yeah i don’t habla espanol pero yo soy sleepy.
sometimes i think politics – my obsession – is the death of beauty. i see people who would be able to create such a lovely world, an interesting world, and instead all we do is talk about living wages and working families and healthcare and lack. and we love it! i’m together with like over 70 people here in petaluma california and they are really some lovely kind of folks who are moved on all types of issues…this cool super smart dude lester from east l.a., this smooth woman angela from seattle, this woman nora who has such pretty eyes i keep forgetting where she’s from, the older black guy named delma from louisiana who looks like huey from the boondocks but aged 60 and 6"5. and within a minute and a half its palestine and poverty and voting rights.
there’s all this wisdom and we’re discussing the same issues in the same frames we always discuss them. i think people are scared to acknowledge that they know the answers, know what’s right and wrong, and know how to create actual change because at the end of the day its all hard work. my friend gavin has been saying folks are lazy. i think folks are kind of uninspired, but i understand that because those of us who are supposed to inspire are kind of in conversation loops around those core things which most inspire us. time to ‘skip hop jump’ as my boy johny says, jump the rut, the broom, the track. time for new language and new approaches, time to shake it off.
another thought in my head: the current theme of my life is moving away from ego/obsession to good self/love. i talked to the heartbreaker briefly today, who i am going to now annoint Friend who i Ended Loving in August, or FELA. fela and i were both like can we talk now? this self-imposed period of healing has been sped along by this trip, where i keep having deep time to think, and the more i think the more i realize it wasn’t all about him, it was about my ego and my comfort with obsession.
i feel so much better about the whole thing than i have. like i have been good to my self, am being better to myself. i don’t want to be obsessed with folks, or obsessed over…want to be a good person and have folks respond to that. i don’t want to pull folks close to me to feed my ego, i want to fall into the arms of love as often as possible, all different levels of love – spoken, huggin, kissin, lookin at, writing to, feelin it love, all of it selfless and self-aware.
to that end, i am currently in this sweet vortex full of lovely brilliant creatures who don’t demand too much from me. i am learning to say no to those sweet creatures whose loving would just hurt me or hurt someone i love. i am learning to say yes to surprises and to letting others sometimes take the lead.
maybe i can apply it to the political boredom i am currently feeling – where is the love in the work, where is the point of people being better as people, less greedy and obsessed and egotistical and more loving and good. that excites me, even if the language over it is federal budget. where is the love for kids in the federal budget…maybe. maybe.
petaluma is all these huge blonde hills dotted with deer and goats and turtles and it makes me think of wuthering heights – immense and windy. in other news the mouse showed up in the room next to ours last night. i smoked out the campfire crew and thus identified the folks i will build with late night here – luckily i smoked out the woman who woke up face to face with the mouse and she was able to chill on it. proof of my level of exhaustion right now is that i walked into the room in the dark, stripped and got in the bed with whichever little creatures may have been in there.
my girl laura is in the house up from oakland, and she said you need to go rest. i have circles under my eyes the shape of this journey. i can’t say no to a campfire with perfectly crisped melted marshmallows by ny jobs with justice worker lauren. hopefully i’ll get a nap first. i LOVE not having a working phone here. 🙂
soon i’ll see mattie, pam costain, meighan davis, my sister and the conways again, and the 505 crew! and someday i’ll sleep…