he pulled on me, his hands on my arm. holding my wrist in one hand and my elbow in the other. pressing into my bicep. sadness welled up inside and we both felt it.
it was so dark in his room and things were foreign and i felt so exposed. foreign: his accent, the smells, the light, the words.
so much wasn't foreign though. a safety net of energy, a comforting pod of neptune.
he removed his hands from me rather suddenly, moved them out to make a circle over my inner elbow. i sense sadness there. let me hold this space for you so you can feel it.
it's the type of thing i cannot write about without seeming insane, "out there," duped or wrong. i'm looking you in the eye right now and telling you, it's real. he's a real honest person who lives on earth and he can do these things. he's not "out there," he's just a guy named jon.
years ago, at 16, i met a person online who told me that he was psychic. he was honest about it and trusted me to believe him. it was late one night, i was living in florida then, and i was so sticky and covered with mosquito bites. just like i am here, today, in upstate new york. spending days laboring in the muggy air, i am sticky.
the person then proceeded to tell me what color shirt i was wearing and what the chair i was sitting in was like. we lost touch after that night. he ended up going to the university of florida. just a regular guy.
we barrel mindlessly toward the age of aqaurius, the dawning of the brahma yuga, our pluto in sagittarius for thirteen years. we move like bumbling idiots towards a time when this will be natural. it will be natural that after holding a person's hand for two hours he will be able to speak my mind for me accurately. it will be natural and it won't be something reserved for those of us who can take it.
this is a place where psychic energy is accepted and encouraged. this is a place where no one finds it weird that when i was 18 i channeled a dead person twice and never told anyone about it besides the person who saw me burst into tears and speak for someone else. i was ashamed, i was crazy.
i don't know where i'm headed and i'm kind of afraid of what happens when jon puts his hand on my ear and knows what is going on inside. but like i said to him night before last, when you're this compelled towards something, what other choice do you have.
in our composite chart: chiron conjuct moon.
...
life here at omega is glorious. time is neverending, the air is the same temperature as our bodies and we are part of air. it's a small place, it's immersive, i am here, and no place else. it permeates me and defies explanation.
i am a worker here, i feel priveleged to be so. i am responsible for small tasks that i feel pleased about.
i talk to peter daily and remind him of my love for him, of my eventual return to his physical location, of our plans to be bound, he reminds me that he is still there, that he trusts me, that he's had too much coffee, that we're in love.
i wish there was a way to tell you about everyone. today, it was the new photographer, josh. we fell into step. he's been here three days. he went to school in chico, he has a wonderful silky short beard and square teeth. we are friends, now. do you want to go for a walk? and then we were walking, visiting the hammock by the lake, him standing awkwardly next to me as i rested in it. i was a horizontal question mark on those diamond ropes, he was a vertical question mark: i don't know you well enough to sit in the hammock with you is what he could have said. instead he said want to see my pictures? and we wandered back the way we came and i looked at his portfolio.
later in the dining hall, sudeesh and katie were playing songs about zion while others foraged for snacks in the cabinet. granola, vegan foccacia, tofutti, bagels. sleepytime tea. jon was there, reclining confidently a table, lecturing me about staying up late because he knows i'm supposed to work in the morning. i knew he'd be there, and he knew i'd show up looking for him. he throws me a look. i throw him a look. he has curly hair, it's long.
i really just couldn't feel more joyous about the ongoing madness in the dining hall. twenty four hour possibility for bonding. i love it.
barry the mailman was there too. he carries a walking stick everywhere. his mojo stick. sometimes he talks too much and won't let you interrupt. his spirit is unphasable.
a few days ago when telling deepest darkest secrets around a campfire, i told them that i never think i belong. i've been thinking about that, and i have begun to feel that i do belong here.
holly graced me with a facerub today, making my caffeine related headache go away. she's lovely, with long black braids and crow's feet around her eyes.
tomorrow i'll get up at 5:30am and matt and i will go around opening buildings. matt will make me laugh, he's so funny, i just laugh the whole time when he's around. i can't wait to see dawn here.
i should sleep, i suppose, being that i have to get up in a few hours.
hey austin. thanks for calling me from the white stripes show last night. i woke up at 5:15am this morning. ten minutes later, rain happened. i sat in my tent, thunder crashing around me, and listened to the white stripes sing BUT THIS CAN'T BE LOVE, CUZ THERE IS NO TRUE LOVE through the static and crackle and distortion of phone lines, cellular repeaters, thunderstorms, time, and coasts. if a morning awake at dawn in a thunderstorm could have been made any better, this voicemail did so.
i have to go and unlock some stuff now. can't use the golf cart in an electrical storm. trudge trudge.
-le
today, vacuuming became a walking meditation. poetry is brewing, somewhere, inside the motion of my arm as it pushpulls the vacuum in precise lines on the rugs. classroom after classroom. a deliberate movement, many deliberate movements.
i rode through the forest from sanctuary with the headlights off. risky business in a silent electric disneyland vehicle.
he lives at the corner where the road to sanctuary is. on the way up and down i checked his window for signs of life. none, but the large tree that grows near his dorm is wet and honors me by allowing me to lay eyes upon it. it's beautiful, it's beautiful when i walk past it in a rainstorm to pee, it's beautiful when i climb up into its v-shaped nestling grounds, it's beautiful when i trip over its roots. the roots are amazing, rivers of wood with rocks between them, moss growing on them.
i was sick yesterday, and the day before. not quite sure what it was all about. holly with the wonderful crow's feet and black braids, she found me sitting weakly on the bathroom floor. she's capricorn moon, a caretaker. she took my pulse and gave me homeopathics. i got a fever and lay in my tent delirious for some time. i took some advil and two hours later my fever broke and i was made of sweat.
i found myself sitting in staff dining, ravenous, then. i ate two bagels and a popsicle foisted upon me. josh who lives in my campground, he buys icee pops by the hundred and eats about 20 at a time, one after another. he has trouble with moderation and his face is some kind of caricature. he makes me a little uncomfortable only because he can be unpredictably terse. but as i sat post-fever in badly lit staff dining, he handed me a popsicle and it was good. i was reading an article about brain chemistry someone left on the board, and thoroughly enjoying it. we talked about it and surmised i must be a geek.
that's one thing i'm learning here, i am a geek. i enjoy tedium. hanging around jon a lot is a lesson about that, because he's actually more intuition based than i am, he'd really rather feel his way around problems and he really doesn't like structured studying or learning. he likes for people to tell him. i like for people to tell me too, but it's strange to be around someone who's almost more my perceived self than i am.
i've learned so many things here actually. i've learned to shit with other people in the bathroom, for one. i've stopped drinking coffee, i've learned that i can immerse openly in groups of people if i feel that they will support me. i've learned how to drive a golf cart, how to hokie a rug, how to use a high end vacuum cleaner. i've learned where the lightswitches and thermostats are for every building on this fucking campus. i've learned that my standards are somewhat high about some things, especially camping gear and dance music. not even high, just.. specific. i'm more exacting than i thought. i've been thinking about my saturn in virgo, wondering if that's what it's all about. being exacting, discerning.
i guess i've been thinking about astrology a lot and become utterly unabashed about it. it's nice to know stuff that people are interested in here. people keep asking me to look at their charts, which is funny because i know there's so much i don't know. the real meat is the aspects between planets and i'm just not there yet. it's with the aspects that i feel i can really help people use what they've given themselves. up until i understand aspects, i'm just telling people things they already know about themselves: "oh you have moon in aries, you need almost brutal honesty to feel safe," and there's a certain "ooh ahh" to that. but it's not helping anyone.
anyway.
things are settling in here, they're less romantic and more realistic today. maybe because mercury went direct, maybe because the moon's in taurus, maybe because it's just time for things to be that way. i feel a little antsy, like i need some outside input. i want visitors, or i want to go to new york city.
last night i was restless. i had napped and woken up at 10pm.
i paced campus. this is a long task. up the hill, down again, into staff dining, down to the production office. up to the cafe. peering mindlessly into the nag champa soaked candlelight of the empty cafe. there's never anyone there, no one i know anyway. i always check though. i realized on my third lap towards staff dining that i was looking for jon because i was in need of connection. i decided that was the wrong approach, mostly because there are a lot of other people here that i long to understand, and only one summer to try. so filling up the Intense Connection need with jon every time would be a cop out.
i ran into barry, his mojo stick, and joe. i mentioned my restlessness and barry said "you should go find abrah, she has a 40oz in her and she has lots of energy."
barry is wise. joe has long black dreads with wonderful things braided into them. he's hard to describe. really hard to describe. but when a fox in heat shrieked in my campground, he told me: be careful, they can smell fear. i have a friend who had a fox in heat go right for her jugular because he smelled her fear. and he refused to admit he was lying. his eyes glimmered slightly.
so i found abrah and we sat in candlelight talking, with jason as our witness. i felt loved and comfortable. sleepy and warm. flowing, words and acceptance. jason is a whole other journal entry. he said you kids were in same pod coming down.
i've been saying, mostly to peter but maybe to people around here too, that i haven't been asking a lot of questions since i've been here. that's not entirely true, i realized last night. i've just been asking totally different questions, gentler questions than before.
later in my tent, the wall made of shadows of trees, i thought about how we live here. all mundanities, or at least, normal life mundanities, are removed from us. we do not buy food, clean our own bathrooms, deal with getting to and from work. those types of mundanities are such a large part of daily life, especially in a city. it drains us. because we are taking care of each other so that we don't have to worry about our own personal mundanities, we have time. so much time. we use the time to relate to each other on levels deeper than are available in other settings. it's a ride. sometimes it feels out of control, i'm flying towards the center of a huge group of people. i don't know them. but i know them.
meanwhile, i've been away from peter just long enough that i feel like i'm losing my footing just a bit. the distance (geographical) and the distance (in time) has grown wide enough that the last time i saw him is no longer a valid grounding point. i need to see him. and i need to talk to him on a phone that doesn't suck.
poetry psychic israeli men who disappoint granola with raisins and yogurt women, connecting with shoddy payphones taming the land mosquito bites shadow & light the stupid face i make when sucking on my labret astrology (particulary: pisces, south node in aries) time off work chocolate chip cookies, healing power of skepticism, about freudian childhood trauma ideas about past lives cliques the word "intelligencia" poetry furniture, and possible locations to move it to and from rosewater nag champa peter's nipples peter's armpits peter's skin ecstacy lost items; keys sunglasses washcloth blue hoodie recovered items; keys sunglasses reiki critical inquiry into topics of intellectual value nourishment
woke up with a tick today. i did many things before i noticed it. i opened some classroom doors with my keys. i drove the golf cart around. i fended off a person who wanted to grump at me for not unlocking her yoga room before 7am. i looked at the sun; an orange circle in the sky behind gray clouds. i witnessed human meditation, as well as a meditating frog. i felt fine.
around 7am i took an illicit trip back to my tent, on the clock, holding the walkie talkie. my plan was to shower and eat breakfast. i am the only person working in my department this morning, so leisurely showers are permissable by me. i ended up having to hop out of the shower naked and have a discussion on the walkie talkie about water urns and tea.
noticed the tick while in my tent gathering items for the illicit shower. i was doing my usual sort of sleepy self-pick thing, focusing on my arms, scanning my fingertips from elbow to shoulder, looking for impurities. usually this almost subconcious behavior reveals an ingrown hair or a blackhead, which i sleepily and joyously destroy. these motions are such a part of me that i do them without thinking. today i found an impurity with legs.
hello tick i said, to the tick. i sighed into the slightly damp interior of my tent (a north face brand shelter, ordered from rei.com. there's a tag inside the tent that says THIS TENT IS NOT DESIGNED TO BE USED AS A LONG TERM SHELTER and i always read it and wonder what, exactly, they mean by LONG TERM. i mean, i will be living in the tent for two more months. for me, that seems like a long term, but these things are so subjective) and considered my options. i could have pulled the tick out right then, by myself. there's something lonely about removing a tick on your own, though. i did nothing. i was really hungry. i went to breakfast.
at breakfast, i was a rebel with an un-acted upon tick. generally there is a sense of urgency surrounding ticks. i actually felt fond of the tick. he was hanging on pretty tight. sucking away.
there is a lyme disease problem here. seven people on staff have already gotten lyme disease, including one of my favorite people here; a psychic israeli scorpio with a penchant for rosewater and chick music. i saw him this morning. i asked him how he was and he sat with me, telling me he was sucky. telling me he puked last night.
the lyme disease people have various stories of bullseye rashes, fevers, ticks, and achey muscles. their stories always end with "but they gave me some antibiotics, so..."
eventually, in the dining hall, i was pressured into making the pilgrimage to first aid. the person who pressured me was a beautiful woman named keagan (kay-gan). she rolls her body when she talks. her body is voluptuous, substantial. her hair is long thick dreadlocks and she is a wonderful artist. keagan rolled at me, her head in a crooked expression, saying girl, don't even front, get that thing removed from your body.
i carried my breakfast down to first aid. katherine was there. she has a french manicure on her long nails, and a rather disproportionate amount of eyeliner considering the surroundings (trees, dirt, grass). she is great. she has spirit and a thick new york or new jersey accent. i saw her and said katherine, you wanna pull this tick out of me? and we were in an intimate situation then, her long nails employed removing my little bloodsucking friend.
the day has gone on without incident. i don't think i'll get lyme disease. this is tick #2 for me. it was very small. it's minute size has lowered my confidence as to whether i'd be able to locate a tick if it should be, say, in my asscrack or armpit. i'm not too worried though. these are crazy times we live in! ticks, hippies, wars, pollution. i will make it.
there is a moment set aside for me
a ripe moment, plucked, mid-dangle
a boiling moment, rolling up the side
of a living vat of stewing time
this moment was offered to me
shiny, squalling
writhing in the palms
of a thousand nameless deities
within the gift of a moment: responsibility
i am responsible for countless unspeakable tasks;
responsible for catastrophe & worship
responsible for decadence & horror
and
somehow, with the chores of an intricate universe
resting upon my briefly present shoulders,
i must find the space and place
to get you alone
and tell you,
with my 6 billion tongues
what it has been like for me
she said "i really want to kiss a girl soon" so i turned to her, midstride, and gestured, a wave of my extended fingers toward the area of my mouth. she moved in hesitantly and i stopped her, grabbed her chin, and went there. oh did i go there. after we pulled apart, she said "you're so dashing"
