Goddess

 I strive to be her. I manifest my role as her with a mantra every morning, reclaiming truth, spirituality, and feminity with my words and my breath. I remind myself what it means to be a strong and sensitive female on this planet. I refuse to denounce the goddess within me as just a fleeting dream of my brainspace. Even though she seems unattainable, she symbolizes perfection even amidst the provocations of earnesty, humility, arrogance, and ego. She will always be within to nuture whatever is uncertain.

To unfold the secrets of balance and grace, I must unveil the wombs and whims of the goddess, both in strength and insecurity. I must show beauty through elegance and strength by intuitive courage that can only be unlocked when I chose to free myself in that moment. Breathe deep and transpire the energy into moments of presence, and witness the blooming novice opening into a lotus of the divine.

All of these qualities strengthened through the feminine by the grace and conditions of nuturement are manifested through the lens of their own perceptions. Women cannot be told they are powerful, they can only feel it. A goddess pays attention to all the changes in her body, respects her movement by dancing with others, spends time each day with herself, by herself, engages her muscles and breathing to reconnect with the mechanics of her temple. She honors whats passes through her and beyond her, and always takes care of her environment within herself as well as around herself. She is open to receive love and assistance from others and is certain of her decisions that come from her heart. She is patient for the frequency and invocation of beauty into life. She finds her duty to unlock love inside others when she is able to fully love herself.

I've been holding off for the right moment to write about my time spent with Becky Harmonm and I feel this piece will be timeless and everchanging beyond what is expressed on this page. These words commence my admiration of her beauty and strength, the goddess that appeared to me in my deepest valley of darkness when a time dawned upon me that I felt my own feminity had been lost. Not even the brightest star in the sky could lead me to the light, as it seemed my perceptions drowned me in a fear that I was forever tainted by a fateful experience that left my courage and will shocked and shattered. My body felt frail and unwelcome as the folds of my flesh were weakened by an infection that dampened my light with fear. The sun climbed above the clouds each day and I felt as if my soul would not awaken to the morning's possibilities.

She rose with the sun and moved with passion from the earth to meet its' highest place in the clouds. She inspired grace and beauty, poise and strength, in every moment. Her body reflected her incredible strength as she charged physical challenges without the slightest bit of doubt. Her belief in her ability was unfettered, even if she took a few extra moments to catch her breath. Her bright blue eyes looked deep within mine, with the same depths as the love in her heart. She reflected the sexy and unfaltering goddess to reclaim her throne in my perceptions. Her ambitions reflected my own, as I mourned the loss of my own strength, and buried its resurrection deep within my self-pity, Becky refused to acknowledge defeat. She swept me up, called my inner goddess to arms, and rekindled the flame of life and love that I was so dearly missing. Much of my recollections of what it truly means to live in goddess form is attributed to her. She is my heart, my soul, my light, my sister.

This was one of the hardest pieces I've ever written

Disclaimer: This is long, intense, graphic, and difficult. Also, out of context and chronology of the other pieces. It's finally ready to be posted, although it still needs a lot of revisiting before it's complete. Self-therapy in progress.

Untitled.

Eyes are windows
They are open.
Blue like rain
Streaming and dancing and washing it all away
They are honest.
Brown and deep
Stable and certain and anxious to speak
Green emeralds
That sparkle.
Grey skies
That cry.
Red blood
That smokes too much.
Black eyes
That die.

August 2, 2006 Early Morning
      I haven't slept. I slap the mattress and throw my head into the pillow. The empty beer bottle next to me is steaming and I can the feel the stink crawling all over me. My mouth is crusted with the morning air and there’s black soot and cigarette ash trapped in my fingernails. Mascara is smudged down my cheeks and my dark hair is matted to the side. It’s been two weeks since it happened, but it’s only 11:30am, and too early in the day to call the day quits.
      I roll over and grab my morning coffee off the nightstand, which usually consists of three shots of whiskey and a cigarette. It’s never about the taste when it comes to whiskey. I wash it down with my cigarette anyway.

     The mornings are clockwork hell. Get up from bed, brush my teeth, stare out myself in the mirror for about 30 seconds, and pick at the little scar on my chin. I have to be at the office by 1pm, but lately I’ve been showing up around 2:30pm, lost in wasteful time and disorganized thoughts.
                I stopped picking up the phone, and my friends stopped calling. When the last drop of the bottle wets the glass and my head stops spinning from the night before, I’m barely breathing.

13 days and counting since I’ve recognized the attack. 13 more days and I go home. Back to reality. Back in the arms of comfort, even amidst this black soot covering my openness to live, whiskey and blood mixed in my veins, drowning me in guilt.  I finally pick up the phone and apologize to my mom, because she worries and knows I’m alone, and she hears it in my voice and she misses me and wants to hug me and tell me I’m strong and will survive this. She speaks gently because I’m fragile. I’ll smash in a million pieces, like glass, razor sharp, and shattered all over the floor. Hi honey, how is it today? You want to come home yet?  I tell her I don’t know what I want to do. I know, Baby. She says softly. Well, your flight to come home is in less than two weeks from now  at JFK Airport. You can call them and get a sooner one if you want.

I hear her, but I’m still too defiant to be defeated. The scene just replays in my head. It was one single moment that stole my strength, and my courage. Still, there’s no way I could leave sooner.

I walk to work with my head down and sunglasses on. The sidewalks are all cracked and uneven. The sunlight is glaring, bouncing the midday reflection back into my eyes. I'm cautious, careful, and aware; peeping over the lenses every couple minutes just to be sure that I am alone. But I’m not. I yearn for peace, closure, solitude. Everyone can sense I’m broken. This anxiety that just won’t go away. Even when I close my eyes, its ravenous beam is still there.

  ***

MixxLounge Bar had a savage smell. It was a mixture of perfume and sweat. The floors were slick from spilled beer and the air was intoxicating. Elvis, the owner, would ask me to hike it up, or let my cleavage show. It’s the Manhattan high class, you sell it and the drinks come with it, he would tell me.. I move around the bar and start setting up the bottles. The cheeky old men, sit across from me all night, watch me bend over to pull the glasses from the rack. Their sports jackets reek of cigars and expensive cologne hanging over the bar stools, creating an aroma that only swanky businessmen can produce.  At around 2:15am every Saturday night, Elvis would disappear into the backroom, assisting the boys to end their night with a fine white powder that covered up anything that money could not. I would watch them walk out, ten minutes later and $300 dollars less, with a little baggy and an unstable swagger. 

Ruggiero, the kitchen manager was an addict. He waited around for the shake at the bottom of the bag, or the crumbs that spilled across the table, scanning the residue with a straw, slurping it into his nose. I remember his eagerness. He never talked much, stayed to himself in the back, frying up chicken skewers and spring rolls, and remained a slave to the men who have it all. He’s worked here for years, Elvis told me. Don’t worry about Ruggiero, he won’t bother you. But I could see him by the corner of the bar. His black eyes swollen with misery, lips pressed tightly, head held low. I never had anything bad to say to him, in fact, I barely spoke to him at all. I made sure to smile back though. After all, what’s the point in making matters worse for someone who scrapes the leftovers.
****

Earlier in July 28, 2006
I tell Ruggiero one last time I do not want to snort a line. He wipes his nose off with his apron. I tell him to shut the bar down, Elvis is gone, I’ll see you at work tomorrow, I say with a deep and hopeful smile. Have a good night okay? I reach over, pull my purse off the counter, and turn towards the door. He moves around the bar and stops me in front of him. His black eyes are bullet holes, deep and fierce and destructive. I pull the strap over my shoulder, and check for my wallet. Take a shot, he says again and reaches for the tequila. I’m already sickened by the smell. His accent thickens as he raises his voice. TAKE A SHOT! He makes a quick move, and two shot glasses hit the floor by my feet. He growls and stumbles around the bar. I feel my heart plunge into my stomach, a force reaction to an instinctive premonition that something terrible was about to happen. I back away from the spill. The floor smells of old Cuervo and rotten limes. He drags his feet through the glass, and I turn my head, but his hands are already on my waist.
His strength holds me hard. He presses his lips against my ear, Permanezca aquí, stay here, he whispers. I can’t release myself from his grip. He leans into my neck, spins my body and throws me face first against the bar stools. He thrusts his hips towards mine and heaves me forward. I’m bent over as he digs me into the bar and I anchor my fingernails into the seat backs. He rips my straps and grabs my shoulders. I can’t speak. I can’t think. I push against the counter trying to free myself from him, but his body is suffocating. I inhale, but it feels like I’m only sucking air, gasping, panting… He grabs a fistful of my hair and throws me to the ground. His grip tightens and I want to cry but, I can’t. I squeeze my eyes, hard enough so that any emotion inside me would come out. But there was nothing. Not even a sound. Barely a wimper. Black out.
     I come to.  The tile is cold and wet. He rips off his belt and holds me down. My heels clatter like hail. My shorts are soaked in beer and my palms are cut with glass. He towers on top of me. I look at the spotlights on the ceiling. His silhouette is a black shadow. I can feel his hand on my thigh and his big black eyes are all over my body. His fingers are rough like splintered wood. I kick him as hard as I can and he doesn’t stop. I roll onto my stomach and grab the leg of one of the bar stools. He slaps it out of my hands. I thrust my back into his chest and slip my legs underneath me. The broken beer bottles cut my shins and palms. He grabs my shoulders and pulls me close to him. I fight him. He wraps one arm around them and pushes his other hand down my throat. I make a fist with my left hand and bang the side of his face. His fingers taste like iron and lime juice. I bite down. I am an animal. Clawing and scratching and biting for safety. His blood seeps into my mouth. And I finally begin to cry.
      There’s no conviction in his eyes. He stares at my chest and moves like a machine. He rips my shirt open. I hit him again and crawl towards the back door of the kitchen. He grabs the back of my neck with both hands and flings me towards the basement. The doorway to the office down below is a gaping pit with concrete steps right in the middle of the kitchen floor. He pushes me headfirst towards the hole. The pit opens its mouth before me, its fatal lair beckons me to just give in to him, and give up the fight.
I dig my fists into the floor and arch back against his body again. I hold steady. Still. His hands are still all over me. Time stops. He reaches and rips my shorts from the back. I hit the floor. He turns me over. I start kicking him again. I shove my heels into his groin, but there’s no pain. He wraps both hands around my neck.

I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.

Please don’t do this! A surge of energy suddenly barreled out of me. I scream. I finally scream again and again and again, desperate for someone would hear me. Anyone! No. This is not where it ends for me. Not here.

Not now.

A power takes over me with indisposed defences, blinded by survival. I grab a metal rod lying underneath the sink next to the door. Next thing I know, his head gushes with blood. His big black eyes looked deep into me, and rolled into the back of his head as he hit the floor.. I get up from the ground and turn my back on him; hurl my bloody legs one right after each other, running as fast as I could towards the front door. My feet stop moving as soon as I get to the street corner. I just stop, and fall to the ground on my knees. The tears fall down my face, soaking my face, and washing the blood off my mouth.  I can’t believe that happened. Did that just really happen? What just happened to me? My shorts are shredded and my whole body is shivering.

                A couple walking their dog across the street run over to me. The woman pulls her jacket off and throws it over my shoulders. Without asking any questions, they tell me it’s going to be okay, and call 911.

***
I’m a case number.
I’m a file.
I’m a statistic.

I am completely fucked.
                My body is shaking uncontrollably. The paramedics tell me I am okay but I need to come in for questioning. They tell me that I need to try and remember everything. I could barely get the words out. I’m not even sure if I am saying the right things. Three police officers climb into the ambulance with me and drilled me with questions, screwing  into the painful pockets of my memory.

We arrive at the hospital. Mascara is running down my face. I am still hysterical in my tiny black shorts and  high heels. I am holding my purse against my chest and rocking back and forth in the wheelchair as they veer me into the ER waiting room. The patient rooms are draped in green plastic and the nurses are just shadows moving against them. My stomach is empty and the smell of latex is stale and completely uninviting. The psychologist comes in and tells me I am going be okay even though the nurse in the room is sticking me with tetanus needles and drawing blood. Protocol, she says. She tells me to stop moving, but I can’t. Every nerve in my body is trembling. The blood stained my face and legs, so she grabs a towel and solution to clean the wounds. The peroxide sizzles on my skin. I just can’t stop crying now. You’re safe here, Ms. Belfiore, you were attacked, but you’re alive and you weren’t raped, right? Just relax now.

They've seen all this before. It happens all the time. I was an obvious case. The nurse put my file into the drawer and two more officers come in to wrap up my statement.
Name:                                       Erica Jean Belfiore
Age:                                                           20
Offense:                                                   Sexual assault and battery
Location:                                              MixxLounge corner of Bleeker and 7th Ave South
Injuries:                    Lacerations and bruises on knees, back, and arms.
Rape Kit:                                     Negative
Offender:                                    Ruggiero last name unknown
Nature of attack:    sexually driven; influenced by narcotics, cocaine, and alcohol.
Investigation:          In progress.

****
August 2, 2006
It's 12:30 am and I'm already late for my internship. But, I don’t care. My mind is elsewhere. Like today, for instance, rather than calculating the amount of time I need to be punctual, I am counting the amount of cigarettes I can smoke from the time I leave until the time I arrive at work. I realize it usually takes me four cigarettes along the way, but today, let’s shoot for five. One on the way to the train, and three in between bus stops in midtown. Maybe I'll find an empty bench with an empty seat big enough for me and my emotional volcano. My feelings spewing out and covering everything around in a thick molten lava of insecurity, smothering all that comes close and killing off any positive energy that could possibly survive the blast.

The bus is three minutes early today. Any other day I would have been happy the bus was early, but today, I’d rather have my fifth cigarette. There’s something about the smoke and how it enters my mouth. It’s the control. Inhale. Exhale and six minutes later, it is gone.

August 2, 2006 12:59pm

I have one minute to get to work. Whatever.
 I climb off the bus at 53^rd street with one more block to walk towards my office. I walked passed a group of construction men carrying large concrete blocks towards the building. I can’t even close my eyes to keep my head from spinning without seeing them looking at me again through dark eyes on the scaffolds. Workers like beasts, hanging off the railing, hounding iron and metal but ravenous for attention. My head drops down and I swerve to the inside of the sidewalk. Don’t look, don’t listen. Don’t look into their eyes. Just keep walking. “Oye mami!” A zealous brute whistles at me as one of the others jumps off the platform and waves his hands. I walk straight and let them bark. I feel my legs and arms swing mechanically down the concrete.  Their eyes spear me, like sharp teeth tearing into me. They are dripping from the mouth and sizing up their prey.
I walk quickly and duck into the nearest convenience store around the corner. The clerk smiles at me and I don’t even lift my head. I grab The New York Times and throw down two dollars without change.

  Monday Evening News Report:
NEW YORK -- A subway train strikes an unidentified man at the Christopher Street and 7 Ave South station in Manhattan 3am in the morning on July 28th. The accident affected subway service on the 2 and 3 subway lines, but service is now back to normal. The man was taken by ambulance to nearby St. Vincent's hospital and died early that following morning. Police said he was heavily intoxicated but it's unclear if the man committed suicide or if he just fell on the tracks.

I rip out the article and fold it up into my hoodie pocket.
I count another one and a half puffs of another cigarette on the corner until the construction workers leave for lunch and I finally can walk upstairs into work, 2 hours late.

I slip into the main lobby, and pass three execs standing in the hallway, sucking on each other’s words, wishing their lives weren’t so uncomfortable. They discuss Hilary Clinton and distract themselves with collared shirts and business plans. Their desks are a row of urinals. Eggshell walls separate nine to five workhorses shitting and pissing their lives away. Vagrant Records office is the last door on the right. Musty, gold colored linoleum wrap either side of the walls and seven separate mirrors spot the hallway. The mirrors bounce their reflection off of each other. I stare at myself as I pass each one of them and there’s seven million of me staring back.
***
The guilt.                                                           
It’s burning a hole. Spinning around me and swimming in my stomach. I try to swallow it down. I walk over to the vending machines for a bottle of soda or some animal crackers to soak up my disgust. Eddie, my internship boss, finds me and tells me he’s disappointed I’m late. I know you’re going through a hard time right now Erica but I need you. This job is why you’re here isn’t it? Snap out of it. He asks me to type up the Saves the Day press release. It all comes up now. I push him out of the way and bolt toward the bathroom. I grab the toilet and shove my face into the bowl. I wish all of this emotional shit would come out with my puke. I sit next to the toilet bowl, and close my eyes.
I slam my fist against the stall and get up to look in the mirror. I look really ugly. My eyes are blood shot and soaked with tears. I smug the mascara some more and give up trying to clean up. I throw water on my face and watch the black tears roll down my cheeks.
I don’t want to talk about it, but Eddie is making me take an hour long lunch break for some time to think. It’s been too long for it to still be smoldering like this. How does this disgust linger so long? Why can’t I just let it go?!  I wander down 42th street amidst the busy worker bees. Everyone is the center of their own worlds; indulgent but content and completely unaware of their surroundings. Like me, for example, who is deathly afraid of every one of them.

My parents say that they’re happy the fucker is dead. The police called me last night and confirmed it. And when they did, I cried a lot. But I don’t even know why I was crying. I woke up today, numb and empty and scared and then it occurred to me why. It’s because I want something. I want answers, or closure, or anything better than that! I want my life back.” My breath shortens. “No trial. No investigation. No closure!” I lean in and write down the last thoughts I hope to ever write again. That bar was his life and once he knew that was over, he jumped in front of a train. ...And that was after he tried to kill me first. I drew a heart, bleeding, and then closed the page.

THIS WAS NEVER THE PERSON I AM TO BECOME.
Too early to call it quits.

***

August 4^th, 2006
I walk down to Tompkins Park with my suitcase and sit with my journal.  It’s been two weeks since I’ve written, but this is the last day before this chapter of my life is closed. The pages are anxious and bare. I stare up into the sunlight for clarity to collect my words, dusting off the cover and opening to the end of the story, to restart it with a new perspective.. I look down across the park bench that I'm on to see a man with red eyes glaring in the sun. His body is hunched over the bench. I’m sitting on the end. Legs crossed with my sandals on the ground in front of me. I pull my sunglasses off my face. He spins around to snatch my stare. Hello, he says. I set the journal on my lap. The sunlight catches his blonde hair and his face is illuminated. I figure he’s 24 years old. Lost and stoned. Hi, I say back with a deep exhale. I light a cigarette and offer him one. I feel him watch my breathing. He slides down the bench so his leg touches mine. He smells of hempseed and sweat. He is restless. He is natural. I know this stranger very well. I recognize his big naïve grin as it was my own. And, I smile.
2^nd Journal Entry, August 4^th 2007
Today, I didn’t force myself to smile. I’m confident to recover.
Fill me up
Rapture of certainty
My fear drowning confidence
When stitches tear at the seams
Be my refuge for loneliness
Tell me how these wounds will heal

This wound will heal..

Graces to Greed

The ganja ranches on Humboldt Hill spread across rolling lands towards the ocean of both fog and sea. Long corridors of Redwood trees barrel the sunlight into misty canopies as it seems almost eerie and uncertain to which way this long dark road will ultimately lead. I realize the more and more we venture down this long highway, the farther away I am getting from what is safe, stable, routine... I am truly on my own, as I have offered my love, light, and heart to an industry of auspiciousness. As the hills climb in elevation where marijuana operations fade from visibility of the winding highways, I have offered myself as a humble servant to the ganja mamas.
They perch, in gallon pots, with stems reaching as high as 10 feet. Their most prized beauties are bundles of joy and medicine tucked away in the folds of their leaves. Sparkled with silver fairy dust, crystals glistening in the sun, the buds were rich and abundant, dark green and purple, with pink hairs golden and gleaming, speckling the surface. The plants that yield fruit are the female plants of course, growing their buds bigger and frostier everyday to inspire the male plants to grow in close proximity for reproduction. This is ultimately their purpose. The more beautiful they become, the better their chances are at reproduction. Therefore, the byproduct of their life’s goal becomes our obsession. The ganja farmer constantly tends to the mamas, a humble servant, fueling their productivity, pumping them full of nutrients and building them up to be the most beautiful and most potent they can possibly afford. It’s as if he is almost tricking them into thinking they will reproduce. But the truth is, they will not. They yield their fruit to become the most beautiful they possibly could grow, and then the farmer deceives them, cuts them down, and sells them off to be consumed by our addictive nature to calm and ease our human pain. The farmer is such a unassuming mechanic, not realizing that maybe the intelligence of these highly advanced plants already understand they are not going to reproduce. Maybe the mamas are okay with it. They realize there is a need for the medicine of the world, to be a part of the human race, in a way that they can infiltrate the world and make it better. Only, at the end of the harvest, I saw an unprecedented and vicious nature between man and plants erupt. Just as the mamas were about to be pulled from the earth, they backlashed, and began to grow their male counterpart organs themselves. The mamas turned on us. They became hermaphrodites to protect their strain. The ganja farmer was mortified, as more than half his crop was wasted to their protective nature. Is it because we are so greedy to bring them to such a high place of production? Could they feel our deceit? Can we return to harmony with these plants or will we continue to mistreat their graces to our own greed?

Ganja Mamas

Larabee Butte road is tucked away upon the acres of mountainous terrain, masked by treacherous landslides and entrenched gulches. It’s practically impossible to get up to it without a rugged vehicle or an airlift. The acreage is coveted by hoop houses, and masked in the valleys of larger pines with locked gates and chains. Gun shots ring through the air throughout the daylight hours even though all of it is pretty much federally illegal. Everyone is kind of in this hush, hush state of consciousness, even though the whole country knows what’s going on up there. The cabin was filled with dust and mothballs. If I were to tip the cabin over, over a million dollars worth of weed would fall out. The corridors in the cabin were filled with trash and boxes, piles of papers, and ganja roaches littered the floor. Seven men and zero females, other than the mamas, inhabited this place. As the first lady to arrive, my work was cut out for me. Not only was I to trim as much weed as I possibly can, I also needed to find nurturing ways to love up these boys, for they had been working the fields since March. This time in September, the weather was just starting to change again so there was an opportunity for me to come in and help be the light. I started to cook, to clean, to massage, and to oversee the production within the domestic realms of this operation. And then, just like the mamas, I began to feel like the more beautiful I made the place, the more I was taken advantage of. The boys made me feel like I should have this much energy anyway, because I am a woman, that I could handle it, and more. I, too, back lashed. There were times I couldn't even look them in the face because I felt like they mistreated everything that couldn't be put into a pipe.

Guerilla Work Fare

I am licking mullein extract off my lips to shield my lungs of a massive influx of dust and marijuana that has taken over. Drink tea, netti pot, trim,, sneeze, drink some more tea, trim, trim, trim, smoke weed… so much weed. In my nostrils, in my lungs, in my head. Alas, I surrender, as the layers of the Madrone tree, laying down the earth and invoking the mountain spirit in. Just shed the layers. I noticed the frame created by the trees when I was sitting and working one day, I watched the leaves change color and fall to the earth completely reinstating my faith for being there. It’s funny how I came back to California, and ended up in a dusty situation once again, same time from last year.
I’m back in a similar place where my throat has closed up and the dust has taken a toll on me once again. I am taking long strides in the forest to shield myself from the Humboldt Hills’ mundane work day. In the morning’s early light, I take reprieve from the congregation of ganja trimmers and smokers’ overindulgences, just enough so that I can be certain. But even though I’m aware, the trimmers awake, and blaze blows and coffee until the sun is high in the sky and I just continue smoking copious amounts of weed to keep up with them. So many toilet paper roll sized joints passing through our fingers, no wonder why I’m yearning to find something to overcome the onslaught of mucus and spacey thoughts erupting in my head.
My hands are puffy and swollen with the cold mountain air. Tecate’ and jabs at the corn cob pipe filled with fresh buds comprised our daily breakfast. I sit forlorn to the beauty from beyond my ganja work station. I desire to experience the desert and the sea of California in yet again a more hands on way, rather than viewing it through this rose colored lens of heart-shaped window. My sights are like daydreams, as I must stick to the task at hand. I accept this opportunity I’ve been given even though I am imagining myself in another place. My work is to take care of myself right now. My art is to sculpt my mind, my body, and these precious little nuggets, into a beautiful and tight package for the world to openly accept. The money maker part of it relies on me doing it as fast as I can.

Try to fake it and get booted

In the past few years, I have visited a lot of places. I fully submerged into the alignment of that place.            

             I went to Hong Kong, and lights were always on. People were walking, talking, chatting, eating... all the time. Trendsetting revealed itself through new architecture, new clothes, new buildings, new trinkets, new everything. Skyscrapers truly defined the word skyscrapers. Street fairs and markets blasted the streets with characters and imaginations of the real 'Chinatown' became truth. Even with all the emphasis on being new and different, the culture homogenized through the adverse complexities of itself, by itself. Hong Kong's adaptations of the elite, advanced, and reprogrammed society of China circumnavigated its dreams of being 'individualized' back to operating in its archetypal ways.  I arrived with my eyes set high and dreams on the horizon, then soon quickly realized how my dreams have already been categorized. I just had to go to the Chun King Mansions building #7, floor 52, and find God in his office with a Macbook log database filing my hopes into a Chinese marketing firm. Not to say that people weren't living their dreams in Hong Kong, but it seemed that every friend, neighbor, foe already knows, everything. The only Chinese that are good at keeping secrets are the poltitians leading the country. After living there for one month, my body and my perspective assimilated. Participation is key in an environment where humanity is dependent on rhythm and connection. I recall seeing the traffic lights move like synaptic connections. A steady vein of lights and chatter polluted the air and streets. Although I loved the new movement that I was experiencing, I realized my body and perception swelled with the onslaught of such trends all around me.

When I moved to Hawaii, I talked 'story' and reinvented myself with every new place and face that I saw there, a complete reflection of me, myself, and I. I seemed to open my eyes and my heart more and more everyday to the tales of the islands. The native words, plants, and people generated a rich nectar inside me that I cultivated and buzzed about. I noticed my skin, my hair, my shape, my perspective in alignment with what was light and bright and colorful all around me. I felt like a true goddess, alighned with the abundance of the earth for the first time, first hand. I continually asked questions about how to continue to grow and change there, manifested quickly but also waited for changes patiently as I found myself often, pacing, waiting, and listening silently to the murmur of the sea. With a place so vibrant and indulgent, the history of how/why a person may end up there for an extended period in mind is the true gold of their experience. To witness the island so intimately, and to learn of the origination of such beauty is a blessing. It also made me contemplate the alchemical nature of the island. What parts of our past has put on their on such a small piece of land for that synchronistic amount of time? Why did we meet in such a place where our hearts continually pull in directions of the moon and sea? My life slowed down as I was becoming more of a witness, than a participant or a leader. Another pace of life that I was so grateful to understand, but in a way I also knew, deep down, that it wasn't the correct rhythm for me.

My sights and travels brought me to Portland, a complete antithesis of both Hong Kong and Hawaii. If there were two opposite spectrum ends, than Hong Kong would sit at the pot of gold and Hawaii would be the end of the rainbow. Portland, to me, is the tricky little leprechaun that makes all the magic happen. "Why the hell would you leave Maui for here!?" is usually the next immediate question I'm asked after, "So, where ya from?"

There are many reasons to leave and not to leave any place. I gauge it by how my body is changing and how my energy feels adapting. I don't think it's coincidental if I get nose bleeds or I'm sick all the time in a certain place. I conclude that place is not for me. Portland has allowed me to slim down and rev up. I'm tickled by the sights, sounds, and routes to take around this town. Everyday is a beautiful representation of the beautiful details I've see in life. In this town, I'm not the only one that sees it. There may be a certain groove or grain that is helpful to follow, but the more a person wants to carve their own path, the more adept to the city of Portland they become. How beautiful. This area is encouraging to be bold, to dare, to change. It is accepting of the essence of things. Well actually, when you try to fake it is when you get booted.

Dream Embers

    It's almost as if I couldn't deny him a night together, or then maybe what I experienced never existed. The logs in the fire cracked and shifted, and without any hesitation I turned my head and puckered my lips.

A portal of images flashed through my mind.  His mouth tasted of whiskey and lime juice. Hands were rough like sandpaper. Goosebumps coated my skin like protective armor to all the visceral sensations that were seeping through, and I felt closest than ever to my reflections of truth.

"Are you cold?" He stopped and said to me, as I noticed my fingertips were quivering on his cheeks.

How could I be. This fire burning between my heart and my stomach, a smoldering burst of energy and flesh surging from within me. I quickly turned back to look at the fire. The flames continued to dance in the same way I felt. My memories of us together were waltzing in my head. The prana from his lips, lingering on mine, seeping like raw honey,  a sweetness between us that reminded me how I am very much alive. And, maybe if I just hold onto him a little together, when the morning light rises above the horizon to wake us, he will still be here.

So, I laid my head down. And redreamt the scene, until I woke up again
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