nomad'z land

holy CARP yes CARP its so cold. you know carp like the fish.

j n da band all moseyed on down (up? i dont know) to napa for the day saturday to play a fundraiser for mikey and saras foundation at this winery, whitehall. 1) amazing wine and AMAZING AUTHENTIC PIZZA MADE BY A REAL ITALIAN out of a wood oven oh my godddddddddddd best pizza of my life and you know i KNOW my muthafuckin pizza. bury me in pizza. or cremate me in a wood pizza oven with some cheese and pepperoni. guuuuurl. 2) ive re-lost my drinking mojo, fuck! i even was drinking lots n lots o wata but nausea still kicked in. im definitely not pregnant so it cant be that. fail. maybe i have some unique liver cancer. ill go get checked out now.

so it was COLD COLDDDDD so cold and i was so pissed i forgot to put my fleece leggings on under. waaaah! not that we were outside the whole time but still, shiet. drove to napa with cat, bulby, and cats dog harry who ended up eating my lip gloss. lip gloss is no longer poppin 😦 love the owners of the winery, tom and jackie who btw is gorge. rich people who are actually nice are dope. like my beanie. yes i am wearing it right now.

well, thats about it, we got there, we drank, we ate, they played, oh my god the version of “im alive” they played was soooooo good. i was nearly moved to tears. can you imagine, how embarrassing would that have been. i may be a hippie on the inside but i am not going to start showing my emotions to randoms via tears, j would never let me live it down.

oh!!! i forgot the beginning. most important part!!!! flight to sf was delayed (of course) so i flew into oakland thinking j would be home but he was at mikeys which is pretty much by sfo, whoops! so GUESS WHAT. i will tell you what: i took the BART BY MYSELF from oakland airport to as close to mikeys as i could get. i know!!!! im in grad school AND i took public transportation by myself for the first time?? (cabs dont count, if they did i would be a connoisseur) it was very exciting. i just kept telling myself to act cool and tough in case someone tried to mess with me which i was like oh god pleeeeease dont let anybody talk to me.

then i get to mikeys and had to take a peepee so i did then the toilet flooded (it was like a slow motion black and white where the toilet water is rising and making crazy noises and my eyes grow wider and the camera zooms in on my widening eyes as the background moves farther behind) and i screamed HELP!!! so mikey and j spent the next 20 minutes cleaning my peepee off the bathroom floor. in my defense there was already tp in there and i was already on my way to sit when i noticed it so i figured it would just go down the drain as we naturally expect. wrong. thank gods i didnt diarrhea. and that my pee was pretty dang clear. also in my defense they sopped up most of the at least 1-inch pee flood mess and i cleaned the rest aka mopped it clean. im just not good with that kind of stuff. i figure itll come to me when i pop out a kid or two. if not, well, thats what my parents and hired help are for. and j. cause j is good at that kind of stuff.

ugh okay one more thing while were on the subject. speaking of kids. we were watching “the road” last night with viggo mortensen. i had this realization that i just might make a terrible mother, but if j is my partner in childrearing then the kid wont be so bad cause he is really good at stuff. the kid just kept annoying the fuck out of me and i kept saying “ughhh shut the fuck up kid” and j would be like “well, think about what hes been through, poor guy” then id be quiet and think “ah shit im such an ass hole.” in conclusion, this is why aint nobody havin kids anytime soon. oh god am i going to be a terrible mother. 😦

by phase, i mean semester. i began my first semester of grad school (15 weeks ago?!) with equal parts trepidation, eagerness, anxiety, excitement. well some of those are kinda synonymous so nevermind, i already digress. i think learning how to balance all the shit i piled on all at once was a big hurdle for me — grad school, prereqs, work, traveling, relationship, friendships. volunteering, therapy, rehabing the knee, me time.

i was having a conversation with someone on the plane the other day about being “busy”. we came to the conclusion that there is always going to be somebody busier than you. but the busiest person in the universe is probably someone with all you can imagine PLUS rearing like 6 kids at one time.. as a single mother. the lesson i got was not to stop whining and bitching and moaning, but to allow myself to be in awe of how much can possibly be fit into a period of 24 hours. or how much information can be stuffed into 1300 g of brain.

im not sure i can encapsulate all ive learned in this first semester into one book much less blog. not just what i learned in my classes or in books, but from my fellow art therapy students and from myself. i dont think ill be able to truly reflect on it and understand what ive retained until ive had super super super downtime, so expect some really hippie dippy trippy shit in my bali blog whomp whomp.

a big thing is perspective — to put it succinctly: few things, if any, that we swear will just kill us, will actually kill us. what i mean is, im not going to keel over and die from taking 10 classes in one semester. my heart isnt going to stop pumping blood throughout my body if i dont get all my homework and projects and reading and work done on time. my lungs will not say “fuck you” and deflate, never to inflate again, if i dont figure out the next ten years of my life, or even the next fucking year of my life. at the same time, sure, i need a plan of some sort. plans are good. priorities are good. but theyre not going to dictate whether i live or die in this moment. or the next one or the one after that. also, we have the capabilities to be stressed and freaking out aka were still alive!! so man up self.

another big’un is compassion. this one is a doozy. a toughie. first up is compassion for yaself. ive learned that once i get that going its so much easier to be compassionate to others. negative self talk is such a bitch to get rid of, god damn. but if i remember that its a part of me that, like anything else in life inside and out, can only be dealt with effectively with LOVE rather than hate, well, it makes a world of difference. after all, hate is a pretty big synonym for fear. oo back to synonyms im so good at inadvertently full circling these thangs.

in conclusion, oh wait. one more thing. i dont know if id ever tell any of the gals this, and i definitely wouldnt name names, but there were definitely some people in my class that i was for sure id not like. then i got to know em for longer than a two second conversation and i was proven wrong, so wrong. and now were like this crazy family. in our last class of the semester, group therapy, we laughed and were cuckoo and cried, and it was great. sidenote: its not weird that we cried cause at the very least, one person cries each week in class, and its totally acceptable which is awesome. anyway theres this perfect and consistent mixture of honesty and compassion and willingness to learn and grow that ive never seen before, at least in a group of people, that gets cultivated in each class and grows every day, and maybe its cause youre mixing art and psychology, so its just emotion x100000000, but fuckballs, i am so grateful for this grad program and all the people in it, all my teachers, everything ive learned in and out of class. i think its the beginning of a beautiful thing.

ps im also ever grateful for my family and friends and my amazing boodle who have been so fucking patient with me and not given me shit for being batshit weird at times, and for not giving me crap for being so unavailable as i did my best (and sometimes didnt have enough in me to give a shit to do my best) to navigate my way through this transition into real life. i love you more than i could ever say.

flew up for the night to see my sweetface and go to lynn’s photo exhibit for her new book rock and roll stories at the san francisco art exchange. lynn goldsmith is the coolest woman of this and last century probably. someone that cool should be a major dick but shes totally dope. i think shes photographed everyone and i mean everyyyyy one since the 60s. naturally ive been inspired. for my first exhibit im going to recreate her most prolific subjects and photographs, seen below. mission statement: in my work, i toe the line between idiocy and genius.

our sweet geoffrey charles weil flew the nest to sunnier climes with perhaps better pakololo. we said our goodbyes and drowned our sorrows in popcorn and beer at pineapple hill which turned out to be a pretty solid reunionfest. god i love popcorn. we love you weil stallion!!