Flight

2009 will mark a decade of my living full time in the Bay Area. It was May 1999 when I left behind a charming apartment overlooking a church square in a hip Berlin neighborhood (Prenzlauerberg/Mitte), solid work, and my mother --whose only child I am, to come to California and move in with my now ex-husband.

About a year ago I started thinking about leaving. Why? I know this place: I’ve lived on 3 sides of the Bay: San Rafael, in Marin County; the Berkeley hood; and now the City- the Castro. The most beautiful spots, especially along the coast, the forests, and the nicest restaurants—I associate with my ex. It’s too expensive to sustain oneself as an artist. Solid candidates for romantic partnership seem to elude me. And there’s such a lot of world to see.

The funny thing is, I don’t have a particular destination. I’m intrigued by popular political movements in Latin America… I have a relatively easy entrée to Berlin, and thus a portal to the EU… Toronto is tempting… I know. More than one friend has said: It should not be a moving away from, it should be a decisive moving toward. I keep waiting for a sign.

The uncertainty is leaching some lifeforce. It takes constant reminders to be present, and still I drift. Anxiety, loneliness…

In my senior year of college I knew I was leaving for Europe after graduating. My parents had moved to Germany during my sophomore year and shortly thereafter we figured out that my dad had alzheimer’s. I wanted to go to Europe; I also felt I had no choice but to go and support my mother, help take care of my father. About midway through senior year, all my relationships started disintegrating. My unbelievably hot and brilliant creative polymath of a boyfriend, Robb, couldn’t imagine moving abroad. The dissolvings (with friends too) seemed mutual.

But here I am, 15 years later, with more self-awareness. I look back on that time and wonder if it was almost entirely me who was dis-engaging. To protect myself, to make the leaving more bearable.

These days, I sometimes choose to be alone on a given night even when I have a social invite. I tell myself I can’t go to another party and not meet someone I’m interested in; but instead be surrounded by nuzzly couples…but instead be breathed on by a moth drawn to my light --with whom I got no spark.

Alone, I flip through my mental rolodex and decide I don’t really feel like talking to any of my friends. I often tell myself it’s because none of them can offer the specific type of interaction I increasingly crave: the breathtaking I-can’t-get-enough-of-you romantic exchange.

The distancing phenomenon’s been compounded by the evolution of my professional life. Thrillingly, I’m a writer now. Yet it’s eaten my life for the past six months, as I’ve busted my ass to get a serious nonfiction project finished in an unheard of timeline. I put off almost every friend between December 2007 and May 2008, and now at the end of that spell I have found myself adrift.

At the Hoop Path retreat last weekend (it already seems forever ago, far more than a week), I was only half-connecting, mostly, except maybe with Beth or Satise. Unfortunate.

What to do except put myself back out (t)here. Share this. Wait for a sign. Invite intimacies. Only connect.

my boys get hitched

www.facebook.com/album.php

ok, she's back.

that sweet nutty Arugula

this whole rebranding thing: o Arugula

-It's a little over the top, there are really much better, more divine hoopers out there.
I was talking to my boss, van. A pretty savvy guy.

But van insisted my superheroname should be hoopgoddess, and promptly reserved a relevant URL for me.

So my hooplog became hoopgoddess.wordpress.com...

And on a whim I changed it here on tribe. Looks weird. I kinda miss Arugula, the Rocket.

pick my outfit

hoopgoddess.wordpress.com/2008/...input/

mesa logs, II

4/22
Tonight I opted to be social, feeling very pleased with myself after having churned out another 12 pages of the policy chapter (tho I’m nowhere near the end of it). Had rambly and unaccountable conversations with Erik, whom I’m beginning to get, and really treasure. Also connected briefly with Jeremy on sci-fi.

Did the sauna with Erik to close the evening- a long sit until it got hot enough that we were actually sweating, more drifts of conversation, with an ease that makes me feel as though we’ve been friends for a long time.

Hardly hooped today. The sky was surly and the weather welcomed rain all day, although it didn’t receive it until dusk.


4-23
I stand on my widow’s walk looking out over the restoring wetlands, the irregular edges of the marshes lit platinum with the sun’s last light --which has gone from rose to violet to blue to now just the last bits of grey in the blueblackness of night. How fortunate I am. Who knows whether this kind of remote seaside escape will exist in a harsher future—with most of us concentrated by necessity in urban villages, with the water levels rising and obliterating most coastal communities like this one…

Even today already most of the world’s people are already living in polluted, lifeless, hopeless settings, and here I am, blissed out on my contemplative green perch.

Adding my name to the wall of writers who’ve stayed and worked here is an exquisitely deafening moment—the whole world reduced to my shaky hand around the sharpie and the yellow wall with these names, many of them familiar and more not (yet?) familiar. I sign in a dash. Then, studying the other names again, realize that many have printed theirs, and here’s my contribution, utterly unintelligible. After a moment, I draw a little arrow to my last name, then write it again in print: CONRAD. Maybe someday I or someone else will laugh at that, the insecurity in me it points to.

Earlier I spent an hour studying a photoessay book depicting writers’ desks, with statements from each of them about writing, or how where they write plays into it, or not. I’m like—me? Yes, it’s me they’re reaching out to, saying welcome.

4/25
Friday.
How do you get to be a bird in Point Reyes? Every bird must want, upon flying over or stopping over whilst on migratory route, to stay here. Mustn’t it? It’s prime real estate. Are the bird inhabitants I see born here? Do they defend their territory by force? Does the country hawk sometimes envy the city hawk, or never?

4/28
Monday.

Van took off last night after consuming my weekend like a blizzard, coating everything heavy and spectacular. Afterwards I feel the need to replenish, rest, rebel. I walk into town and eat orange cinnamon French toast with stewed bananas and then, while waiting for the bookstore to open, go to Toby’s Feed Barn for a chai. The locals all greet one another—dogs and humans. Gods I LOVE this place.

4/30.
Wednesday. The last day.

Something about Van’s energy and the weight of the remainder of the book knocked me off kilter. I’ve done some paltry work since he left but nothing of the magnitude that I accomplished in the week leading up to his arrival. And I decided I should just go with it.

Soon enough I will be back in the Castro, with the noises of the city—and worse, the grumbles and nastinesses of the housemates.

When I woke this morning I noticed the Silence, except for the birds, a host of different bird noises I wish to hell I could identify —especially after polishing off Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer yesterday, an utter indulgence that felt SO GOOD… so close to her Appalachian cast of characters that I miss them now with a pang.

When I have sat outside or mosied in the garden, I’ve been hyper aware of the scent of it. Overwhelmingly, a gentle green smell from all the things growing in this marvelous garden; and then the brinyness of ocean in sudden soft blasts…. When I walked into town—or when I biked in—the smell of cow dung and rich soil, bringing me back to summers visiting Oma and Opa in Brechten, wandering through the fields with Bettina and her friends, snagging the odd cob of corn and munching it. The farmers never missed it.

A prominent theme that emerged during my stay was: CHILDREN. Hearing the stories of Erik’s amazing Max, so earnestly taking on the world and taking it apart—in his brain—to understand it all, perhaps to fix it later… And Jeremy’s Liko… and meeting June & Johnny with their little Clementine… And just being out here, and getting some perspective on my life, and nursing the great Want inside me for a Partner, a Nest.

I have been so very patient. And will continue to be.

In the meantime, I have birthed a book.

mesa logs

Mesa, 4/19.

It’s noon. I arrived 23 hours ago. I’d had a spirited conversation about race and race relations with Rafiq, my cab driver, in our hour plus together. At the end he gave me his number, the gold of his grills flashing. I smiled back, blushing.

I had envisioned the Mesa Refuge extended over more land—oceanfront—and more rustic and minimal. Instead there are cut crystal glasses and a decanter full of sherry in the vast library/ living room, and up the stairs—painted a pumpkin color and checkered with modern square windows—is my “tower room”. A beautiful geometry of exposed unfinished beams crown me; more of these perfectly square windows that, awning-like, are hinged at the top and open at the bottom, so the rain can veer off them; and faded soft Turkish carpets underfoot on the honey wood floors. A decadent queen bed with perfect pillows, a glamorous cobalt blue bathroom with mood lighting and a luxurious tub, a mission-style writing desk, and my own balcony overlooking the wetlands, entirely enclosed by climbing roses that are just popping into flower: light pink. It’s a lovely green respite, formerly the home of artist Sam Francis.

Yesterday was glorious weather: brightly sunny, hot and still enough to hoop shirtless in and then hunker down on my balcony with The Botany of Desire and then nap in a spot of sun.

One of my co-inhabitants arrived in the late afternoon: Erik, an effete anthropologist and professor from Michigan who’s writing about plants exported from the border of China and Tibet in the first 30-odd years of the 20th century. He’d been driven up by his friend Dave, of Oakland. The three of us exchanged sly eyebrows while Mesa groundsmanager Pam went on with onerous details about the house. Then after she left, shared dinner, which revealed that all three of us are divorced (or about to be, in Erik’s pained case). Talked about self-efffacement, losing and finding oneself, dating again… And then this handsome Dave asked me out before he left. I said yes: there are lots of likeable things about him.

The winds kicked up last night, buffeting the tower. It sounds like I’m at sea in a storm. I can well imagine this windswept bluff devoid of any vegetation, as it was before white people starting settling and planting it. Now pines slap the house walls and the rose bushes blow like waves, undaunted.

I have lots of pieces to add into the book and find it difficult to start. The Botany of Desire rocked my world. I hope our nonfiction prose can be such poetry.

An email comes in from Mitch and I savor it. He is 27, involved with a Russian woman with a kid already, and probably not a long-term prospect. But I can’t stop the memories of our pyrotechnic magnetism last Monday night after the Goldmans, the way we came inexorably together, blazing eyes locked.

There are so many men popping at present it’s a little ridiculous. And still I haven’t had any sex since the one time with Jason in January. And before that with the Admiral in October. Me and my 6-month celibacy stints. And my familiarity and comfort with solitude. Who knew I would get so good at being with myself?

4/20. Happy 4-20!

It’s 8:15 and all three of us have risen. Jeremy, who arrived yesterday, seems to have already been going at it down in the Great Room for some time when I pad down to make coffee. We’re a fun threesome. Jeremy says in his past 2 stays he did nothing of the sort of convivial post-dinner sherry-drinking, storytelling, and hooping/hoop lessons around the fire that we did last night.

The gale force winds fled sometime in the early evening, so now this morning it’s so still that not a rosebud twitches. Better to concentrate by. Today I have high aims. In a moment, still warming up, I’ll write a response to Mitch, and then get going.

No wonder Brian A adored it here. How could you not. You would have to be a pretty big fat spoiled brat not to.

I polished off another couple books—one (Leadership and the New Science, by Margaret Wheatley) on “new science”/ chaos theory and quantum physics as applied to organizations and leadership (interesting. The org vision should be held as a _field_ that characterizes all activities, not as a destination!).

Musing on quantum theory and relationships as the most basic of processes, I wrote a few pages, possibly for a first chapter, about Van’s role as a bridge builder, and the courage and persistence it takes to introduce a new world order, a new paradigm.

Tomorrow: the first draft of policy, and listening to Van’s rambles from that day at the Grotto. And now, at 9:30, a private celebration of 4-20.

4-21
Wobbly, I hooped my butt off after I left off here last night. The glass doors to my balcony and adjoining floor-to ceiling window made a perfect wall of mirrors for the PSI-hoop, which I am considering sending back to Patrick to have him replace two of the reds with orange, and two with rainbow riders so it has less of a candy cane effect.

Slept in longer, waking vaguely aroused and not willing to take the time to deal with it. As I finished making breakfast I glimpsed Erik pacing the lawn with documents in hand, reading. Gods I love this place. I could stay here forever.

synopsis

3 weeks ago: got over the final Futureflu, which had kept me down for about a MONTH, with the help of a stellar acupuncturist and naturopath and lots of herbs and rest and love from friends. Thanks especially to Christabel, Michael, and Craig for the caretaking: I hated to ask, but I needed the help.

2 weeks ago-ish: spring had arrived, and the flu had departed, and I was compelled to dig out something that's been like a corpse under the bed, moldering: a mess and a mass of divorce-related paperwork that I could hardly bear to touch as it came into the mailbox from my lawyer, one traumatic envelope after the next. Finally, I sorted through it.

1 week ago: I departed for my four-day stint in Memphis. Our Dream Reborn gathering, on the 40th anniversary of Dr King's death, was off the hook. I am so blessed to be part of such important work. More about that on my wordpress blog.

1 day ago: I signed the contracts. It's official. I've sold my first book.

Outfitted

Recently I’ve been going through a spate of consumerist indulgence. Or indulgent consumerism.

It’s all relative, so allow me to describe the baseline, as illustrated by my shoe collection.

I’ve got 22 pairs of shoes in my closet, two of which were acquired in college (around 1995); 9 of which I got between 2002 and 2004; two of which are second-hand; and roughly a quarter of which I bought last year, the most recent in August 2007. Five of them are athletic-ish. Five of them have any heel to speak of, including an all-purpose black suede pump—one of the 1990s acquisitions. My mother’s frugality rubbed off on me, and I am holding onto several pairs that are entirely out of fashion, but well-made and in good condition, in certainty, or the delusion, that they’ll come back into style.

Anyway. Often this seems to me to be an obscene number—22! I think of women who manage with two. Or fewer. My life’s work is about spreading shoes—and other possessions, rights and opportunities—around with more equity. How much can I really justify owning?

But recently, I was contemplating the adjective “sophisticated” as a descriptor for the Manlove I’d like in my life. Sophistication is a quality that has been mostly lacking in the Mission hipsters, earnest leftists, and Burners whom I’ve been mostly dating on and off.

And then I realized I haven’t exactly been exuding sophistication myself. On a recent dinner date to a semi-posh sort of place, I paired said black suede pumps with a cute teal satin dress, which I could just get away with, but then ran into a little snag with the evening bag (I didn’t have one). So I stuffed my keys, lip balm and wallet in my coat (from 2004!) pockets. Less than sophisticated, that.

I decided I needed to outfit myself a bit. In the past 2 weeks, I have shopped: Lingerie, a purse (metallic: works for posh evening occasions!), sunglasses. And an InStyle and a Lucky, news of which my stylish Best Girl Antonella responded to with a gasp and a “you’re unwell!” Very funny, Antonella.

So now I’m beginning to feel equipped. I’m not certain For What, exactly, but it feels like it’s going to be a hell of a ride.

joy is me

I was just notified that I've been accepted to the Mesa Refuge program for a spring residency. What an honor! All the energy from all the amazing writers who have spent time there (Michael Pollan of the Omnivore's Dilemma was one of last year's residents). Striding on into the dream...