Heaven: Maybe this time I've earned my wings.

I am so happy to be home. My life has never felt so good. So great grand fantastic fucking amazing. Beautiful. After those tumultuous times in Riverside (I must say I do miss Ben, Anthony, Austin, Max, and Brittany something awful, and talk to them throughout the week), I never take any day for granted. Every day has the potential to be beautiful. Every moment has the potential to change my thoughts. Every every every every every good good good good good. I mean, of course things are up and down still. I feel jealous I feel blue I feel loss and pain and lonely, but mostly I just feel and it feels good to feel not bad. I miss Pancho something awful, but at the same time I'm like a mother who can't cry in front of her children-- I've got the Dodger-dog to look after, and he's grown something big since some of you left and he's looking mighty handsome with his new collar and I'm awful proud.

I'm meeting a slew of people in Modesto, acquaintances and people I've come to call friends. I spend weekends with them. Ashley Machado, if you remember her from Dutcher or Turlock, is one of them-- old friend who I've just met (again). She says hello to you when I've mentioned your names in the past. She's pretty and pretty cool. Max is another (a different Max than the Riverside Max), bike rider, real sweet and but also the king sarcasm, kind of frustrating, but its Max and we laugh it off. Veenu I just met, and we haven't hung out in person, but she's really nice and we're planning on it. More people too. I spend a lot of time in Modesto. A lot of time. It's quick. Fast-paced. And when I drive back to Turlock on Sunday night, after open-mic at the Queen Bean, I come to appreciate our town so much more. It's slow. Not so slow as Oakdale or Knights Ferry, that slow that I would love to be experiencing, but it's nice. It's quiet. It's safe and it's Home.

And then there's Mark. He's incredible. He's honest and fun and I never feel the need to hesitate around him. I can be me, totally and completely. It's been fast, but it feels like so much longer. We share common interests. We learn from eachother. He plays songs on the ukulele for me, and he lets me read my poetry to him. He encourages music, and we're even starting a music project together-- he's better with his hands than I am, and I'm better with my words, I think, although I would argue that it all depends on what you're trying to say, and that my English words shouldn't cover up whatever he's trying to say with his hands, but he says otherwise, so we're collaborating. I played a show at a good buddy of mine's tattoo parlour alongside some of my songwriting heroes-- Sodapop, Tom V, Willy Tea, Roy Dean-- and Mark was there to play along with me. We spend weekends together, back and forth from Turlock to Modesto, sometimes Oakdale, with eachother's friends and family. It feels good. It feels grown. I am happy.

I am happy. That's what it gets down to. I'm feeling something that I didn't know existed. A new level to what was a fading memory. And it's real. Alive. Breathing inside me and outside of me. Created. Creating. Giving birth to more beauty. Tangible and real and in my hands and above my head and beneath my feet and growing within me, wrapping vines around my heart and flowering in my head and bursting forth from my hands and my eyes and my mouth and fluttering around like a butterfly and scattering its seeds in the wind and planting more and growing and growing.

It's a wonder, it's a mystery. It's amazing, and it's before me, and I'm ready. I'm finally ready. Maybe this time, I've actually earned my wings. Now it's time to take the leap and see if I plummet or if I soar. I'll build the muscle; I'll get back up; I'll try again.

I feel happy. I am happy.

I am really, really happy.