Smiling in Sante Fe

I woke up this morning and had no idea where I was. For a few seconds, I looked around in the semi-darkness and a few scenarios popped into my head jolting me around in space and time before I remembered I was in Sante Fe visiting friends I knew from my time in Moab, Utah.

Good friends. The kind of friends that no matter how long it's been since you've seen or spoken, there's no awkwardness and time takes on a funny quality as in 'Wow. How could you have done all that in the time since we last saw each other when it feels in this moment like it was just last week when Nat did that double pitch climb and Adam and co. hosted that 'roll your own sushi' party and then we were all laughing at that music festival when I bought a turkey leg and grease was dripping down my chin and one of y'all said 'Isn't this the girl who's about to go live on a vegetarian Buddhist lettuce farm?!?!?!?!?'

I sit here in amazement too because I had no idea Nat and Adam were back in the states. Last I heard, Nat was getting her Master's back in her homeland of Canada. When I arrived in Alburquerque a week and a half ago, I posted it on Facebook and Nat saw it and told me that they were in Sante Fe which is superclose to ABQ. I emailed back, thinking they were on vacation, saying I hope they are still there when I finish my training. It turns out that they live here and so after wrapping up in ABQ yesterday afternoon, headed up here and I feel so happy to reconnect with them.

I have felt quite disconnected from my friends and from community down in coastal Texas though it has been great to reconnect with my family. I went back last year thinking I would stay for a few weeks, maybe a few months to help my Mom rebuild her life after enduring Hurricane Ike and then head back west. I have chosen to stay to continue being helpful and to study music and will be going back for school in the fall.

This summer, though....this summer is a gift to myself of reconnecting with friends, with nature and with myself through songwriting and by continuing to explore how I can be helpful in the world. I'm driving and so I have flexibility to take advantage of opportunities that open up and to move at my own pace, receiving the gifts of the universe instead of rushing off to the next thing I have to do. I feel really grateful for that plan because I had originally booked my whole entire summer up with trainings and retreats with little time for friends or for myself. The new improved plan is a combination of both. And so, it is with much joy that I receive this unexpected gift of reconnecting with Nat and Adam. They are going out of town for the weekend and are gifting me the use of their studio where I plan to play with music and catch my breath from the intensity of the last few weeks (more later). Perfect, perfect, perfect.

About an hour ago, I had wanted to go for a run, move my body, breathe in the morning air and Nat told me about a trail that runs along the railroad track. I was supposed to take a left down this pedestrian alley a few houses down and then take a right and continue straight through some houses to the track. I became confused and couldn't find the track and thought maybe I would just jog around the neighborhood. I backtracked, tried to find the second alleyway again, wondering if anyone was home where I could knock on the door and ask and then I saw an older gentleman standing in his driveway. He was visiting too, but used to live here and pointed out the path to me. I gave him a hug and continued on. Perfect, perfect, perfect.

The alleyway popped out onto a paved track adjacent to the railroad bordered by plants and trees. I stretched, started the timer on my watch and took off, listening to the playlist on my Ipod I call 'Girlfriend'. It includes Alanis Morissette's '21 Things I Want in a Lover', 'Respect' by Pink, Indigo Girl's 'Closer to Fine', Lyle Lovett's 'Aint It Somethin', John Michael Montgomery's 'Life's A Dance' and India Arie's 'Private Party'. When the path came up to a road, I danced on the sidewalk until the way was clear and I smiled at everyone I came across: solo cyclists, cyclists with kids in those cute little carriers, joggers with cute little puppy dogs. I 'Hi-Five'd' the branches of trees reaching toward me.

As I prepared to turn around to head back, I suddenlty felt afraid as I realized I had not turned around and taken a look at where I had popped out from my friends' neighborhood onto this track. 'What if I run right past it?', I thought with a little bit of alarm. I strategized that I could run back for the same amount of time I had run to this point and I should be close. My experience is that usually it takes less time to get back than it did to get to the turnaround point so I was still feeling a bit concerned. I don't know this town well at all. And I kept running and smiling at people and then all of sudden, a woman popped out from the left ten feet in front of me. I stopped short in awe of the grace of the universe and had to manouever to not get run over by a family of bicycles. I tried to talk to the woman to express my amazement at her timing, but she just kept on walking oblivious to my experience or maybe aware that I looked a bit crazed in that moment.

Ain't it somethin' how the way things go? Perfect, perfect, perfect:)

Beach Bum: Essay 3: March 26, 2009

 

A gull flies overhead, arcs back toward the shore and lands.  It stares off to the left. 

 

A small white dog with brown spots pants over to a ceramic bowl, licking up water as if she’s found an oasis in the middle of the desert.  She’d gone missing in our perception – not her’s – disappearing into wetland plants taller than she.  Harmonized whistling from the top of the dunes by me and my new friend, Miranda, we thought was futile.  However; just as Miranda headed down to tromp into the green in pursuit of the dog she’s had since they were both knee high to a grasshopper, out darted Poppy in a dead heat straight toward the shore fifty yards to our left.    Now she sits between us, content, grooming herself.

Miranda & Poppy

My bum is currently a foot off the sand, supported by a blue swath of fabric which is itself supported by an aluminum frame.  Aluminum is useful here on an island constantly bathed in salty, moist air.  My feet are covered in sand, my army green pant legs are wet and sandy – I was surprised by the tide soon after I arrived.  My well worn Chaco sandals almost washed out to sea as the tide continued its move inland.

 

It’s been lovely sharing nature with Miranda.  All kinds of stories were recalled from my childhood.  Memories of oil spills and tar-covered beaches, of being surrounded by cabbage head jellyfish bobbing in the water,  of a friend swimming out to the second sandbar and into a school of eels, of myself swimming parallel to shore and into a school of grouper, fish everywhere flapping against the whole length of my body.  There was the time I crawl-stoked into a Portugese man-of-war that I felt, but never saw, red streaks painting my right arm.  I recall being grateful the tentacles didn’t slap my face instead.

 

I want to tell her everything: about the different beaks birds have specialized to what they eat, the seaweed, the sea anemones.  I want to take her into the salt flats.  I want to share the joy that I find here in my hometown, the one I was so eager to leave.

 

Another cloudy day, yet no rain.  The temperature is perfect:  not too hot, not too cold.  Just right.  No need to spoinl the present  moment with oppressive thoughts of Texas summers.

 

I feel an itch on my left bum cheek and wonder if a sand flea has found me.  I had forgotten about them – images of childhood post beach showers where all kinds of surprises fall out as you peel off your suit:  amazing amounts of sand, shells, and sand fleas.

 

I feel at peace here.  No need to worry about where I will be sleeping tonight, when repairs might start on Mom’s Ike ravaged house, or if she will be able to purchase a new one.  No worries about whether Dave and I are meant to be friends or more.  Just gratitude for what I have and for what I’m glad I don’t have.  So often I forget to be thankful for all of the terrible things that could be happening that aren’t.

 

I used to have a travel alarm clock that had a setting that sounded like this.  Sounds of nature to lull one into sleep.  Yet I don’t feel sleepy.

 

If I took a little piece of the scene before me, it could be seen as a chaotic swirling and churning.  I remember being knocked over by waves as a kid -  my sister Sherry and I would sometimes for fun go farther than we could touch the ground.  I can see Dad far away on the shoreline waving his arms for us to come back – I guess we were confident he would come to get us if we needed him.  From here, fifty yards back, all the motion is contained, held by the shore, supported.  It’s calm here.  I feel my feet firmly on the sand.  And I know that if I got up right now, walked into the ocean and started swimming perpendicular to shore, I’d make my way to the calmness beyond the wavebreak.  It’s calm there.  Floating on my back, eyes closed, I allow the ocean to hold me, to rock me while I listen to the chatter of my dolphin cousins.

 

Poppy’s up  now.  She wandered away, sniffing, and then turned and ran full speed back to us.  Just because.

 

I am amazed at how fast the legs of the shorebirds move as they run across the sand, stop, peck, run some more.  Now the whole flock flies straight up in concert to avoid the approaching tide and again settles on the sand.

 

My exposed right shoulder feels the recent visit of a skeeter and I notice a few have landed on my left arm.  As I look at my arm, I notice that the hair is standing on end.  The temperature must have dropped a few degrees and/or I am feeling the effects of sitting around in wet clothes.

 

I hear an ambulance in the distance.  My bladder is full again.  I scratch a bite on my neck and start feeling antsy.  And itchy.  And ready to go.  Buh-bye, beach.  I know you will be here waiting until the next time I decide to slow down, to notice, to be.