Viva Las Vegas

It’s 6 ish am and it’s 109 degrees here in Las Vegas. The Monk is doing his morning service, chanting in Chinese and next door the Australians are having an argument. What is there to argue about at 6 am? Nothing. Consciousness has barely taken a foothold. In my world no words should be spoken above a soft whisper before 8 am.

Yesterday we went to Walmart and a young man carefully approached us in the hardware aisle and asked the monk why he was dressed that way. This happens wherever we go and it always surprises me. Not that people are curious but the people who muster up the courage to ask are always a little…strange. This man made me feel like we should maybe leave immediately. I think it may just be the after effects of recent events AND we watched Nightingale the night before and David Oyelowo’s brilliant performance was still swirling in my brain. The idea that people in such excruciating pain are walking among us shopping, going to church, pumping gas and all the while they are sinking into a deep madness.

And we’re in VEGAS! I’m going to breakfast in my jammies. Then we’re off to Zion National Park. This WOULD be the week for a heat wave and by heat I mean fucking outrageous 3 digit temperatures. We have lots of water and my hope is that the temperature will plummet down to the 80’s by this evening. Wish us luck.

namaste

Monk and Me (Chanda) Roadtrip 2015

This year’s annual Monk and me road trip has officially begun. We’re in LA at the lux and fabulous home of my cousins. Eating gourmet food and swimming in the pool under the clearest blue skies imaginable. This is why people live in LA. The weather. That and Sprouts! My favorite supermarket because they make a tasty cranberry and walnut bread and they have Dr Bronner’s Patchouli moisturizer.

We head out in the morning, in a northeasterly direction with the intention of meeting up with friends in Colorado, camping along the way.

The Monk tells me that the Buddha had a driver when he ventured out from his childhood home. His name was Chanda so I’m adopting that name for this trip, especially after I looked it up and found this: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=chanda

Scenes from LA…

Last year’s trip:

https://plantingalongtheverge.com/2014/07/

I spent the last week up in Reno/Truckee with my beautiful daughter and her savage crew. It was exhausting and lovely. Those boys are a handful. Baby boy likes putting a colander on his head and running around.

He’s got two speeds blur and coma.

His brother only has one speed. It is decidedly NOT coma.

On my way home I stopped for lunch at Panda Express. You might think the eggplant and tofu with a bowl of brown rice a healthy and tasty choice if you’re that kind of crazy. I don’t recommend it, it was about as tasty as soggy cardboard. But.My fortune cookie clinched the deal when I was trying to decide which way to head home with a misbehaving van.

I took the long and scenic route down highway 395 which is absolutely as spectacular as everyone says it is. Unfortunately, the Sportsmobile was not happy and it made for a kind of nerve twisting road trip. I was planning on stopping at Mono Lake and Mammoth Lake and several other spots along the way. Instead I stopped at Tuttle Creek Camp at the foot of Mt Whitney. It was late ish evening when I arrived so I made myself some dinner, popped open a bottle of wine and feasted and then lay down on the picnic table and watched the stars light up the night sky. It was grand and it drained all the worry from my tired bones. It’s a beautiful spot. I can’t wait to go back.

I managed to make it back to the coast in one very tired sweaty piece and even managed a “release” in one of my favorite spots along the Kern River.

This morning the Ommobile II was dropped off for inspection and repair before I head out again next week for the annual Monk Road trip.

Fingers crossed.

Namaste

Owl’s Roost

Another one of my girls is set free. When I started these little stitched pieces my daughter was somewhere around 9 or 10 ish? I would stitch a little portrait and ask her to write a small story to go with it and then I’d stitch the story to the portrait. I sewed a few of these onto pillow covers. Sadly, these are gone. Somewhere. I have one left. It will eventually find it’s way out into the world along with the others.This one never got her story told.

Until now.

She wore the dress every day for months. She rinsed it in the bathroom sink every three or four days, depending. She would fill the bathroom sink and use some of her lavender soap to wash the armpits then hang it in the shower to dry. Some mornings the dress was still damp but she would put it on and let the heat from her skin do the rest. It would be dry as a corn husk by the time she got to the Owl’s Roost.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

An enchanting walk along the hills this morning. It started out chilly and gray and then the sun showed up and made everything smile. I walked up and down and all around and found fields of these everywhere…

listened to this insightful talk this morning, thanks LaVonne.

and found a perfect tree for her…

She’s not terribly pretty but she has beautiful lips and she’s dancing in the breeze under the dappled shade of a pine tree.

Namaste.

and yet another…

I pulled into this parking spot, went in and bought some chocolate chip cookies and when I got back to the car and looked out the window, I saw this perfect tree. It’s a busy place, I’m sure it was noticed quickly.

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

William Butler Yeats

Namaste

Third Release

I was so happy to hear that someone came upon my first “release” in the almost wild. I have not heard a peep about the second and I wonder. It was an old stitched pieced of a nude. Too risque? Maybe. Oh well. I hope it finds a happy home and that someone will let me know.

This third was a quick tie up to a tree and run as it’s on a well traveled path and it is a holiday weekend. Lots of people in town so I know it will be found fast.

Who knew this could be so fun?

Geocaching my stash…

This getting rid of all your worldly possessions thing has been really easy AND really really hard. Goodwill has gotten loads and loads of my stuff but there are some things I think are not Goodwill “material”. Stuff I’ve made over the years mostly that I no longer have room for. So, I’ve decided to start planting these things along the “verge” and other places. I’m starting today. I’ll wrap it and “plant” it somewhere with my blessings and good wishes and hopes that whoever discovers it will find some use for it.

Sitting On The Rim

I brought a nasty bug home with me from my short visit with the kids.

NASTY.

I appear to be on the mend.

SLOWLY.

If each day falls

inside each night,

there exists a well

where clarity is imprisoned.

We need to sit on the rim

of the well of darkness

and fish for fallen light

with patience.

Pablo Neruda

Sick baby

I’m visiting with the very sick grand baby.

Conversation yesterday went something like this:

Me: Do you need to go to the potty?

Chips: No, I’m pissed at the potty.

Me: why?

Chips: Cause it’s white.

Me: You don’t like the potty cause it’s white?

Chips: yeth, I want a green potty.

I’m heading home this afternoon, my snuggle battery almost fully charged. Oh these babies and my beautiful daughter. I adore them.

MOnday April 27, 2015

Thank you Elizabeth!

Friday April 24, 2015

I haven’t meant to be away so long. In my head, I’m here all the time rambling on. Life has taken so many turns and every time I think to sit and write something I am overwhelmed and like that phone call I mean to return, I keep putting it off and off and off and it grows larger and more difficult to make the call because so much time has passed.

But here I am.

The children have moved and the compound is quiet. Most of the toys are gone from the yard and the house is a shell littered with boxes. I am in the process of wading through a lifetime of “stuff”. Toss, donate or keep. The keep pile is very small since the plan is to sell the house and go on the road in a trailer. I am being ruthless. The few things I can’t part with and can’t take with are going into a couple of bins to be stored in some one’s garage/home/attic.
My once massive wardrobe of beautiful clothes is now down to a very few practical pieces and I expect will be cut even further once we get under way. I may yet adopt some kind of nun’s robes. First I’ll have to invent my religion. It’s on my list of things to do.
The other is to knit a trailer cozy.

I woke up on the cynical jaded side of the bed this morning.

Receiving a chance to win a prepaid cremation from the Neptune Society did not help.

Neither did going to the new market in town. $13 for a jar of tahini. Really? They had some great stuff like ceramic water bottles $30, and a camping stove for $130. A bakery and a deli with delectable looking food. Young, scrubbed fresh looking smiling faces working the counters and old affluent white people shelling out their dough for gluten free, gently farmed, free to roam, organic goods.

The place used to be called the Hamlet. It was an old restaurant with sticky floors and nasty food but they had jazz every Sunday afternoon and there was a spectacular garden made up of giant old and rare cactus. They tore them all out and planted a mostly edible landscape which I think is grand but I also hated because of the tearing out of the old cactus.

See what I mean?

Meanwhile, I made this yesterday.

Turquoise from Afghanistan, red jade and sandalwood beads from a mala the monk gave me. The big amber bead is resin I think.

And I came home to this…

My grandson’s Harley festooned with sourgrass.

Slow Landing

I am home safe and mostly sound. I feel as though I have not fully arrived. That Mexico crossing was long and difficult. Over 2 hours to get across the border. Two hours of peddlers selling candies, ices, trinkets of all kinds. After spending every dollar and peso in my bag, I had none to give when the maimed started begging the closer I crept to the border. It was a heartbreaking experience that is still haunting me.

I drove two full days to get home lickety split. My trusty steed did not let me down. I rode it hard. Thank you Helen Hellenbach!

My grand babies are bigger and louder. Mr Chips is talking in sentences and his words are clearer now though there are some we still cannot decipher. Dear Leader Baby is thinning out and exploring his world but not with the vengeance his brother did. Baby is quieter in nature, a little shy. He is a careful observer.

I am landing here…

and here…

San Felipe Baja California

We’ve been in San Felipe BC for five days. We arrived right in the middle of the San Felipe 250 off road race which meant nothing to me but was a big deal to A LOT of people. Trying to navigate this tiny town’s roads was kind of a nightmare. With 5 vehicles trying to stay together and no phones or maps with which to communicate and navigate, it was only a matter of time before we lost each other and it was nothing short of miraculous that we found each other again among the masses.

Our first night’s camp was in the sandy parking lot of the town’s stadium. We circled the wagons and settled in. Earlier in the day I spotted an interesting vehicle and stopped to chat with the owner who turned out to be, like everyone else around here, Canadian. A. He was accompanied by James and Sarah who had just sailed their boat from Vancouver to Ensenada and had just driven into town to see the race before heading back to Canada. They were great fun. And they shared food. We all crammed into Ted’s groovy Chinook and feasted on crab tacos and clam chowder they’d brought with them from their friends restaurant in Ensenada. We could not have planned a better introduction to Baja. In the morning they took off to watch the race and some of us went off to find provisions and a more suitable camp.

Turns out we were only a block away from the beach and a perfect camp spot but there were no spots available because of the race! We spent the next night on the street right outside our current camp spot at Rueben’s. A very bare bones, seen better days campo. Still, they have one hot shower, an ocean view and the place to ourselves. The town emptied out like a Tequila bottle after the fiesta.

Race Day….