Open

 

[Best paired with music by Vancouver Sleep Clinic]

 

I woke up early to color my lungs with fresh morning air. When I slid my stiff feet into hiking shoes, I planned to leave my house and head Right to loop through sleep-dusted neighborhoods and admire the hush of dawn. It wasn’t until I was partway up Madonna mountain, pausing in the trail to watch an invisible crane lift the sun over earthline, that I realized I went Left.

Gifted by the powers at play, I stood sandwiched between growing sun and shrinking moon–the rays and reflections catching on tiny silver tightropes, swaying with blades of patchy grass. My shadow leaned soft and brown on the hillside. From the air, nothing more than a tiny birthmark on a small knoll.

 

Sam, Sarah and Jack

My friend Sam’s been growing out his beard and I’m convinced he’s hiding wisdom in there.

Last night I took a looksy at the full moon, and a looksy down at my lazy self before calling one of my oldest friends to take a night hike with me. There was a splatter of residual laundry powder hanging to my sleeve from the load I’d just put in. Sheets. 

When he showed up on my doorstep, singing a tune to my porch light and wiggling to the beat the way he does, we picked our peak right then and there. Bishops. Not too far, not too easy or hard, short or long.

It met the Goldilocks principle, so we met it with high-quality footwear: his Merrell’s, mine Salomon’s. And we talked about normal things, you know, work and friends and honesty and goals and songwriting and lentils and biking and Thanksgiving plans. Occasionally, we’d take breathers along a switchback. The fields below grew motionlessly, the lights winked with secrecy. 

Everything is so manageable from up here.

He said it without knowing its impact. And we pressed on, following the trails as they meandered around and up the mountain.

Want to hear one of my favorite quotes? I haven’t been able to get it out of my head.

Sure.

“Energy creates energy. It is by spending myself that I become rich.” 

Is there a word that combines yeah, woah, mm, love and fascination? If so, it would describe my reaction to that Sarah Bernhardt quote. The idea of spending yourself … being spent…giving everything…becoming currency. It was so wonderfully charging and inspiring, and I thought of it for a long while, long after the echo of his words left the crisp air. I thought about it as I came home to my clean, warm sheets and tucked myself in, airtight. I read a bit of Kerouac to set the tone of my pending slumber and stopped on this sentence and Buddhist quote:

When you get to the top of a mountain, keep climbing.

 

George’s Girl Takes 5: Second Edition

See:

San Luis Obispo, you must know I’ve been flirting with the idea of leaving you–courting me nonstop like this. You with your gorgeous hillsides and your calm mornings served in coffee chalices. I’m not quite ready to forsake your sun’s kiss.

Touch: I got my hands on my mom’s old Singer this weekend, and turned fabric into furniture jewelry.

Smell: 

Sam is a close friend who uses his hipsterness for good not evil. He’s ironic, bearded, and enjoys pour over coffee with the same intensity that eighth grade boys in middle America enjoy Bagel Bites.

Sam and I drove due north this weekend to visit our respective families up in the bay area. Sometime around the King City speed trap, our bladders and obnoxious coffee intake teamed up to force us off the freeway and into a McDonalds.

I thought it would be a quick get in/get out kind of pit stop. Sam took the “when in Rome” approach and purchased a single hash brown. It was that uncertain mix of firm and flimsy woven fibers that took my car on an olfactory journey from hydrogenated oil to a confusing after-scent of cabbage, rotten egg and diesel.

Taste: 

Replace raindrops on roses with butternut squash,

whiskers on kittens with apples, ricotta, and caramelized onions,

brown paper packages with mascarpone…

… and Julie Andrews and I have a lot in common.

If you live within 25 miles of Danville and love organic, gluten free, thin crust pizza, go to Jules.

Hear: 

I’m thankful to be fairly good at several things. Double knotting my shoes in 2 seconds flat, preparing oatmeal to a cloudlike consistency, hula hooping–to name a modest few. But when it comes to impersonations, every attempt sounds the same unpleasant offense: an Indian/Irish hybrid of misshapen vowels and misguided inflection.

So when I was home this Friday night, wilding out to my complete score of Beatles sheet music, I passed the mic from John to Paul to Ringo to George. The accent that escaped my lips sounded like what six-year-old Danny Bonaduce in a Sari would look like.

My dad loved the Beatles, and would sing Goodnight to his girls every single night.

I have several videos saved on my phone where Dad played the leading role. This week, I watched them all. Back to back, forward and back, lying face up below a headboard he helped me build from an old closet door.

His voice sounded close, his eyes seemed like they blinked and batted in rhythm with my own. He was so goofy, and I am so cold lying here months later with my index finger tapping and untapping a big triangle on a small screen. Playback. Playback. Playback. Playback.

George’s Girl Takes 5

Here we have it: The First Edition.

A recap of the week’s sounds, smells, sights, touches, and tastes from a girl who lost her father but not herself. 

Let it be said that I had my first date with Photoshop this weekend. These images are my notably novice creations. What’s the phrase, Rome wasn’t built in an hour?

Feel: 

• Grateful. Under a grey sky, someone new took me somewhere new.
• Surprised. A beautiful stranger left this anonymous note, and a book titled “50 paintings you should know” for me. Whoever you are, Thank You.

Nicole, You inspire me everyday. I hope this brings you some more inspiration to fuel your mind and soul.

• Able bodied. Started my running regiment for my Israel half marathon. The lungs and buns are burning.
• Shocked. It’s been almost sixth months since I’ve seen/heard/spoken to the greatest man I’ve ever known.
• Progress. I finished the prelude this week – now to polish, and polish some more.
• Relaxed. Been going to acupuncture. I haven’t a clue if it’s working, but if it’s wrong, I don’t want to be right.

Taste: 

• Gluten Free Chocolate Lavender Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting. I spent Friday night baking these bad boys. They tasted like a somersault, back rub, sun salutation, and bear hug all in one.
  
• Gin. Which is one letter away from grin. Which is what happens to me when I drink it.

See:

• The skies in San Luis Obispo. They explode at sunset.
• The hills, the valleys, the stretches of road, the glittering tides, the rows of vines.
• More chances to grow.

Smell:

Scentless Sunflowers,

when I close my eyes, my nose

detects your brightness.

• Stables. I visited a friend in Atascadero this weekend. Helped her feed the horses (!!) and enjoyed a night in with plates full of salmon, and ears full of John Coltrane.
• America. Beers, Bean dips and everything in between, Super Bowl XLVII wasn’t won by the Ravens, but by Pinterest. Thank you, pretty little push-pinned site for exposing so many finger licking good recipes to taste and taste and taste some more.

Hear: [this week’s repeat offenses]

• Beethoven’s Appassionata
• The Head and the Heart
• Kendrick Lamar
• Gregory Alan Isakov
• Blue Foundation
• Gustav Holst
• Trampled By Turtles
• Passion Pit

And there we have it, friends. An overview of a week in the life of a girl who plain and simply is not fatherless.

If you’re so inclined, a sneak peak behind the serious curtain:

February 3, 2013

It dawned on me yesterday as I was driving down the grade.

Foot off the gas, heat expanding my pores and drying out my hands. It’s February, I thought. I’m entering the sixth month without my father.

Alone in my car, plunging into the valley, my breaths became shallow and my shoulders caved. I realized I didn’t cry once in January, and I panicked.

Was I forgetting about him? Am I okay without him? I don’t want that; I can’t possibly be.

And as if cued in by an omnipotent conductor, tears fell, dropping in time to a song I had on repeat. Some shot down like pellets, some lazily serpentined down my cheeks. Some stung more than others. All blurred the construct of reality I had unintentionally crafted for myself during the previous month.

January was busy. Filled with progress and opportunity, newness and fondness, it arrested my time and attention in such a way that I hardly noticed the handcuffs. If not people, then things. If not things, then thoughts, if not thoughts then work, if not work then something. I was always surrounded.

But in my car, with this song on a relentless loop, the message drilled into my every cavity and I found my solace.

I realized how in grieving, my mind demands expansive time to itself. That crucial exploration of self via sensations or wonder or the complete absence of the two.

I cried for my father’s short life, for mine, and for the uneasiness I feel when my alone time is chipped and chiseled away.

Tonight I am reflective about my week. About this month, about my father. About the way I choose to spend the time I’m gifted. It appears as though this little series is becoming my own little prescription pad. Just by seeing the writing on it, I already feel better.

Happy Anniversary, Mom + Dad

To celebrate what would have been George and Dina’s 33rd wedding anniversary, George’s girls spent the weekend together in a tiny beach town called Cayucos.

They watched 4 movies in 2 days, went through more kettle corn than a state fair, read by the water, and wine tasted amid the sacred glow of a Paso Robles sunset.

  

     

new tradition

15 movements of a Rachmaninoff piece, 10 people, 3 beds, 2 showers, 1 fridge full of imperial stouts. That about summarizes the best staycation weekend a girl could’ve asked for.

My family came down to the central coast to see me sing at Cal Poly’s Performing Arts Center, and we all stayed snug as bugs in rugs in a picture perfect vacation home in Avila Beach. We did things normal families do, like play on swing sets and chase brownies with English toffee.

Needless to say, there was a George shaped whole in all of our hearts this weekend. Not a minute went by where we weren’t all wishing he was enjoying the view or coffee or choir music alongside us.

 

     

Photography by my sister and cousin, Bryanna.

Who’s laughing now

San Luis Obispo has a funny way of participating in the summer season. Luckily, we share a humor founded in an aversion to hot weather.

There is no greater sensation than waking up to overcast skies, leaping from carpet to kitchen rug only to avoid the hot lava that is the cool linoleum. But when the fog finally fades, the sky expresses its happiness in the bluest of hues, and suddenly I am left wearing just one of the original six layers I put on in a cold morning flurry. It is sheer brilliance, the way this town keeps us all guessing.

May I just say, in preparation for the 4th of July –God bless (the central coasts of) America.