It's hard to know where to start when I've traveled through so many worlds in such a short time. A quick synopsis:

Love: I moved out of the place I shared with Misha in October of 2004 and got my own apartment (living alone for the first time ever!) where I live now. Misha moved to the suburbs and continues to work at a casino and live a a lifestyle totally opposed to what I want for myself. As this is the case, separation was the best thing for us and we are both happier as a result. Andras (the "lesser-known" celebrity I was gushing about just before I quit LJ 5/04) continues to be in my life in challenging, pleasant, and mysterious ways. More on that next post.

Work: I actually make my living in the realm of spiritual sexuality now. I am a novitiate tantrika, undergoing training and practice in tantra, meditation, enlightened sexuality, breathwork, and elements of shamanism. It's mind-blowing.

School: I began a master's program in Mental Health Counseling but am now on pause with that. I've used all my time and energy lately to build my business and have been re-evauluating whether I want to sink my resources into this more traditional training or into alternative forms of education. I've also become involved in Landmark Education. Anyone familiar?

Thanks for all your kind welcomes. :)

Hello old friend. Wow. I haven't been to Livejournal in nearly two years. I've moved homes and changed jobs since then, have started and stopped school, have entered into and exited out of an amazing, challenging, rewarding relationship, have grown and spiraled upward in so many ways. At just this moment I'm finding myself entering into a bit more of a quiet, contemplative time. I'll have more time on my hands this winter than I've been used to. I'm looking forward to this return.

It occurred to me tonight that perhaps I am a healer.

All of my life I have felt called to some task, some duty that I could not precisely define. I have always been skeptical, afraid, and hopelessly drawn to the spectacle of romantic connection, to the accident scenes where love has gone wrong.

Tonight I wondered if this were my job in life, to drift one sadness to another bringing new love, new life and compassion.

Every man I've ever dated has somehow grown and blossommed through our bond and its eventual dissipation. Perhaps that is all of life, each moment an opportunity for us to reach and trandcend, relationships merely magnifying that, but I have felt drawn. I possess an unusual empathic capacity; lovers can inhabit me.

I imagined this life, scenes upon scenes of it, my shifting self moving from lover to lover to friendship, each of us teaching and knowing the other, connecting with and letting go of pain. I would not be a martyr here. My satisfaction would be complete.

I have a big, fat crush on a lesser-lesser-lesser-known celebrity. I have a crush on a boy who did kung-fu in a bad horror sequel, on a boy who's made a guest appearance on Saved By the Bell. I have a crush on a boy who lives an hour away, but whose absence I can ease by watching his bad, bad movies in the comfort of my home. You better believe my Netflix cue is full. Ladies and Gentlemen, if the internet wasn't so damn scary and if I didn't still have a shred of my sense of privacy left, I'd be posting his headshots all over the damn place. That's how girlishly giddy I am. But I'm not going to do that. Yet.

He was one of those random Friendster boys. I get odd messages once every couple of weeks or so, local men trying to say something impressive, wondering if I'd like to take a walk or go for coffee. I'm by no means a snob, but I mostly ignore them. And the subject line in his message was "Hello," the kind of mushy, meaningless subject line I hate. But as I read the message, he wrote about having marked my page long ago but not writing until finally deciding "it's just time to come out of the shadows and say the most frightening word in the English language...Hello."

Swoon. Okay. Let's be honest. My quick reply was somewhat motivated by his bearing a strong resemblance to freakin' JORDAN CATALANO.

So I met him last Friday for a non-date. I wasn't sure I was dating at the moment. Misha was in Minnesota. (Another story entirely.) So we agreed to a look in the eye and a head-poke. Nothing more.

It was different than my other many, many dates this past year. My heart is in a new place. I was open to him. I wasn't putting up my sturdy, flirty barrier. I've had a habit during this poly-experiment of going on dates with this attitude that I am looking for friendly sex and that is all, everything else being far too complicated. But I want to know this man's fear and the color of his childhood pajamas. I want to know all of it.

He was in an open marriage for eleven years and that relationship dissolved last year. He's got all kinds of mixed feelings about open relationships, as do I. We're both still hopeful, but tentative, frightened.

He's invited me to his town this weekend. I'm not yet free to reply. Too much mess on the Misha front. Mish and I have decided we'll go our own ways in September when our lease is up. For the time being, however, we are still best friends and lovers and we don't have a protocol for the current situation.

But god, I want to go. I want to walk down his street and have a beer at his pub and see what kind of books are on his shelves and smell his sheets and kiss his hips and make a brand new start for me. I've felt electric since Friday just thinking of him.




And you'll all have to help me find the perfect pseudonym for this 80s hunk turned dashing, dapper man; I won't be able to stand another pronouns-only entry. Ideas?

i thought that my sex drive had just died down. i realize tonight, while he is in Minnesota eating mock eclairs from his mother's oven, that my body has simply tired of him. the emotional drain dries me out when i'm around him. but six hours after his plane's taken off, i want to dress in a skirt and heels and find myself a good strangerfuck.

i need to go out dancing.

i don't want to go alone, but my girlfriends aren't quite the fans of smutdancing that i am. i need a dance comrade, a juicy girl who wants to occasionally put on airs with me. i still agree not to hurt him. but i do need to let myself breathe.

I can feel myself waking up. I feel energy seeping back in, what feels like dried and dormant cells in my body filling with liquid and re-animating. My body has become sensitive again, my desire is returning.

Is it possible that I am this in touch with nature? Possible that the past few months were simply Winter and this is Spring?

I am tanned and happy, fresh from Florida with a Vitamin D stockpile and a proper dosage of my father's good sense.

My favorite part about the trip? Every time I asked my dad what time it was, he would answer in one of two ways: "I don't know, the sun's up" or "I don't know, it's dark." The work he's doing there on his boat has allowed him this rhythm and I'm trying to sustain it. I've been up by six each day since returning, partly owing to jetlag, partly to renewed enthusiasm for life.

I am seeing beauty in everything again, seeing holiness in the cracks in the sidewalk.

This is who I am when I feel myself. This where you can find me.

( Look, I caught it out of the sea! )

Going to ignore the to-do list for at least another week and get on a plane to Florida tonight. I will be sitting in a hammock on the deck of a ratty wooden boat for the next six days. That should be time enough to clear my head.

Goodbye work, goodbye apartment, goodbye Misha, goodbye cloudy Seattle.

I need this.

To do list:

1. Break up with boyfriend
2. Move into own apartment
3. Quit job
4. Go back to school

1. Thanks to all of you who sent me such thoughtful responses to my last post. You amaze me with your sensitivity, perspective, and resourcefulness.

2. Tomorrow is the kangarooification. My bits and tackle are being marsupializied. Don't worry, it's a lot less sideshow than it sounds. But do send me healthy, healing vibes--and lots of 'em.

3. In an effort to fill my belly before midnight (doc says no food or water after the stroke of twelve), I am currently having white wine and cheese dogs. I am such a classy girl.

Tonight's menu:



Bacon-wrapped shrimp with mango on skewers, black beans and cotija on the side. Add Sierra Nevada Pale Ale to wash it down with and B & J's Pistachio Pistachio for desert, and that's one highly satisfying meal.

So, out of curiosity, just how many of you are in some kind of funk right now?

Are the planets aligned to our disadvantage? Things seem to be schlepping along rather miserably for most people I know right now, myself included.

Ya basta.

Are there other people in America who listen to A Prairie Home Companion while they boil and sanitize their dildos on Sunday morning? It feels a little wrong to me, and I like that.

I love Garrison Keillor because his kitschy, narrow humor is home to me. I love him because Lake Wobegon is where I'm from, and church suppers and ice houses are more than familiar. I love him because I have distance now, because I can make fun of it with him, in the same way he does; I am both of and apart from the small-town Midwest.

I'm in one of my back-to-the-land moods. At least once a year, every year, for the past ten years, I find myself thinking that I will die if I can't dig and eat potatoes. I buy books on urban gardening, and maybe re-pot a pothos, and dream of a life in which I tend to my wildflower patch each morning before work.

I grew up with room to move and lakes to swim in and fish to catch. I grew up with beaches and safe biking and store clerks who knew your name. But to be fair, I also grew up with mindless gossip, rampant racism, and pervasive Christian mores.

I have lived in cities because it's only in urban areas that I've found the kind of people and ideas that I want to fill my life with. I live in cities because I need to be able to browse the queer bookstore for hours on weekends or to pick up a new pocket rocket for a friend's birthday on the way home from work. I need to be able to sit in coffeeshops reading Bitch magazine and see subversive film at the local Landmark. I need options and Indian food and the occasional warehouse fete.

But I don't live in cities for the concrete. Or the traffic. Or the neon. Or the noise. I don't need hipsters or fashion or social hierarchy. Yesterday, driving home from an overnight trips with friends on I-5 from Portland to Seattle, staring out the window at the ugly expanse, I spent a lot of time wondering if progressive small towns could possibly exist. Are there low-stress, quiet towns out there in which people don't go to church but make art instead? Is there a place where locally-owned business outnumbers the chains? Could I possibly live in an affordable home with a backyard and dangly mobiles hanging from the trees and have neighbors with "Impeach Bush" signs in their front yard?

I would give up excitement for peace right now. I'd give up Thai Express for herbs from the yard. I want to shut my mouth, open my ears, and not hear the highway rumble.

Hey folks. It's been awhile, I know. Between broken girlparts, a broken bank account, and a broken heart, I haven't had much to write about that would have been worth reading, so I just spared you and went AWOL for a time. Life is on the mend in many ways, however, although that may also just be a mental illusion caused by the rare phenomena of sunshine on Seattle today.

( So here's what's been going down: )

Yesterday was a nearly-ideal Saturday, as far as putzing-around Saturdays go. It went like this:

++Wake up with Misha around 10 am. Have the 2nd sex I've had since the surgery, enjoy it immensely.

++Stumble into bottle-filled living room around 11 am. Say goodbye to hungover friends who had spent the previous night in our guest room after fancy food, drinking, stupid card games, and a viewing of the spectacular "Jesus Christ: Vampire Hunter."

++Make scrambled eggs and mexican-style crema, devour quickly.

++Look at recipes online, make shopping list.

++Brave the rain and head to the International District to buy produce at one of the garage-style markets. Pick up chili-mangoes and licorice-plums as a treat. Discover that they are both quite disgusting. Laugh. Spit. Laugh.

++Finish shopping at the Red Apple, stop at home for a snack. Pack up the thrift-store purchased board game Solarquest and head to Perkatory for a show-down. (I have a board game phobia that Misha has taken upon himself to break. It's like exposure therapy. It's working.)

++Head home for a quickie (again, delicious) and then off to the gym. Workout for 30 minutes, stretch for 15, and then sit alternatingly in the hot tub, the steam room, and the cold pool for about 45 minutes. My body is now putty and I like it like this.

++Home again, I make pea pod/broccoli/yellow pepper stir fry with beef and my own sauce concoction. We play more Solarquest. I kick ass. We drink beers and get silly. Watch CQ, which I love. Fall asleep together on the couch, wake up and go to bed at 4 am.

It might seem boring to you, but this is exactly the kind of thing I need right now. Let's concentrate on the basics: food, sex, and exercise. The rest can wait.

I've awoken from the haze of painkillers to discover that my life is in need of some serious ordering. Off to yoga, I go, and then to look for part-time work. I am beyond broke, kiddos. It's looking like my knitting, my photo sorting, and my musculature are finally going to get that long-awaited attention they've been needing. I'm scaling way back here, drawing nights out on the town down to zero, gradually increasing to, at best, two (if I get all caught up).

I just wrote to the president-elect of the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors, and Therapists. I'm feeling out the possibilities of going back to school and being able to read and learn about sex while I'm doing it. What could be happier?