waking up

it's gray, again, from the inside of the labyrinth.  there is different weather outside the maze.  i am here in the heart of it, though, and happy for the space of having been met--having co created some kind of space for self and others in the salon idea of last night.  we've taken a turn toward the art making.  each time someone comes i offer more of the bounty that has been bestowed here.  it gets to go home with people.  it is too much, maybe--the not clinging to the stuff of all the stuff that has been imparted.  it goes endlessly on in the flowing river of stuff traveling on toward stuff that lives in the cubbies and closets of spaces and places crammed full of stuff.  i still have so much.  i keep trying to give it all away.  i keep trying to let it all go.  what is it to let it all go? i wonder? stuff.  i got to cast a mask yesterday--and send home a book and give away some supplies that felt right for this one.  i gave away paints that had been given and shells and beads and medalions and pendants--that's the thing about working in recycled materials--there is always an abundance of other people's excess given--because YOU might do something with it--might share it--might make it possible for other people to use this thing that wanted to be possessed--to be lived with--to be held on the shelf for decades--still wrapped in its plastic wrapper indicating its newness.  new.  new.  what is the coveted state of new? what is the pristine, unused state of still fresh from the factory--still sealed in the plastic--still preserved under glass? what is this constant state of coffin that everything seems presented in? what of the unruly future--thrown into garbage bags and left by the side of the road in the rain for the goodwill trucks, just like the garbage ones, to come along and collect what can be collected for the sorting and storage of others.  i live down the street from a great good will hub.  i am wearing the first shoes of my PhD journey that have been offered as gift--that i didn't buy from the good will.  good will.  good will.  what is that exactly? i live catecorner from the white elephant sale--and every year, the good women of the oakland museum board, have their best used stuff shlepped to this part of oakland they might not otherwise go to, and invite all their friends, and offer their things to the bargain buying others to raise money for the museum.  this is a beautiful oakland tradition.  a grand expression of excess and opulence going toward a good cause.  we've just passed the good cause season.  i'm still stepping over homeless people in the rain on the street when i come up from under the ground at civic center in san francisco.  i walk to my groovy school--past the new construction for yet another magnificent building--past the tourist busses filling and emptying and filling and emptying each week with a new group of lookeyloos making it to the mecca of san francisco.  it is mecca for some people--some people kicked out of their well meaning, holy homes with no where to go but the castro--from wherever they happened to be born.  we used to work with these kids--no--play with these kids--homeless kids who gathered at the lgbt center to free their minds.  and we'd show up with plaster and gauze and bandage them up and birth their new faces and watch them paint rainbows over what hardened--and then they'd head back toward their nights of offering head on the streets of san francisco for whatever comfort exchange that might offer the nobody's child sleeping on the grounds of city hall.  we didn't do it every day.  we asked to be paid for showing up.  we took the money they spent with us and put it in a bank and split it in half when we split up the partnership of what was never going to be able to make money if what we were selling was ourselves.  i am working it out in words.  i don't know where i keep making the same mistakes.  i can't make sense of the world.  i can show up, do what i say i will, open space, hold it open for others, offer my gifts and talents, take what's offered in exchange, and know it is all with the leftover excess that any good thing happens.  the leftover excess.  the icing.  my life is all icing.  i wish, for the sake of realizing the metaphor, that i could walk to the fridge right now, dip my finger in the depth of chocolate sugar, and suck the goopy pile of it into my mouth that knows exactly how that tastes.  so much is confounded, conflated and coordinated to come back to life in taste.  childhood tastes--in dreams, in coloring things, in possibilities unfolding into this here and now in time.  here and now, in time, i am waking up on a gifted futon, typing words on a gifted laptop, drinking chocolate and coffee concoction from a gifted cup.  i am gifted.  is there a class for how to give away the gifts???? ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, piles of excess still line the walls of everwhere i manage to find myself.  supplies are plentiful.  life begins? or ends? when waking up from dreams.....