This was the song that was playing the first time I walked into my trailer and turned on the stereo right after I bought it. I didn’t think much of it, like I didn’t think much of the original booklet in my truck saying (other than the fact that an original booklet was still in a 2003 truck) “Sport Trac turns on the charm whenever you want it. Like when it’s just you and….well, you decide.” And when uncle Steve questioned me one day at Sunday dinner at the ranch about doing this alone, and again when his mother-in-law was concerned as we ate by the fire because ‘it’s good to have company when doing these big things’ and again when Robert showed up a month later to help put a new roof on the horse barn while escaping the Michigan winter and said he gave me credit to do what I was doing alone because he felt he’d want a partner and as I floated in the pool and considered what he was saying, I took the credit because I felt I needed no one. Interesting…..

And now here I am, days after celebrating a 3-month anniversary with a man who seems to embrace the lifestyle I’ve chosen and adores me as I do it. Sometimes other people seem to know you before you do….and they tell you, to prepare you for what’s coming. The day we met on the beach, Paula, whom I’d known for about a week, asks me if I knew him already as she walks up to join me and he walks away to get me wine for the sunset. “I only just met him,” I answer. To which she says, “That’s not what your auras say. They’re the same color.” She still loves to tell people about the golden glow, the “mustard colored burst of light” she saw when she walked up to us at my beach towel. She was trying to tell me that he, that we, were going to be something and I was trying to tell her that he, we, would not. I had just had one of those very touching yet very incredulous bare-your-soul conversations with the lady at the stretchy jewelry booth about the love of my life back in Wisconsin who broke my heart. We joined over the idea that we were mermaids blown off course,, somehow ending up being born in the middle of the country, far from our natural habitat of water and how we had both had great loves that didn’t work out and the only reason we could fathom was because we wouldn’t be doing what we were doing now. I found some peace in that, as I did in her words, “maybe you’ll see him again when you go back to Wisconsin.”

Oh, if I could find her now; that operating system is in desperate need of an upgrade. She was on the very edge of the market that I’d come to see Paula at, at her suggestion, and a stone’s throw away from the café and the man I was about to meet who would change my mind. And my path. The man who talks about watching movies in his truck on the beach in the rain. The man who after sleeping until 5pm after Gasparilla the first time I stayed at this place in Tampa colored my hair for me. A man who says, “It’s your whole energy that jazzes me.” Someone who’s seen me too hungry, too tired and too drunk and expresses the same thing in each version of me not at my finest, “I got you.” He’s gone rug shopping with me at Wal-mart at midnight and when someone tries to weave through the aisle where I’ve spread out all the possibilities he says, “we’re just trying to see which one flies.” He yells, “Go deep, Starfish!” as he raises the carton of soy milk like a football.

And that he calls me Starfish. It started as starfruit, my favorite thing to eat at the time and reminding me that I was no longer in the Midwest, but that transformed. Because he found me on the beach and felt that the tide must have washed me in, he can think of no other explanation. I too find it incredulous when I wonder all the things that needed to line up for him and I to cross paths. He says he thinks about it every day he goes to work and looks out at that spot.

My co-addict in late night runs to Starbuck’s for Smoked Butterscotch Lattes and hazelnut croissants and as I lean over to order he kisses my shoulder and strokes my back. He gets me (I was beginning to wonder if anyone ever would), I know because he tells my Caramom when she asks him how he feels about my gypsy life, “I’m just trying to caress her, not cage her.” He sings “I really like your peaches wanna shake your tree” to me as he pulls me close later that same night at the Palm Pavilion at Clearwater Beach which runs a tight second to the night he sang “Darling Nikki” as he leaned over the railing of the café where he works one night holding me while I bent over backwards and looked up at the palm trees swaying in the wind as I swayed, looking up at the starry night sky. He sounded so close to Prince I had to ask if I could fantasize that I was with him when we were between my purple sheets. He was, after all, my first true love….the one who wrote songs about how I thought it should be too.

And now I have it and I’m so glad I didn’t compromise and I’m so glad I waited. I wanted something amazing with someone who wanted something amazing too. I don’t need companionship because I’m uncomfortable being alone and I’m not trying to fill some empty space so I can feel complete. Like someone says in the book Quirkyalone; A Manifesto For Hopeless Romantics, “I’d rather be alone in anticipation of something awesome happening than involved in something that doesn’t make me happy.” I must be amazing too because it’s all coming from me. “An outside picturing of an inward condition,” A Course In Miracles says. This relationship lifts me and I lift him.

 

“Don’t fight it,”  that’s the first thing I would say to someone thinking about living on wheels and the wind the way I do.  Or maybe you should, I know I did for awhile, just to make sure.  I guess I thought, subconsciously, that there was something wrong with living this way; like I couldn’t make it as a responsible adult with a 401k and a mortgage much the same way you wonder when you’re single why you can’t just find a nice guy and settle down.  Society and my family do their best to convince me that stable is better and that security is certainty but I secretly suspected since I was about twelve years old, and intermittently ever since, that this would not be my path in the world.  I remember the moment I looked at adulthood and did the math: 5 days working and 2 days off seemed pretty lopsided to me.   Also how many years of my life I had to work to then be able to retire and have all my time given back to me with free reign how to use it.  I was already employed at this point, babysitting and helping in my grandma’s bakery, and this road seemed to stretch endlessly ahead of me.  I felt like a fraud.  I told no one.  I just carried this secret with me and tried my best to override it.

And if there is a moment when I can say it all began, this, my pre-teen existential crisis, was it.  I believe it activated a Grace, rather a dependence, on Grace.  “Necessity is the mother of invention,” said Benjamin Franklin and it’s one of my favorite things to quote.  You never know you can until you need to.

I pull the camper into Myakka River State Park.  It’s her maiden voyage.  I’m driving and it’s really not that tough- everyone was right.  I come up to a “ROAD CLOSED” sign and need to make a U-turn and as I pull it off, I feel so powerful.    “I’m more worried about driving her than I am about where I’m gonna put her,”  I told my step-in dad.  “I’d be worried about just the opposite,” he’d say back.    I’ve come to learn he was right.

I go to the ranger’s office to ask about the camp host lead I got.  Their volunteer coordinator position is vacant so there’s no possibility of that happening until that gets filled, I’m told.  I say that maybe I could fill the position, but it’s with the State of Florida which means it’s permanent and I am not.  “You millennials,” the ranger says (I’m 48 and take the compliment) “How does someone so young as yourself live so free?”  “I was born this way!”  I declare  “And by the sheer Grace of God.”  I try to explain that we don’t have to provide for ourselves but he can’t really hear me.  I think maybe he hasn’t had a pre-teen existential crisis, or at any other age either.  And I think maybe that’s the problem we have with God – we think we have to earn it.  Work, get paid, give money, get stuff; A Course in Miracle says, “You really think that if you didn’t have paper strips and metal disks, you’d starve to death.”  But I live  a lot on “consider the  lilies of the fields or the birds of the air, they neither toil nor trouble and they are provided for…how much more important to God are you than these?”  or however that exactly goes.  If we don’t know God then that’s on us, not God. Our terms are too tough – on ourselves.

I also think our pride gets in the way.  There’s this self-sufficiency badge that we like to wear when we handle our shit ourselves and there’s no room for it when you live like you’re sustained by the Love of God.  It’s hard for me to explain that I’m not the one doing it when I’m talking to someone invested in doing it for themselves.  I can plant a seed, I can represent an alternative as so many have done for me but until you want to change the rules – or throw out the rules of the world all together – then nothing changes.  A great freedom was given me the other day: “You are who you say you are.  And that is all.”  It dawned across my mind as a light and a gift.

“I don’t know if I can do it,”  I say early on to Vic and to Karen.  “You ARE doing it,” they both declare in unison; and I realize, it’s in the starting and not all in the finishing.  I’m defining it for myself.  I’m making it up as I go along, and no one is checking, there’s no personality police with some power to ticket me for not doing me the correct way.   There is no right way, there is just what’s right for me and I will try this for as long as I’d like and there is no other criteria.

 

“Tell me the part of your story that led up to this moment,”  he asks me shortly after I tell him I’m living in a camper I just bought and going to  wander the wind, and ride the road for awhile.  The short version?  I flipped a house with my ex, my car got totaled (at 9:20 on 9/20) and my boyfriend broke up with me, soooo I threw some stuff in a rental, grabbed the check at closing and with the intention of no permanent address drove towards the sunshine seeking warmer pastures.   I had no idea what I was going towards, but I was pretty clear on what I was leaving; memories of the best relationship I’d ever had and the merry-go-round of one of the worst.  The cult I’d been a part of and the only state that I’d ever called home – my going out from and my coming back to since forever.

My addresses always ended in “WI”, but no more.  My realtor just laughed when our closing officer asked me to sign and fill in my new address.  “Oh, I don’t have one of those,” I tell her.  I wasn’t sure if I could actually get away with that

If there’s a time when I would reply “story of my life” it would be that some rules are meant to be bent and others are meant to be broken.  I have an almost total disregard for them.  Ask anyone.  I was raised by someone who shoved them down my throat like milk and now I drink neither.  I….make my own shit up, for the most part.  and sometimes I look like I’m really fucking it up, but I never am.  You can’t screw it up inside the miracle, Karen said the other night.  And I live inside the miracle and I like to write all about it.

It started with a force similar to the Wicked Witch of the West showing up early this morning after a very sleepless night. I could hear her even though I couldn’t hear her and slowly woke up to the realization that the moment the men of the house had hoped maybe wouldn’t ever have to happen, was happening. My Baby and I, we’re holding out in the truck like a bunker against The Barbara with beautiful words and music flowing from the radio and playing around us as she swirls around us too. A little Tampa Tasmanian Devil, spinning crazy and getting just as cartoonish. “No Limit” comes on and Usher sings me into having faith in the man I’m sitting next to and walking through this with….”just know when u roll with a nigger like me, there’s no limit, baby. Baby we shine, you and me, we shine.” I’ve always said that when the shit hits, I hope for and am grateful for good timing and good company and to that I would now add a good soundtrack. The refrain of another song comes on as we discuss our options and strategize a game plan. I’m still in pajamas and trying to wake up to what my baby is saying…”you don’t want no problem, want no problem with me” refrains through our plans and lifts me into a better position yet. I’ve decided, I’m not doing anything that’s a reaction to what’s occurring. I feel myself resisting the urge to become unreasonable in the face of something unreasonable. I will carry on with my day as planned and get my truck tire replaced and no I will not take the camper with me and yes I will look for another spot to put her as soon as is possible and no I don’t want to just stick her in storage, and no, you cannot just open the truck door and make crazy demands. Go ahead and call whomever you are threatening to call; I haven’t done anything wrong. Vic held me in when I wanted to react at the ranch when we got there that Sunday night and my trailer was gone (we found it in the woods) and I’m holding him in now. It’s nice to know someone’s got your back and it’s a good feeling when you’ve got theirs. “This is good practice,” he says. “For what?” I ask. “For my mental.”

I’m folding the blanket and making the bed; recognizing the peace in the mundane and the centering effect that folding something down the center has. The blanket got smaller along with my problems as I sing along to the song in my head “you don’t want no problem, want no problem with me.” I’m still in my pajamas but now they’re starting to feel like my armor. I feel like I’m finally on a team and it is so much easier. We hug each other at the foot of the bed. “Are we good?” I ask. And when he says, “Oh yeah, we’re real good” I realize that, if him and I are good, I’m good. “As long as I’ve got my Starfish, I’m okay” he likes to say. So we make a break for it. He goes to work and I go to the garage with plans to be in touch and be in love. As I come out of the gas station I see my truck pissing what must be antifreeze onto the ground. “Jesus,” is all I can say. And as the mechanic puts pressure through the system, it’s like three little squirt guns shooting out in the illumination of the flashlight I’m holding…”Jesus.” Add to that the two front lower ball joints and controller arms and a $50 tire has just rolled into an $1100 estimate clipped to a clipboard and being presented for my consideration – and signature. Luckily, I’m sitting across from the pop machine that has this taped to it:

It is just money I remind myself, paper, it’s not my soul. I float it and it keeps flowing back to me, from me. My bank account or that of Abraham the mechanic, from the vantage point of us all being One, is there even a difference? And how can you not trust someone called Abraham, one of the Bible’s oldest names?

And now, I’m off looking at places to store my camper. We’ve decided, this comes as a bit of a surprise to myself even, that we will stay at Vic’s and just take my camper out on little trips on his days off. I’m sure I must’ve agreed under the pretense that this would be temporary. And I have, after driving and calling and asking for a few hours, found a place with the first month free and $70 after that. Just as I leave the place Vic calls to say that it’s been offered to work out a deal for staying in the driveway long-term. Super. It’s settled and we end up driving around talking and smoking and kissing and processing and enjoying and wandering into the future with with each other in mind. It’s a far, far way from Wisconsin….in oh so many, many ways. We laid in bed at the ranch and woke to the rhythmic gallop of horses after falling asleep under clearly seen stars and the utter silence within a dark, rustic, tree-lined landscape. We stayed in the eye of that storm and we’ll stay in the eye of this one too.

The next morning I walk out of the bathroom to the back of The Barbara in the bedroom doorway shrieking at my boy whose doing a good job of being defenseless under the covers. I say, “Excuse me.” “Excuse me!?! Excuse YOU!!!” she yells in return, to which I say, “Yeah, that’s what I said.” I think she would inspire a good Saturday Night Live character. Someone who tries to act all tough and insulting but can’t get the grammar right. Then she apologizes with, “I’ve got a chemical imbalance, sorry I yelled.” Then we’re all outside and she wants us to move a car so she can park, even though she doesn’t live there, and when we don’t she drives onto the lawn, jumps out and with the wild wind blowing her frizzy blonde hair and swirling leaves around her polyester red pants she yells, “fuck ya all, ya cunts!!!” and slams the car door shut. She then apologizes again and asks my name. It’s like being around someone with verbal turrets syndrome. I ask her if she doesn’t have something better to do than going out of her way to come and try to push us around. Doesn’t she have any friends I ask her, to which she softly replies, “yeah, I’ve got a few friends,” and then proceeds to insult Vic by calling him a nigger. Yesterday she called him a white boy; pick a flavor lady.

 

We wake to the sound of horses galloping across the pasture and I will miss that.  It’s ending the way it began – my first morning I awoke to the whinnying of Joey telling me it was time to get up and when I opened the blinds of my trailer I saw his face looking in the window.  It was then I knew, I was far away from where I’d come from.  I’d done it.  I’d found the trailer.  I’d bought the trailer.  I’d gotten the trailer delivered from Tampa.  Tomorrow  was Christmas Eve and the big red bow on the window made the statement of what a gift had been given me.  Freedom, warmth, an oasis in the world, mobility, a whole bunch of potential just waiting for me to discover it.

I would be somewhat happy to keep hanging out here, but when we came home from the crazy not-sailing trip two nights ago, my trailer was gone.  Bill, in one of his bipolar episodes decided to move it into the middle of the woods.  Through the fences and in the darkness, we hook her up to my truck and pull her back out and onto the side of the driveway.  I want to take her out then, impulsively because I’m pissed, but Vic and Trinity calm me down and we decide to wait a few days until we have a more solid and sane plan.  We don’t really come up with one, but on Tuesday afternoon we go anyway.

We take her out, Frida Kahlo, around the loop and as Vic is backing up and I’m on the road watching him, I hear a loud “POP!” and then see smoke moving along the triangle that joins the hitch to the camper.  He jumps out as I yell out and run to grab the fire extinguisher.  It’s already over though, except for the smell of melted plastic and burnt wire.  As he investigates, I hear the “zzzztt” of wires sparking and I shriek as a reflex.  He assures me he is okay and continues to investigate.  Another “zzztt” another shriek from me, to which he waves his arm in a firm request for me to relocate.  I apologize.  I can’t help it.  Call it some PTSD caused by a dramatic and traumatic childhood.  “I’m not even getting hurt,” he says to calm me, “but your shrieking is freaking me out.”  I let him handle it and discover that the sway bars were put on on top of some wiring and the friction from driving and turning has shorted it all out.

So, meanwhile, back at the ranch…..

He gets to rewiring it, all the while calling me sweetie as I hand him tools and have Toad on speaker phone explaining how to fix it.  He is absolutely my hero once again.  It’s not that he even knows how to do it, but he stays calm and confident and cares enough about me to try to figure it out.

We finally get her back connected and we are off again.  We go to Myakka State Park just as the sun is setting and stop to enjoy the view and snap some pics.  As we go to leave because we’re hungry, we can’t get the brake assembly to engage.  More investigation leads to the discovery that we’ve got a blown fuse, probably due to the wiring fiasco.  So we drive ever so gingerly to an auto parts store with only the truck brakes to stop the whole thing – luckily, Florida is flat.  Fuse replaced and it’s late, we go to eat at Burger King and when they ask if it’s for here or to go, we answer “both!”  We are eating it at home in the parking lot with a bottle of sparkling Sauvignon Blanc, the last of the four bottles I brought back from New Zealand.  I was saving it for a special occasion and can think of nothing more special than this, the camper’s first night out.  I am so happy, happier than I thought I’d be and that tells me that I’ve made the right decision.  Whatever comes, this is my path, and I’ve never felt it with such certainty as I do tonight over a veggie burger and fries.

We go to the rest area at the bottom of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge and camp overnight and this is our view the next morning.  I feel very blessed to be in this place with this person.  As much as I wanted to stay in the ease and comfort of the ranch, it was time to move on and the place that embraced me on the other side of that move was beautiful enough to make the transition all worth it,  It’s the beginning of something very new and also very unknown.  I’ll develop a whole new set of skills as I engage in a whole new way of living…being blown ad trusting the direction.

I’m sitting here on the eve of this big sailing trip and I feel in another world.  I love it here, in this on-my-way-but-not-quite-gone-place.  Is that selfish?  I don’t know.  I don’t know anyone who does what I do so it’s a little hard to know.  It feels like I’m floating, like I’m in no-man’s land.  Similar to when I’m flying and I truly feel suspended in air, above it all, jumping time and place.  And I feel how my movement will ripple and rearrange.  Being on the brink of that feels powerful and incredible.  I can’t wait to see what all shakes out of it; what will come aboard and what will fall overboard while I and the sail flap in the breeze.

It’s a much needed distraction right now as I consider my next move and how best to make it.  I had a little meltdown last week as my plan fell apart and I seriously questioned what the hell I was doing.  Maybe I should just go back to Wisconsin; maybe this whole thing was a mistake.  But on one hand I have been doing it, I’ve been here for two months and it’s been really great!  And on the other hand I haven’t even done anything yet, so I can’t quit now!  It’s too early to call.  And even when it does come time to call, it will have been grand.  I’m not exactly sure, but it always has been like that.  It’s so many past travel scenarios running through my head and I’ve always felt like I would be fine; and I always was.  I’ve been homeless both times I’ve gone to Australia.  Rome was entirely booked for a holiday weekend when I arrived there.  I found out on my layover in Atlanta that the arrangements I had in Colombia would not be available.  I’ve never really worried and I don’t know why I’m worrying now.  Maybe because those others were temporary, I had a home to come home to eventually; but this is it now, we are sans stability.  That’s what I love but that is also what gives me little bits of anxiety every now and then.  This is it.  This is my life.  I have bet it all on this.  “I give you credit,” Robert says.  He’s visiting and doing work on the ranch in exchange for staying in another trailer here.  “I’ll take it,” I reply as I’m floating in the pool.  This is a guy whose been in the military and been all over telling me that he doesn’t think he could do it without a partner.  Funny, I was not sure I could do it with one.  I’ve often found myself doing stuff like this alone.  I find new experiences invigorating and I always find great new people along the way.

I’m surprised at the ease with which I now pack.  It used to stress me out but now I just shrink down my already majorly shrunken down wardrobe without much thought.  I think I care less and less about how I look as I know more and more the greatness I really am.  It’s all so much less circumstantial these days.  There’s a genuine understanding and appreciation for what I am and where I came from and the God that I can depend on.  I’m just not trying so hard anymore.  Maybe I’m coming to know my awesomeness.  I hope so.

Things are changing and it’s time to leave the ranch.  I think back to 2 months ago when I drove here, to the middle of nowhere it seemed, passing all the Christmas lights and parking by a horse barn.  I had arrived.  Across a little wooden bridge and past a pool under bright starlight to a tiki bar and a wood stove.  It was Friday night, December 16, 2016 and over a few beers I began to piece together what it was I thought I wanted.

We talked the ins and outs of gypsy life and the pros and cons of camper styles.  We talked Florida geography and country wide climate.  I felt relaxed and ready and most of all warm -in December.  That alone felt like a big accomplishment.  And it was.  What I had done and what I was about to do was going to be my biggest trick yet.  A week ago I was at the title company, walking out with a nice check and into a car packed with what I hoped was all I would need on this fresh start.  I wasn’t sure if I could pull it off.  And a few weeks into it I was still saying that.  “I’m not sure if I can do it,” to which Karen and Vic both replied, “you are doing it!”  From that Friday night of saying what I wanted, down to a bed that you could get in and out of on each side, “in case I have company,” I’m now sitting on the kind of bed (and I’ve had lovely company) and writing this as I feel the stirring of me getting ready to hitch it up to my truck and drive over that bridge one last time.

I believe this is coming because I haven’t been there much, I’ve been in Tampa staying at Vic’s and that has created a current in the flow of things.  I’m glad I got the glimmer the other day that the only things that could get in the way of my happiness were a lack of gratitude and resistance to whatever is.  I am not the greatest transitioner and yet, I cannot stand still.  It’s a curious paradox.  I’ll get restless and have thoughts that I’m sure set the ball in motion and yet when the change is presented, I resent it.  I want my life to move and grow, I just have a hard time letting go.

So I freaked a little at first.  I got a little fight-or-flight.  I tried to blame.  And then I realized something; that this is what I wanted.  And that whether or not I knew what the next step was, Something did.  And that Something’s only goal is my highest good.  So I tried to trust and tried to sleep.  I woke in the morning worried and had had about enough of it so I prayed, “Jesus, a little help here.”  I fell back asleep and had the most gorgeous dream.  I was in a private plane.  It was sleek and smooth, like something from the future.  I was wowed but also at peace in the fact that I could never miss any of the flights.  I knew it wasn’t my plane, but I had the sense that I could have access to it whenever I wanted.  Next I was on a luxury cruise ship.  I had a huge gorgeous cabin with my own deck.  I woke up feeling so taken care of.  Like this is what it was like to be a child of God.  If my Father was my true father, what kind of life would I have as his child and that I wanted to start living even more in the unfolding of that Grace.  And that what was happening was exactly that.

I ended up in Clearwater that afternoon at Gemini’s and she has an idea for a place I can stay right near her.  I’m thrilled beyond the solution to physical logistics she offers, I’m thrilled because I saw her say it before she even said it.  I’m also thrilled because when I first came to see her a month ago I was talking about wanting to move out of Sarasota and I said that it thought it would come clear to me in the next week where to go next.  I left to go watch the Packer-Cowboys game and as I drove over the causeway with the low afternoon sun blinding me in its reflection off the water and Fitz and the Tantrums blasting “roll up, roll up, roll up, come on get your love”,  it hit me that I wanted to be staying here.  It was that fast.  It was that clear.  Now here we are.  Just where I wanted to be.  May the energy of that sustain me as I go to tow this 4,000 pound pod of mine there.

“I haven’t had anyone to spoil in awhile, I’m kind of looking forward to it.”  When he said that to me, looking back, I guess I first heard it in the monetary sense of the word; which he does.  He indulges my coffee desires, takes me out to dinner and when we get up to leave he dances me in the aisle and when I resist the dip he says, “I got you.”  And I think maybe he does.

But since then I’ve seen spoiling in the broadest sense of the word.

He’s also very giving of his attention – to my words, my feelings, my opinions and he embraces my every little quirk.  He holds me with the delicate balance of wanting to never let me go but also with the freedom to leave and just be me again for a little while.  He’s mushy and gooey and isn’t afraid to baby talk me on the phone in front of his friends but he can easily slip into this deep and low voice that I feel touch me in the center of myself… and lower.

He showers me with his rich characteristics – he’s attentive and affectionate, funny and safe, confident yet humble, soft and strong all at once; I just know he’d catch me, no matter from how high or after how long.   He’s smooth, but not too smooth.  He’s open and cool and warm; sexy smart sweetness.   Charmingly genuine and genuinely charming, I feel adored and entertained whenever I’m with him.  He’s easygoing with a face you trust immediately and a smile that tells you he’s one of those truly happy people; not because of arrangements or accolades but because at their core, they’re Light and they’re just letting it shine.

He supports me not just in what I do but in who I am: “Starfish in the Starbuck’s writing star books” and “It’s your whole aura I’m so jazzed by.”  I swear he looks different every time I see him, like he’s growing and changing into some new and improved version all the time; but then, so am I.  I’ve had a lot of depleting relationships that seem to empty me in the effort and this one nurtures and nourishes me on every level and puts a louder song in my soul.  I’m writing this in a sunbeam in a coffee shop that seems to be playing every cheesy love song ever made from Air Supply to Led Zeppelin and I’m wondering if maybe this is what it’s all led up to and if this is why nothing else worked out.  The culmination of everything I’ve enjoyed in the past and the absence of all I feel ready to do without.

And mmmmm, he’s a generous lover.  Touching and kissing me with such reverence, like someone who understands the intimacy of the invitation; who knows not how long he’ll be able to be here so he savors and makes savory each and every moment.  No touch seems less than planned for optimal pleasure, his movements synchronized to my unspoken desires.  I honestly don’t know how he does it.  Could it be he knows my body better than I do?  He’s exploring places I haven’t been in awhile and others I didn’t even know existed.

I was beginning to wonder if anyone was ever going to be with me the way I really wanted to be with.  I’ve been carrying around this blueprint based on an idea for  something truly amazing and divinely driven and it feels like it’s finally being built.

I thought a life on wheels where I take my home everywhere would, in some way, settle me but I fear it has only stirred me more. I feel an almost constant state of restlessness. Funny the contrast of it all; my life. I had come to answer the question of what I’d do when the house sold with, “I’ll probably just move in with Frosting.” His invitation came one night at the house as he scooped me up under the curve of my back and moved me into the center of the bed. He liked to do that and I liked to feel the strength of him doing it. It felt good to be with someone strong. “You should just move in with me- all your flip flops are there.” I made no external reply but internally, an answer and an acceptance began to form. On the day of lunch with Ulli on the deck of The Barn I say it out loud for the first time. She turns her head slightly away from me and looks far off into the distance, saying nothing. Just an hour later, Frosting replaces her in that seat and he’s letting me go. We are officially untethered. What was a moment ago my landing has now launched me.

I’m on the steps of the Dali museum in St. Petersburg after seeing the Frida Kahlo exhibit and having this writing inspired by her. The exhibit talks about there being two: the suffering, pain-wracked Frida and the one alive to the joy of the universe. And she gives us two truths, the truth of her body and its challenges, and the redemptive vision of beauty that rises from the haunted reality. I feel her contrast of human physical suffering and struggle as well as the spiritual rising over it all that leads to understanding and strength. When she faced her foot being amputated she said, “What need have I for feet, when I can fly?” I see myself and my style in this as well. I so struggle, in many the same ways she struggled – in body and in love – right down to her depiction of and demons within a conflictual and painful relationship to a much older man that is somehow necessary while being understood by no one, not even ourselves. My life and my muse is this grit and Grace.

“The only thing I can say with certainty about my work is that I paint because I have to, and that I always paint whatever comes to mind, without any other considerations.” I feel the same about my writing. I write for myself and from whatever is going on for me, that’s all the method I have. No more and certainly no less.

I’ve declared a gypsy year. Out loud to my friend Luke and as a commitment to myself and so nothing distracts me. Let my unsettled self be unsettled for awhile. Let her flag fly. Let the restlessness keep rustling. I will follow wherever it all leads me….

Every time we go out it’s amazing.  I can tell you why, and I will, but the greatest testament I think is the fact that Frosting tried calling me 3 nights in a row and on each of those nights I was on too great a date to want to pick up.  I’m texting him though, without someone jealously peering over my shoulder.  We’re on the same side of the booth, he slid in right next to me.  The only one I’ve ever had do that on a date was me.  It also might be because he’s doing a funny stint with the waitress a la The Rock.  I get out after we eat and we end up dancing in the aisle.

Another night we’re in Starbuck’s ordering our latest drug – chocolate hazelnut croissants and smoked butterscotch lattes and we start having this really great thing with everyone on the other side of the counter.  I can’t even remember exactly what was said, just this funny and light connection.  The one taking our order says she can’t charge us for everything because we ‘made her chuckle’ and she starts subtracting things from our total.

We’re out to dinner.  Not at the place we had the amazing time at last Wednesday that we swore we’d return to, but the place next door.  We stood literally at a crossroads; the past pulling at us and yet the allure of adventure feeling so tempting.  We decided not to try recreate an amazing time but instead shake the dice and try something new.  A few songs after we’re seated, Jenny Jenny 867-5309.  That seems like a pretty good affirmation of the choice.  Then we’re talking as we’re waiting for our food and I’m explaining that most, if not all, the great artistic minds are in fact a little mad; and I feel that I may be going this way as well.  That the more I write, the more differently I see the world and the less organized my mind is.  He doesn’t seem concerned; of course, it’s not his mind.

I then get into  what I lately see as my writing style formulating.  I like to jump around my timeline as opposed to telling the story sequentially.  Instead of it being chronological, it’s more emotional memory triggered in the present that then takes me back to a moment in the past and fills in the story.  I don’t know if there’s a name for it but I’ve seen other authors do it and I’m asking/explaining how I feel it’s my style too and wondering out loud if it would work.  Before he can even answer me, the guy on stage breaks into Purple Rain.  It’s the purple checkpoint.  My favorite!

One night we go to Motorworks Brewery.  My massage therapist recommended it and the Yelp reviews are good.  There’s a gorgeous patio out back with bocce ball, except neither of us knows how to play bocce ball so he makes up a game, explains the rules, and let’s me go first.  And, according to his made up rules – I win with my first move!  I walk around the tops of the 2-by-4’s lining the “field” like a balance beam and he walks backwards keeping a face to face pace with me.  We go in to get a beer and end up staying well after closing.  We do after work shots at their invitation and inclusion and watch them mop and count the till.  We hit it off like friends.   And when we finally start to leave and settle up, they, like friends, refuse to charge us for anything.   I even got a shirt!  It was the last one.  They had to take it off the display for me and then they just hung the naked mannequin back up.   Crazy fun times.  Blessed times. Then as we’re driving, I’m giving them a good review and posting pics on their Facebook page and I look up and we’re crossing a bridge.  Why are we crossing a bridge?  I don’t know much yet about the exact geography of where I am but I know we didn’t cross one on our way there.  It’s a full moon and it looks like there’s a spotlight on the water.  He suggests we sleep on the beach some night, not tonight, but one night when we’re prepared with covers.

I think I may have found a fellow crazy romantic.