where to start?

i'm back at the mill. some blonde children and their mother just sauntered through the door. my drive to the mill was full of lincoln wonders. there were little girls playing in front of a house dressed up like fairies on j street. there was a couple in love walking into their apartment. i drove by lincoln high, where i loved teaching, even though i was teaching spanish and not english and was not engaging the kids like i wanted to. but i did get to know those kids. their favorite activity (as far as i could tell) was when i had them break into groups by their horoscope sign and collaboratively translate a spanish description of their sign into english. it was kind of too big of a task. but they enjoyed doing it together. one of the brightest students, alex, said that he felt like it was authentically tailored to them. better than "i like to scuba dive. i want to climb mountains." i feel like i kind of sucked as a spanish teacher :) but i tried.

lincoln is kind of bumping for a tuesday night. people were driving with their windows down, smoking their cigarrettes and listening to their music loud. i was listening to npr. i spent the late afteroon listening to the cd "music to make love by," watching the colors and movements of its energy swirl on my computer screen, while i swam safely and warmly in my soul.

right now there's some arabic music playing at the mill and i'm eating a pastrami and swiss cheese sandwich. the guy said "that will be $5.87 for the water, and the sandwich is free." i laughed. i am happy. i have just lived a day that met all of my needs. wow.

really, it was about 3 hours in specific that were the most sublime of my life today. and i can't even go into that. some things appear on my radar for the first time as truly private. sacred. that's all that can be said about that.

this afternoon i think i slept for awhile. i didn't sleep last night. i tried. i'd had plans at 2am that were changed, and then i couldn't sleep, so i started calling back my late night friends. i called cindy back and talked to her calmly for awhile, which was a nice change. she and randy are off to mexico. yay. then i called dave back. he was on his way home, said to come over. i was hoping for guitar so maybe i could sleep. he was thinking espn. then aaron woke up with heartburn and went out to the balcony to smoke a cigarrette and play some guitar. i went out there wrapped up in a blanket and lied down. aaron played. i relaxed. i started to almost fall asleep. he was having kind of an off night on the guitar. we decided we're kindred spirits. it's nice. he kind of brings out the ultra-feminine in me. different people bring different parts out. those that really bring the soul out, well, that's a lot.

i love this pastrami sandwich. i'm totally freewriting right now. after i napped i started thinking in lots of snippets of stories. i feel like i've lost them. i can't wait to get an internet connection so i can blog on call. i get the hook-up next monday. and i have an appointment with pete then, too. so that means at the earliest, i'll go to california monday afternoon. still have to call american airlines. i feel like dealing with one business thing a day. today was time warner cable. i was very polite. much more polite and kind and sweet than i'm used to being. that's good, huh? now that i'm no longer in such a button-pushing home life, i'm freed up.

the kids are swirling and playing. cute. talked to my friend alison today. she's a taurus married to a taurus. these taureans. alison is married to jens who is german. they have a baby hannah. alison is blissed out about hannah. we shared our bliss on the phone. i told her i'm getting a divorce, etc. sounds weird. i sound funny. but oh well. i know my own mind/heart. what else matters, yeah?

yeah, yeah, yeah. :)

i had to let go a little bit today. it was okay. one of the stories i was thinking about telling was my deepest memory with my mom. i was 4 1/2. she was telling me my grandpa had died. her father was the most important person in her life. he was really fun-loving, masculine, full of praise, and giving. he bought me lots of kind of big presents. like he had to search all over omaha for the right rocking horse for me that would whinny and everything. i used to go up into the attic when i was too old to ride that horse anymore and climb on, just to hear it do its clicking and whinnying. i was amazed it still did that. after people had died and everything. my grandpa died of cancer. he was a bald and beautiful man. i remember him much more clearly today. his name was bob hammond. my grandma annie fell in love with him when they were six. they were born a week apart. my grandma, whose mother was born in scotland and came over with two kids after her husband died in world war II, converted to catholicism to marry my grandpa. the religion ended up meaning more to her than him. anyways, i digress a lot. i think i'm pretty opened up right now.

when my grandpa died, my mom tried to explain it to me. she told me he died and went to heaven. she said we wouldn't see him again, like he wouldn't come over, but he was in heaven. i asked my mom if she would die. i think i sensed there was danger. looking at her pscyhiatrist records i see that she wished she were in the coffin when she saw him in it. i see that she was severely depressed when she was telling me about this. i asked my mom if she would die, and she said no, and i said "promise?" i had learned please and thank you. now i was learning what a promise is. she promised. this is usually like my most painful memory, the deepest, most important promise ever made to me that was broken.

i feel like i can bring it up now because i've got the support. pete knew me when i was trying to work on my master's thesis like 3-4 years ago. now it's bound and done. i don't think i've read it since i wrote it. i needed to get it out and get the friggin' degree. my old neighbor has had it for a year. last summer when sarah thomas got me to sell arbonne with her (and thus i got to understand my mom's mary kay experience) i went to see everyone i'd known. this neighbor sue had always been fascinating to me. we had various connections. my brother used to sell her daughter pot. she wasn't overly concerned about this. it was the late 70's. my grandma had a painting by sue that my mom had bought her. sue didn't know my mom very well, but she'd met her. when i went to see sue, we talked for like 5 hours. i had no idea how liberal and cool she is, especially for bellevue. her husband stan is so sweet, too. he's retired military. at first i bristle at such a designation, but stain was so sweet. he was depressed. he was retired and didn't feel very vital. he would meet with his buddies and talk about investing. he watched dvd's with sue. they gave me a bunch to watch which i still haven't gotten to. some on warren buffet. a lot on psychology. sue is into psychology, new age kind of stuff, just really well read. she took me down into her studio. she's a self-taught artist. she gave me a ton of prints. pretty awesome stuff that i have rolled up on top of a bookcase in the purple room that was maybe going to be a nursery someday in clint and i's house. i tried to tell clint about it. i never got to. he never saw the art. it's rolled up on top of the bookcase waiting for what comes next. sue said she'd give me this one print when i was pregnant. she wanted to meet clint. i knew it wouldn't happen. anyways, i need to see her to get my bound thesis back. she passed it along to her daughter sarah who is a paraplegic now. she had a really bad drug trip and fell off a cliff, naked and alone in the wilderness. now she's a buddhist. i need to meet sarah. sue thought sarah would appreciate my piece in the fragmented thesis on seeing the dalai lama.

when you try to capture your experience, it does come out in fragments. i love that i've gained an understanding of this. my new and kind of old idea is that i want to work with older people. i really like older people. i feel repetitive. i love hearing people's life stories, and i feel like people really need to relive their memories when they're older. i've watched my grandparents do this, my dad, etc. i need to re-read mary pipher's book on aging. can't remember what it's called. need to get all of her books out of the basement.

last night i called my dad at midnight and said i want to become a geriatric counselor. it was kind of a joke. it was also kind of serious. he laughed and was my dad who doesn't mind too much if i need to call him at a bad hour to say something important. we started doing this in college. i called him anytime i would think of something to say or ask him. it's our relationship. we like it. i called him tonight briefly to talk about some practical things, told him going ahead with divorce. he could hear i was happy. he called me sweetheart. i'm so grateful he's alive. done with chemo. back to being him. not in crisis. wow.

steve and tom are going to be in town. they're going to maybe come visit me in lincoln. they want to come here i guess. steve likes to get down to lincoln. he's staying with ron right now. tom will stay with marilyn. they'll have to entertain a lot of barelman's, marilyn's family, for the family reunion. since i'm not on marilyn's side of the family, i'm not going. my old high school principal was marilyn's cousin. small world.

i'm like going on and on. i don't imagine you will read this. but i like typing a lot at the mill right now. i've had a beautiful day, and i don't want it to end. my pastrami sandwich is almost done. i feel like i'm ready to go back to teaching writing and grading papers. but i won't do that this year because i'm taking classes. in a way, i'm like what was i thinking? i was thinking a phd in english. i don't know. a job would be better. we'll see. i'll be glad to go back to teaching, even subbing, in august. will be good to be part of that again. also looking forward to taking joy castro's narrative non-fiction class. even though it kind of scares me because it's been so important to me. because i feel like personal narrative can save your life. or make your life. it's complicated, and it's simple.

it's beautiful, i will tell you that. i am really, really lucky. i feel so lucky. i learned my body's major chord. it's E. i knew that. i want to hear some music soon. dave said music can be on tonight. i need it to be just music. just connection. my soul is full. it wants to be vibrate. it wants to wait. it wants to live. it wants to love. fully.