Winding down 2009 and preparing for the rest of my life.

- I am in love.

- Today is my last day of 2009 in the Bay Area. This morning was my last morning in Oakland for 2009. Praise all that is good in this world.

- Tonight I drive home to Santa Clarita to see family. My sisters and I are all going to be under the same roof. This is very, very, very Good.

- Christmas is Thursday. The Nativity fast will be over. I'm eager for the birth of Christ.

- Michigan next week, then Chicago for a wedding, then Michigan. I get snow around Christmastime!! Be very jealous, please. Thank you.

 - My mouse is cooped up in my car today while I work.

- So are the flowers Zak bought me this week. I hope my mouse doesn't die of Lily poisoning. It would be ironic because her name is Lil which is short for Lily.

- I'm in love. This is first and last on my daily report. I am very much in love.

Done with Semester One

- A 1/4 of the way done with graduate school.

- The floor is covered in cookie crumbs. My dorm room windows are foggy.

- The Bay Area is cold and understands an inkling of winter: forty-two degrees this morning and I shivered in my blankets before remembering I had a thermostat. Temperature regulator.

- Jesus is on my bookshelf. He watches me sleep and sometimes it is comforting and sometimes I am afraid because he Knows. Whatever it is that I am always hiding. And I never know what I am hiding, for.

- It is easier to write when I am thinking. Today I am not because my fingers are cold.

- I want to live in the city. I want to live in the sometimes sun. I like our friends in the city. They are warm and memory and feel bless-ed ages even though it's only been since August. September. January. My life will be young when I am old.

- I said our because you are my home.

Things are very far between point A and point B and it is two (twenty-two) a.m. and I have yet to fall asleep.

I've been stuck in another world these past few days and have surfaced for air (once, twice) only briefly. Tomorrow I refuse to descend again. Tomorrow I'll write about tutors and teachers and students and make it a pretty triangle with something remarkable (?) at its core.

That is, if I can still think in the morning. Supposing I still have a mind for anything but small towns in Sicily and Biblical legends. I need some sleep.


Where are we? The dust has only just begun to fall.

Crop circles in the carpet.

I think everyone should know that I just impulsively researched cheap flights to Italy.

As soon as anyone has three thousand dollars they want to donate to the cause of a good fantasy novel, let me know.

I'm going to go plan other ridiculous adventures.

I am at school for writing. Can you really get a masters in Creativity?

This tonight is the end of a long day of story telling. I am used to tipping my nose in my tea. There is honey caked on my chin. A story has been written.

Maybe this time next year she'll be sitting on a shelf in a bookstore wanting somebody to love her and I will say, Ebony, my child, my prodigal. To be loved is not to be.

Today is a day I worry about me because I've been stuck in her world for nearly 24 joined hours. Zak called me today and I think he was worried because I was forgetting how to answer a phone. I had three missed texts before noon. There are no cell phones at sea.

And I said to my roommate, I have been writing all day. She said, that is why you are here.

30thousand to sit and write all day long. I just wish the money was going into my pocket, instead of out.
Someday.

Maybe next year when she's sitting on the shelf and I am telling her You are Loved, and she is smiling and saying, You too.

My tea is cold. Time to heat it up again.

Welcome back

Hm. Poetry sits thick in fingertips that refuse to surrender what they're thinking. It's because I'm thinking that I cannot write. My fingers don't think and when I actually let them write they make up nice stuff. When I am doing the writing I make up garbage and sometimes I get confused--where did that come from? Where did the deep poems go?

---

Thanksgiving: is over :(. Zak and I returned north with heavy hearts, leaving family behind in a house in a valley with streets I have known my entire life but it took moving away for me to realize I'd never grow tired of them. Of it. Of the places I know and walking/driving/go-going and running into everyone--into the constant Familiar (face, person, circumstance, location) that triggers memories--which are neither good nor bad are just memory--and are Home.

I miss. Home. And I just left yesterday morning.
---

There's a new poem here for your perusal: Poem | Blog


Christmas is coming. The turkeys can relax. The goose begins to sweat.

My mouse can run on her wheel for two and a half hours before she has to stop,
which is surprising, considering that I never feed her.

Orinda Adventures

With my first Sunday off, Zak and I drove north to Orinda and visited St John's (Orthodox Church), which was a lovely Antiochian service that reminded me a little of St Athanasius in Santa Barbara (oh, how I miss thee :( ). Fr George was a very kind man, made us feel welcome and at home. I am falling in love with the Church again; after (how many? too many) months of irregular attendance, these free Sundays already have me settling back into the quiet space my heart's been longing for. Christian Community. Just the words make my core melt a little. It's like finding a new kind of home each time I cross another threshold. Hello, iconostasis. You are a breath of Serenity, to me.

After Church, Zak and I headed to Tilden National Park (straddles Berkeley and a couple other northward, Bay area places) to take a ride on...


A STEAM ENGINE RAILROAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mmmk it was a train with a bunch of children on it and we THOROUGHLY enjoyed the circling tour of trees. As the train wound through the national park, I couldn't help but grin. The conductor even said "ALLL ABOOOARD!"

It was just like Disneyland.

Only it was only $2.

And there weren't any princesses.

Except me.

Oh, and a 2yr old girl who was dressed up as Jasmine. I also made friends with a little boy wearing a frog backpack.

I couldn't think of a more perfect way to spend this Sunday. On to more great adventures!

Oh, and Zak and I visited THREE cafe/coffee shops for Perfect Cup. Check em out! :)

justhey

I work at a spa and listen to people get hair ripped off of their unmentionables all day long.

It's romantic, really, when a woman comes in with her boyfriend and he sits there happily flipping through Cosmo while she screams in the back room.


---

In other news, I get a free facial today. Hurrah for spa!

AND I don't work Sundays anymore. Tomorrow's destination: Orinda.

NEW ADVENTURE!!!

The Perfect Cup: http://perfect-cup.blogspot.com

Zak and I have begun a new adventure.


We're looking for the perfect cup of coffee. And blogging about it. You're gonna wanna see it.

Follow us at http://perfect-cup.blogspot..com as we jump around, sampling brews and espressos, lattes and cappuccinos, in search: for the perfect cup, and the perfect coffee-house atmosphere.

Tomorrow I will have a blog for poetry. I suppose poems will no longer appear here?

That is probably mostly a lie.

go here for the poems: http://krobyn-poetry.blogspot.com


stay here for the life.

San Francisco

I keep forgetting I live in the Bay Area and pretend I am in SoCal with sunny skies and sea breezes, because here it is gray skies and freeways underneath my window while gulls circle overhead looking for some semblance of the ocean.

(which is here, somewhere, past the city, I am sure, but it's crowded by narrow streets and 45 degree hills and a giant blinking gold sign that points this way for Chocolate).

Today I am not a poet.
I will be a poet tomorrow.
Today I am a sleeper behind a fogged window on which I draw a heart and smile because it's cold outside, in the city, and my Home is miles away.

i used to write about toes but now i write about love
(which seems cliche) (but is it cliche when everyday
is new, to me?)

is it ordinary when every morning is a new opportunity
to be falling, unexpectedly, into, it?

and even if its something that happens to the (nearly) "Everyone"
it is significant--because it is happening, in the Every Day
to this Someone, to two Someones--to the extraordinary: him.

to the everyday, to the ordinary: me.

Nov-em-burr

On the first day of November, I considered picking a theme on which to write each day, but it is now the third and I have no theme.

Cousin Megan visited the past three days and let me say it was SO GOOD to be with family, even for so short a time.

Hi, San Francisco, I'm sorry we abused you, but I'd never RIDDEN a cable car and I REALLY wanted to go to the Disney Museum (which is only closed on Tuesdays--the only day we had) and I didn't MEAN to search for the Palace for two hours, only to wander around like a tourist taking pictures while craned-neck-gaping.

I apologize, SF, because I am not sorry for being a tourist. I got a free ride on the cable car and a $1.25 visit to SFMOMA and looked at a urinal signed by some contemporary artist and said, yes, I suppose he knew what he was doing but to me this looks like backyard junk, much like the poodles in a circle around a white baby and the painting of the Virgin via elephant dung.

But the see-through skybridge that lets you gape down four stories below your unsuspecting feet certainly made my heart race with--fear? terror? awe at human ingenuity?--all of these things. 

Tip: If you're visiting San Francisco, buy a City Pass, then when you're leaving the city early, make some local (me)'s day by donating the book with the leftover tickets. Free museums, free cable cars. Free San Francisco.

We ate our way through the city but it's okay because we walked for hours. Just like Disneyland.

deear blogworld

The Bay Bridge is broken. I do not approve.



I just re-arranged my room for the (sixth? seventh?) time this semester. Looks awesome. What's that word? fung-shwey? (excuse the phonetic spelling.)




Poems are funny things. They make me confused as to why I am here. In a good way.


(decipher that)

You're soft like the Rain

and deep like the sea.

--

I'm coughing up a lung today and I think it's funny because I treat me pretty properly.

More sleep please.

Happy birthday to Zak who is twenty-four years old today and will always be

older than

me. 

he he.

He's made of magic, you see, my better Soul, and makes me believe in Happily-

ever-after, repeatedly, and we're like two peas in a pod, two-

pieced puzzle, two hearts dreaming together, two minds

in the Love nestled in the Palm in the lap of the God

who is my Tomorrow and makes our Today and formed a Yesterday 

so we could be Now and Love and Trusting 

and Trusted. Oh, Lucky, I'm in

Love.

Every day is new. 

I am doubting I say and he says no, you are not doubting, let me show you doubt.

and he pulls the picture from beneath his books and points to the man in the center

This is doubt, he says, this is a man who is full of doubt and it shows in the creases in his eyes, in the red of his irises.

I am still doubting, I say, and show him my list of ten problems and he looks at them like I am made of white wool
and he says no, you are not

made of doubt, you are made of a question.

But there is no answer, I say,

and he says, you cannot hear it, because you talk

too loud.

Just things I think about tonight

I am made of something that (I would like to say is prairie dust, but) is
suburban streets with concrete pavement tattooing feet
that tap, not barefoot, but heeled and stuccoed
like the face of our home (not honey-suckled, but) saturated
with tan paint the color of desert dust.

It's okay because the summer is one-hundred
and four degrees at sunset and burns the skin
like sex at midnight, (which, even if I have no first-hand
experience, sounds like chaos that erupts,
like terror, at dawn).

And I miss my family because they, like him,
are home, in a different way: are Home in the blood-lines,
in the Love that hurts when I eat dinner
alone.

These words are capitals on purpose because of Truth,
of Stories, of Permanence that wraps my wrists
in thirsty grins akin to purpose but instead are sleepy,
are wishing, and Miss:

the mom that holds me when I am tired and runs
her fingers through my hair in the heat
of the desert, in the soft of suburbia.

the dad that kisses my cheek, with an I love you
(and he Means it, with a capital Meaning like Reason,
like Understanding, like the Truth
that forgets where I came from and dreams for where I
go).

My God is something blue like the Iris,
is something black like the night, is purple
like the velvet of the pillow that waits
for my cheek but instead is forgotten alongside the

fists I press into my forehead. My God is God.
It is different because you are confused: what is she writing
about? What does she mean?

I mean that home is halfway across the bay, is at the base
of this large state, is in the red prayer book at my beside,
is the dawn. Is the twilight.

You are

You are my favorite (something, someone, inhale, jumping-jack) 

you taste like (sunshine, bananas, ice cream, mud pies)

you feel like (silk, satin, sheen, breeze, jersey) against my skin and your heart 

is (purple, blue, fire-engine red) inside of mine.

Say it aint so--ohwhoaohwhoa

I came home from a weekend in the woods--with 13/14 others, in the heart of Lagunitas--and sat on my bed. I then proceeded to consume an entire bag of Trader Joes peanut butter filled pretzels.

I have white mask on my face
My mouse is chewing her way through a steel barred cage
Salt granules cake my brown comforter
And I had no one water my Ivy this weekend.

But that is okay. Because Ivy is invincible.

My starving mouse, however, is not.

---
In other news, my spirit's soaring again and my soul is more settled--all because I finally skipped out on work this morning and was able to attend church. Praise God His voice was Thunderous music to my ears today.

Ah. Lord I miss you when I am far from your Sanctuary. Bring me Home to the Church again soon.

Fall on me (for anything you like)

They say that some things never die (no, I have no idea who they are, and I do not know what those certain somethings are). But I am intrigued.

A pathos plant seems to never die. They last multiple human lifetimes and only die when you toss it in the trash and stop watering it. A tree seems to never die. They pride themselves in getting rounder and fatter and continue to shoot up to the sky till someone in need of a cross or a cradle cuts them down. I suppose its mostly plant things that never die. Probably because they have no consciousness so they never have to worry. Maybe that is why we find them soothing.

Maybe that is why I purchased a bush of ivy and put it on my bookshelf today. Because plants never die. Because they don't worry. Maybe I am trying to learn a lesson.

Mostly, though, I think I am just a compulsive shopper.

stresshisseslikeyour teeth

I'm lying on my bed with a round, heavy stone in the center of my back because I want to be centered and I think it might be something like those stone massages--or, I thought--but so far its just a rock.

I'm feeling oppressed. By nothing. I am impulsively filling the silence with Linkin Park and I am only slightly ashamed.

I just finished reading a Sarah Dessen book (not ashamed) and am on to figure out how to raise 900 dollars in less than a week, so that I can keep going to this school.

If I am living on the streets by the end of next week, it's because Mills Student Accounts and Financial Aid is run by vampires.

War

Someone is smashing things against the wall downstairs in my apartment.

It's very violent (a fitting couple to the shrieking sirens outside the window).

Each smash is accompanied by a horrified shriek.

You might wonder why I am doing nothing to help or hinder the smashings.

It's because Erica and Gina (two of my four housemates) have declared war on our recent infestation--of flies.

And I would say I told you so because we never take out the trash,

but that would mean I never take out the trash. And I do. Because I can smell it. From my room.

We don't know where the flies came from. But there are about fifty large green, bug-eyed freaks nesting on the ceiling of our common room.


Erica and Heather refuse to sleep at home. Gina is smashing them by hand. I'm trying to purge my lungs of my innovative 409 frenzy (involving random spurting of the cleaning solution on the bugs when they landed anywhere. It didn't kill. Just stunned. Proven when I nailed a bugger and walked away as he lay screaming on his back, only to return moments later and find--he'd flown off).

Yes, I know. Fly hunting is the most enthralling thing you've read about this week. Probably more enthralling than the story about the four shootings down the street from me--last night. Probably more enthralling than the stabbing on the Fruitvale BART--ten minutes from me. Probably. Probably.

I don't know how I feel about Oakland.

(_____________ )

I think this is where the poem is supposed to go
(in this box), (though it's stuck in my toes),
So I'll put it here (is this even a poem?) as if I can
whisper my meaning (from the page) (to your heart).

Separate (my parenthesis, I think I mean) the phrases
I've put together (because, really, they don't go
together) in order to find something (anything) sig
nificant.

(I broke that word for a reason and when I die they're going to say
genius but for now they'll say idiot you're not making
any) (say it--) Sense.

Exhale

I am listening to the Silence of a crowded room, and wondering why the woman in the corner stares at her shoes (as if they contained the answers to the world).

When voices fill this space it's like walking into a vacuum, where my eardrums are sucked out through my chest (grotesque) and the thudding of my heart rings in the back of my eyes.

Meanwhile the fountain (in the corner) murmurs beside the woman as she watches her shoes, occasionally shifting her gaze to the trickle of the water, as if it's whispering secrets (to her feet).

I wonder, as I watch her, if she can hear it, too: the buzz of the vacuum beneath the hum of the voices that fill this crowded room.

I am feeling (typical) as if the vacuum has affixed itself to my chest and tugs its pulling--searching, I think, for something to pop out.

and when the nearly-familiar Voice whispers at dawn that He is waiting, I shudder because I am afraid that He will see me, in the woman, in the corner, beside the fountain, waiting for answers from my toes.

I push the vacuum against my forehead and strain for the answers, for the something, to sneak past the Silence

beneath the voices in

my crowded room.

damn.

(I rarely say that word aloud and I
just wanted to try it on the page to
see what it looked like, and it looks
nothing like what it sounds like cuz
it sounds like a rock and the page is
more like a sigh, into nothing like
hell or fire or brimstone but more
like something you take from a box
of pencils when you're looking for
the sharp one and finding only dull
ones and not even the color--blue--
that you were looking for).

This has nothing to do with anything

Hi, Magic Flower,
I'm feeling abstract
to make up for words
I may seem to lack

like the bulb in my face
that's blinking like matches
and phrases in teeth, stuck
like bears' metal catches

(clashes like jaws yawning after
gnawing because bubble-yum
is sweet and sticks like soda's
bubbles run).

And another P.S:
you must understand, it means
nothing unless you--you and me--'re
holding hands.

Just a blurb

Today Alyssa answered a question about me in a way that brought me much laughter:

Q: "What is Kellie's greatest weakness?"
A: Sugar. She's like superman but instead of kryptonite its sugar that takes away power.

hehe
---

Rain and thunder ushered me to the car this morning as I hurried to work. Now, I'm unable to figure out how to get the soothing music playing on our loudspeakers; however, the fountain is doing a pretty good job of providing a soothing environment.


Today I anticipate: much creative writing, punctuated with phone calls requesting Brazilian waxes and facial cream.

This afternoon,

1. The Mills clock tower chimes every fiften minutes, telling everyone, "You're--" "late", or "--early".

2. Bugs are stuck in my room, drawn to the lavendar reed diffuser.

3. A new story unfolds under my fingers while I wait for September to get moving.

Yesterday I aged another year

and I think it's an omen:

on 09-09-09, I turned 22. Repeating numbers better be a trend this year or I will be very, very disappointed. I hope everything comes in pairs. Like .... I get two cookies. I get two slices of toast. I get two A's. I get two thumbs up. Two... paychecks? (ideal).

Unfortunately I wish I was 33 because trios are more interesting than doubles.

Two wheels on a bike. Two harddrives in my failed computer.

Sigh.

Two .... I dont know. I'm out of ideas.



In other news ... hm. I'm writing a great story you all better read when it starts selling like mad in a few years.
In two years? meh.


I'm uninspired regarding this blog. My poetry has been weird lately.

Grad school in general is just bizarre. I'm sorry you had to read to the end of this post. I miss San Francisco.

Collage de lyrics = poem? :)

you're like a 6th avenue heartache

('it's drawn on me')

drawin you in like the end of a breath before you
*remember? that something before the nothing began?*

that Nothing from the No-one.

(I never understood before).

What_a_feelin.But Change is good. Take the road that leads back to Sullivan Street (home through the town past the shadows)


that fall down whenever

we: meet.
I'm nearly fallin' to my knees on the way home I'm forgetting
the way home. (drag the "e" so it sounds like an ho-oohm.) and for once I remember how I got here. }though I'm nearly crawlin on my knees, down on her knees drowning in your Sea{

(and then the motor runs while you're in my tub listening to the
thub-dub-thub-dub of my

[heart, duh] my hand when everything turned out right.]

I'll meet you tomorrow afternoon. I (I'm not your first fool but) I'm going to be--your last one.

I "work"

Well, hello, Dreamers

It's me: the Weaver.

---

Life Update:

Right now I'm sitting at the front desk of a lobby with a trickling fountain while soothing spa music filters through the mesh, Chinese-style screens. My brain is filled with the heavy scent of a lavender bouquet and, somewhere in the next room over, a woman is receiving a relaxing facial to the soundtrack of the forest.

Yep. New job perks: constant poetic atmosphere, coupled with green tea and potpourri. Is this job going to further my career? Nah. But you cant beat discount professional facials and spa products.

This morning, I drove to Fremont reluctantly, having skipped out on the end of this weekend's forest extravaganza: a group of us spent the night in Galen's cabin-in-the-woods--after dinner and a late-night-lake-hike where we chased echoes beneath the glow of the moon. But this atmosphere soothes in a similar way: low-stress, muted greenery, and the freedom to write poems and stories all day.

---
Happy Labor Day tomorrow. What is that holiday for?

From the Berated

From the Berated


Dear,

(you)

this is: Me.

word-writer, -seer, -reader,
-lover, -mutilator (?):

who doesn't really
/fit/

inside the brackets you
b_race around the

breathed-, scrawled-, painted-
taped-words you

(hope)

to strip squish onto your own
page--worthy of only

your own
Praise.

Pat yourSelf on the back,
jerk,

since

no one else
will.


----

No one wants to read poems that no one else can understand.

My poetry--my new poetry--is about the day, the moment, the hesitance of a breath. Freezing things so that you look again, and again, and again,

at the Normal: the concrete.

The things that mean something to everyone.

No one cares how may ways you can rape the word "they" through a series of ugly sonnets that only make sense when the world is high.

So what if being the poet laureate was a weak aspiration for sell-outs. I LIKE that academia has no place for my poetry. Words are for the everyday.

the World is my everyday and God is my Audience and if all I write are Jesus-poems and listen to the hum of the sea--that's

ME.

Bite it, tear it off, sink your ugly educated fangs into the Me that Listens to the Reader of the Day--

not the reader of the classroom who loses interest
when your tweaked nose isn't pressed
against their work yet still wanders home wondering,
How can I write so you love me?

I write--Knowing, dear, that you won't.
you're not the Point.

My aim: is Truth. And your wrinkles, your callouses
are proof of your
fear
of It.


(you will never be a Capital on my Breath.)

On choosing

Tomorrow, I have to turn in a recently written poem

and I am stressing out, freaking out, pulling out
my hair as it falls in tufts around
unfamiliar pages filled with words that
sound somewhat like me,
but a different Me.

A Me who knew, recognized, breathed
those lines and smiled in each of their
conclusions.

This Me sees: the threat of words that
just. don't. fit.
beside one another,

as if stuffed in a jar,
through the neck of a bottle,
down the throat of a child.

----

Someone help me choose a poem to hand over to a strange professor, to slip beneath the eyes of
nine other classmates, as I--vulnerable, insecure, unsure,
inadequate--
watch them stare, frown, muse,

and pull out:

Nothing

from the Nothingness
of my poetry.

----
Your words can only mean nothing if they are nothing.

Kellie Parkinson
PO Box 9765
Oakland, CA 94613


DO it.

I'd like to punch a hole in the nearest wall

Just say that you ...

Oh.

Hi?

I surprised myself by clicking "new post" without knowing what to New Post about.

I suppose I could bore you with the normal, everyday, 'room's-not-clean' and 'looking-for-a-job'- type things. But that would be... normal. And Everyday.

Just like my day is not.


Make sense of that.

If you are looking to pray and don't know what to pray for, or to talk about, or to muse over, or to send happy thoughts towards--I am waiting for the 'ok' on a shift change in the Writing Center. Or for God to open up the skies and shout out directions. Or at least to drop a map.

And, you see, I would isolate that paragraph to a particular section of my life; I would give you specifics and lovely little details. But I reference my entire life. Every little bullet and sub-point on the outline of this chapter of my world could use a little Google map that says 'start here' and 'destination will be on the--'

Left? In the middle of the street? { like the crooked homeless man this morning who waved his sign on my windshield, shouting his "Veteran in need of" into the streaked glass. Wipers on. "Sheek, sheek." Still in need--but the "of" is blank }

like that slate we all reference and give a knowing nod toward, as if the same tuneless song dwindles through our (semi) conscious minds.

God, give me the right question to ask that makes sense of the answers I see-

[-k?]

Now that I adjust my eyes as you turn to leave

Well, I'm moved into Mills, even if still not completely set up. (Clothes strewn about the floor from wall-to-wall evidence enough of that). But I'm here.

Some things are exactly as I hopefully expected; and, some things are ... not.

I cannot decide whether the City is freedom or toxic. I do not mean the thick fog that lingers over the city of Oakland, burning off before the fog across the bay and creating a strange, pulling vortex toward that .. City as it sits engulfed in the still-sleeping clouds that weep on passerby's cheeks.

The City is San Francisco and I watch her fall asleep in the morning, waiting to wake hours later to spit crazed bus lines and clacking stilletos and grungy old men with their hair twisted all over their head and a week-old coffee cup shaking in the faces of the rich businessmen on their way to work.

The high-rise buildings are all gray from over here--gray and asleep as the sun leaks white light across their faces.

Oakland is not City: he does not have the heart like the City who sleeps across the bay. All night is loud, aimless sirens and all day is tired people walking from one block to the next: the migrant workers searching for work, the jobless mingling with the homeless so they all look soil and sweat and lethargy.

A city like Oakland cannot decide where he begins and ends: he blurs tokens through Berkeley, into Alameda, down the streets of San Leandro and up into the hills and along the shore of Lake Merritt. He feels non-committal, afraid, insecure.

----

I am drinking a cup of coffee brought to me from Africa.
I long for someplace exotic.

A Whole New World

I live in my room at Mills now. I can see the San Francisco bay from my window and this evening the sun painted the horizon a milky orange that matched the juice in my cup, which I sipped as I watched the city yawn into the night--then rise to life.

My foot is covered in mosquito bites from a hike Zak and I took through a surprise forest nestled above a street riddled with an interesting assortment of folks. The bugs bit three times. And I got stuck in a tree and almost fell off a hill. But it was a glorious adventure.

Excitement coursed through my veins as I moved to school, anticipating the poetry I'd write and the friends I'd make and the closeness to Zak.

Thus far, I underestimated the glory of having him so near. I can see San Francisco from my window. I can drive 15 minutes and arrive at his doorstep.

Praise God for opening doors. And now I live on a mountain surrounded by haunted looking buildings and crooked paths that lead to secret gardens.

My latest prayers circle around my job-less state. May He knock my pride down a few notches so I can humbly serve any need.

I have arrived.

On Friday night, I sat in a semi-circle with family and talked and listened through stories of past, present, future. My aunt's eyes glittered through stories of our ancestors, I laughed across memories of Ireland, Hayley pretended to half-heartedly muse about her future (though I know she's secretly dreaming on her own). And when Alyssa arrived, I sat in a huddle with my two sisters and felt whole: complete in a way only sisters can afford.

Early Saturday morning, I packed half my life in the car and began a road trip north with my sisters.

We sailed past Santa Barbara, stopping in Goleta for camera film and a tide pen (due to my spastic driving, Alyssa ended up with coffee all over her light shirt. hehe)

Along the coast, we watched the waves snake north and caught glimpses of gulls, tourists, vultures, and cows (to Hayley's delight).

After resisting the urge to side-trip to Buelton (where I hear you can feed ostriches), we reached SLO and jumped onto the 1, where the ocean again greeted us--like familiar friends.

Lunch in Morro Bay: a town riddled with lovely little antique shops and slow-moving old men, who smile when the occasional tourist winds into their path. Site to see: Morro Rock--a huge, impossibly out-of-place "mountain" of a rock, perched on the beach of Morro Bay.

We ate sandwiches and pizza from a corner-in-the-wall Italian place and got back in the car, heading to Hearst Castle.

Hearst Castle, with its gold-plated floors and its Romanesque sculptures and is Mediterranean aura, was breathtaking, if not a little out of place on the peak of a San Simeon mountain. Birds circled--what I thought were hawks turned out to be vultures--and the air was warm, but not sticky-hot like the beach tends to be. In fact, the heat seemed to radiate not from the sun but from the Castle beneath our feet--a heat begging relief in the clear Neptune pool or in a recline in one of the sofas of the large main house.

I really did feel as if Mr Hearst sampled the best parts of Europe and painstakingly molded them into the hillside. The man definitely knew his art.

After Hearst Castle, we stopped for coffee and ice cream in Cambria as we headed south to slide onto the 46, in an attempt to avoid the windy northern path of Hwy 1. Hours later (after singing at the top of our lungs every song we could find on Hayley or Alyssa's ipod) we arrived in Monterey. We waved at the sign for the school and drove around for a glimpse at the town before having dinner on the beach.

San Francisco saw us slouching into bed at 11pm in a hotel by the airport, exhausted but eager to finish off the trip in the morning with a drive through the city before I had to put my sisters on the train in Oakland. When I heard they'd been picked up in Bakersfield and were headed home, a huge part of me yearned to go with them. But that chapter has drawn to a gentle close: I turned city-ward, to where Zak welcomed me with an embrace, and the next chapter opened:

the poet now resides in the heart of Oakland, gearing up to start the next adventure at Mills. Last night I slept in an inn on the water, by Jack London Square. I can hear the waves whispering outside my window and I am at peace, even though the next few hours sees me moving onto campus and entering a nearly foreign world.

I miss my sisters. I miss my family and the closeness of our bond.
But I love San Francisco, and hopefully I will learn to love Oakland as well. I am overjoyed with the nearness of Zak.

hello, Home.

Another end of another Chapter

I'm leaving again.

The suitcase in the center of my floor overflows with the entire contents of my closet.

I have three boxes in the hall: my shoes lined in pretty rows with their heels sticking up; my books nudged against one another, their bindings matched to size; my bedding folded and vaccuum-sealed--the space-saver.

I don't know what parts of my life to keep, to tote along. I don't know what parts to leave resting in the shelves of my closet, or the corners of my desk drawers. I don't know what parts to pour into the black trashbag unceremoniously draped over my doorknob.

I don't know what parts.

No one ever packs it all.

I'd like to fit my sisters in this suitcase; the warmth of my mother, the heart of my father. But no one ever packs it all. Instead I have photographs and memories peppered with sunshine and salted with rain. This, then, is the beginning of another--heart break.

I wish the earth were flat, so I could always see everything. So that the only hindrance would be my inadequate eyes, and not the stretch of the world.

I thought I was eager to leave. But I find myself reluctant to put the key in the ignition. I leave my things strewn about, unpacked, waiting: in the choosing of what remains, what journeys, and what's thrown away.

Can't I be everywhere? At the side of my eagerly anticipated friend--Love--Zak AND behind the desk of a graduate classroom AND in the car next to my mom on yet another long journey, in the room next door to my still-highscooled sister. Can't I Be it all?

In the space between, I sway and play tug-of-war with the turning of the page.

On "Goodbyes."

A silly little red head rubbed the freckles on her cheeks, tweaked her braids, and dreamed up the bosom friend.

Decades after that literary child sprang to life, the spirit of her words wrap themselves around a precious few of my own comrades and draw them in a swirled etch on my heart--a pattern that sinks deeper with time and seems oblivious to space.

A true friend Listens to the hush of your core: nods along and slips in her own tune, so whatever melody you hummed blends to harmony, chants a rhythm, trills complete:

because without a round, Row, Row, Row your boat is just clumsy notes
and Ode to Joy, without a symphony, another exercise.

As I boarded the train today, the Santa Barbara morning was silver as the stars. Palm trees and tourists sped past the clouded window--

past Kelsey--the woman indistinguishable from the joy of the sun, from the wisdom of the earth, from the delight of the sparrow and the patience of the waves upon the shore.

While the beach town faded, I settled into my seat.


"I've always dreamed of having a bosom friend," said Anne with a sigh. "A true kindred spirit!"


For a friendship not bound by geography~

This should be framed with a smile

I am in Santa Barbara and the sky clouds gray like the whispers of fog that puff from your mouth on a cold night.

It's lovely. Kelsey and I head to the pier to watch the waves come in. Last night, we attempted to participate in the Fiesta festivities, but after half an hour of standing in line at Dargans, watching dead people zombie-walk through the streets with confetti freckling their black hair and hearts, we shrugged, escaped to Vons and bought chocolate cookies and milk. Returning to Kelsey's apartment, we curled on the couch in our pajamas, watched a good Hugh Grant flick, and dozed off while Santa Barbara burned around us.

I missed this city. Part of me will probably always--miss it. 

In the next few days I'll be loitering about this beach town. Emily's in town from Texas and the reunion of cherished friends has warmed a part in my heart that's shivered for a while.

Off to sand and overcast sun.

Can I be your Memory?

I really miss my friends. Mammoth has been wonderful with all its natural wonder and high school laughter. But I miss people my age. I miss the sidewalk of the VK courtyard and the dirt on the old track and the baseball field at night with its stars that stretch for miles while we slouched in the stands and grinned.

I miss Butterfly beach and the black waves after dark that crash at your feet as you dangle them over the ledge. I miss State Street in the afternoon, when Westmont students crowd the corners and wave "hello" even if you've never talked to them before because they're Westmont and you're Westmont and that makes you Kin if not Same.

And even if we didn't have much school pride, or enthusiasm for section events, or rolled our eyes at that one professor that droned too long (or the student that did the same);

Even if the campus crowds with bungaloes and tractors where there used to be trees,

The path still winds through the undergrowth: the one that Willis snaked around the perimeter, the one that's broken up with streams and rocks and wildlife and silence.


the path still creeps beneath the bridge and through the trees past Kerwood and in the center of the formal gardens to end at the

little: white: Chapel
that

Sings stained-glass hymns after dark, as a Somebody, a Same, the Kin, presses piano keys
by candlelight.

This trip's adventures

I stole this site from Jeff :)

Random

Lookit where we went for Ireland:



hehe

There's bad news on the other line.

Good news first:
I am sipping a glass of whole milk and apologizing to my body as I feel the fat curdle in the pit of my stomach.

Sometimes I read over this blog and think, Yeah, I remember when I was thinking that. And how I felt. And what was around me and in me and beside me. Through me.

These words on this paper.

The color in the storm.

----

Whole. Milk. Not halved nor split in quarters so that it's X-percents of heightened health so I can sip my latte without choking.

Yes, I remember what I was thinking when I wrote that: Belladona.

That's a secret.
---

Today's mental boundaries got left at the foot of a waterfall: Rainbow Falls--aptly named for the colorful arcs that stretch across the mist where the water smashes into the creek below. Of course, if you decide to wear polarized lenses,

you will not be able to see it.

Interesting that there is something in this world that can only be seen if you're looking through the right eyes.

----

Bad News: Steve Meissner, a close friend of my cousin's family and our family, just died completely unexpectedly. Wonderful singer/songwriter who glowed with joy and whose heart's kindness was soft as velvet and calm like the depths of the sea. I don't understand how a man could drop dead at 48. I don't quite ... understand.

photo courtesy of the Insider

And you can talk about the man, remember his voice on the tape from my parents' wedding--"To lead a better life, I need my love beside me" (thank you Beatles). He would handle the Oscars in the evening and be at family breakfast in the morning, tinkling along at the piano next to my aunt who LOVES Aude to Joy (and, though his talent far surpasses the oldie, he'd eagerly play along).

You can say all these things but it won't bring him back. I can't chatter in delight about the Life in his smile, then bring you to meet him at our next family gathering. He can't sing at my wedding, can't share a conversation with my uncle, can't admire my cousin's beautiful, newly renovated home.

We should get a warning: A memo from the Watcher that says, "Hey. Heads up. Friend: This is the last time he's going to play you this song. Mother: This is the last time he'll kiss you goodnight. World: This is the Last. The Last."

And if Death is not a complete end, it is a stopping: a resting in the Waiting until someone else follows. And then another. And another. Until we all step in our place to find out the Next.

regretful Cheers to another Last. and Fond Prayers for the departed.

Harry Potter and Huckleberry Finn

This morning,

1. Coffee at the customary crack-of-dawn-hour with my mom
2. Hiking through a meadow at the foot of the mountain.
3. Delong and V stranded in the middle of a lake on a Huck Finn raft.

(Delong gets a phone call from his wife: "Lisa? I'm on a raft in the middle of a lake!!")

4. Itchy skin from invisible bugs.

Next:
Push-up contest Round 3
Lazy hours by Ruby Lake
A run around Convict Lake.

Mmm.

Last night, I ate a three pound burrito (don't worry, it was veggie) and saw the new Harry Potter. Barring my disgust with J.K., the movie was really fun. Probably cause it cut out most of the worst parts of her run-on-novel.

I can't wait till the story gets good again with the last book. The first 200 pages anyway. And the last fifty.

Cheers

Jump in the shower while no one's here

Today consisted of:
1. Starbucks with my mom
2. Long walk around Mammoth Village and up a forest path called Uptown
3. Observe the Canyon xc "push-up" contest and remember when I used to be able to do (three) push-ups in a row.
4. Interval work-out at Shady Rest Park

(Note: I haven't worked out since December. Sprints through the dusty trees? Glory)

5. Water fight with high schoolers in the Snow Creek
6. Thigh attacked by leeches.
7. Sugar-free popsicles. Flavored Grape
8. Popsicle-stick jokes. My punch lines were better than theirs.


Tonight we're off to see a movie in the Village. It's time I got out of these wet clothes

Restless

I find it difficult to think if things to say. Increasingly--difficult.

It's not that nothing buzzes in my brain--I see, feel, experience a lot each day and I spend (hours? minutes? a breath?) processing. Or just thinking. Or observing the repeated images that parade across the back of my eye-lids

(grotesque)

when I close the (blue) eyes that See
that Look

a lot.

Too much, sometimes,
but a lot.

But those are pictures and abstract
thoughts that don't like to
sit still
on a page.

This is not a poem.
This is a brainstorm.

On (not) Forgetting

Hey,
shadow at the cusp
of Remembering, you:
Somebody,

the Not-Nobody of
"Do-you-Remember that
One-Time" and all
The One-Time(s).

The air outside my window
crackles, like the crisp
of your heart that--echoes
faded moonlight, before you wake
with the Reaching,
while smoke twists star-ward from a
corner-couch.

Like the curb of a Santa Barbara street
between the 'Hey: Somebody'
and the 'You'll always be'--
Somebody--

To me.

(krp)

The Mountains gape at their reflection

Oh, yes, I've seen a glass lake. I'd post pictures but I can't put the SD card into this little laptop. Wrong size.

Hiked up a mountain today: two miles past the burnt carnage of forest which a fire recently used for a snack, and onto the beach of a smooth lake. Occasionally, the wind picked up and rippled the water in a ghost of the sea.

Lisa Delong and her sister and Anne Riggin all went swimming in water cold as snow (it is melted from the still-snow capped peaks that frame the valley). I also collected many rocks. This is becoming a horrid habit that I've had since kindergarten. Only in Kindergarten, I would dump out all my schoolbooks on the playground so I could fit twenty-pound boulders in my backpack. I lugged them home (to the dismay of my mother) and dumped them on the kitchen floor alongside that day's collection of acorns.

I only kept the acorns who still had their hats on, though. And I never tried to eat one. They're poison.

Little wood-imps whispered from the trees when I loitered behind our hiking brigade and I snapped pictures but they don't show up on the film.

Like vampires in a mirror.

Like a heart on a sleeve.

Mammoths are large ancient elephant things with fur.

Pretty sweet.

I'm in Mammoth for a week with Canyon's cross-country team and my momma.

Oh guess what, the trees are green here, the lakes are pure blue and lovely jade-green, and the temperature is (at most) eighty degrees. Fahrenheit. Yees.

Well. Fahrenheit is a hard word to spell. Had to use spell check twice.

I haven't yet submitted myself to the whole running thing. But out here among my coaches and my old team (new faces, same atmosphere), I can't help but want to run again. It also didn't help that I decided to go on a walk wearing running clothes and shoes. I'm asking for trouble.

I'm sitting aronud swinging my legs and watching Wizards of Waverly place. We left the house before six this morning. I'm ready to sleep!

Weird. I haven't said that before 1am in weeks.

Zak's on his way home at the end of this week. Yay!

Do you think they picked us to do this cause we're ... young? and dumb?

Some_where.

That's probably where I am, though I pretend I'm suspended in the nowhere that is the sweltering desert summer.

Dessert--with a cherry.
Desert--like the .. storm. (chuckle)

I've spent today hacking at my sister's Mac, desperately trying to resurrect it from the (death trap) it is.

Pearl Harbor is playing in our living room. Not the steamy aircraft hanger scenes, not the "Oh, Raif, but you were DEAD" scenes. The shooting scenes. And the surgery scenes. And the war.

LEAVE NO MAN BEHIND!

Guess who's behind the remote?

My father :)

---
"Victory belongs to those who believe in it the most."

Somehow I find this .... odd.

Sometimes I wear my slippers on the beach

Whoa, wierd. Totally forgot I had this thing.

Update:

We put Woody to sleep. Animals need to not ever die. I sometimes forget they probably don't have souls and then when it comes to the end of their lives, I realize--saying goodbye to animals might be tougher than saying goodbye to (some) humans, cause you're not guarenteed to see them again. Ever.

At the same time, it's not like we're for sure going to see humans either.

Dumb. Done thinking about death for now. Let's think about today.

Postcards have been arriving in the mail from Zak's African adventures. For those of you who were wondering, he's still alive. For those of you who weren't wondering: I admire your faith in humanity. I keep worrying he's going to get bitten by some rabid bug and come home infected with an incurable disease.  And then instead of being a writer, I'd go to med school and find the cure. Happily ever after.

In other news, I worked at Canyon's triathalon this morning; found myself incapable of spelling, counting, giving change, or reciting the alphabet in order; watched wrinkled men in speedos come galloping across the finish line and demand the removal of their racetags from where they'd stored it on their unmentionables; chatted with friends. All-in-all, a warm day (105 degrees) and I'm only slightly cranky from the 5:30am wakeup call required to get us out to Castaic on time.

Hugs

Kellie: stop being a worrier. Your nerves don't do anyone any good.

Defeated

dog has cancer in his jaw.

Lame.

---

Dear God,
Why did you make cancer?
Why did you Create something that over-Creates?
It's weird.

You should (could, you, please) un-Create the over-Creators?


----

Sigh. On the floor of my room there is an unframed painting, three library books, a worn out braided rug, and me: sprawled out in a long, flowy skirt and flipping through old photographs from--dance, cross country, high school, college.

I'm excited for the next (part) of my life that has
none of these things
in it.

Just because those things will leave a Space to be filled with

new
somethings.

In the middle of
nothing

I found: something, that reminded me
of that--
nothing

I
almost hadn't
forgotten.

Remind me again, why, we (breathed)
in the shallow end of the pool,
while the clouds swirled overhead and you
picked out the Rabbit
as it dove down the

hole.

And bubbles rose--under--your
skin in the thin
breeze of the (ecstasy)
that stank

like the
crust
on your
heart.


Remind me
for (it seems) I
forgot.

(krp)

Someone once said "The best Words were: Invisible."

It's a Song
like the trip of my
fingertips on the (black-and-white)
Keys of an old wooden
piano, too tired to stay

in tune

(but still happy to 'do-mi-so'
along, as I squint at yellowed sheets

of familiar music).

The Piano bench creaks with
the sigh of a flat note's drone

which warms the room, like
buttermilk at sunrise.


(c)krp

My so-Called...

I think the epic of Gilgamesh could be replaced with my new ballad: the Quest to Find the Floor of Kellie's Room.

It's been going on since I got home from Ireland and I think this place must be under a spell cause the more I clean, the messier it gets.

That makes noooo sense.

I made popped corn and now Beth and I are sitting in the middle of my room pretending to get things done. She's great morale support. Doesn't make me clean like my mom does.

I suppose I'll go downstairs and get a popsicle.

A-fric-a

Mmmhm my body's in the middle of a newly cleaned room, trying not to melt away in the heat of the Santa Clarita sun

but my heart's in Kigali, Rwanda.

Yeeep he made it.

*huge sigh of relief*

----

Now: make a list of things to do in my job-less world.

Any suggestions would be most appreciated.


Hugs

Echo! (echo, echo echo...)

Hey reader-world,

I just returned from a trek north to see Zak off to ...

wait for it...

AFRICA!

The man's insane but I suppose that's why I love him.

As of now, I've received two updates: he breezed in and out of Amsterdam with no set-backs and has currently paused for another plane change in Kenya. Where I hope he 1. gets his bags changed alright and 2. runs laps around the airport because its another long flight into Rwanda.

I LOVE travel. How exciting.

In my own news, I received my housing assignment for Mills, my room has once again imploded on itself, and my Ireland scrapbook is begging to be worked on.

----

Good thing I'm not responsible for Planning out my life.

Christ is among us.

Oh, to kill a Mockingbird

It's 5:30 in the morning. And no, I'm not just rolling over into the blue haze of the day.

Outside, in the tree on our street, a mockingbird loudly lets us know that he's made his fort. And he's been letting us know for two weeks now. Every night. From midnight until 9am the next morning.

Incessant little bugger.

Unfortunately, the mockingbird is a protected creature (something about a Migratory Act) and I cannot (either on purpose or 'accident') use the tempting air soft gun to aid his untimely demise.

I tried shaking his tree and got spiders in my hair. I tried cooing and he just copied me.

He does a great car alarm around 4am each morning. Pretty impressive. I tried teaching him a new whistle and he repeated it a couple times and returned to his usual mournful wail.

I wish he'd lose his voice. He's not even getting hoarse.


---

In other news: no job but not worried about it yet. The bill for grad school isn't due until August 3. I've got a few weeks anyway.

Headed to San Francisco this weekend to see Zak before he ditches the states for his immersion into Africa. I'm takin the train early Saturday morning. Never done that before. I'll let you know how it goes.

---

As the blue light of dawn fades to the gray of another summer morning, I miss ... Santa Barbara. And the friends that go with her.

Hey Westmont. You're my Sunshine today.

Boom, Boom, Boom.

thug-dug, thug-dug

That's how a heart sounds.


----

I just printed out 316 photographs from our Ireland tour. Step two: put them in a scrap book.


Step three: Finish the scrap book in shorter than two years.


That's how long it took me to finish the London one.


meh

----

Today and yesterday, I bought sheets for my grad school house and accepted an on-campus "job" (A TA assistantship, working with Comp and in Mills' Writing Center).

----

Bomb. As in good. Not as in disaster.

Cue muted lights

and

screechy noises like chalkboard on nails
like nails on teeth

like teeth on.


Cue:
Focus, to Wide-eyed Deer
disguised as Human
like the

Human squinting
through this blank screen
at you.

Online Traffic School

Note to self: stop speeding.

Working on online traffic school. It's actually quite amusing. I read through reviews of each of my options and when one had multiple messages describing the site as "hilarious," I signed up.

Nothing like waking up to a funny driving school.

Favorite Quotes:

- "So, we know we're supposed to not be angry while driving."

- "On the off chance that you were taught a lesson by a tailgater behind you and it changed your life, then we don't have to worry about you anymore, do we? Still, consider yourself the exception, not the rule."

- "Example 3: You get in an argument with your spouse and drive off in the car mad. Oh, this one's a bummer. But remember, you're free! (At least until you come back home)."

- "If your spouse had to come along, well, try to impress him/her with your calm driving while s/he knows you are obviously enraged. You can think to yourself: "Ha, I'll bet if s/he was driving right now, we'd get in a collision. It's a good thing one of us isn't crazy."

- "Don't make obscene gestures. Do you feel fulfilled after you do this? Or kind of stupid? Pay attention to the part that feels kind of stupid."

Quiz question:
You can reduce the hazards of multitasking while driving by:
A. Putting on your makeup while waiting for the light to turn green, rather than while moving.
B. Asking other drivers or pedestrians for directions so you don't have to look at the map while driving
C. Trying to take an extra 15 minutes to apply makeup, make phone calls, and consult maps before leaving home.
D. By using the computer while driving
E. By talking on the cell phone while driving


- "Okay, so you've become a regular saint behind the wheel. Congratulations."

- "Think about this: According to the California Department of Motor Vehicles, a person driving at a low speed of 15 miles per hour who stops suddenly can hit the windshield with the same force of impact as a fall from a two story building. With a seatbelt on, you never have to know what that feels like."

----

Special. I'll let you know how it goes.

Today:
Job Search.
The Joys of Room Cleaning.
Finish Traffic School.
Hair Cut.

----

Pretty enthralling

Well, we survived!

The conclusion of our stream of photographs will be posted soon but for now I am reflecting on the space where words have failed me.

I reached a point on this trip where the break between the inscription and the experience would not be breached by any amount of floral scripture.

The more I wrote the less I looked around, and the less I looked around the more I missed.

The missing could only be avoided by leaving the pen, the keyboard, on the table--on the chain of tables in the string of hostels as I let myself See without Saying, let myself Think without Breathing.

And through the Silence I learned how to better Sigh.

And to sigh into Speech.

----

I stepped off the plane from Ireland into the arms of my father, my mother, my sisters, and the surprise Life-Love Zak lurking in the shadows

(for he had mischievously plotted with my fam to greet/surprise me at the airport)

Which he did--successfully--surprise me: the overjoyed mess that squealed
and forgot for a moment that I was disheveled and mop-faced and travel-stained
and bumbled the shrieked light into his arms.

----

The weekend of homecoming was grand: family-filled in every dimension.
Father's Day: the beach left me slightly burned (a mere crisp) from the Santa Barbara sun and sandy from the beach and full from a Father's Day breakfast and happy from a day of strolling with Zak and laughing with my sisters.

----

When in love it is hard to write of anything else.

When loving--be it family or friends or him (both blended)--it is hard to write of
mundane daily events like

the pending job search
traffic school
cleaning the bomb wreck that is my room.

Walking down a street, knowing men died under your feet and that their blood stained the freshly washed cobblestones just three decades previous evokes a sense of ... temperance.

Like the horizon.

Like her smile, or like the light in a near-stranger's eyes.


Temporary as America or as the loyalty of three colors strewn together: red, white, blue
devotes fidelity to
Britain, America, Australia, idea, country, place.

Today we walked the walls of Derry and crossed the line between the "Occupated" and the "Free."

Oh, hello, northern Ireland where the watchtowers grow tall as the
steeple on the
three churches:
Protest-ant, Catho-lick, ... "Other"

like the blood across the banner in
Free Derry Museum
labelled "Freedom"
stained
with promise

like the shoelace tied
by the father who stooped
down on his daughter's
foot on the corner
of the first street in the
Bogside this morning.

like the anger in the eyes of a friend
turned stranger,

like the familiarity of
hatred
between her sketched
smile;
painted like propaganda
across the walls.

--
We've seen the Cliffs of Moher (pronounced "more"), castles and cathedrals, bridges and causeways and rivers and waterfalls.

And what words do I have left to describe it?

A halted lyric about Bloody Sunday and the Bloody Foreland this afternoon,
where we watched the sun melt into the sea

but the water stayed
blue: turquoise-blue as the painted sky

And I wondered why I was surprised that the world had not bled
red as the guidebook
promised.

----

This Ireland: the Ireland of ... the north ... is Red. Is Brown and rust
like the ship in Galway's harbor
but smells of blood, and not fish.

We crossed over into the Republic today to see Glenveagh National Park and as much as I loved, re-embraced the Castle nestled in the breast of the mountains,
I wished for the charred streets of Derry.

And I understood that when the brother of a man killed in Bloody Sunday
devotes the rest of his life to working the front desk of the Museum of Free Derry
so that tourists and locals alike can hear: understand.

I understood: that is Permanence. That is Age. that
is Home.

Roots

Well

since I had not made plans for last night's accommodations, we found ourselves back in the small bay-town of Kinvara, in the hostel on the trickle of the Galway Bay.


In the past two days I have met four relatives, seen my great grandmother's home, and seen the gravesite/stone of relatives that date back to the 1700s.

Oh, I said, I DO belong here!


Imelda is a kind, gentle woman that fed us till we thought we were going to explode. Her treats fed us for the last two days after we'd left her home (mostly because she sent us with a bag of them). She flipped through photographs of relatives, cousins, aunts, uncles, my great grandmother's family. We absorbed stories of our ancestors long into the afternoon and when she finally dropped us back off at our hostel, it was with joy in our hearts that we waved her off.


Speaking of hostels: the hostel in Galway was an interesting experience. We were in a room overlooking the harbor of Galway Bay (the other side from Kinvara) where the fishing boats dock when then come into port. The street below the window was filled with the bustle of the outskirts of city life--where the sailors come and go and where the businessmen walk on their way home from work.

The hostel was filled with everything from Americans to Germans to Scandanavians ... name it, we saw it. At ten, the city exploded with noise (the sun doesn't go down till 10:30 here) and we laid in our small rectangle of a room and waited for it to die down. I went downstairs till 11, hoping everyone in the hostel would go to sleep once the common room closed down, but the hostel just got louder after that when everyone returned to their rooms with the paper-thin walls and we listened all night to the creaking and rustling of backpackers in their beds.

Once we finally did doze off, I woke at four am to the loud, creaking sound of a large fishing boat coming into the harbor outside our open window. As it approached the air filled with the sharp scent of rust and fish and the voices of the sailors filtered through the dimly lit morning air (the sun rises round 4:30/5).

The merry sailors poured into Galway and down the streets and the city life woke up again.

When I went for a walk the next morning, the streets and the harbor were littered with still-drunk sailors and foreigners.

---

Here the wind blows like it knows something, and like the eyes of the locals when they listen to a story. And they LISTEN, friends: I find myself story-telling to a rapt audience whose only reaction to the words is reflected in the shifting gaze of attentive smiles.

----

We move north now and I am reluctant to leave the slow south behind.

Sidetrips

Oi,

No internet in the last few hostels.

I'm sitting in a window seat overlooking Galway Bay as the sun glitters over the rippling surface. Today we meet a relative--FINALLY!--as we leave Kinvara and drive north to the city of Galway.

Yesterday .... Yesterday I decided to ignore the itinerary and we left the Dingle Peninsula, traipsing through the mountains on a precarious path called Connor Pass. We ditched the car and went climbing with the sheep and stumbled upon a waterfall and a lake.

We also had to replace our tire *finally*. We've been driving around with a nail stuck in it (hehe) thinking it was just a slow leak and we could do with filling it up every now and then. Come to find out the whole thing has a crack, rendering the stupid thing un-salvageable.

Is that a word?

Our drive through the Dingle Peninsula the day before yesterday was beautiful. We took a detour out to Valentia Island and spent an hour beachcombing for broken pieces of painted pottery.



----

We've all assimilated different roles on this trip:
I'm the driver, Colleen is the navigator, and Bre makes us nutella and bread in the back seat. Yesterday she made egg salad sandwiches (a real treat!). A few days ago, they both fell asleep, so I was without my navigator AND without my food. I was feeling sleepy and we were driving through the middle of (nowhere) as usual and I kept seeing signs for "ancient stone circle.' After the third time of seeing this sign, I finally decided I had to figure out what it was all about. Colleen woke up when the GPS started his panicked "Recalculating..." (which alwys means I've taken a wrong turn) and Bre woke up ten minutes later in the middle of a field of sheep.

She was very upset with Colleen's lack of babysitting skills..

At any rate, we drove to the end of the road only to find a house and a bunch of rocks all over the hill side.

The "ancient stone circle" ended up being three stones haphazardly strewn about a person's front yard. Sheep were grazing at the base of the monument.

Ridiculous.

Needless to say, the girls have been hesitant to doze off again.

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Must wake them up! Checkout is 10am.

Slan

Check it out:

Photos up to the beginning of the Rock of Cashel:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2030839&id=65800739&l=3a86e1124c


Sleep time. More will go up later. We've got tons!

We just realized today is SUNDAY. Been here a week.

Pictures for today will go up later. We're hungry.

Quick update

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Dear Fail-Blog:

The Blarney Castle and stone is just like Disneyland: an over-priced tourist trap.

Love,
Kellie


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After settling into our hostel in Cork, we drove to Kinsale (a quaint, multi-colored "heritage town" 35 minutes south of Cork) and visited Charles Fort and Desmond Castle.

Charles Fort is a GORGEOUS, many-acred, star-shaped fortress on the ocean: full of secret gardens and places to climb, to gaze, and to get lost.


Purty.

Desmond Castle is an old war prison (called the "French Gaol"--pronounced "jail") converted debtor's prison, converted wine exporter, converted wine museum. With a few creepy looking mannequins littered about.

After causing quite a scene in the evening traffic (those streets are freakin small, okay??), we headed back to Cork. A few minutes down the road, as we wound along the curved coast, Colleen looked up from Albert (our Austrailian male GPS system) and said ... "You know ... Blarney's only three miles from our destination...."

"Do you want to go to Blarney, Colleen?" I asked.

She grinned sheepishly.

We headed to Blarney.

We knew the castle would be closed but we thought, like all the other Irish monuments/historical sites/things-to-see, it would be in the middle of town or in the middle of nowhere, so we could at least get a look at it, even if we couldn't tour the place.

But it turned out to be the tourist trap it's rumored to be. Not only could we not see it, but it was enclosed by an all-embracing barbed fence, a moat, and tons of un-trimmed foilage. You had to pay an arm-load just to LOOK at the place.

We drove the 35 minutes back to Cork only slightly upset: it's difficult to be upset when in the middle of all this green.


Bre's hungry. I'm a little hungry. I'm sure Colleen's hungry.
Time to eat.


Bye then!

Today's Count: One Flat Tire. One Light-house. Half a waterfall. Sheep.

It's been a few days—we thought there wasn't internet at the hostel last night, until Bre talked to a Texan staying upstairs and he gave us the password. Tonight, we're at a B&B on the beach in Youghal and I don't think there's internet here either, so this post might not go up until we get to Cork!



Yesterday we stayed in Tramore: a beautiful, old, little town perched on the crest of the cliffs that dive into the south-eastern Irish Sea. It's about ten minutes outside Waterford City. Once we got checked into the hostel, we drove into the city and went on an historic tour through Waterford (Crystal Factory town, though we didn't make it to the factory). The tour was led by a sweet Irish man who took us through Ireland's first Catholic cathedral, and through Ireland's oldest protestant church (which were both designed by the same man—a protestant with twenty-two kids. He designed the beauties and his wife did the book-keeping).

Our roommate in Tramore was a Czech lady biking south on holiday from some refugee job she does in Kilkenney.

Colleen and I went on a random Ferris wheel in the middle of town, from which we could see the whole city.

Todayyyy was quite an adventure.

We left Tramore early this morning and began the trek along the ocean, in search for Hook Head Lighthouse, Ormond Castle and Manor House, and Mahon Falls. On the way to the lighthouse, we took a car ferry across the water (INSANEE) and I stalled on the way up the ramp (the men behind us got a kick out of that). I believe I should start charging admission for all the amusing scenes I've caused behind the wheel.

<--(view of Hook Head Loop from the Car Ferry)

The lighthouse is an old medieval structure, and the oldest still-functioning lighthouse in Europe! (*coool.*).

We didn't tour inside it because we talked to a woman inside the lighthouse cafe who said it was 1. very high 2. not worth it. A bunch of fireplaces and nonsense. Her kids came back from the tour and said about the same thing.

So we played in the wind-blown grass around the cliffs and the sea, crawling among the exposed rocks before the tide rose to wash out the terrain.



When we returned to our car, the tire was ... less-than ideal. Thus began the nail-biting race to fill the tire before it completely deflated and began bending the rim.

Oh wait. I already did that.

At any rate, I've had more conversations with the Irish people—asking directions, looking for help, learning their lives—than I think I have had with strangers in America. “Stranger” just isn't a part of their vocabulary.

In Carrick-on-Suir, we took a private tour through the Ormond Castle and Manor House—the Butler family is following us around here. Yesterday we went to Kilkenney Castle and learned about Queen Elizabeth's “black husband”--the Butler man whose family owned Ormond Castle and who was related to Anne Boyeln (Henry VIII, anyone? That man, by the way, has quite a horrible reputation out here. Obviously).

When one Irishman holds a grudge against a man, Ireland holds a grudge against the man, too.

After Ormond Castle we decided to skip Mahon Falls and continue on to Ardmore and Youghal, for the sake of time.

But when Colleen looked up the falls and saw they were “on the way,” we decided to take a detour and find the much-hoped-for landmark.

Thus began the hour-long adventure through the winding hills of the Comeragh Mountains. We passed quite a few sheep roaming the hills, or seeking shelter from the sleeting rain.

Oh, yes, we have finally found the rain. After a week of beautiful clear skies, the clouds have frowned their scowl into the holiday, casting the pale gray halo over our faces and the water drops across all our photographs.

Any rate, we found the waterfall as well, but it was a fifteen-minute hike from the road, so we decided to take pictures from afar and continue on to Youghal. I frowned sadly as we passed the sign to Ardmore. We had to check into the Bed and Breakfast by 6pm so we didn't have time for any other last-minute detours. Sigh.

Youghal's full of old people, fishermen, and foreigners running small businesses in the nooks and crannies of this fisher-town.

Last night we headed down the street to the pubs frequented by the locals, in hopes of finding some “traditional live music” ... or, as Leah (lady running our bed and breakfast) sheepishly called it, “old-folks' tunes.” Unfortunately the only "live music" we found was by a band called Soul-d out, and they only played two 80s flashback songs before they needed a "break" ... and never came back.


We've settled in Cork now and are heading back out to see a Fort and a Castle in Kinsale. Wish us luck with driving--I parked on a steep incline.

Bye, then.