I woke up wanting to write, which is the effect of Oregon grey on me.   It sits on my skin with the whale spit in the fog, stirs my blood with long armed wrinkled fists of driftwood splayed out on a frothing coast.  All I knew when I flew in to Portland was physical: my body, there was nothing else to follow now. 

 Just.

Get.

Me.

To.

The.

Trees.

In dreams when something is emerged from your psyche and finally you can clearly see, it appears solid, illuminated, it is still even when bizarre or un-understood, and that was Beth, mermaid goddess nymph and total golden bodhisattva peace.  This is the peace of having peace but not only peace alone, the glory triumph of openness with good friends.  I am what I am.  Here’s all of me: where’s the bathroom, I’m hungry as fuck and without talking I know you see it, stressed out tired lonely and poor, but aint that it, here is us doin the damn thing, c’mon let’s eat…

And she has her passion and family, two dogs a husband and kids, these things I surrendered in order to have me.  The journey is not over yet, I am reminded, we talk about therapy, me seeing clients, grad school, my own long road, I think of what I always do when I am here, my ex and our life on the road, living in the trailer ten miles from here on the Alsea when its mouth spoke words from the sea, the logging roads where only he and I would go, the chanterelles, the winds and love and being afraid, the breaking down when we moved to Depoe Bay.  Fishing Rock and how does a person ever move on?  

I celebrate that I brought no books and will do no homework the entire time I’m here.  She has opened her own yoga school and we go to Harmony Yoga Center, which just opened last week, which is hers, which makes me, me.  I lay on my back in a five minute yin pose and open my eyes and see the shadowed rafters of her space, and this is it, what I came here for, and I haven’t even gotten to see Gretchen yet or dear dear Paul.  I think man I hope Ben is making us dinner because Ben is from Tennessee and he can cook the country way that is in my roots from the Pennsylvania hills.  We open the door and the whole house smells like BBQ and bacon and it is true, I am home.

Same how like the time I drove all those hundreds of miles from the Humboldt dirt roads up the coast along the Pacific, who roused up with Genie-yearning swirled out of a golden lamp which is the ignorant earth and us rubbing its belly with our haphazard feet, I will never forget Beth opening her door and the hug feeling of, AHHHHH you’re here.

And that is now, and it was 8 years ago.   I lived in that little mother-in-law in a single room with my man, near the Fishing Rock and up from Depoe Bay.  And it was then and will be, again and again.  And all that matters is I give my body what time convinces us we do not need.  I leave the sun and happy light blue for my other parts, the fog, the buoyant grey that seeps dark green, the rocky shores and the loss and the gains and all the tall, speechless trees.