the ocean sends her hello - and with her plenty of change

mmm mmm mmmhh

I got home Sunday evening and unpacked my bags, left huge piles of California all over the living room and washed all my clothes. I took a shower and washed all the rest of the California air and smell away. Tangible stuff washes out anyway.

The coordinator for the VONA writing sessions, Diem Jones, sent an email today to close our time at VONA, reiterating what he'd said when we closed the session on Saturday morning : our lives would be different now. He spoke not just as people of color moving back into a white-dominant world but artists moving back to a world often without creativity/appreciation.

He spoke of attendees of the past who've changed their lives once they've gone to VONA, moving away from home or to the San Francisco area, completing manuscripts, separating themselves from people or things that didn't support them, finding new partners.

I cannot wash off the beauty of the women in my writing group : Robyn, Teri, Onome, Spenta. All incredibly talented and with such a bright light in their faces. They are powerful.

I'm electric. Thinking again about how I ended up in Willie's class by some misguided luck due to electronic communication (Eleggua handles this, no? The orisha of communication and open doors knowing I needed a self-test...), I cannot imagine another way now of having my writing come together. When I typed out a couple of the poems I'd written throughout my week at VONA, I could feel my mind recalling the different ways to set a poem on the page, considered word choice, included concrete images and figurative language. All conscious choices. The act of writing, however, was collective memory tapping my temples. Damned, I didn't know how incredible it could feel to be harnassing some bull of an idea and know that, all along, the creature was lovingly waiting for me to see it.