So Cat and I stayed with J’s mom, it was a beautiful summer with all the trees and river that I could want… the days were PERFECT for boogie-boarding down the Toutle River. Guess you could say I toodled down the Toutle. A lot. After having to leave so much of my stuff, my LIFE, behind in that RV, I couldn’t stop weeding out everything. Each belonging had to have not just a purpose, but be MULTI-functional, or it went. Funny thing is the more I cut loose, the lighter I felt. Quotes from Fight Club came to mind. Really can’t express it, it looks different in writing—the big OMG factor just doesn’t show through. Any Northern Exposure fans out there? You hard-core people will remember the Mastodon episode, where Joel, robbed of his chance at documenting a magnificent Paleolithic discovery, succumbs to the energy that is Cicely, now that someone cut up his frozen ancient elephant for steaks, saying, “I’m one of YOU now.” If you felt something when he said it, in your gut, a feeling that wrenched your stomach in a big knot that would forever stay, then you may not understand the sentiment. If on the other hand, you tilted your head to the right and uttered some variance of “hmm…” as if there were a great eternal mystery about to be revealed to you by taking the middle way, going with the flow, and felt curious to see where you end up… THAT is the beginning of understanding. That was the beginning of me.
Even if I hadn’t decided to move, the coach was a disaster waiting to happen, hell—already caught fire once—and almost nothing worked right, never mind the details. There just isn’t enough room to talk about days like when my door lock broke while I was inside, and I had to hammer the thing off to get out, and from then on had to use an elastic band just to keep it shut, which didn’t work when the wind blew hard; or that my shower bottom was breaking out and leaked under the rig; or that I was missing a cover to an air duct and had to keep a pan under it when it rained (which I could never place just right, water still got everywhere), or what I had to do each time I used the toilet to make it work… there’s just something that steels one’s insides when one repeatedly works that close with their own excretions.
Without a job I couldn’t get my own apartment. Without an internet connection or a decent signal to my cell, I wasn’t having luck getting a job. All things kept pointing to impermanence—everything that defined me seemed to be falling away. Like I was being extinguished. I don’t know if anyone can really, really understand what that’s like, until you go thru it. (Jon lived it with us for a few days on the road, and I’m sure was eager to get back to his own problems ;o)
Eventually I finished all my weeding: I had some good clothes, a few kitchen items, some bedding, a couple footstools, and was getting along swimmingly (there’s that punny girl again) with J’s ma, and her two cats were getting along with Cat. We were a houseful of females and felines, having the time of our nine lives. Staying up late, getting up late, going down to the hamburger stand 5 miles down the road with my laptop… and boarding, boarding, boarding. 
The memories of the recent Incubus concert in Tucson got me more into their music, which surprised me in their Buddhist-like implications. I began to see the joy in not-having. I began to feel the lightness in it. For once in my life, my future was completely hidden from me, uncertain. For once I did not have anyone depending on me to right the wrongs on the job, or anyone to ascribe any worth to me. Or feel the need for such. Slowly, silently, it was happening...The horses were expensive, but happy. I paid my way with groceries at the house. Although my unemployment was running out, I feared for nothing.
It was one day in September, I happened to be on the river again, after my umpteenth time down the rapids, belly-first on my board, and I had stopped in the middle of the river against a rock, turned over so that I was laying on my back, and placed myself in the current just so, going nowhere and watching like so many times before the bald eagles, as they flew in their dances... Just then. Just like that. Like the first tiny raindrop of spring falling on your cheek. Like a someone laying a comfy blanket over you half asleep. Has this happened to you? A soft realization. Could it be... happiness? No, not quite. Contentment? I’d already been content for a few weeks. Hmmm.
Then it dawned on me. Funny euphemism, that. Dawned. And it’s just that way, too, like a sun rising, dispersing the darkness. The darkness where I thought I was my job; where I defined myself as wife, sister, daughter, a person with means, before all these things fell away.
Dawn came, and I am suddenly just me. Dawn came, and there is nothing but love left inside. Dawn came, and I am one with all things, in an endless, timeless way of infinite understanding.
I am standing barefoot on the edge of the cliffs overlooking the ocean, wind blowing, head back, arms wide open, smiling and singing “Wish You Were Here.”
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