snow on the first day of spring

i feel like so much has happened since my last post.
how could that be it has just been a few days and you are out in the woods?
to that i say, the world is a complex and wonderful place and i did say it was only a feeling.

let's see the night before last i spent the night alone, first dancing in the studio as if i was perfoming on stage, then by the fire with some tequila, lime, paper and pencil.
i drew a drawing of each of my family members, meditated on them, wrote down some of their qualities, who they are to me and a prayer from me for them
and then i threw each one in the fire.
one by one. a symbol. a ritual.
letting go of old structures to make way for the new.
maybe it is weird. the idea arrived spotaneously while i was making my dinner, mac and cheese...then i ended up trying out the idea with one of them and it seemed to be the right move or anyway productive.
oh and earlier that day i created my own religion, in augustine's example based on the biases and let downs brought on me by my formative years of life. it was funny at first then i thought this could be a pretty successful template for many people to structure their life on...man turns out to be the troubled one instead of woman this time, the unstable aggresor when given too much power but the sacred intelligent supporter when kept in his place, the right place. ha. you could imagine, i wrote a page or two of doctrine. the female, so strong and steadfast, only in her can the power of god justly and temperately be used...only in her giving love and care and life can the true magic of god be seen on the wordly plane...so at the end of my burning ritual,a few tequilas into it, it was only logical to announce my religion to the empty house surrounding me...it was met with crickets... afterwhich, while i duely noted the inherent potential for great success and strength of my doctrines. and while it would be selfless and strong of me to bring these self generated truths to the masses i instead threw them in the fire...because augustine, the bullshit will stop with me, i will not pass it on to those that follow me.

so then fire.
fire!!!! guess i discovered a new use for it. put things in it and watch them burn and see what it stirs in you.
felt liberated and oddly relaxed after.
but alas too good to be true (or not)...had a horrific dream later that night. strong, clear, lasting. message was; things are serious colleen, do not take them lightly...you are strong but even someone strong can get cocky and off their guard. it is not so easy as to just balk at the means that those have set before you...burn years and years of tradition without resistence? did you think it would be that easy and you so capable?
so now i am working it out.
david gave me a tarot card reading yesterday afternoon which indicated not only that i am on the right track but that i will get what i am aiming for. love, love not cynicism.

when i have tea in the morning, i position myself so i can see the pond david made to collect all the rain/run off. i like watching the raindrops land on the surface of the water, also i like to imagine what is underneath the dirty shaking surface. my visions of what goes on down there change radically with my mood and the time of day (pure personal entertainment) but yesterday, i had to do none of the work for my pond adventure, instead a mom and baby deer showed up and drank from the pond. it was a great spectacle for me and i deemed it the best thing of the day, which it was. but then last night david and i went to town to go to get a drink and dinner and when we came back it had snowed again and the snow had stuck.
so the snow spectacle tied with the pond/deer thing.
the full moon was out and the snow made the whole place glow, it was magical.

not sure what today will be about.
going in to town tonight to play poker, dance dance revolution and guitar hero 3 with some of my eugene women's ultimate friends.
excited about that...i think i could use some light fun social time...
'til then think i will meditate after some mild yoga then maybe paint in the workshop or draw in the kitchen. david left for portland this morning to visit some friends for the night...

will all the male turkeys in the room shake their jelly

this morning it snowed for an hour or so, while i was eating breakfast and drinking tea.
it didn't stick, the ground was too wet hence warm.
it was pretty.
it is so nice and quiet out here.
last night was a good night, meeting jun...my friend's adopted chinese 20 month old.
she is a bundle of giggles and fun.

woke up stressing about the far future. i was painting empty tree branches all over myself and the covers
as i slept...but while some became real substantial branches that helped me sleep in comfort and thrive in my existence, others remained empty eventually becoming brittle and unstable, the more i tossed and turned the more they broke and shattered making my sleeping arragement all the more disjoint, uncomfortable and dangerous.
finally i quit the illusive battle, lit a candle and let Dirk Gently and his adventures distract.
i reprimanded myself in the morning but what can you do really...
it is where i was at last night.
so i needed to be there.

after the snow, i meditated then drove in to town for lunch with some old collegues (physicists) at one of my old lunch spots.
that was nice. overdosed mildly on coffee but no harm done.

tonight david is in town dancing and eating. i will maybe stretch, then dance in the dance studio for a bit, eat then continue my reading on the fall of the roman empire.

currently learning of the father of the catholic church Augustine, the inventor of the whole adam and eve story and the grace of god, the trinity etc...seeing it play out from his personal goals and experiences it seems so transparent, so much less mystical and holy. he was just a person, just a person with a penis, a strong ego and mind and desire for more, fufillment, understanding...damn woman tormenting me when all that matters is the father and the son and the love between the two...but he must have struck a chord for it to have lasted so long, become a part of "the way things happened"...
this guy, Augustine, like 1600 years ago...and there you go. nothing new....you've heard it all before, we've heard it all before...
perhaps you are rolling your eyes or your mind, bravo colleen, big whoop.
people are just people. that is how it goes...but hmmmmmmm... turkeys, turkeys are so much more.
you can just tell by the way they dance.

the irish to the rescue

rastaman vibration kicking in the background.
david is down painting one of the walls in the living room before we head into town for dinner at our friend's house.
we will be riding on japhet's coat-tails tonight and
bring the french onion soup of saturday.

today did some drawing and talking to david of future illustration projects in the morning,
next tea and then personal painting in the workshop.
almost stepped on a large slug on my way back into the house for a pee.
i apologized to the slug.
now gonna take a shower, help with the f.onion soup prep, then off we go to pick up a bottle of wine pre-dinner.

yesterday was a good day. pretty internal.
morning time, david's flame's children were over. we took them on a leprechaun hunt into the trees up by the cabin.
then lit a fire in the cabin's stove and david led a few make-shift irish songs.
being as we found no leprechaun's, they (the kids) happily took that role on and created mischief.
they started their own alternative fire out on the deck out of mostly newspaper, which we apathetically supported until it filled the cabin with smoke and ashes. then we went back down to the house and their mother picked them up.
i meditated most of the afternoon (where is love?), then did yoga.
intermittedly read about the fall of the roman empire in the hopes of learning how the irish saved civilization.
that i enjoyed. the reading. never was huge on history, never understood how anyone could really know any of it...but yesterday, yesterday it did the trick for me. fireside.
david came in and we talked about it. history, people...it.
conversation transitioned nicely into tequila and limes and discussion of our own personal histories.
what does it mean? for us, for you, for me...
take home message; i am me, i am here, i have it pretty sweet. the individual rises.
threw together a late dinner of beets, greens, pasta, tofu.
and that brings us to this morning.
oh and the fact that i can really sleep-in well these days. phenomenal.
no sun to blind me or scream me out of bed...just lulling rain and green trees.
only limitation is that my bladder isn't the size of kentucky.
can't have it all.

mild image update

played ping pong last night in the workshop.
haven't had the opportunity to play that much in life but am looking forward to many more times while i am here.
ping pong rally on!!!
today the sun came out, it was beautiful.
made a good pot of tea in the morning and painted most of the day away in the workshop surrounded by trees and sunlight.

david got the fire going in the wood burning stove in there so it was pretty deluxe.
ended the painting with a bit of meditation. now planning on taking it easy tonight.
david is down the road tending to his love interest.
warm shower, light reading, then try and reenact the french onion soup from last night, which by the way was
awesome.
oh yeah, cat-wise, there are many of them that come hang out on the property ...one fuzzy white one is living under my cabin. so i am thinking of naming it fluffball

also the best i could do, in terms of documenting the walls in the room i painted; here it is

lazy saturday

so the stomach is all cleared up, i had a beautiful type 4 this morning
(see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_Stool_Scale)
david got back on thursday night which has spiced things up.
i learned a little about the wood selection out in the shed from him. which pieces were hard and/or green thus
perhaps clearing up some of my fire maintinence struggle...that and i was skimping on the amount of wood i had in the stove at a time.
lesson to be learned; know your fuel and don't skimp.
finished painting the bedroom walls (3) black and white yesterday. i would best describe it sort of as a children's room themed job, with the disclaimer that i would never let it be my child's room.
meaning it could be a little dark...but in a lighthearted childlike way, which debatably only a real genuis could capture.
this morning we laughed about putting one of those halloween sounds cds on in there for guests and creating a device which drops fake spiders on them when they sleep.
so, i guess productivity is up out here.
as is tea consumption.
yoga session this morning followed by a sauna, a quesadilla and then a nap in front of the fire.
david's son japhet is out here for the weekend. they are currently playing a father son dueling scrabble game below me while also maintaining the pot of french onion soup which they are making for dinner tonight.
i think i will go put on my painting clothes and go out to the workshop and paint for an hour or so.
some paintings which were mid process from sf.
unfinished business.
think i gotta go drop a type 4 on my way ;)
oh there has yet to be a day with out rain for me at fox hollow which is what i need.

rereads reheats revisits

today i left fox hollow for a bit, which was good.
a chance to put my behind on another toilet...noooo that is gross, but it is true.
went in to eugene to celebrate a friend of 8 years' birthday (what is the correct punctuation on that, "a friend of 8 years' birthday", let's be honest no one probably really knows that)
so we talked/laughed a long time over a meal plus at one of our old haunts.
then just kind of meandered through some errands i had to run.
it was a break from the stomach situation...which is becoming less frequent and today i ate more than i have eaten since sunday. triumph.
then back here;
fire in wood burning stove had gone out since i left in such a rush this morning and didn't properly tend to it...so took me like 20 minutes to restart it and get it back to self-sustaining...which was fun. really. watching it, reorganizing it, blowing on it...soothing experience.
god, think about how much life would suck without fire.
then i watered the plants in the greenhouse which shares half of the cabin with me...brought in some more fire wood, said "hi" to a passing wild turkey, tried to pick the lock of the armoire that david put in the cabin for me with a bobby pin...but to no avail!
gonna research how to pick an old lock tonight and give it another go after finding that out...david comes back tomorrow and i am sure he must have the key anyway. let see finished The Cay last night by the fire...hmmmm took me maybe a day and a half to read that thing. take that middle schoolers!!!!! glad i did the reread but it was not all that i remembered it to be. it was more or less a let down.
but i was in middle school when i made my judgement of the story, so there you go, why wouldn't i be into a book about being stranded alone on a deserted island with a big sweet older black guy who makes it his sole purpose to take care of me and make sure i survived. coconuts, langosta, fresh scallops, chocolate and bisquits.

starting another reread tonight...Douglas Adams, "dirk gently's wholistic detective agency". no surpirse there.
recently reread his "long dark teatime for the soul" and rekindled my burning crush on his writing style/take.
so the sun is going down, just polished off some reheated spagetti... gonna go downstairs, do a brief meditaiton and then work the night away on the wall creation.
sharpees and black paint and me!!!!
that last part was meant to be sung...by you. not me i wrote it.

so i broke loose

left the job.
the job was expendible, it was only so important in that it pushed me the extra inch so that the leap was feasible...feasible? by that perhaps i mean the only posible stable option from the precarious position i had worked my way into.
the precarious position being a box then? who knows, i have neither worked it out, nor is it significantly important anymore.
well, so i left the job, hosted an art coming out party for myself then
left the city, left the state.

drove up the coastline to oregon. stayed the night in klamath at the same hotel my boyfriend craig (now) stayed at when he rode his bike down the coast to sf from oregon (then). ate a gas station dinner after being chased away from a sunset hike by a worn 40 something male.
back to oregon. mildly back in time, where i used to find solice, support, strength, respite.
then the diarhea hit and i have been moaning and complaining ever since.
but alas, there is always ones body and it comes along for most everything. whether you would like to think so or not.
neither here nor there.
but obviously mentionable.

so now it is sort of beginning, how i pitcured it: me untethered doing what i want and seeing where that leads me.
out at david's with the fire, the rain, the tea, the trees.
when i arrived i saw he had painted a wall in the bottom bedroom with random black slashes over white. so after moaning on the couch for all of yesterday and some of today i went in there with a sharpee and some black paint and some brushes and started adding to it. it has become a nice beginning project for me. well suited to my style. impromptu, meandering and building on some preexisting lines and structure. different in that it is only black and white.

so that is basically today.
that, mild yoga, meditation and some pu-erh tea for stomach health