I haven't been writing here lately because I've been living. Summer always happens fast.
I went to a marriage celebration that seemed like it brought so many things full circle. It made me content, proud, and excited. And the lemony asparagus was so delicious.
I've gone up to Pinecrest a couple times. I pet my poodle a lot and relish her adoration of my attention. I went on a road trip and hung out with friends. When Sacramento strangers asked me what I do, I replied "I'm on vacation." In a few days, I'm going to Costa Rica. I have no idea what I'll be doing there, but I love Costa Rica. I love the soft sweet Spanish, I love "con gusto" and "pura vida", and I love salsa (the dance), gallo pinto (the food), and I LOVE guanabana (the fruit--you might know it as soursop, although I never did). So who cares what will happen once I get there. I don't care at all.
After Costa Rica, I'll be in Boise for the end of July. Then, somehow I have to get to New York by mid August. The dream is to ride my motorcycle, and second best would be to find other people with a car with fewer broken parts than mine who also are going to New York, and to share the ride. After that, I'll consider taking a train. Obviously, the worst thing would be to fly.
What comes next for the unemployed and savings-depleting Laralyn who wanders around California? This summer is so full, but then next, I don't know what to do with myself first. I have a lot I want to do, but I don't know what to do first. There are years in the making here. My self needs an occupation. Myself is this body that needs food and a little shelter. Myself is several decades left on earth if I'm lucky, and all the connections that my heart can carry.
I want to be a writer, I think, but I don't have anything to say. I've never liked plots. I don't like sad stories. This is why I don't write much fiction anymore. I might be in an independent film in the fall, if it gets funding. I want to crew a yacht cruising around the Galapagos. I want to live in a van. I want to learn to surf. I want to make coffee and drink coffee. I want Provence and Tuscany, mostly I want to be in the realness of the idea of loud dinners with big families with lots of bread and olive oil and wine. I want to grow organic vegetables, for someone else, with someone else's instructions, someone else's love in the soil, someone else's dirt on my hands. I want to feed people. I want the ocean. I want it deep in my heart, pushy and salty and terrifying me with its opaque indigo. I want fire in the palms of my hands in everything I do, and I want to forget the moon for a while and be a summer child, a sun daughter.
I've been reading a lot. A lot of it I forget, but some of it I don't. I thought about listing all of the books, but it'd be so deceitful. It would make it seem like I have all of those words in my mind or my soul, and I certainly don't. They just stretch me out and keep me company.
I wear sun dresses and big hats more fearlessly these days, and sometimes I catch my reflection and think I look fabulous, like one of the soft curvy goddesses painted by the masters. I found this wonderful project, and ever since, whenever I see my body, my skin, I see an oil painting, soft lines and deep curves, or a fresco, surfaces for reflecting light, or a watercolor, hazy and sweet and warm. I'm not at all into the fat acceptance movement, but I am into seeing those particular edges of my existence as quite lovely and strangely beautiful even while they are under reconstruction. I'm into being comfortable, like an artist's model. I guess what I'm saying is that I've recently discovered that the greatest men would have painted me, if I had lived near enough to them in time. And if they would have loved me, then everybody with any sense must love me, and I love me, and anybody who doesn't think I'm glorious has no idea that I quite nearly modeled for Botticelli (I only missed the gig by five centuries) and so I saunter and flow around California in this basil green cotton dress, knowing that I'm extraordinary when I smile, without having to bother being painted at all.
Maybe next I'll practice humility.
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