i'm not me anymore.

i'm not sure who i am, but i'm more centered. there's a place from within i can push from, can use to push off against my old self. i've taken a bit of power from where i've been, power from the earth and the ocean, and made it mine.

now i want to be at that place, to make it my home.

i told risa, i feel like i have stretch marks all over my everything-not-physical. this is a good thing. i don't want plastic surgery for it.

despite how popular that kind of thing is where i want to be.

i'll try to explain...

before last tuesday (20 nov), i'd never seen the pacific. i'd never seen a desert or a mountain before either, but i took care of those the day before. fuck, how can i sound that flippant about it? i almost drove off of I-15 when i came through the cajon pass -- i'd never seen anything so breathtaking before in my life. mt. san antonio kept looming larger and larger to the right. and then that drop! and it just kept dropping! just around that curve and WOOOOOSH! i'm pretty sure i started crying.

sublime. everything so sublime. coleridge and shelley can keep their mt. blanc (for now). and i can't believe i'm typing this, but i felt moved to when i saw it -- this is on american soil. this is part of the land i'm supposed to be so moved by, and for the first time, i was.

but i know the time when i did start crying, absolutely.

saltwater from my eyes. saltwater extending for half the planet. my feet submerged, acting as the conduit between the two.

(who's gonna taste your saltwater kisses?)

here's the view from in the water, looking toward the rocks i call the amphitheater:

here's the view from the cliffs above; i try to give a sweeping panorama of what i saw:



this is where i was born anew. i wept. i was/am water. i was the water that surrounded my feet, and the pacific sprang from my eyes. emotionally, i was like the sandpipers there. the water rushed at them from so many directions that they couldn't help but be confused.

but i was jubilant. this was a baptism, and now this is part of me. i feel so much stronger, so much more centered for it.

i love my swamp. but i cannot stay in my swamp when my tears have mingled with half the water on the planet, and i am called there.

more than that -- i feel a oneness with the west coast.




does that sound new-agey enough that i'd belong out there? *wink*



11-sep-2001

eyes open

shrub shite

teeth and suicide

do you connect?

local anaesthesia

chemical down