 for high school. Best of luck getting a reference.

They want too much information & not enough of the right stuff, like I enjoy working. I am good at it. I get stuff done. I’m good with people. I’m a problem-solver.

Unity is the second job I voluntarily quit in my life & I have worked since getting my “papers” & my social security number at 16. But today I feel as though I will never be worthy to work again. It’s like love, I’ll never be worthy again. Just to show you how twisted I am, work was my choice over love my whole life.

Today is a loss day. I’m walking the dripping woods with a hobgoblin on my shoulder whispering what a loser I turned out to be.

I hear that work is now a “hurricane” since I left. I get cryptic texts about “what is/where is/how do I” on my phone. I see the place upended like the butt end of the Titanic going down in all those old movies. The band members have already slid into the sea. One friend cries as she tells me I need to be there. Except I don’t anymore.

I cannot work with a narcissist extraordinaire who makes accusation her #1 motivator & who insists on privacy while discussing my errors with peeps at lunch. She had a month to possibly rectify the situation, but chose instead to bring in a contractor (at twice my hourly rate) for 25 hours per week. She did this five days before my departure & told me to teach her everything she needed to know. That’s how little the “boss” – a card-carrying Unity Minister – thought of my work.

There’s a little girl inside boo-hooing & snotty-nosed. She’s getting loose. Time to get the plunger & stuff her back. Or time to let her out & heal? My choice.

My self-image has always been tied up with my work ethic. It didn’t matter if I’d forgotten to bleach my moustache if I got the report done on time. Or if I had an unnoticed stain on my blouse if I showed up & answered every question anyone asked me with a solid solution. I chose my work over my daughter, over my husbands & relationships.

I’m worn out with stuffing things back. I have found it comes out in other ways.

This time alone, not working, is to heal. It is time to allow the sadness of “failure” to out itself. Time now to root out fault-finding, to leave things behind, to understand that no one’s future, let alone mine, is assured or geared to success as all the markers have changed. The life I lived is no longer available for review or notation. Only the feelings remain – like all the self-help books say. “How does that make you feel?”

No snack food will help here, no rubbing my eyes, no self-examination which seems to turn up scars when I cannot recall the wounds that left them.

Today I stick my hand out from the pile of rubble. The other one is holding onto that child.

Dear Carol,

Well, you DID it, Girl! You went & done QUIT! Your! Job! Woo f’n hooo! We were getting tired of pushing you toward the door! We’re sitting back, enjoying a Tall One. To you, Darlin’! To you!

Do angels cuss?

We do.

Is this a dialog?

It can be. Whatcha wanna know? And don’t you dare ask, What’s next! Just let that come to you. We were there yesterday at your party. We listened in to all the conversations – mainly they said how the place won’t be the same without you. But nowhere ever is once you leave.

And By the Way, we don’t mind when you don’t greet us everyday. We know you know. Maybe now it can be different.

Time went away with the Covid Scam. Part of it was to erase & upend time as you knew it. Time never caught up quite to its old standard of before that. Thus you’re neither late nor early in your life right [dare we sat it?] Now.

Even tomorrow time slips a notch once more. Daylight Savings Time – Pshaw! What savings? Your world is lit up with so much artificiality, it’s ludicrous!

So what do you wish to ask?

Well, I was going to start with my future, but that doesn’t seem to be on the table,

Nope

Next?

Have I achieved my purpose?

Depends. What was it?

Oh. I thought you’d know…

And just how would that aspect of Free Will work, Carol? We’re here to observe & support. We’re not dictators.

So, all the time I’ve asked you for inspiration, what’s been happening?

Hey, we relay from the Big Tent, sometimes by megaphone, sometimes in a whisper down the alleyway. You made a bunch of decisions, thinking them divinely inspired, but think on that: You are your own Divinity!

Oh yeh, that’s what all the books say.

The very ones you no longer study since you realize you need to do this on your own. You’ve laid the track, set the barriers, striped the car parks. You’ve set the speed limits & chosen the destinations, too.  We roam ahead & behind, scoping out the routes & making sure the litter gets picked up.

Leave only footprints, remember?

Sometimes you get clear directions, sometimes you’re hearing echoes thinking these original & subscribed to you. But we’ll say at times it WAS us, hoping you’d heart-heed & heal.

It’s been easier with you – this rendition – than with the other you’s. You’re pretty quick on the uptake, mostly ready for change. Pretty sharp until you dig in your heels & holler…

When you block or try to stop the flow, things happen control & contrariwise. You’re learning.

Be the screen door wishin’ on the breeze. Be the laid-back self we know you can be. You’ve SO got this, girl.

We love you, CB, through & through.

~ R, C, D, A & M.

I am here.

The beach.

I left the apartment climbing a racheting of worry: I didn’t bring a …

Whatever & all my civilized mind believes I need for an elemental day.

Driving, I revisit one of the many conversations I could/would/should have had

Yesterday.

I open the car windows: blow the words away.

That

Is

No

More.

 = = = = =

The sandpipers only may run back & forth

Circling one another as my thoughts

The parking places are 9’ high with hurricane sand

I pull into one of the last seven left

I carefully scan the meter structure:

Oh good! I am clear until 10 and it is 8:12.

I keep my sandals on to walk to the waterline,

Distinctive sounds of crunch/slide walking

I eye the knotted trash bag, hoping for a conch

But conchs don’t bear logos.

There are few shells, many fragments.

My breath becomes as deep as the beach

My shadow grows as the sun takes heed, uncovering itself in light

I put my old lady jacket on the back of the chair as I sit.

 = = = = =

I momentarily have no words, but I’ve come here to write

Higher Self prepares to scrawl a renewed prescription for this life.

Yesterday I left my job to a rousing sendoff of friends at a luncheon.

My boss says “I never intended to let you go” & runs thru her too-familiar

Litany of my faults

My heart shrank, my stomach heaved…

This time I could walk out the door.

 = = = =

People asked, “Where are you going?”

I shrugged, I’ve not thought that far

Only knowing I would be at the beach today.

 = = = = =

Growing up on an island means I return to my roots

Ironically in the place where none will ever take

I am movable as the sea, like the sea.

 =  = = = =

I wear no makeup: I took no shower

I wear ocean colors, cloud colors

I am invisible

 = = = = =

I am awake

 = = = = =

I dreamt a dog climbed onto my bed

My throat too clogged with words to say them

I accepted its warmth & quieted.

 = = = = =

I will find a bakery when I leave

(Why must plans intervene?

Why follow a path in front of the biggest mystery I’ll ever know?

Why not be random, erratic? More aware of shadows than what creates them?)

 = = = = =

On this day, I begin a journey unfathomable to many, my plans

For far more than a bakery

 = = = = =

I have been here before

But usually this feeling aligns with making 350 miles before dinner.

My dead vie for control of the pen begging, “Write me immortal! Re-create me

Anew in three dimensions!”

I thank them & write on.

 = = = = =

Tomorrow is November: Tonight Halloween

Church bells ring: An omen?

The waves chase each other

Churning sand to drag back in their retreat

Nowhere else to go, they tag the shore, melting.

The sun decodes me, pushing my personal shadow to one side

”Let me look at you,” she says

“Hey! I like those earrings!”

“Hmmm, no makeup today?”

“Good to see you, Carol, been awhile, but I remember.

I’ve watched you every day & while you think your life is long,

I know that body as a blink on my horizon.”

“I see you like one of those sandpipers,

To & fro & back again, snatching at the ground for nourishment

Flickering wings catching breeze,

A black & white life you lead,

Stark with words.”

Well, my sarcasm meter has embedded itself in the red. The crimes against humanity out there in the world are echoed in the small crimes committed by those who “should” know better. Take my job, for example. Take my job, please.

I know the paradigm shift is the background against which all this is being played out. I know I am divinely protected & fulfilled on the broadest measures even as others suffer madly at the supposed randomness of weather & money fluctuations. Governments can’t help in this suffering. They cannot render justice to balance any scales – to expect them to do so is just plain silly. Besides, by the time they’re involved/invoked, the suffering has been maxed.

Human nature is indefatigable. We rise. And still we rise. For many who are beaten down, there are more waiting to take an upper arm & lift them back to their feet. The stories I can tell have all been told in Greek, in Latin, in Aramaic, in all languages & time perpetuations. The emotions fit a spectrum fading off into the ultra on either side – all the way from & to the zones beyond our hearing & sight. The repercussions echo faintly from the hidden places above, below & to either side. Where does this leave the regular humans? Smack dab in the middle of each individual strand: in joy, in sorrow, in the “meh” factor, cuz we are burnt out or in, burnt up or down.

I hear so much – a symphony of lives playing out the background. My cynicism enlarges as does my laughter as, overall, this is so far from where we should be, it’s laughable. I am not the most balanced individual – had two bowls of ice cream for dinner last night. But I’m not the most un/imbalanced measure on the cosmic scales either. Ever note that cosmic minus one letter = comic?

What is happening at my job is not to be believed if you count upon sanity as a rule. It is based so totally on emotion, on perception, on cosmetics that there’s no recognition of what will happen when the truth is gold (a telling typo made twice there.)

This song struck me years ago & has just resurfaced in my life with deeper resonance. What do we expect outwardly in the world when our inner realms are so out of true?

As to my work, it’s Local Gossip. Our former minister – I work at a church – mentioned the property is built on a native cemetery. Now that’s a mentionable cliche, yeh? But let me tell you, Sons of the Pioneers, the inexplicable & illogical & irredeemable happens there every day. The caretakers dither in the wings as the main production tanks. Afraid of nay-saying themselves, they propose a no comment policy which will ultimately unbalance the entire effort: buildings, grounds, Sunday population, current staff. All will suffer – but only if they choose to accept it as suffering. Is this the big-school lesson always talked about? That Earth-Is-A-School Meme carried to fruition? Or is it just a series of egregious errors compounded by the Board & exaggerated by their choice of ministerial leadership?

Aw, hell. I’m skewed on it. I work there. But only til the 30th. By Samhain, I’m into the New & the void looks mighty attractive at this point. I’ll be someplace else soon with a laundry list of the same things but a chance of doing them with a measure of fun & fulfillment, not negation & nihility. I put in to remove my name from the website as of that date & the webmaster (who is purportedly taking over my job) has already erased me. Did I say I work at a church? She’ll fit right in!

Am I upset? Nah. Surprised? Yeh. Some propriety needs to be kept, I feel. It’s probably an honest mistake of not reading the end of the sentence, the part that says as of 10/30, after the remove me from the website. And this isn’t about that particular item, in fact (fact=truth?) Is jumping the gun the same as jumping the shark? I always say when the series runs out of good story-telling, they bring in the dinosaur threat. There’s a velociraptor in the back ministry office & a t-rex in Fellowship Hall. Truth be told. But truth is way subjective & develops a quick rime of mold when exposed to the air.

The fun part will balance the heavies here (one letter short of ‘heaves’) & do so soon. I can’t stay down that long & it’ll take a longer time to assert balance here than I have time for.

I might be a Cassandra, “cursed” with foreknowledge only to be expressed in cynicism. But as Mammy Yokum always said: “Ah has spoken!”

good morning, Muse.

Stopping by before the storm?

paying a visit?

slapping down your hand on the table asking for some of that cooked-ahead-of-time flounder, and burger, and panko-zucchini, that tuna steak chunk…that beef fajitas strip-meat?

you love the fried food as I do & we grin, cleaning up the kitchen together.

will you help me pack the bugout bag?

will you watch the videos of North Carolina over my shoulder with me?

Will you put your hand across my mouth when I shout my truth out loud …

that truth few seem to wanna hear?

you & I know I can’t keep it to myself.

come with me, let’s open the door

to the peace of the held-in breath

soon the world will crack open

with rain, with wind, with trees bending to the will of fury

ginned up by the ill will of darkness.

Grab a chair, Lady, let’s stare down the storm.

= = = =

this is a Florida morning, not a mountain in sight

insight

this is a day like no other

unique in a dawn promising way more to come in terms of

the adventure of life.

no idea how I got here

it was just an idea: this life

it was diving into the body that would (heh heh) expand with use

grow outward with caloric intake, enlarge even as my mind slims lean

simmering

with thinking about love, with leaning into Love.

i have sat at every table.

i have partaken only some of this & some of that.

sometimes dyspeptic but mostly dipping it into oil & frying it with spices

i can taste.

(seems an irony too big to bear to be unable to taste anymore)

but hell, I know what’s under the Masterpiece is a masterpiece of cellular

structure becoming part of me

exchanging Grace out loud before digging in!

= = = = =

Rescue me, retrieve me

i’ve seen the world from a wall of water before,

from the top of the wave

watching the ship go down

watching the once upon a time spear of the mast

sink below the blue surge

i’ve breathed the water

breathing out of my body

escaping the sluggish movement

of swimming limbs in cold/cold/colder

to fly over the sea

to find an island

to sit on a limb

to preen my feathers

my soul hitches a ride

to heaven’s before & after

i join hands with All That Is

as we laugh about everything that just happened

saying, “can you believe that?!?”

= = = = =

I’m no braver than you

my soul will never get this life together

like yours n yours n yours

my truth will not live to your standards

but even under this burden of perceiving disappointment

this little poem rises

a bubble in the swamp

a burst of iridescence

fragile as a baby’s laugh

fraught with joy wreaked from a poet’s life

seeing the seeking as the only truth

not the arrival but only the journey

pacing down the world

across the spheres

bending a knee to none

even the backpack slung under a tree

to travel free.

= = = = = =

The recklessness of love

choosing me as the object of its affection!

my voice scrapes across the spheres

to find a way to say how much love there is

in this world, to know only love to chant

under the breath of my mother

putting me to breast

to feel that love

as the warm palm of my father

patting my bottom: I sit upon his arm

giggling in the miracle of being held

the song rose then & stayed with me:

that one moment raised me into a heaven

too seldom experienced, yet known

somehow familiar

there was only that hallelujah of a moment

imprinted on a tender heart.

no matter a future of ashes & pain

no matter the darkness rising again

there’s always that music alive in me

vanquishing fear underfoot

my enemies are astounded

i can summon it up

breaking through their snarl

to live so alive & on & on & on…

= = = = =

skipping on the lightning

aiming for my feet

i laugh aloud at the wreckage

the detritus

i bless the mess

i’ve made; i see the next choice

coming up – i grab that golden ring,

holding it a moment to my chest

before flinging it to the crowd

the galloping carousel

will bring me here again

a grumble of machinery

the painted horses sing

i have only to reach

to have that golden ring!

= = = = =

I am free again –

have i said those words before?

have i died again to a life

of no nourishment

no breath?

yes, in deed, indeed

i walk away in an exaltation

of light, restored

to my self: to the greatness God intended me to be!

i bathe in the mercy of light

i move the mountain along with me

just to have a view.

= = = = =

Sitting in my Henry-chair at 2:33, eyes a bit crusty. Checking the storm predictions flowing on Twitter & the news – those chipper Jihadi weathermeisters & their Cats 3-4-5. Well, partner, my cats all had tails & whiskers. I’m a Jersey Girl. We grew up with nor’easters. I do recall this one, though:

Hurricane Agnes – Wikipedia

In both Pennsylvania and New Jersey combined, about 43,594 structures were either destroyed or significantly damaged. In Canada, a mobile home was toppled, …

A mobile home was toppled? 43.5K structures? Helene just sideswiped North Carolina & the bodies … the bodies … it must be a Civil War battlefield scene, era BBB: Before Body Bags.

No matter who does or does not come to “SAVE” us. We are already in our next lives, regardless of lingering in this one to the fullest extent possible.

This post is a ramble. The hour is not unusual anymore. By tomorrow night the Milton will be rattling the front door with rain bands. The boss wants me at work to “go over Sunday Service” today. I’ve got it done but forgot to send it to her before leaving, so I’ll head in. I’ll try to pick up ice if any is left in Sarasota & fill my roommate’s cooler in case of no electric. I’ll fill the bathtubs in the place. I’ll grab two extra gallons of her special filtered water at the Center.

We just fixed the floors & walls there from Tropical Storm Debby – truly ‘Little Debby’ in light of these Cat 5’s lining up.

Lots of speculation on my part – did they pick up enough quartz crystal on Siesta Key’s famed beach to fuel steering Helene? Will a bit of my friend’s floated-off trailer home churn the EV engine on the next Volt? And stop nattering about mobile homes – normally you don’t need much more in a tropical environment so standards were met. It’s another case of needing new conspiracy theories cuz all the old ones have come true.

Truth seems to be “they” are not through with Florida yet. Like the Conquistadores, they’re after the (now) indigenous population but I don’t think there’s lithium here for reward… maybe they need new alligator shoes.

In keeping with irony, yesterday I found an oldie by Richard Bach – a long-favorite author – called Running for Safety. HA! “Nowhere to run to, Baby, nowhere to hide” says the song.

I expect our apartment complex to weather this well. Debby did a good culling of branches but the piles are still on the grounds & a dead tree can be as lethal as a live one being stripped down in the moment. I have said I’m comfortable on both sides of the Veil & might get to experience the flip tomorrow night. But I’ll probably sit in Henry, listening to the wind & supposedly caring about Sunday Service.

I’m out of there soon, anyway. With how that building aged, there might not be anything there come Sunday! My time might be better spent cooking the flounder in the freezer.

There’s only so much I can take: being prodded at work, blogging at 3 a.m., checking on X for weather updates. The only “whether” I have going on is if my kid has enough info to get the little bit of money I have saved – she can donate it to the Florida Relief Go-Fund-Me, yeh?

Me? I’m always at the beginning of something. It’s what I’m best at.

Love,

C

Tossed madly from sleep’s sweet dreamlight

To pebbled shores where it hurts to walk

Returned in a heap, sodden with that ridiculous logic of

Slumber’s illogic

Stumbling sideways, a hard-shell crab tossed onto

Morning’s beach of dark-to-light

The home shore, the other life, the place where

The real is more puzzling than the dream.

Bringing faith with me, I lie, for a moment, stunned

With changing worlds. I draw myself up, blinking

In sudden sun flashed from sea

I believe in me once again, as separate

From all I rise to walk, not fly

To clothe self in this mad world,

More sodden than still, shivering with

Separation.

Superheroes only may apply

Themselves to this,

The saints all stay behind, whispering advice

On how to live when they don’t know the half of it.

= = = = =

We rub noses, dreams & me,

Wet & chilly, streaked with salts

Of life in saline blood, of electrical currents

Reassessing worth & width.

We run about, hiding behind each other

Knowing tomorrow is yesterday reconsidered.

We sneeze & move apart, foraging our quests

& questions while answers skip ahead, just beyond the pale.

= = = = =

HEALING ONE WOUND AT A TIME

Not quite ready for death’s respite

Not quite permitted full life in living color

But hedged about by quality & cause,

We lick what hurts most, long strokes of raspy tongue

The cleansing salt, softening edges of scar,

We straighten up, ignoring pain, mistrust,

We trust the loss & betrayal to bring us somehow to joy

To existential trust

In a system based on malfeasance alone.

Yes, we are crazy & crazed with the smells of life

That which causes us to grow beyond the worst of it.

= = = = =

SHE VISITS

Padding up from behind

I don’t always feel her coming.

She throws a casual arm around my shoulders

For a moment I nestle there

In that sweet hollow next her heart

So richly beating.

Some days she blends with me, we share  the cape of Knowledge

Ironed in understanding.

Some days she covers my eyes & takes me into her spaces

Crowded with life, with love, with pulsing ever-afters realized.

Some days she drags me into chaos, the crowd, the market of

Rotten decay, handing me money, urging me to street food.

Some days find soft meadows rimmed by trees.

These are my favorites.

The days she touches my forehead & pushes me into

Stark reality are harsh

I make my way alone, unwed & stumbling through

Tomorrows all starting again.

= = = = =

WALK ON

I do this all the time, my Warrior before, behind, below

Winking from the path

No longer slowing me down

With caution, no longer testing the air for enemies

Retracting her claws, allowing me safe passage

Through safer lands rendered still by her presence

Just within, shining from my skin.

Some days are all challenge while some are all belonging.

My step does not falter: I am the Journey

Both me & anti-me fumbling fabric for the water flask.

= = = = =

The faraway roads once beckoned

Now I wear out the path between here & there

In no seeming rush except for what is inside pulling,

With no outward drama, dreamed by softer beings

Who work with surface only

Not knowing the turmoil of an unsettled heart.

= = = = =

Love tapped me awake

Spirit woke instead,

Taking the proffered hand

We had our tickets punched at check-out

We grabbed some water

And headed out, grinning

= = = = =