8 Days

I've been avoiding this post for awhile, mostly because I am stubborn and I hate to admit when I have been found wrong, or when my plans have changed, or when I have to face something new and unknown.

Here it is, though.

I don't want to make a huge to-do out of nothing, and I apologize in advance for this being more dramatic than it needs to be.

I have been told I have a flair for exaggeration.

Lovers,

I'm leaving Cannon Beach.

Trust me.  I don't really understand it either, and in light of a post I wrote a few months ago raving about how I never thought I'd leave, it may sound surprising.

It is a surprise, though.  It surprised me about three weeks ago, when I was sitting at Waves of Grain in Tolovana, sipping on a Cafe Au Lait and thinking about life as I knew it.

Thoughts pass in and out of our brains in an exceptionally unpredictable manner, you know?

One second I was thinking about how in that moment, at that little table, in that crowded coffee shop, I was a part of the happiest existence on earth.

The next second, I looked up at Becca and I frowned. "Bek....  I'm going to be in Ireland a lot sooner than I think I am, aren't I?"

"What do you mean?"

I paused.  I stopped.  I looked around me.  I felt an overwhelming sensation rise up. "I'm not supposed to stay here anymore."

Ever since that moment three weeks ago, life has been an insane whirling spectacle of apologies, love, seawater, goodbyes, and magic.

I'm tired.  I'm overworked.  I'm at a standstill and I have no plan to fall back on. I'm scared and excited and nostalgic at the thought of leaving Cannon Beach. Full of regret, full of acceptance.

I'm ready to move on, even if it means saying goodbye to the places and the people who suddenly mean the most to me.

I don't know how they've all done it.  I haven't put them in that place of supreme significance.  If it were up to my awful, selfish, small-minded self I wouldn't have let them touch me with a 10-foot-pole.  I don't make it a habit to trust people.  I don't let people in.

Yet here I am at the end of the summer, saying goodbye to a group of incredible individuals who, over the course of about 4 solid months,have completely changed my life.  They managed to work, and sneak, and weasel their way into the very depths of my cold, cold heart, and for that, I am eternally grateful, because from the inside out they have created heat and warmth and light and I value each and every one of them more than they know.

They are priceless treasures to me.  They have done more for me than most have in my life.

Some of them are responsible for that P.S. I Love You moment.  The one you have to look out for.  The one where suddenly, life as you know it changes, and your eyes are opened.

Some of them are responsible for my newly sharpened sense of adventure.

Most of them are responsible for the priceless gift of reminding me that when I am young, I am young, and there is life to be lived because of it.

All of them are responsible for making me feel loved, valued, cherished,  and because of that I am admittedly a lot less, well, bitchy.

Not that I didn't ever feel loved or cherished before, it's just different this time. I think mostly the whole experience of moving out and being self-dependent has mellowed me out a ton, and when you mix that with new relationships, you get a whole smorgasbord of love and happiness and good, fuzzy feelings.

And all I've got is 8 more days of this town and this lifestyle and these memories and these friends.

I guess I owe it to them to make the next 8 days count for all they're worth.

I'll be home soon, Portland.  And even though I'm going to miss my beach life, I'm excited to come home a new person with a new outlook and a new stockpile of memories to take forward with me.

Things are gonna be different, this time around, babe, and I'm looking forward to the opportunities this move is going to bring me.

I love you,

I love you,

I love you,


Goodbye. <3 br="br">

"You. Me. 5 bucks and good conversation."

Lovers,

Lately I have realized a series of facts that start off with the phrase "There is nothing quite like...." and usually end up with some obscure or obvious declaration on life. 

I would love to say that I've taken to writing them down.

I would also love to say that I recently won the lottery.

So here I am on this beautiful gift of a sunny day, thinking of all my "nothings" and ready and willing to compile them here. 

The most recent one I came up with was "There is nothing quite like watching the stars through a sunroof."

• There is nothing quite like coming home to a bouquet of fresh Sunflowers on your kitchen table.
• There is nothing quite like a morning routine of vanilla soy lattes and a fresh quiche of the day from a local coffee house.
• There is nothing quite like sitting on your new skateboards after a night of skating, quietly talking and rolling and watching the stars with your best friend. 
• There is nothing quite like awkward employee dance parties, in which your 40-something year old boss requests Raise Your Glass by P!nk and proceeds to jump across the dance floor, all by herself, singing all the words with all of her heart, and your spirits lifting at the sight and laughing because even though it's strange and awkward, you really, truly are having an amazing time with coworkers that suddenly turned into friends.
• There is nothing quite like being told that you've made someone proud.
• There is nothing quite like being loved enough to be missed when you're not around.
• There is nothing quite like the Oregon Coast when the sun is shining.
• There is nothing quite like being asked to dance by a 90 year old man named Jordan, when you're in a red HRAP jacket and rainboots, and then being swung around while he gracefully sings Isn't She Sweet just because he's happy to be alive and healthy. 
• There is nothing quite like hearing Hey Jude when you need it the most, when your day was stressful and you're at wits' end. 
• There is nothing quite like a text that says, "Come over to my house," from a friend when he just knows you're feeling sad. 
• There is nothing quite like the combination of sunny days and songs with "na na nas" in the chorus line.
• There is nothing quite like the sound barnacles make when they are circulating water within their tiny systems.
• There is nothing quite like the sound of the word 'enrichment' when you used to work at a zoo. Music to your conservational ears.
• There is nothing quite like receiving a book in the mail from a friend who just wants to share something new with you.
• There is nothing like living your life in the moment, unafraid to fall, unafraid to shame and unafraid to make mistakes. 

Life is full of little tragedies. 

Take them as they are.  Ride your melt. There is nothing quite like being alive.

Sorrow

Sorrow comes in waves.

Sometimes she slips in through the back door, with the barn cat, or with the pitter patter of little feet tracking mud all throughout the house.

In all of the commotion, she enters quietly, unnoticed, and slides deftly into the old walls, into the creak of the floor.

Sometimes I see her staring back at me through the eyes of a loved one.

I want to yell and scream and claw her out of her possession over the defenseless body, torn in pieces and weak from sleep-deprivation, but suddenly she's gone again.

And then I feel her in the thick, misty air that hovers over the sea.  As I walk, as I sit, as I look around me, I breathe her heaviness into my own lungs.

I am fighting a battle I cannot win.

Today, sorrow is everywhere my constant companion.

This morning I could taste her despair in my vanilla soy latte.

I sat in my car with my breakfast, overlooking cliffs and sea stacks and grey, grey ocean, and I saw her in the eyes and felt her in the hands of a beautiful friend who stumbled upon me.  I wanted to cry as I looked in his eyes and could see the fresh pain of a million looming goodbyes he'll have to make in a few short weeks.

I don't know when I'll see him again.

Again at work she struck me when I received a text from Becca, who is beginning to say her goodbyes to a beloved grandmother- a body riddled and racked with tumors.

The text read, "It is sad here."

I closed my eyes, and could feel sorrow's deathlike grip surrounding Bek and her family, leaking into the picture frames on their mantle, and flowing underneath the door frames into all the many rooms of that huge, empty house.

I felt sorrow creep into my own cancerous memories.

And now, I sit on a beach I never wanted, that has somehow become the only one that truly belongs to me, overlooking sand and stone and set after set of slate-colored waves.

The pelicans and the scoters and the gulls all fly in a frenzy, feeding and squawking and pressing their wings against the endless sky.

Sorrow sits next to me, compelling me to a time of pen-to-paper, a time of powerful reflection, a time of slowing down.

Goodbyes weigh down my heart and sit awkwardly in my chest cavity.

I lift my eyes and scan the beach up and down desperately, seeking something- anything- a familiar face or name to rescue me from this battleship destined to sink.

But there is no one.

I am alone.

And when I am alone, sorrow quietly grabs my hand and whispers in my ear:

"It's okay.  You and I will always be together."

I nod my head, no longer fighting back tears, and rest wearily on her shoulder.

Somewhere, a lonely, black-eyed gull tumbles into the pounding surge.

And sorrow smiles.

Dead.

Take my hand! She screamed.

I have to show you something!

We ran, thunderstruck and hellbent down the hallway and around the corner.

I'm not supposed to come back here! I tried to tell her as she pulled me into the backroom, behind the curtain, beyond the realm of the customer, into the magical behind-the-scenes.

I don't care.  She squeezed my hand and pointed to the floor.

Look what just came in today!

I followed her excited gaze to a shiny mass of white and jagged edges resting on the bamboo carpet.

What is it? I breathed.

An alligator skull.  She squealed.  A real alligator skull!

I got so excited when I unpacked it today.  I almost cried out- don't you love the shine of the bone? The threat of the bite, the menacing empty holes where eyes used to be? I want to take it home.  I want to take it home and I want to hold it and feel it and let it sit, heavy in my lap, while I close my eyes and imagine a different world.

A world of deep river, and muddy water, and prehistoric trees, riddled with roots and dangerous leaves.

It used to be alive, she said heavily, after a moment's dreamy pause.

It used to be alive, and now it's here, on my floor- detached, decomposed, derailed.

Dead.  She opened her eyes and looked me square in the face.

I like dead things.

The buoyancy in her voice was gone.  Deadpan, weighted, dangerous.

It makes me want to write.  She started to grin.  I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck begin to rise.

It was a world only she understood, a world I could never cross into, no matter how tightly I shut my eyes and how hard I tried to imagine a dark bayou crowded with reptile and amphibian and voodoo priestess.

The answer was present in the statement.  The words rang out like a shot.  The room was a different realm.

I like dead things.

Ashes

Listening to Iron&Wine makes me feel like napping and crying, writing, drinking and creating all at the same time.

It also makes me think of my old boss at Mi Famiglia, Kyle, who used to put on Iron&Wine Pandora every Thursday night.

This alternately makes me miss the Spinach Chicken pizza -sub creamy garlic and add pepperoncinis- in an extremely unholy manner.

Funnily enough, listening to Iron&Wine also mostly just makes me angry that I'm not listening to Bon Iver.

Yeah, internal artist jealousy.  It happens.

Lovers, we have a problem.

I'm not writing as much as I should be writing.

I try not to think about it.  That makes it worse.

There is so much crap bouncing around in my thick, lethargic brain that I've completely given up.  The worst part is I'm over halfway through editing the first five chapters of Tulips.  I've only got two more chapters to edit before I can finally just clear the space and finish the damn book.

I'm so close.

But I can't do it.  This environment is extremely healthy for my soul, and my restoration, and my self-worth.

This environment is completely hostile for my writing.

And I'm absolutely split down the middle about which is more important to me.

All I can wrap my head around is the seasonal flight patterns of Puffins, the lifespans of sea anemones, how many more antique oyster forks need to be polished at work, Binocular inventories, imported tablecloth folding patterns, grocery lists, account balancing, gas budgets, Bible Study requirements and just how long I have been waiting to learn how to surf and how I'm still waiting for someone to teach me.

There's no room for creativity.

I haven't even been able to finish a single book this summer.

Writing needs to be a bigger priority in my life- I just never know how to make it one.

Life seems out of control, I don't have time to process all the good and the beautiful and the breath-taking, and the spontaneous and the bad and the heart-breaking and the confusing and the heart-pounding, and it's all so wonderful and exhilarating, and all so stunting to my discipline.

I feel at my wits' end sometimes.

And then I get texts like this from my soul sister-writer-friend-guru-guide-confidant  extroardinaire and then I don't feel so bad about my life.

"Spend it all.  Shoot it, play it, lose it all, right away, every time.  Do not hoard what seems good for a later place... Give it, give it all, give it now.  The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now.  Something more will arise for later, something better.  These things will fill from behind, from beneath, like water.  Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive.  Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe to find ashes."
-Annie Dillard, The Writing Life.

"Something more will arise for later, something better."

This summer was given to me to learn and to love and to grow and to expand my world so that I can prepare for discipline in the future.

I may not be writing 1,000 words every day.  I may not reach my January 2014 deadline for Tulips.  But I'm changing the way I see the world every single day, and that puts me closer and closer to my own writing life.

It's a hard lesson to swallow, patience, but it's powerful.

Be gentle with the soul, lovers.

"Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe to find ashes."

Even time can be given freely and abundantly.  I don't want to lose my time.

I don't want my hours to turn to ashes.

And so, I begin again, quiet this time.  Ready to learn.  Ready to be filled.

Last Thursday

Last Thursday was my day off.

I spent it visiting Becca's sister Jessica down in Twin Rocks for the day, because she was in town for our old church Family Camp.

I drove the entire 45 minute trip along the coast with my windows rolled down and a playlist full of nostalgia to keep me company.

There are few things I love more in this world than driving up or down the Oregon coastline.  Every viewpoint is a must-see stop.  It's just breathtaking.

Between here and Rockaway, one drives through Manzanita, Wheeler, Nehalem and Arch Cape. Each is different and each is beautiful in their own way and I can't even begin to describe the smells or sounds, which is why it's vitally important to make the trip with the windows rolled down.

Jess and I spent time together eating ice cream, watching the ocean, talking about her adventures in Hawaii, spending time with her amazing family and laughing in the sand on the beach.

I left that afternoon feeling strangely settled in my life.  That was the first time I'd been to Family Camp in 4 years and definitely the first time I'd ever been solely on my own, and with the freedom to come and go as I please, driving myself to and from.

It was strange, but good.

Later that afternoon I was doing some writing back home on my beloved Cannon Beach when a stranger walked up to me and asked me if I was using the pile of driftwood I was sitting next to.

The conversation went as follows:

Him: "Are you using this firewood?"
Me: "No, go ahead and take it."
Him:  "Thanks.  What are you working on, there?"
Me: "Uhm, just reading over some stuff I've written."
Him: "Way cool! Are you a writer?"
Me: "Yes. Well. Sort of."
Him: "Me too. I love poetry and short stories."
Me: "Yeah, I kind of suck at poetry. I try to stay away from it."
Him: "Well at least with poetry you don't have to stick to the rules, you can do freeform and then it's not so hard."
Me: "Yeah, I guess so."
Him: "Hey, keep writing.  There's not enough writers out there in the world- not many with balls at least. Don't let your passion die- it's better to do what you love than nothing at all."
Me: "Thanks, I definitely will."
Him: "No problem.  There's  gonna be a fire over here later, if you're interested. You should come."
Me: "Uhh, okay thanks."

(Don't worry mom, I did not attend the bonfire with the friendly strange man)

That conversation honestly made my day, though.  I mean, what are the odds?

I felt like God was verifying everything I dream about in life.  It just felt good.

I love this town to no end.

I love my life.

My friends.

My boys.

My Brook, my Zach, my Wes, my Allen- all sweet, dear ones.

I love my girls.

My Lynn, my Angie, my Rachel, my LaChelle- all lovely, funny ones.

I love my jobs- my singing barnacles and my tufted puffins,  and my age-old linens, my perfume-scented tea towels and my beautiful bosses.

I love my house-ghetto and falling apart as it is.

I love my car- my sexy race-car driven Volvo wagon.  She's such a beast.

I love my secret spots.  My Ozzy B.  My cove.  My Guanos Tan spot.  My favorite lookout.

I love my community.  My local discount.  My quirky, fellow citizens.  My weekly burger nights at the local legion hall.

I love my experiences: latenight longboarding,  rainy days at the park, early morning beach exploration, bonfires, salsa dancing, crazy adventure hikes.

This is how my life should always be.

I love my Ocean.

I love my life.

Summer 2012

This might be my most favorite thing I've ever found in my notebook.  A recap of summer 2012 so far- and there's so much more to be added to this by September. :)

• Freckles
• Sunsets
• Burger nights
• No Maintenance Mondays
• Hiking...
• Trailer hitching
• Wet swingsets and slippery monkeybars
• Longboarding the promenade
• So many movie nights
• Vintage art posters
• Bible studies
• Black Oystercatcher nest watching
• Scented candles
• Bellydancing and yoga always!!!
• Flirting?
• Dinner parties
• Laughing with managers
• Tight, tight hugs
• Competitions
• Blue eyes, brown eyes, hazel eyes, green eyes
• Playing chalk
• Super burritos
• Dead sea mammal carcasses
• Writing at The Cove
• Costco buddies
• Disney movies
• Adventure levels

So many reasons to love my life.  

And the most recent is this:  Becca is officially moving to Cannon Beach today. 

That's right lovers, the best friend and I get to spend all summer together and this list will start growing ad infinitum as soon as she gets here!

Which should, hopefully, be in another hour and forty-five minutes or so.

Not like I'm counting or anything.

Summer wishes to you and yours.

Roll On Summer 2012!